New York Insomnia

Since I have been in New York I have been up way too late. All the time.

It is strange. The first night I was here I was up until about 1 or 2 am. Reasonable. Not an unusual time. Maybe a little later than usual. Then the next day it was 3 am. Then the next day it was 4 am. Then the night before last I was up til 6 am and slept until 10 am. I was thinking that if i forced myself only to get 4 hours of sleep I would somehow resume a more regular/reasonable sleep schedule. Then last night I was up until 3 am and again got up at 10. So that is fine. I'll keep getting up at 10 and that's fine. This lack of sleep makes me think about two things: coffee and time.

Since I have been visiting family in New York I have been settling into a bit of a routine. Getting up at 10, showering and listening to some music, driving to Barnes & Noble, like a 20 or 30 minute drive cause everything is spread out in Putnam Valley, getting some coffee, reading the book I am reading, and then looking at more books. I have been buying lots of books. That is probably not good I shouldn't be spending money but I have a hard time controlling myself. But anyways, talking to my sister about this routine she suggested the regular cups of coffee could be keeping me awake? But that doesn't make any sense I drink a lot of coffee pretty much all the time. It shouldn't be affecting my sleep, especially because I am drinking this coffee at like 11 am or thereabouts. Definitely shouldn't make me stay up til 3-6 am.

Then it makes me think about time because I knew a girl who had a penchant for staying up extremely late. Occupying herself throughout the night with various tasks. She told me that there was always something that you could do. And it's true, as I've been finding out. I remember when I first met her I thought this was strange. Just because I am used to the typical schedule that most people run by. So for a long time I always felt like night time was a sort of down time. A time when real things weren't really done. Then I just remembered that show 'Insomniac' with Dave Attell. All kinds of people do all kinds of different things in the middle of the night. Conceptions of time and social regulation. Clocks and conceptions of time. It's like, for the bulk of my life, and to this point, I definitely just take time for granted. Meaning that the way most people think of time. That we wake up in the mornings and we work our jobs during the day and night time we go to bed so we can do it again. Ummm, I don't have very developed thoughts on this topic. But, as a quick look at the internet showed, there are plenty of books written about the history of clocks and time. I wonder at what point most people were aware of clocks and time. Or at what point peoples lives really started to be changed by the idea of time/time measurement. I am also very curious about how the invention of the light bulb changed the way people conceived of time. Cause sure, sun goes down, no electricity, days over, sorry. It would be really hard to do things by candlelight. And I'm sure candles weren't the easiest thing to come by for some people. But then the day is extended by electricity. I have read something about when street lights were first put in city streets and that's pretty interesting stuff. I also know about a book about the history of air conditioners and how they facilitated the growth of schools and stuff in the South. I think the history of things that seem to have no history is really cool. These things have been part of my experience for my whole life, so it is interesting to see how it changed things. Anyways, that is enough of that.

This insomnia business has been enjoyable. I have been getting lots of work on this paper done. And have been listening to lots of music, chatting with friends, and watch some tv shows that I have been enjoying. I mean time means practically nothing to me these days.

I will admit, however, that losing the regularity of hours and days is a little bit disconcerting. It makes me feel like I am endlessly drifting forward in a sort of void. As opposed to moving through weeks and months, Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday. January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December January February March April May June July August September October November December.

The calendar imposes a sense of order on my existence. I wonder if that heightens my sense of monotony at all. I bet it does. I've thought about this vaguely a number of times. Along with the repetition of work and education and life in society I bet it does make life seem more repetitious and less dynamic then it really is. I think this is where my big interest in dynamism comes from. The fact that it seems very easy for life to seem cyclical. I live days that have the same name but no day is ever the same. Nothing is ever the same as it was before. But it is useful to speak of them as if they were.

I wonder if life felt more dynamic before calendars. Probably not, because in order for there to be dynamism there had to be a sort of order. Dynamism comes into existence once there is a sense of order. Before that life was probably just life. You just did things with a certain sense of yourself and the days and age and time. But knowledge about time probably wasn't that elaborate for a long time. This is wild and outrageous speculation.

But anyways, I came from a world in which time was always highly ordered for me. So to have no obligations, (I have no job, no classes, nowhere to be these days), is highly unusual. When I said it makes me feel like I'm drifting in a void, I guess I mean that it makes existence feel much more constant. Sleep combined with the sun combined with the calendar does a good job of making my life feel segmented. It makes it seem like life is experienced in intervals. But no, when I sleep I'm literally just lying their breathing. I'm not really in touch with existence when I sleep. And so I guess you could say that not being able to sleep gives me an extreme awareness of how many hours my mind and body really exist for. It gives me a heightened awareness of my corporeal continuity.

Anyways, fuck sleep. I am doing lots of reading and writing and watching and thinking and shit. During the days, however, I do feel tired. BIIIIG OLD YAWNNNN right there.

I have the rest of my life to be on a schedule. I'll have a job soon. I'll be in graduate school soon enough. I'll be overloaded with obligations soon enough. I have my whole life to live by society's rules. I have my whole life to obey the all mighty clock and calendar. Right now I suppose I am just living as my body lives. Ummmm, I'm not sure what that means. I guess it means I am just living. My body regulates itself. Unfortunately society regulates me too.

So I guess that is the conflict. My body isn't obeying social standards of sleep and shit. And it feels strange because I have been indoctrinated into the culture of time pretty thoroughly. Whatevs yo. I'm just fucking around. I ain't got shit. Signing off. Perhaps I'll write another blog tonight if I can't sleep and feel the urge. Hollatchaboi.

The Order of Things and other adventures of the day

So, right now my nonfiction project is Michel Foucault's The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. My reading of Foucault up to this point has always been challenging, fascinating, and very rewarding. I read the first two volumes of The History of Sexuality and quite a few of his essays and interviews, but OOT is a whole different ball game. It is actually startling how difficult it has been so far. I am about 120 pages in, the whole thing is 400. A friend of mine had previously warned me that if I thought any of those other books were difficult then OOT was gonna wreck me. I wouldn't say it is wrecking me, but it is definitely true that at the end of certain paragraphs I just have to say wtf? And the book is so big that I am just gonna keep going. I know I am not going to be able to understand everything he is saying this time through it. So I just want to get all the way through it regardless. I definitely will.

At the end of undergrad I feel like I acquired a pretty strong ability to identify the major arguments of a monograph, but this book. Jesus. I mean, I have a sense of what is going on and I could tell you what type of argument is being made. But I was thinking I would try to give a brief summary, but I don't think I have the energy. Also, it isn't even worthwhile at this point to try to write about it. I'll finish reading it and then I will perhaps write a post about it or something. But yeah. It's about language and representation, and how the development of more complex systems of language allowed people to assign meaning to the world in different ways. He claims that prior to the 17th century nature was thought of in terms of similitudes, so that pretty much everything in the world was infinitely related to everything else. Also, things were classified not necessarily based on abstraction, but based on what objects really were. The second chapter is called "the prose of the world" and I think that is what that means, that the world literally exists as a text that can be deciphered. But then the development of grammar and more advanced understandings of language essentially allow language to free itself from reality. Language becomes a representation of a representation. For abstract concepts build on abstract concepts and refer to one another and eventually become disassociated from their subject. Or something like that. Jesus. I said I wouldn't try then I did.

Today I had a strange day with a headache and some dehydration. I went to Barnes n Noble and, excitingly, quickly saw a table called "brain awareness month." I immediately thought BALLERS ONLY BALLERS ONLY and started checking out what they were showing off. Basically I ended up buying three books on neuroplasticity and how it is possible to change the way your brain functions pretty much throughout your life. I am not super familiar with the literature but it seems as though people often thought the brain cemented fairly early in life, childhood maybe. But yeah, it is relevant to my interests because of my concern for how the humanities can modify the brain/mind. Synthetic experience is the main thing.

Basic idea: experience communicates things in ways that language cannot. Straight up. So is it possible to use language to approximate the effects of experience? Well! I know some top notch scholars who think so, and I find the entire idea very exciting. I was originally introduced to it in terms of history and synthetic experience. But, novels and synthetic experience. Imagination and synthetic experience. Mirror neurons. Anyways, I always think about this when I read novels. Or history. But two nights ago when I finished reading Sputnik Sweetheart I was so swept away by the feelings I was feeling. This one line, it smacked me in the face. Well, it was more like a full body wave. It is impossible to read about another person's experience without simulating that experience for myself in my own mind. Not that I have to try to do it deliberately, it is literally the only way to understand other people's emotions. That is basically what my reading on mirror neurons has stressed. So when people talk about the humanities as though they are some sort of bogus major, some impractical thing, that's bs. Experience. I mean. Seriously, life cannot be navigagted exclusively with technical knowledge. We can't always say what it is that we need to do or even why we do what we do. Intuition, basically, wordless understanding, is a very very important part of living and decision making. How to improve intuition? Experience. How to get experience without actually going through those experiences? Synthesize it with the help of language and reflection. Ummm... I will have a whole post on synthetic experience and how it was that I was introduced to this concept. That will be very worthwhile I think.

As for right now, I am working on a paper on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I know, I finished school. But I wr0te this paper right before I finished and a teacher told me I should try to publish it. I am currently expanding it to the appropriate length. It was 7 pages, now I have it to 17. I am working on the last section as we speak. Looking at a book. Ummm. Here I go. Onward to writing. I will perhaps have a post on this paper later. Anyways, peace out.

Savage Nobility?

I am unsure how to go about explaining my interest in noble savagery. It’s a bad term. But I feel like it communicates something that I want to be a part of. Something that really means something to me. But without the connotations of colonialism and ignorance of other cultures etc. What I really want it to communicate is that language/reason should be subservient to emotion/experience. Emotion/experience should always come first. I often think that popular opinion believes the inverse; that emotion/experience should obey the rule of language/reason. Bull shittttt.

Historically that is what the term noble savage seems to have meant. That an ‘indigenous,‘ ‘uncivilized person,‘ a ‘savage,’ was capable of embracing civilization and shedding their impulsive and animalistic ways in favor of logical control of the self. What I am seeking is to flip this on its head. I feel like I live an overcivilized world. All this emphasis on language and science and self-control and reason and logic and fuck that. Crying is so much easier. Being furious is so much easier. Feeling is so much easier than thinking. And somehow we have this idea that thinking logically is ‘what we do.’ And let me say right now I do not buy it for a second. I have read a number of books that trace the existence of the West’s logocentric view. The best I have seen so far are by Guy Claxton, Hare Brain Tortoise Mind and The Wayward Mind. Claxton is a British psychologist and a practicing Buddhist. Smart guy, I really like reading him. I’m sure there are other very good ones too.

But anyways, so how is it that we can change the relationship between emotion/experience and language/reason so that we can begin to think of emotion/experience the guiding force? And is that really what I am after? This has perhaps been a vague notion of mine for a little while. Savagery, that is. When I read Angels by Denis Johnson the blurb on the front was very striking, as was the entire book. But the blurb said ‘Mr. Johnson has written a savage and dazzling first novel.’ And now that I think about it, I think this book is actually a convenient avenue for explaining my inclination towards ‘savagery’ in general. I used quotes because I have realized how muddled this term is in my mind right now. Navigating the connotations is interesting.

So sure, I will use my experience of reading Angels as an avenue for addressing this idea of noble savagery. So, I guess first I want to talk about my experience of reading Angels. The story is about a woman who leaves her husband with her two small children, ends up meeting an ex-marine/ex-con and they ‘get into some shit’ involving drugs, rape, multiple robberies including a bank robbery. Essentially, these are American savages. These are people whose lives are governed more by impulse and happenstance, more by sex and violence, more by emotion/experience than by language/reason. The story is quite engrossing. I found it overwhelming in the best way. I had a friend tell me that he didn’t like it because he found nothing to identify with in these characters. That they were too extreme. That their pain, their plight was too unrealistic. Bull shit. I found the story universal. I guess I will draw one conclusion from this story in the form of a question with an obvious answer: What is it that made these people do what they did? Why would behave this way? What could spurn such violence, drug use, and ‘recklessness?’ (I quote this because it is implicitly value laden and I don’t want to give the sense that I disapprove, or I find these characters detestable. I have infinite sympathy for these characters).

So why would these people act this way? In a way considered forbidden by Western views? Ummm, because they are savages? Ah, this is so interesting writing this out because these are views I have been holding for a long time and trying to get them out is interesting. Proving that the O’Connor quote on my first post is indeed somewhat true. Anyways, to ask the question ‘why do they act like savages?’. My friends answer was simple, they are crazy, they are brutal, they are stupid, etc. It would be easy to write off that sort of experience as madness or stupidity. However, this assumes that the nature of human life is civilization, that we exist primarily as beings using our rationality/language to make ‘choices.’ Like little scientists every day deducing the proper path and then implementing our logical plans.

I am proposing that the very nature of life is constant savage compulsion through time. That the nature of human existence is to feel violent and sexual and angry and confused. To react to changing and uncertain circumstances without the benefit of reflection. That living is about doing feeling doing feeling doing feeling and NOT thinking writing thinking writing thinking writing. I am very curious about the connection between science and the idea of choice/responsibility. In what historical moment were people first able to conceptualize something like choice? It would be interesting to see what other sorts of events it coincided with. Does it have something to do with science and logocentrism? Who knows, historical research for the future, no doubt.

