Cate wrote:I do have to wonder about the length of time he's {Geoffrey's}
been going on
- maybe he does have some kind of an issue here
or maybe he's just like a Saturday Night Live skit
that keeps going and going, with him sat at home
laughing himself silly.
Geoffrey is entertaining. You've got to give him that.
(And if you can't, then you can always, like me, entertain yourself
with fantasies of his faithful sidekick, Sideways Sue, in various ironing positions.)
Geoffrey's being entertaining must be what it is that makes
some people say that he shouldn't be taken seriously.
Being serious, and being entertaining, being incompatible states of being, after all.
Comedians being permitted to tell a joke only in order to make people happy.
Serious people being permitted to tell a joke only in order to be sarcastic.
And it makes people very nervous if they don't know, for sure,
from which of those two given directions somebody is coming from.
Nobody, after all, wants to be the last sucker taking seriously what may be a put-on.
And nobody wants to catch hell for assuming that somebody
must be joking
if they aren't.
~~
I personally have completely given up trying to guess other people's motives.
For one thing, I am no good at it, at all. And for another thing, many people
just don't have any motives that can be described as simply as "serious" vs "joking".
I know I don't. And when anybody says I do, - that I am "serious"or "not serious"
about this or that, - I can never see it. I can only see that they are trying to make
a power-play of some kind.
More to the point, anybody who publicly questions somebody else's motives
simply because they happen to find the person harboring them to be a bit too entertaining,
or too irritating, for their personal taste, is blatantly committing the most famous of them all
- the
ad hominem no no -
An
ad hominem argument, also known as
argumentum ad hominem
(Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man")
consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to
a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than
by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim.
The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted,
and the
argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.
It is most commonly used to refer specifically to the
ad hominem abusive,
or
argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or personally attacking
an argument's proponent in an attempt to discredit that argument.
It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument,
yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it.
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
So I don't know if when
annie blue wrote:hi cate, you're most probably right. 'geoffrey' is indeed a bit of a wind up merchant and is more than likely enjoying being the centre of all this attention. i retract my earlier statement to let this run forever.let's just leave it dead, enjoy andrew's wonderful lines and leave geoffrey to the mercy of his troubled mind. he really needs to get out more
she had a really
serious eye-lash problem. Or if the winkys have
some other explanation. (Although her latest post - Mon Apr 28, 2008 12:21 am -
gives the appearance of somebody caught in a mouse-trap.)
Likewise I don't know if Geoffrey seriously thinks that Andrew's poem
is so bad, morally, for the ears of youth, that its author ought
to voluntarily drink the hemlock.
But what I do know is that all such questions are completely
irrelevant to the serious question that Geoffrey raised:
-- Is Andrew's poem obscene
-- in a sense that Leonard Cohen's
Beautiful Losers isn't?
The
Miller test is the United States Supreme Court's test for determining whether speech or expression
can be labeled obscene, in which case it is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution
and can be prohibited.
The Miller test was developed in the 1973 case
Miller v. California.
It has three parts:
- Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards,
would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
- Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way,
sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law,
- Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political,
or scientific value.
The work is considered obscene only if all three conditions are satisfied.
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test
Of course "obscene" is too strong a word for Andrew's poem in any case.
Which is why I'll use it.
And I'm not sure if that's really Geoffrey's question.
But it is my question.
And, for the sake of argument, I'll take it to be his too.
And in any case Geoffrey (like Lenny Bruce before him)
has been obsessed with this
sort of question for far too long
(-going back many years and not just in this thread) for anyone
to seriously doubt that he is serious about it.
To be sure it's a common enough subject for comedians.
Eg George Carlin's "7 dirties words".
But Carlin, like the whole Berkeley free-speech movement before him,
simply badly failed to take into account the distinction between the
use of words, vs the
mention of words.
(eg:
-- "Lenny Cohen" has 10 letters. (--mention)
--- Lenny Cohen has broken all 10 commandments. (--use) )
The distinction is crucial in logic.
And logic is very strict about putting quotation marks around words
when they're being
mentioned, and not
used.
But the distinction is also critical in life, generally, when quotation marks
aren't available. When context, and good faith, have to replace them.
When the context is comedy, then just about anything can be referenced,
all day long, and nobody takes offence.
But for some reason many comedians and poets feel
they need to walk the razor's edge between
use and
mention.
Geoffrey being a good example.
So that comedians and poets often wind up "going too far".
Which usually means they've blurred beyond redemption
the distinction between use and reference.
Don Imus being a good example.
But we should give them a break.
Because, in truth, comedians and poets
"always live there, - where you and I have only been."
~~~~~~~
The distinction between
use and
reference
also goes a long way to explain why certain great art is not obscene.
