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09/19/2007
News and literature
After a protracted period of silence I feel strongly persuaded to present you with a plethora of progessions in my otherwise pedestrain life. :P (I realised after the second p that I could have some fun with this sentance and I will once again use the time-old excuse... its MY blog!)
Anyway... to those of you who do not already know, I am doing music at Uni!! :D And over the moon. Seriously, my cheecks are complaining because I am grinning to much. Not only do I now have time to do the things I wish to do (like practise, or read, or draw or listen), but no! This is encouraged in me. Active development of skills outside the classroom is encouraged and praised. No longer do I have to feel guilty for practising for more than the allotted 45 minutes. I am free! And it is wonderful.
And as for my degree... I can't wait.
Along with this I have given up Further maths. This is a less joy-bringing development, I do enjoy maths and will be sorry so see it go (despite the extreme hang-hold it had on my time). However, I do not enjoy - and neither am I good at - so that is less of a loss. And as I need the time, am not certain of an A, and do not enjoy the course I woulkd have to take it seemed like the logical conclusion. I will pick maths up again when I have time and inclination (If this means never I will be dissapointed, but so be it).
Music itself is going well. I still need to order reeds from Howarths, so that will happen tomorrow. Started playing piano again - a glorious piece of Schumann! Which I will do in a concert sometime. Might pester one of the teachers to give me playing advice, but it seems fairly self-explanitory. Organ is organ. Some brilliant hymns, and even better volentaries. The head decided to announce my scholarship in assembly, I don't know how I feel about that. :S oh... and how do I tell the difference between Sibeleus and Wagner? ("Sounds like toffee pudding" applies to both!)
Went to the English Society last night. Which I have a strange feeling I enjoyed more than the English Students there. The talk was basically on "what is literature" and the perspective was that literature is a piece of writing that intrinsically serves no purpose and that now (with the rise in consumerisation) we no longer have literature as all written word is a comodity. Here I must disagree with a several issues:
- Publised books have always been a comodity; nowadays that comodity is accecisble to all instead of just the wealthy.
- If literature serves no purpose then there can be no literature written in the past as all historical literature gives us significant insight into that culture and how social states functioned during that period. Literature also allows us to develop our understanding of people and how people see things - it is in essence one persons view on a scenario be it imaginary or the combination of a series of events theyhave experienced.
- All writing has a purpose as it is written (perhapse not conciously so). People write what they feel, how they think, what polotics they support and abhor, the qualities they admire or distain - all these factors come across through good literature as the author (in part) tries to communicate and promote their own beliefs. Few people positively advertise that which they dislike.
- True, part of the beauty of literature is that is is based in fantasy and does not point to specific instances in time and tangible objects or events (and in this sense it is nothingness and "useless") but this does not mean it serves no purpose. If we limit purpose to the epirical then we limit all sense of culture/unity/emotion/faith/belief and also all sense of identity and history. We can not bring out our sense of beloninging (to a family or a group) as an object to see when it is discussed (Guliver's Travels - the philosophers) and neither can we identify a specific purpose for literatue that is ubiquitous. This does not mean one does not exist.
- The moment we try to define literature, to categorise it, to class it and treat it as something which can be contained and measured then we loose sight of so much, you cannot qualify the emotive and the beautiful. Why is something beautiful? Because it fulfills the golden ratio? Or because we take pleasure in it? Because the colours do not comflict? Or because it reminds us of a time we were happy?
Sorry, that was an incredibly badly constructed set of arguments/thoughts. My head is still reeling slightly as it was a very in depth talk. You will not be surprised to hear that I said nothing during the questions time!
Anyway, I should go do something productive (shocking isn't it!)... probably organ! But there is another character pending in office blog... so I think I shall post another episode of that, hopefully a little more amusing than the last.
xXx
14:23 Posted in Complete Random Junk! , Life , Literature , Music , News , Thoughts | Permalink | Email this