One of the major directions that this whole thing leads me to is the different ways of conceptualizing action. The idea that we are beings who primarily use language/reason allows us to conceptualize action in terms of choice, and responsibility. These concepts are soooo very important to our sense of morality in the West. But what if life is not driven by choice/responsibility, but by things like happenstance, impulse, desire? In short, what if life is compelled by emotion/experience far more than it is chosen by language/reason? Well, then, I find myself trying navigate a middle ground in which we need to account for these deterministic factors without totally giving up up on the notion of choice and responsibility. I have often conceptualized the relationship between determinism and free will through imagery, namely the image of a river and the individuals ability to struggle in said river. Fleshing out this idea of the river metaphor will probably be one of my next posts but for now I will only make a few points. By thinking of ourselves as in constant movement through a river accounts for things that I think must be in any account of human freedom and behavior: 1. our constant movement through time 2. the inability to foresee of many crucial events in life 3. the uniqueness of individuals lives 4. the relative nature of all action 5. the limitations that circumstance sets in our lives 6. and the ability to act within predetermined circumstance.

Let me try to bring this whole business back to noble savagery. The noble savage was a concept that is based on a faulty assumption: that people inherently exist as civilized individuals who operate primarily through language/reason. So, therefore, a noble savage was a primitive or ‘inferior’ being who operated more by emotion and impulse than reason. Yet, he attained his ‘nobility’ by learning to overcome these impulses in favor of civilization, language, reason, etc.

As I have said, I think that emotion/experience is far more important to most human lives than language/reason. So then, if what we have typically called ‘savage‘ is essentially the nature of human life, then how are we to think of our ‘civil’ selves? Ummmm. Well, it seems to me that we need to change the definition of what it means to be a noble savage. What I am proposing is not a full blown retreat from civilization. It certainly has all kinds of great things to offer. Comfort, medicine, stability, etc. But how to deal with the persistence of very violent crimes and other things we see as counter to civilization?

As an individual living in the West I feel overwhelmed by words. They seem to be everywhere and shape the way I think about pretty much everything. They are inescapable. They are limited. So the task is to reverse the morality of the term ‘noble savage.’ Savage is a positive word in my mind. It signifies the ability to lose yourself in feeling, to follow your daydreams without concern for their purpose, to love and to hate, to scream and to cry, to run and to hide and to sleep and to fear. All of these things could not be more real and could not be more human/animal. But logocentrism has, in many instances, made these natural feelings seem perverse or bad. It has made us averse to intense swings of emotion. Scared us of ourselves. Of how very much we can love and hate. So, then, the task is to make savagery akin to experiencing life on the level of emotion and experience.

So how to redefine noble? I think it is noble to admit that you can never say everything that you feel or think. To admit that life is driven by compulsion and intense feelings, by circumstances and unreflective action. To admit that we will never be in complete control of ourselves or our lives. It is noble to admit that words and reason are just not good enough. Above all, however, nobility is about not giving up on language and reason, but radically redefining what it is that we are trying to do with them. Rather than using language/reason to suppress or control our emotions we need to use them to get to a space where we are capable of feeling them without words. A rational pursuit that is ultimately about enjoying sensation in its rawest, ineffable form. This reminds me of The Picture of Dorian Gray. At one point Lord Henry speaks of New Hedonism. Forgive any misquotes or w/e, I don’t have the book with me. But at one point Lord Henry says that he wants to found a new theory of pleasure. One that is aimed at enhancing the experience of pleasure itself. How can this be done? How can language be used to embrace things that are inherently ineffable? How to use words to approach the wordless? Well, it is, actually, the only way that it can be done. Language is the only thing we have.

Now for a little imagery. When we use language we are searching for something. Typically it seems to be used in an attempt to control, to understand. This is an endless quest. We will never have a perfect knowledge of the world. We will always be changing out understanding. perhaps refining it, but there will be no end to language’s pursuit of knowledge. Similarly, any use of language that is meant to enhance experience, or to heighten emotional awareness, or to feel more of life, is also an endless quest. Because so long as we are using language we are not actually entering that world of pure experience and emotion. So then, a moment ago I laughed out loud because of an image that struck me. Then I just fleshed it out in words for myself. Given what I said above, about language’s infinite nature, it is interesting to visualize its use as a line that extends infinitely in both directions. At the center is the mind using the language. In one direction is language in pursuit of more knowledge, articulation in search of articulation. In the other direction language is in pursuit of emotion/experience, articulation in pursuit of the ineffable. Ultimately, the latter, is what I want for language. I want it to be placed back into the pursuit of emotion and experience. I want to, and I do, FEEL so much more than I THINK. I think quite a lot. And quite often the more I think, the more it helps me feel.

