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roachboy · 03-05-2006, 07:27 AM

zar: thanks for the sentiments about roachboy.
inside the compliment, the underlying question---"what are you doing here"---bothers me from time to time---i cant always figure it out. and something about what you wrote above makes me feel like i should defend roachboy a little. like you hit a nerve or something.

usually, this is something that i do while i am drinking coffee and waking up in the morning. between stops on my tour of newspapers. the posts that i put up do not usually take terribly long to write--not much longer than it takes to read, i would think. i check in periodically during the day if there is something interesting going on and if i have time.

i say all this because the idea that you would read stuff that i put up here--or that roachboy says, depending on your viewpoint----as grist for the mill of "what good is a humanities education if this roachboy fellow ends up in a place like this" is kinda depressing.

you cant judge the 3-d lives of folk who post here from what they post, i think.
there is a convention in tfp about community that tends to work on the assumption that this board is transparent, that the personae that swim about are reflections of the 3-d people who manoever them.
and you can see, if you cruise around here long enough, that for the folk who feel that way, it is that way.

it is not like that for me: roachboy is a persona. he is in many ways an extended exercize in disciplining the writing of the 3-d sort who is sitting at a desk, looking over his glasses, wondering between clauses why exactly he feels compelled to respond.

roachboy only exists here. i like that he is hidden. i like that he is anonymous.
he gets into debates. sometimes i participate in them really, sometimes not.

i am interested in how conservative ideology bends the thinking of the folk who use it to process information. roachboy tries to understand the shifting terrain of right ideology, the ways its signifiers are constructed, and the extent to which the types of arguments that folk who use this framework run out are shaped by it. i--the 3-d fellow--am interested in the limitations of this ideology--what information can and cannot be assimilated by the folk who employ it. can folk who think through right ideology also think about capitalism as a social system, for example. teh answer, from what i have figured out so far anyway, is tht the folk behind the personae can, but only to the extent that you get to them--if you find someone who works entirely within the ideology and will not step out of it in this context cannot even start thinkign about capitalism as a mode of production. i think the discourse explains that. and i think that is interesting.

i should say that the other reason roachboy swims around in here is because the conversations are often interesting in themselves--there are alot of smart folk. there are some who i have to assume are smart, but who seem to make it a mission to conceal it. and there are others, who i ignore.
==========
as for the idea you have of being a writer:

remember what eliot said:

everyone is a poet at 18: no-one at 40.

there is alot to that.
keep going with your writing. be stubborn. you have no idea where you might land.

here are a couple of sentences that speak to the experience of the fellow behind roachboy:

dont confuse academic work with creative work: in the main, they are not the same thing. literature programs (creative writing apart) are geared around the collecting and classifying of finished works. cultural capital within acadmeic fields is a function of lists that are generated: academics will legitimate themselves by being "the guy who talks about x" or "the woman who talks about y" or "the guy who talks about x using the vestiges of deconstruction" or "the woman who talks about z through the lens of material culture"---the system is geared this way. in the main, you will find that most academics do not really like people who make stuff who are not either famous or dead--they prefer a combination of those two features.

you can learn alot from literature programs: theoretical frames, ways to read--for myself, i found my training opened up literary modernism for me--a psace i still like to swim about in, from whcih i take all kinds of stuff both in academic writing that i do and in creative work. but i also know that you cannot--cannot--accept the conflation of modes of reading texts with accounts of what the writer went through (the process) to make the text. so there is no way to coherently get from a literature program information about how to write.
not beyond the rudimentary level--because, in the end, making stuff requires distance.
from this follows the problem that i have with creative writing programs--the up side--theyu create potentially interesting environments for folk who should come primarily (to my mind) in order to buy themselves time to focus on their work--that is who are already fairly advanced in their own way of wroking and who are not there to be molded in any deep way by the program. more to interact with other folk who also work in the medium. you cant really routinize creative work. it doesnt seem to work like that.

that because, it seems to me that you have to be able to assume considerable autonomy--you need to work with voice, feel authorized to tamper with the order of things that are taken as given, both as such and in a particular sequence as a function of being given in the world. and you have to feel authorized to take what you want or need from what is around you, inclduing your academic training, and use it for your own purposes. so you need, to use the clche, to own your own training. that takes time.

literary analysis is about listmakng, rearragement of a textual order, assimilation, putting things into place again. quite the opposite of the autonomy you need to hang onto to be able to reprocess the world.

i---the 3-d guy---work on both sides of the mirror--history and piano---and i have found that it is more dangerous for your career as a historian to come out of the closet as an artist or musician than it is to come out about anything else. the assumption is not that you may be able to generate more interesting work because you do these two (or more) things--rather, it is understood as divided loyalty.

i have been working on piano for about 30 years now.
i dont know if what i do is interesting to many other folk---it only matters to a limited extent, really--but i find it really interesting and think that, over time, it has become a space that is open to all the other things that i do, in ways that are sometimes direct, sometimes not.
all i know is that i would never have imagined this space possible when i was 22--and if i had stopped playing, it would not have been possible. no-one else could have done this, and even if others worked in spaces that ere close to it, the meaning would be different because it would be someone else's space.

so keep going.
like i said, you have no idea where you could end up.

btw this post took 17 minutes.

