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RE: Subtext
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Christopher Locke
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Jan 05, 2002 15:47 PST
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b!X
I'd be quite interested in hearing more about how you've been thinking
about this -- either on-list or off. perhaps "resonance" is as fraught
with mystical overtones as is "voice," but I don't mean it to be. if
voice is some essence, some quality that some express and some don't,
the some that don't want to know where it comes from -- either so they
can achieve it themselves (not so rare as it may sound) or so they can
rip out your gizzard for talking loose-lipped New Age bullshit (also
not rare -- perhaps, but only perhaps, unfortunately).
if voice is some sort of inner essence then it becomes like a "talent"
-- you either got it or you don't. from the perspective of the artist,
this becomes a claim to an inside track on the infinite, or whatever
aesthetic is currently selling. and I think that *is* bullshit. people
are right to distrust it -- even if (and this gets complicated) they
distrust art for all sorts of other self-protective reasons that are
not so defensible.
if on the other hand, voice is a social phenomenon, things get easier
to explain (in some dimensions anyway), and (I hope) closer to what's
actually going on. the effect is no less powerful, btw, so this isn't
an attempt to explain voice away or reduce it to some cognitive or
sociological formula. it goes a little like this...
even the most private voice is making an *appeal* to someone (or
something). it wants to be heard. I think that without such an appeal
-- the purely private journal, for instance, if there is such a thing
-- voice doesn't really come into it. but where there is an explicit
audience, then what is said is shaped by the hearing and what is heard
shapes the saying. it's a reciprocal thing. if there is no resonance,
there is no voice, as such. and where there is no voice, there is
(obviously) no possibility of resonance.
I think the net has changed this in significant ways. for one, by
collapsing the time it takes for the loop to be looped. curiously,
what we have now is closer to the Neolithic campfire than it is to the
Gutenberg model. and by collapsing space -- we don't need to be
sitting around the same local hearth.
we make our own fire.
what say your chuddies to that?
chris
-----Original Message-----
From: b!X [mailto:bi-@theonetruebix.com]
Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2002 3:59 PM
To: Cluetrain
Subject: RE: [cluetrain] Subtext
On Sat, 5 Jan 2002, Christopher Locke wrote:
| | I am working on the thesis that the only workable definition of
"voice" that does not require the invocation of some mystical essence
(don't laugh; this is a BIG problem!) hinges on *resonance* with some
real audience. If I write something, can it be "good" if no one seems
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Resonance continues to be the point I most enjoy bringing up with
people in "voice" conversations. Although it'd hard not to sound,
indeed, mystical when I try to explain what I mean.
Voice is kind of like love. I once tried to explain to someone that
their presence made something deep and central in me resonate, like it
was attuned to the same frequency.
I think voice feels the same way when you're exposed to it.
-- The One True b!X <http://www.theonetruebix.com/>
Accept no substitutes. And kiss my chuddies.
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