This writing is incoherent and if you actually read all of this and find it in the least bit interesting that would be pretty fascinating to me. I have expressed these ideas to very few people in depth. And I have never tried to articulate them on paper in a coherent or systematic fashion. This took about an hour and 45 minutes to type this. It was mostly a stream of sorts. Groping my way through my ideas as I went.

But I would like to offer an extremely brief summary:
I want to reverse the connotations of the two terms ‘noble’ and ‘savage’. For me, Savagery is the fundament of life. It is compulsion, inarticulate emotion and wordless experience. And nobility has to do with the way in which language is employed in life. Typically, articulation would be employed to attain more complex articulation. But I think it is noble to use language in the pursuit of the ineffable. I want to use language to pursue something that is fundamentally different than itself, words must chase experiences, articulation must pursue the ineffable. Endlessly.

This is deeply connected to my views on history, fiction, lots of things. I will chase these ideas in later posts hopefully. This feels ridiculous. ITALICS.

What it is. What it ain't.

So, I am currently in Putnam Valley, NY. My aunt and cousin live up here so I am visiting them. My aunt asked me if I had ever seen my cousin's blog: http://cheadlesucks.blogspot.com. The answer was no. So I briefly checked it out and dug what my cousin was doing and felt like perhaps I should do that too. At the very least it would be a convenient and savable medium for fast paced internet reflection. Lately I have been lamenting how very long it takes to write in notebooks by hand. I certainly enjoy the challenge of distilling thoughts that way, but I also feel interested in the more rapid expression that typing can offer me. This blog also seems enticing because I have been a little bit fixated on a Flannery O'Connor quote that I read: "I don’t know what I think until I see what I write." Briefly perusing Google, this seems to be a common sentiment. But I really dig her books. So I like hearing it from her.

Anyways, I feel obliged to provide a brief biography given that this is my first post and I am new to the world of blogging. My name is Riley Paterson and I finished undergrad in December. Currently, I taking my time to travel a little bit. I've got aunts on both coasts. So I have been using that as an excuse to visit Seattle and New York. I need to take care of some business and then I want to perhaps travel Europe for myself for about a month or something. Shit man, my plans don't mean anything these days. That's how indefinite things are. But yeah, I'm gonna end up somewhere new and confusing in less than 5 months. Booya.

I imagine that I will use this blog for a few purposes. As I mentioned, one will be rapid expression. So sure sometimes this may resemble a rant more than anything else. Hopefully I will also use this site to discuss the books I am reading and the music that I am digging on. In college I studied history and that was sort of a big thing for me. I dig history a lot, and have an especially strong interest in the philosophy of history. But most of the reading I have been doing since I graduated has been mostly philosophy and cognitive/neuroscience. I imagine I will be posting some of my ideas about my readings.

I fell out of reading novels for the last few months. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I'm pretty sure it's cause I read The Ark Sakura by Kobo Abe and was underwhelmed by it. Not his best, I've heard. I'll give him another shot. Then I read The Counterlife by Philip Roth. I definitely dug the first 4 chapters but the last one sorta left me wanting. Soooo, I turned to the world of non-fiction for about 2 or 3 months. Last night I read the first half of Sputnick Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami and let me tell you, I feel really good about it. An anonymous narrator struggling with alienation and unrequited love conveying a very interesting story about a sexually desireless girl who writes novels. Snap. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood definitely engaged me and left me somewhat satisfied, but I have higher hopes for this one so far.

Perhaps I will also write some stuff about music at times. I dig last.fm a lot. Here is a link to my last.fm! http://www.last.fm/user/madeasnack. It might be fun to write little band or album reviews for myself. Lol I wonder if anyone will read this. Probably some people. I'll post the link on my facebook. And maybe I will even put it in my facebook status! IT WOULD BE MY FIRST STATUS EVER!

So, I guess this is it. The beginning of a strange, hopefully enjoyable, and potentially fruitful writing project. Savage Riley. Lol. My next post will be an explanation of the name. I dig noble savagery.