Jeremy Hacker
Journal Entry #1
April 2^nd, 2015

In the winter quarter of 2015 I attended a 3 week lecture series held by historian Thierry de Duve, which focused mostly on avant-garde art and French history, particularly dealing with modernism. The one thing that struck me when coming across this passage from Proust, “But none of them would go so far as to say ‘He’s a great writer, he has great talent.’ They did not even credit him with talent at all. They did not do so, because they did not know. We are very slow to recognize in the peculiar physiognomy of a new writer the model which is labelled “great talent” in our museum of general ideas. Simply because that physiognomy is new and strange, we can find in it no resemblance to what we are accustomed to call talent. We say rather originality, charm, delicary, strength; and then one day we realize that it is precisely all this that adds up to talent.” (1), was that it closely resembled the way in which Manet’s art pieces were received by art critics around 1870. “More often than not, the critics judged that Manet could pull off successful morceaux, which, however, did not amount to tableau.” (2) A tableau in this context is a collection of successful parts, or, morceaux. In comparing Proust’s description of those judging Bergotte and the critics addressing Manet’s unsuccessful tableau, we see the timidness involved with judgment when something unique and new comes across our field of view, particularly forms of art which fail to meet what our memory of talented works are supposedly composed of. I think it’s easy to look in retrospect and tsk those who judge harshly, but I wonder at what lengths all of us may perform this somewhat harsh judgment toward something new and confusing. I imagine the rise of modernism, modern art in particular, came to fruition from the reflection of these unsure judgments and experimenting with notion of what makes art good, and whether it even matters. It’s in this respect of reflection that we see the genius of such modern artists as Manet, for they maintained a thin line separating themselves from traditional tableaus while still being able to be recognized as art worthy of examination.

Bibliography

1.)    Proust, Marcel, and C. K. Moncrieff. “Swann In Love.” Swann’s Way. New York: Modern Library, 2003. 137. Print.

2.)    De Duve, Thierry. “The Invention of Non-Art: A History.” Artforum Vol. 52, No. 6, Feb. 2014: 197. Print.

“Whether it is because the faith which creates has ceased to exist in me, or because reality takes shape in the memory alone…”

This passage had me thinking about both reality and memory and their relationship. If reality is in the memory alone, which type of memory? Voluntary memory, memory that we construct in our minds, intentional memory, that pays attention to the events that we want to pay attention to. Or is reality shaped in within the powers of involuntary memory? How is reality constructed?

As I am reading In Search of Lost Time, I notice that memory and how it is the source of the narrator’s reality, experiences, and existence. The first part of Swann’s Way, where the narrator describes his experience of emerging from sleep without a clear sense of where he is or what time it is, when he required a few minutes to place himself and reclaim his identity, indicates that this conflict between reality and memory may be a theme that threads through this novel, a theme of finding one’s identity, of awakening and determining what is memory, what is reality and the possibility that the recovery of lost realities can be accomplished by remembrance.

“The hour when an invalid, who has been obliged to start a journey and to sleep in a strange hotel, awakens, in a moment of illness and sees with glad relief a streak of daylight showing under his bedroom door. Oh joy of joys! it is morning. The servants will be about in a minute; he can ring, and someone will come to look after him. The thoughts of being made comfortable gives him the strength to endure pain. He is certain he heard footsteps: they come nearer, and then die away. The ray of light beneath his door is extinguished. It is midnight; someone has turned out the gas; the last servant has gone to bed, and he must lie all night in agony with no one to bring him any help.”

With the reading of this passage it is apparent that the for the narrator, the present is uncomfortable and painful and that he suffers with no one that will come to his aid and so he looks through his memories of his past trying to relive what will never again occur.

By the end of Swann’s Way, the narrator acknowledges his total discontent with the present; especially when compared to his memories of the past.

Several passages describe this disillusionment:

“… The flowers that people show me nowadays for the first time never seem to me to be true flowers.”

“I sought to find them again as I remembered them…they had long fled, and still I stood vainly questioning their paths.”

His disappointment is significant. The narrator confesses, “How paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the pictures that are stored in one’s memory… The reality that I had known no longer existed.”

In these quotes he seems to indicate that the past memory holds a greater reality then the present. Yet it there are differences. In the first quote he is disappointed in the present and feels that the present is not the true reality, in the latter quote it seems that he is searching for the past reality and it still has possibility of return and finally he comes to the conclusion that that the past reality no longer exists.

The narrator has manipulated his memories to include or omit certain aspects. Stored in that memory isn’t the actual events, but how those events made sense to him and fit into his previous experiences.

Our memories are filled with gaps and distortions, because by its very nature memory is selective. When we try to remember an event or time, we often recall a deception. Are our memories therefore fiction? Or do we have the power to create our own reality?

Our readings this week discussed the culture around art and isolation in Paris in the 19th century. Harvey stated that at the time “ennui was the mark of a distinguished sensibility and an elevated mind” (213).  He also discussed the romanticism of the social outcast, stating that “the new outcasts were in there own way visionaries, not unlike the jesters and fools who both entertained and troubled the princes of the Renaissance by their insights into human nature ” (219).

This romanticism of the unhappy outcast has, I would suggest,  been prevalent ever since in a slightly evolved form: the true artist needs suffering in order to achieve authenticity. The example that comes to mind is a phenomenon from the beat generation that Norman Mailer called the “White Negro”. This was the idealization and adaption of black culture (clothing, music, drug use) by young white artists as an attempt to break free from the middle class and gain a more “hip” lifestyle.  I have recently heard it argued that part of this cultural appropriation was motivated by a desire for what the beats considered the genuine suffering of the black man,  their historical suffering serving, in the eye of the white hipster, as an enviable kind of motivation towards artistic work.  Kerouac wrote in On the Road-

“At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness,. music, not enough nights.”

In certain ways this idea still exists, and I have wrestled with it to some degree when considering the lives and fates of my favorite authors. Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace, all brilliant minds and writers who, it could be argued, achieved such success in writing because of their internal suffering. Although I understand that there are many counter-examples, I wonder if there is some truth in this old cliche. This idea that to suffer, to be an outcast, to experience deep inequality and unhappiness, somehow feeds the artistic soul.

As I sit here in class It’s hard to focus. 2014 was the hardest year of my life. Last year had at least 5 life changing events happen. The biggest event would have to be getting custody of my little cousin. My aunty, her mother, passed away when she was 9. Now 14 her father isn’t in her life as much as he should be. so I was asked to take care of her. Unwilling to fight me in a custody battle here in Washington he attempted to fill a felony charge in Alaska that I battled for a year (case dropped completely).

Lets recap I know have 2 court cases pending over this little girl no one else wanted. she was getting straight F’s in class and already had her own “adult” problems happening. So by September I had my 1st court hearing on the criminal charge in Alaska. So my toddlers and I ventured up to Alaska on an almost 2 day ferry trip. We stayed in Alaska for 3 weeks just to have the court hearing pushed to the new year.

While I was up there I broke off my 5 year relationship due to, I guess differences. I had fallen in love with a man I’ve known my whole life and worked with for 3 years. Lets not make this into a love story.

My last week in Alaska I got a call from my sister saying my biological father is dying of cancer. I barely met my biological father and my half sister and brother 5 years before this and only seen them once. I’m not mad at him at all, however he will never be “my” dad. My dad is a man that my mother married 28 years ago. However I do still feel connected to this man that I never got to know.  So by the time I made to Washington I was off to Arizona to visit with my bio father. While there my sister asked me to file a court case with immigration so that he can become legal and get medical help. I was game, making this my 3rd court case.

