Is it because "ordinary mortals" have either breadth or depth in
scope? I've wondered this, as I find myself frustratingly unable to
remember fine details for long periods of time, but tend to be able to
think broadly (pardon the pun) about current issues.
On a separate issue, I am unable to remember fine details unless they
are tied into a strong narrative. The pentose phosphate pathway- I
knew it once cold, but I'd have to look it up now. Dialogue from any
Coen brothers' movie going back to Barton Fink? No problem.
Alicia
On Apr 19, 2011, at 9:57 AM, Dana Paxson wrote:
Wow, Eric! Your comment blew me away! What you've described
resembles the kind of thing I've been trying to write for the past
15 years or so: the project that is Descending Road and the ELM
supporting it! That's why I ended up with multiple POVs, multiple
masters of the narrative, and threading and glossaries and
references all automated - and I'm still having trouble making it
comprehensible to mortals like myself. Ha!
On 4/19/2011 8:57 AM, Eric Scoles wrote:
...
Many many moons ago I conceived of a character who would be a
master of memory, the end of a long lineage of such masters, who
transferred their history orally and as a result, had verse and
prose maps of a whole continent in their head at any given time,
situated in history. It was hard writing and in the end I let that
aspect of it slide, because I couldn't find a way to write the PoV
of such a person and make it comprehensible to ordinary mortals.
On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 8:08 AM, Dana Paxson <[email protected]>
wrote:
How clearly this emerges as we try to drink from the informational
firehoses every day. Two thoughts:
1) To trust certain people with the culling tasks is to empower
them. In the social framework, culling can be the enemy of choice.
2) Surrender may be inevitable and necessary, but the fabrics of
information are interwoven so richly and finely that many works
inform each work we read. The traces of Aristotle lie latent in
most of what we read in the West. We need not read Euclid's
Elements to gather its meaning, because most published mathematical
works use its paradigms. And the few who read one obscure
scribbler may find in their reading what will inform all that they
write, which in turn whole worlds may read. Surrender, in the end,
becomes a joyful swim in the great seas of knowledge.
On 4/19/2011 7:43 AM, Alicia Henn wrote:
Culling is easy; it implies a huge amount of control and mastery.
Surrender, on the other hand, is a little sad.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/04/18/135508305/the-sad-beautiful-fact-that-were-all-going-to-miss-almost-everything
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