The ultimate redeeming value in things like
Beautiful Losers,
and
Naked Lunch, and all the other famous cases,
is that they are full of great poetry - images, thoughts, the use of language.
And their ostensible "subjects" are nearly incidental.
Purely vehicles to carry the poetry. As incidental
as the physical book.
I take that to be self-evident.
But in this case Geoffrey goes beyond it.
This time - the first time off hand I've noticed him doing it
- Geoffrey makes a positive assertion as to what is
and what is not obscene -
i was thinking about andrew while laying in the mission hall that night, i was thinking about what i was going to write and i decided to not tell him off no more because he can't help what he is - it's the way he was brought up.. he writes a grubby poem - but the dirt is invisible, inconspicuous. the bit containing the filth he edited out so that the reader has to use imagination and put it back in order to maintain continuation and make sense of it. that's the 'wicked' part. the physical act in andrew's poem is left to one's fantasy - one is encouraged to participate in forming the mucky details. he plants a growing fungus into our minds. i often come across this type of thing in library books (see below). the chapter ends just as the couple are climbing into bed, and the new chapter starts and it's not mentioned no more about it - it's all happened, it's done. the sex is hidden, glossed over. leonard's beautiful losers doesn't do that, it's like he's continued on from all those abrupt endings. his book is like a collection of all the missing bits. andrew cheats us, either through sheer cowardice or an evil desire to coerce his readers into guessing exactly what rotten antics those two selfish buggers happened to get up to. we are supposed to excuse what they did because it is love. love? - don't piss in my wellingtons and tell me my feet sweat. however, one thing is to write about sinful things, another is to make an audience write it themselves in their own minds. andrew is the devil's lackey, he is holding up the bible and telling us that the covers are black for a reason. i say remember the three monkeys. he accuses me of angst, implies that i see everything as good or bad, that my angst-filled little finger never once took the biggest half of the wishbone.
(emphasis - mine)
The fact that Geoffrey dresses it up in a tux, so to speak, should not blind people
to the fact the charge he's making is a serious one. One which it's important
that we think about. And I believe that Geoffrey would prefer that people take
his point, at least, if not his way of saying it, a little more seriously.
And perhaps themselves a little less.
~~
Geoffrey's charge against Andrew is not easy to prove.
And it's all too easy to deny.
(And in that it's just like the charge against Bill Clinton of having made a racist comment
when he compared Obama's victory in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s.
People with eyes to see could clearly see what he really meant by it.
People without eyes still can't see it.)
~~~
But Geoffrey was wrong when he said -
the bit containing the filth he edited out so that the reader has to use imagination and put it back in order to maintain continuation and make sense of it.
What Geoffrey should have said is -
the bit containing the passion he edited out so that the reader has to use imagination and put it back in order to maintain continuation and make sense of it.
And that's my objection to Andrew's poem. Not its implicit filth.
But it's explicit lack of passion.
That's what makes it obscene.
It's much more like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_c ... eliot.html
than Dr. Zhivago.
Manna wrote:
By commencing the piece by stating "I'd like to...", it is possible he intends
not to effectuate said heathen fornication. Rather than extending an invitation
of his own, perhaps he is declining a most tantalizing invitation from a lady,
while allowing the lady to maintain her dignity by entertaining with her how
beautiful it could be, although, of course, short-lived. Perhaps he is a man of fine honor.
And then later -
Manna wrote:I once suggested that the piece was a turn-down to an invitation from a lady, but in that argument, I intentionally denied the title.
The poem does seem to be a put-down of some sort.
Andrew McGeever wrote:
I almost agree, yet I'd invite all to read the original post: to date, there has been no comment on the title.
Maybe I'll post a nice poem with a happy ending. I'm working on it as I type, yet it doesn't appear.
Andrew.
P.S. "64" was never an erotic poem: I've written better than that.
But what's to comment on the title?
It doesn't work, whatever it's supposed to mean.
And it's a lousy idea to pick titles like that,
- unless the thing is supposed to be parody.
And what in the world does it have to do
with anything that's actually in the poem?
The song "When I'm Sixty Four"
..is sung by a young man to his lover, and is about his plans of growing old together with her.
Although the theme is about aging, it was one of the first songs McCartney wrote, when he was sixteen.
Both George Martin and Mark Lewisohn speculated that McCartney may have thought of the song
when recording began for Sgt. Pepper in December 1966 because his father turned 64 earlier that year
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_i%27m_sixty_four
The song "When I'm Sixty Four" "is sung by a young man to his lover,
and is about his plans of growing old together with her."
So "Before You're Sixty-Four" must somehow be contrary to that.
"Before" suggests that one or the other party wants it
(whatever it is) sooner rather than later (or never).
Perhaps, following Manna, it's the lover, not the young man,
making the request for something more real. And this
young man counters it with a description of how cheap
it would actually be. There is a definite aura of put-down.
~~~~~~
A long time ago, in this thread, I quoted canto 5 from Dante's Inferno.
That, however, was my response to Geoffrey's comments,
and not to my own reading of Andrew's poem.
And I was all wrong about it.
Canto 5 is about limbo, and the first and second circles
of Hell, - the ones reserved for the least offensive sinners,
the most forgivable sins. Sins without malice. Namely, passion.
Their punishment -- to be eternally tossed about by whorl-winds,
--- just as they were tossed about by their passions in life.
And that's all wrong for Andrew's poem.
At best his poem deserves circle 3 - for gluttons. ("fried heart attack")
But more, it deserves circle 8, - for fraud
- "panderers, seducers, flatterers, hypocrites, sowers of discord".
And possibly the poem, and Andrew himself, really deserves
the lowest circle of all, for the greatest sin of all: "superbia"
- pride, vanity.
But it really isn't clear what's going on in his poem.
Andrew McGeever wrote:
Dear Diane,
The couplet which ends the poem was taken from (inspired by?)
Boris Pasternak; not from one of his poems, but his novel "Doctor Zhivago".
He wrote;
"She was near and dear to him In every feature
As the shores are close to the sea In every breaker."
The novel, sent to the "West", was made into a film starring
the incredibly handsome Omar Sharif and the eminently unbuttonable
Julie Christie.
Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958
(but that's the stuff of another thread).
Diane, that's all for now.
Andrew.
P.S. The girls at my high school fell in love with Omar Sharif,
after watching "Doctor Zhivago".
Knickers in vertical descent; no twisting.
Mind you, that's before I introduced them (well, 2 or 3) to
"The Songs of Leonard Cohen".
So it's an attempt to borrow someone else's passion
and tack it on to the end of his poem. Which makes it a punch line.
Coming at the end, as it does, it serves only to underline
the complete absence of passion that precedes it.
It's much more of a put-down punch-line, than a
classic concluding summary couplet.
ALSO!! -- Julie Christie ---is "eminently unbuttonable" ????
Andrew could not possibly have seen the same Dr Zhivago
that everybody else saw!!!
then gently
unbutton each other; shed
decades of separation.
"Gently"???
--After "decades of separation"?
This poem is full of cognitively dissonant notes like that.
"I'd like to take you to a bed-and-breakfast place not far from town"
--"Not far from town"??? Really tawdry.
How about Rome, Venice, Paris?
"The hours would fly," --- As when you're having fun?
"and when it's late" --- LATE? As in "time for bed - I've got to get up early"?
"we'd share more tales about the boys"
--This is really hard to figure.
The whole situation is hard to fathom,
- but if these two had some kind of relationship in the past,
then they'd be much more likely to reminisce the times
they had together, than to be going through their
separate family photo albums. The trip to Disney land.
Bring out the slides.
"our bodies spoons for Sailing By."
Andrew McGeever wrote:
Sailing By is the music played on B.B.C. Radio 4 every night: it accompanies the Shipping Forecast; messages to mariners who listen in, people like me. Then the channel changes to B.B.C. World Service.
Sailing By is the safe, comforting stuff to send you off to sleep.
Try it....it works
"spoons", seem here to mean "sails", to me.
It evokes the old fashioned expression "spooning".
Informal. to show affection or love by kissing and caressing, esp. in an openly sentimental manner.
And for that I consider it the best line in the poem.
And because it's followed by
-- We'd be awake for breakfast:
-- you, fresh fruit with bran flakes,
- where the "spoons" become metallic.
So it has, in the way I read it, a nice awakening
from a dream-like quality about it.
~~~~~~
The poem has an "adult-theme" (whatever it is)
- which always makes "adults" uncomfortable and giggle.
And so they over-compensate, tripping all over themselves,
trying to appear to be urbane. And then they go easier on the poem,
as a poem, then they would if it was about kittens.
~~~~
Not many people refer to Leonard Cohen as their excuse for writing obscenely.
But many people do, explicitly, refer to him as their excuse for proselytize their
idea of religion. And there are some who, mistaking Cohen for a "confessional" poet,
take that as their cue to write their own confessions.
The appeal to Cohen (or Dylan or Waits etc) in all such cases is of course
absurd. What's absent in the imitations, among other things, is, of course,
his level of art. His hard work on it. His life-long devotion to it.
Which is somehow evident to everyone but the imitators.
In any case, they're sad cases. Not really egregious.