I stayed in Arizona for a week. So believe me I was exhausted by the time I finally made it home. To only be crushed the next day. My toddlers father had taken them without telling me where he was taking them to. So for a whole day I thought the worse. So imagine my relief when i found out he took them to California. They didn’t crash and was in a hospital somewhere. however this started my 4th court case this year.

As I sit here and reflect on my life the last year I’m happy to see it go. I know deciding to get custody of my little cousin was a good thing. That was the only thing keeping me from me losing my mind. That poor girl needed a childhood. My life finally calmed down and I am now able to take this step in my education. I am able to move on. I am not writing this to make everyone feel sorry for me, I don’t even feel sorry for myself. We become who we are by life changing events happening. I am writing this because I can finally move on.

The narrator opens his mind and interpretation when he starts to describe Swann’s love story. The narrator puts his own point of view to the side and opens it to a thrid person point of view, as a reader, this allows me to see in ideas and feelings of Swann. When the narrator begins to describe the way Odettes and Swanns love affair began, it reminded me of the way my love affair began two years ago, well before it ended. Similar to Swann, I was invited over to a ‘friends’ family home for their famous weekly dinner. The families daughter played piano every week and her brother would play the guitar. While I would socialize and be kind I could not help but notice the mothers liking to me and her sons constant gaze in my direction. I learned that her son had taken a liking to me for about two years, his name was Martin. I believe people fall in love in misterious ways and this was one of the most misterious ways I could think of. As the night went on, I talked to Martin and his family, I did not take an immediate liking to him, but there was something about him that drew in my attention, enough to accept his invitation to come back for next weeks dinner. As the weeks turned into months, Martin would play the guitar for me and convince me on why Jimmy Hendrix was so much better than Jim Morrison. It was about three months of weekly dinners and seeing each other at school until he asked me to dinner, but with only him and I. I went to dinner with Martin and finally saw what it was about him that I loved, he was different, he saw the world in such a different way than most people that it amazed me. Similar to Swann and Odette, time was really our only friend. We took time to get to know each other; however, one of the hardest things to go past for our families was our “class difference”. My father was a doctor while Martins’ father was a mechanic. My mother was an accountant while his was a preschool teacher, none of this mattered to me but it mattered to my parents. With Swann being in the higher class and pretending to not be, I understand why he protrayed that persona. As our relationship went on I fell in love with Martin and who he was, everything about him was so new and amazing, I was blinded, I never noticed our differnce in class or race, but my mother and father did. They would constantly tell me I did not belong with someone “like that”, I would cry and tell them they were oblivious to the obvious and only saw what they wanted to see. Time went on and I fell more in love everyday, that was until things started to change. I have not read far enough into Swann’s love story to know if the relationship between Odette and Swann changed but the relationship between Martin and I did. Martin started to become a different and harsher person, he was not the man I fell in love with but I still stayed with him, until about three months ago. When I moved to Washington my eyes finally opened to the relm of posibilities and chances Washington offered, what the world offered. I broke up with Martin and told myself that if it was meant to be then our paths would cross again. I still love Martin very much but I know I did the right thing for the both of us. I still think about him and our memories, similar to Swann, I will never forget the way it felt to fall in love.

Our readings this week discussed the culture around art and isolation in Paris in the 19th century. Harvey stated that at the time “ennui was the mark of a distinguished sensibility and an elevated mind” (213).  He also discussed the romanticism of the social outcast, stating that “the new outcasts were in there own way visionaries, not unlike the jesters and fools who both entertained and troubled the princes of the Renaissance by their insights into human nature ” (219).

This romanticism of the unhappy outcast has, I would suggest,  been prevalent ever since in a slightly evolved form: the true artist needs suffering in order to achieve authenticity. The example that comes to mind is a phenomenon from the beat generation that Norman Mailer called the “White Negro”. This was the idealization and adaption of black culture (clothing, music, drug use) by young white artists as an attempt to break free from the middle class and gain a more “hip” lifestyle.  I have recently heard it argued that part of this cultural appropriation was motivated by a desire for what the beats considered the genuine suffering of the black man,  their historical suffering serving, in the eye of the white hipster, as an enviable kind of motivation towards artistic work.  Kerouac wrote in On the Road-

“At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness,. music, not enough nights.”

In certain ways this idea still exists, and I have wrestled with it to some degree when considering the lives and fates of my favorite authors. Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace, all brilliant minds and writers who, it could be argued, achieved such success in writing because of their internal suffering. Although I understand that there are many counter-examples, I wonder if there is some truth in this old cliche. This idea that to suffer, to be an outcast, to experience deep inequality and unhappiness, somehow feeds the artistic soul.

I’ve never been good at writing about myself. I could easily write a five-page paper analyzing nothing but the technical aspects of a piece of art, but as soon as I have to write something about myself my mind draws a blank. Words change from something being used to describe something external from myself and therefore having no relation to me besides the fact that I chose these words out of preference for them instead of other words of similar meaning but maybe not a similar feeling for me, to something that is necessarily part of me when I use them to describe myself, showing my very essence, and capturing how I see myself at the moment forever, a memory that can no longer shift with my ever shifting “self”, a cage of sorts for any certain memories to be trapped in. I feel as if I am both exposing my very being for scrutiny by others, and caging myself to these words which I use to describe myself. Words themselves have such transient meanings, beyond dictionary definitions, different people have different associations with different words, which will color their understanding of what someone else is saying a different shade perhaps than what the speaker or author is meaning. I just can’t trust in words power to ever completely convey exactly what I mean, or to understand other people perfectly, which is a shame, but there’s nothing to be done about it so it necessarily has to be accepted. However, words not having a 100% set meaning, does help me feel less caged in using them to talk about myself, I’m thankful for this imperfection of theirs. It leaves me to later interpret these words in ways in which better suit my view at whatever moment I come back to them. This personal interpretation that is so essential to words I feel is important to the “Death of the Author”. In that since our subjective views on words give us different meanings from them, it makes sense that what the author means doesn’t necessarily matter as much as what we get out of the words, what we pull from them and put together.

On page 245, the narrator sees Mme de Guermantes for the first time, taking particular note of her red face and the pimple on the corner of her nose. At first, he is extremely disappointed in how ordinarily human she seems. Unable to cope with this reality, he makes the (perhaps unconscious) decision to re-imagine her to fit the idealized perception of her he had before. Swann has a similar experience in the next section of the book when he falls in love with Odette, though it seems more like obsession than genuine affection.

One of the major things Swann and the narrator have in common in their romances is their need to see these women as art. The narrator wishes for Mme de Guermantes to be “a tapestry or a stained-glass window, as living in another century, as being of another substance than the rest of the human race.” And Swann’s love for Odette doesn’t fully blossom until one day when she reminds him of a Sistine fresco. The more he is able to associate her with art, the more he is able to love her. From page 317, “The words ‘Florentine Painting’ were invaluable to Swann. They enabled him, like a title, to introduce the image of Odette into a world of dreams and fancies which, until then, she had been debarred from entering, and where she assumed a newer and nobler form.” Neither of them wanted a woman, they wanted a beautiful symbolic concept.

Swann and the narrator aren’t abnormal for doing this. When we imagine the kind of person we want in our lives, we never say to ourselves, “and here are the flaws, unflattering features, and annoying habits I would like this person to have.” We grow up wanting so badly to believe that perfect mythical heroes exist, that when we form new relationships (romantic or otherwise) with someone, we tend to put that person on a pedestal. While it is nice to think the best of someone, it’s unfair dehumanizing to think of them as more than they can be. I think, whether we’re conscious of it or not, we sometimes see people just in terms of what they can offer us- status, a sense of worth, power. For Swann and the narrator, they were allowed to feel like a part of some grand mythical world. I read these sections and was disturbed by these obsessions, but unfortunately it could be easy for anyone to distance themselves that much from the reality of a person.

Journal Entry 4/7/2015

“I thought there would be more.”

The first time I watched Boyhood was last year at the Capitol Theater. The theater was dreadfully cold, the chairs seemed to actually hate me and would without provocation attack anyone who happened by (or at least it seems like it; they really are the most uncomfortable of chairs), and I managed to eat way too much candy and popcorn and a massive burrito from my work, but I found the movie to be entertaining and did not give it much thought beyond that.

With one enormous exception, the conversation that Patricia Arquette’s character has with Mason as he is finishing packing for college. He is in his room, she is sitting at the table and starts to cry. When Mason asks her about it she simply says, “I thought there would be more.” She mentions hitting all the milestones in her life, marriage, divorce, children going off to college, and now she believes that all she has left is death – she thought that there would be more.

I don’t know why exactly this statement hit me then. I watched the movie for a second time yesterday and again, found myself crying when she began to cry. I knew what she was going to say. I knew how it made me feel last year in that theater downtown. But here I was again, crying at the same spot, of the same movie, after the exact same phrase was uttered. I think it’s the fear that there won’t be anything more is what gets me. What if no matter how hard you work, how deeply vested you are in school, how much money and time you donate to charity, how often you call mom, floss your teeth, and are an all-around a swell person to everyone in your path, what if in the end you are still kicking yourself in the ass and asking ‘is that it’? I imagine it more of a shaking your fists at the sky, screaming to the clouds above, “is that really fucking it?” or some other expletive filled temper-tantrum.

Everything that I do now, every single day, is in hopes that when I find myself old and alone that not for one god damn second will I have think there would have been more. I want to be exhausted, ready to check out; I want to be so full of life that if I have any more I would simply explode.

As I was walking home I saw a rock that inspired in me some strong reaction, a sentimental feeling of fondness.  Much like Proust’s narrator being stricken by the beauty of a flower or a church steeple, I was stumped by this very ordinary rock.  As I walked on a moment I recalled a memory this rock had thrust upon me.

Several years ago, on a sunny and slow day, a former student of my theater teacher’s returned to impart on us some of the knowledge she was gaining at a professional acting school.  She had decided to take us on a right-brain walk.  The purpose of this silent activity would be to engage our creative right brain; to act on our impulses without carrying judgement or logic into the interaction.  So we began our quiet exploration of the school campus.  We felt free enough to climb trees and to roll in the grass, to move around in ways we hadn’t in a long time.

On the course of this walk my friend found a rock.  She lifted this large rock, no more special than the others nearby, into her arms and cradled it protectively for the next hour.  She held it close to her chest, turning away when others would walk near her.  Only once did she seek me out to have me hold the rock while she carefully leapt her way across the parking lot; an act I suppose she felt to be too dangerous for the rock.

When the walk ended and we began to reflect on our feelings and actions my friend told me that upon seeing the rock she felt the strong urge to protect it.  She felt as though the rock were her baby and she had to shelter it from harm.  To many of our classmates this seemed unusually funny because it seemed so out-of-character for this particular girl to exhibit such gentle and maternal qualities.  She always had an outward appearance of disgust and indignation at having to be amidst our classmates.  Her hardened attitude kept many people at a distance.  However, knowing her as I did, her need to mother and shelter a rock seemed appropriate.  Some of us in her close circle used to refer to her as our mamma bear.  She was always aloof in her affection towards us, but aggressive in her defense of us.

So while walking home after seeing a rock this memory flooded to the forefront of my thoughts.  In just a brief moment I could recall the bright day; the image of my friend, worry on her face, as she gingerly carried this large rock in her arms; the timidness with which she admitted to me, back inside, about her feelings.  After this memory came back to me the fondness the rock inspired in me was connected to my friend, whom I always found endearing when she acted on such heartfelt impulses.