Blog 4 (Where is my mind?)

My alarm this morning was set to the tune of Where Is My Mind by the Pixies. There couldn't be a more perfect prelude to my day. On that note, here are my insights into the readings.

The Spandel was read first, and as usual, I found it to be a chore to get through. Her call to the wild was nothing new, not even in our readings (that estuary in WTL is looking much better), and sucked a good amount of the motivation I need so much right now out of me. It felt a bit like a rambling account of several personal experiences. BUT, to avoid being a complete naysayer, I went back and found some points that I liked. The foremost of which was "if we wish to encourage reflective thought, we must stop equating thinking with busy-ness." (10) I couldn't agree more, but to go beyond that, I also resent all forms of calculating intelligence. Grades do not make intelligence. Memorization is not worth testing. At the heart of all of this resentment is the way people try to force you to think in certain ways. Thinking is freedom, one we can keep or let out, and no person should tell you how to do it. (Unless you are a physicist or a mathematician... but I digress.)

I was happy to move on to the Smith. He went into philosophizing about the thinking behind the writing, a point which had to be salvaged from the Spandel chapter. (In my opinion) The statement that really wanted to make me raise my lighter was "writing does more than reflect underlying thought, it liberates and develops it." (35) Hell yes. That's going onto my Facebook as one of my new favorite quotes. He followed that up soon after with "No one can censure us for making a mental mistake. In the arena of imagination we have a freedom to hypothesize, to test and to explore consequences that is rarely available to us in the outside world." (36) I grew up as a somewhat solitary kid, largely spending my time imagining. One of my mother's favorite memories of this was that every time we go into a car when I was a child, I'd sit quietly staring out of the window, and If she'd try to talk to me I would say "Shh, I'm imagining." That intense need for imagining corresponded with an intense love of reading that developed into an appreciation of writing and a will to write. It took a lot of time to understand language better, to improve my prose, and I am still far from what I'd call "good". More than anything, I had to learn to accept, and even more so, appreciate the criticism of the work that came from my imagination. For me, it's my most valuable writing tool. Where am I going with this?- Don't know! In any case, I loved the Smith piece, it was full of interesting philosophizing.

The piece by Craig T., I mean, G. Lynn Nelson, didn't rile me as much as it did to some other classmates, but I was not in agreement with it. Firstly, blaming every problem with proving that you are a proficient writer on media is ridiculous. Many intelligent people watch lots of television and listen to tons of music. For some, it is a major distractor that keeps there interest that could be in language elsewhere, but that's their choice. Not everyone needs to be a linguist. Most insulting was her resolute statement "and so their sensitivity for language dies, and a part of them dies with it." (322) I don't quite feel people's skill with language should be put to death, but maybe put to sleep with the possibility that it might not wake up again. Her steps to encouraging writing were ridiculously basic, and I resented her interpretation of "publishing", because sharing your piece in a workshop and having it sent to the press is quite different.

So, after expressing my disorganized thoughts, here are my final words.

Your head will collapse
If there's nothing in it
And you'll ask yourself

Where is my mind.

Okay, they aren't my words, but I can relate.