03-05-2006, 07:27 AM	#21 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	zar: thanks for the sentiments about roachboy. inside the compliment, the underlying question---"what are you doing here"---bothers me from time to time---i cant always figure it out. and something about what you wrote above makes me feel like i should defend roachboy a little. like you hit a nerve or something. usually, this is something that i do while i am drinking coffee and waking up in the morning. between stops on my tour of newspapers. the posts that i put up do not usually take terribly long to write--not much longer than it takes to read, i would think. i check in periodically during the day if there is something interesting going on and if i have time. i say all this because the idea that you would read stuff that i put up here--or that roachboy says, depending on your viewpoint----as grist for the mill of "what good is a humanities education if this roachboy fellow ends up in a place like this" is kinda depressing. you cant judge the 3-d lives of folk who post here from what they post, i think. there is a convention in tfp about community that tends to work on the assumption that this board is transparent, that the personae that swim about are reflections of the 3-d people who manoever them. and you can see, if you cruise around here long enough, that for the folk who feel that way, it is that way. it is not like that for me: roachboy is a persona. he is in many ways an extended exercize in disciplining the writing of the 3-d sort who is sitting at a desk, looking over his glasses, wondering between clauses why exactly he feels compelled to respond. roachboy only exists here. i like that he is hidden. i like that he is anonymous. he gets into debates. sometimes i participate in them really, sometimes not. i am interested in how conservative ideology bends the thinking of the folk who use it to process information. roachboy tries to understand the shifting terrain of right ideology, the ways its signifiers are constructed, and the extent to which the types of arguments that folk who use this framework run out are shaped by it. i--the 3-d fellow--am interested in the limitations of this ideology--what information can and cannot be assimilated by the folk who employ it. can folk who think through right ideology also think about capitalism as a social system, for example. teh answer, from what i have figured out so far anyway, is tht the folk behind the personae can, but only to the extent that you get to them--if you find someone who works entirely within the ideology and will not step out of it in this context cannot even start thinkign about capitalism as a mode of production. i think the discourse explains that. and i think that is interesting. i should say that the other reason roachboy swims around in here is because the conversations are often interesting in themselves--there are alot of smart folk. there are some who i have to assume are smart, but who seem to make it a mission to conceal it. and there are others, who i ignore. ========== as for the idea you have of being a writer: remember what eliot said: everyone is a poet at 18: no-one at 40. there is alot to that. keep going with your writing. be stubborn. you have no idea where you might land. here are a couple of sentences that speak to the experience of the fellow behind roachboy: dont confuse academic work with creative work: in the main, they are not the same thing. literature programs (creative writing apart) are geared around the collecting and classifying of finished works. cultural capital within acadmeic fields is a function of lists that are generated: academics will legitimate themselves by being "the guy who talks about x" or "the woman who talks about y" or "the guy who talks about x using the vestiges of deconstruction" or "the woman who talks about z through the lens of material culture"---the system is geared this way. in the main, you will find that most academics do not really like people who make stuff who are not either famous or dead--they prefer a combination of those two features. you can learn alot from literature programs: theoretical frames, ways to read--for myself, i found my training opened up literary modernism for me--a psace i still like to swim about in, from whcih i take all kinds of stuff both in academic writing that i do and in creative work. but i also know that you cannot--cannot--accept the conflation of modes of reading texts with accounts of what the writer went through (the process) to make the text. so there is no way to coherently get from a literature program information about how to write. not beyond the rudimentary level--because, in the end, making stuff requires distance. from this follows the problem that i have with creative writing programs--the up side--theyu create potentially interesting environments for folk who should come primarily (to my mind) in order to buy themselves time to focus on their work--that is who are already fairly advanced in their own way of wroking and who are not there to be molded in any deep way by the program. more to interact with other folk who also work in the medium. you cant really routinize creative work. it doesnt seem to work like that. that because, it seems to me that you have to be able to assume considerable autonomy--you need to work with voice, feel authorized to tamper with the order of things that are taken as given, both as such and in a particular sequence as a function of being given in the world. and you have to feel authorized to take what you want or need from what is around you, inclduing your academic training, and use it for your own purposes. so you need, to use the clche, to own your own training. that takes time. literary analysis is about listmakng, rearragement of a textual order, assimilation, putting things into place again. quite the opposite of the autonomy you need to hang onto to be able to reprocess the world. i---the 3-d guy---work on both sides of the mirror--history and piano---and i have found that it is more dangerous for your career as a historian to come out of the closet as an artist or musician than it is to come out about anything else. the assumption is not that you may be able to generate more interesting work because you do these two (or more) things--rather, it is understood as divided loyalty. i have been working on piano for about 30 years now. i dont know if what i do is interesting to many other folk---it only matters to a limited extent, really--but i find it really interesting and think that, over time, it has become a space that is open to all the other things that i do, in ways that are sometimes direct, sometimes not. all i know is that i would never have imagined this space possible when i was 22--and if i had stopped playing, it would not have been possible. no-one else could have done this, and even if others worked in spaces that ere close to it, the meaning would be different because it would be someone else's space. so keep going. like i said, you have no idea where you could end up. btw this post took 17 minutes. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite