TAO LIN 9/26/05
lorrie moore and robotics; author and story; language and numbers

lorrie moore has a line,
her brain was drying and subdividing like a cauliflower
i think how much pleasure my brain decides to give me when i read a line depends on how possible my brain decides it might be for a robot to write it (the line)

lorrie moore is the anti-cyborg of writing

of the writers i've read, i feel like it'd be hardest to program a computer to write something that lorrie moore has written

she is more human and less robot than all other writers, i feel, that i have read

jean rhys is sometimes (in good morning, midnight) as human as lorrie moore (in this sentence-level way that i am right now talking about)

computers do not think in language, but in zeroes and ones

they plug things in and make whirring noises and do not have faces

computers do not have epiphanies or moments of heightened imagination; they just keep going at the same speed; they cannot try harder; are either on or off; do not have desires; and do not get sad; they are enlightened

idioms and stock phrases and cliches are closer to zeroes and ones, maybe, than to language

idioms are two-or-more-word expressions whose meanings have nothing to do with the meanings of the words that make them up

lorrie moore has a paragraph,
Perhaps you could open your arms and have so many honeys that you achieved a higher spirital plane, like a shelf in a health food store, or a pine tree, mystically inert, life barking at the bottom like a dog.
that she thought of that makes me happy

to think of that—life barking at the bottom like a dog—is not a trick, is not a gimmick, not something copied or deravitive (not something that is an improvement of something else), but something sudden and new, something of luck, hard work, patience, alertness, open-mindedness, and objectivity

these are the things of imagination, i think: luck, hard work, patience, alertness, open-mindedness, and objectivity

schopenhauer (i think) said genius is the gift of objectivity

to see things without preconception, as they are

lorrie moore's language is beautiful to me; i wouldn't use the word 'beautiful' for anyone else's language; sometimes other writers have beautiful language; but lorrie moore almost always has beautiful language; she is so often sudden and new

i don't care much for story

i don't want plot

i don't want to be lead along

that is like materialism

accumulating things in life

these things lead you along, neccesitate the next (what comes next; you must know!), and you sort of forget that you're going to die

a complicated kindness, by miriam toews, did not have plot

it taught me to stay and detach and be calm; 'calm down,' it said; 'sit down; stay' 

some writers say you should cut a line even if it's good if it interferes or distracts from the story

don't fall in love with the lines, they say, the language; don't be so in love with your own brain

i say leave the line and make more lines like it and just have it all be beautiful without leading anyone along (without tricking anyone; plot: so like a scheme, like a one-sided game, to keep the reader's attention like that, how inconsiderate almost) and fall in love with the language and show off a little because they taught you in second grade that you are unique and this is true and don't deny it and i want to see just how unique you are

here is a paragraph from haruki murakami's latest story in the new yorker, translated,
Junpei was sixteen years old when his father made a surprising pronouncement. True, they were father and son; the same blood flowed through their veins. But they were not so close that they often opened their hearts to each other, and it was extremely rare for Junpei’s father to offer him views of life that might (perhaps) be called philosophical. So that day’s exchange would remain vivid in his memory long after he had forgotten what prompted it.
a robot could've written that paragraph, i think

(i know nothing about robots, do not have a degree in engineering or robotics or computers and fell asleep everyday in pre-calculus)

stock phrases, cliches, idioms

reading that paragragh, i feel unconnected to the world of humans; i feel alone

when i read a story that cares only about story, i feel unconnected to the author

i feel vaguely cheated and vaguely unalive and vaguely despairing

i feel like the author has made a clone of him or her self, a clone that denies the self but is a kind of machine that cares only about the story

and that is who i feel connected to, when reading story-stories, the clone of the author

and it's a trick against me

the author is at home, sleeping, eating, living his or her real life, and i am trying stupidly to make a human connection with the clone, the once-removed and de-consciousnessed thing, the unhuman, scarecrowed thing

but i want to feel connected to the author

feeling connected to the clone makes my brain hurt in an inner-brain, nervous-systemless sort of way

it's a kind of numbness

i mean this

really

literally, that when i read a story that has revised out any evidence of there being an author—an identity—who is idiosyncratic and passionate about certain things and despairing at times and sad and lonely and angry and all these feelings and biases and motives, then i feel a little numb, physically—literally—though vaguely and dizzyingly, even, somewhere in my head

maybe this is the feeling of having denied a bit of my own self, my own identity

of forgetting it a little

getting lost in the 'story'

(the 'story' of it all)

becoming a little enlightened

as, to revise the author out of the story (there is just one story, really, maybe; the story of everything), isn't that what buddhists talk about when they talk about detachment?

give oneself up to the story, stop trying to be your own self, because all there is, objectively, is the story?

are identities lies that force upon us desires, which cause us suffering?

are identities truths that force upon us desires, which cause us suffering?

does lorrie moore cause us suffering?

i don't think she causes me suffering

she makes me happy

i am not detached when i read her

but attached, to her, and unlonely

but maybe that gives me desires

maybe i should practice detachment

that is, maybe i should practice attachment to the authorless story

(that has revised the author out of it; the story that has no identity, but is just there and impersonal and like a universe of atoms and zeroes and ones and that 'anyone could've written it')

and not the author 

(who has revised the story out of the language; that is, who has asserted the identity; who has gone against robotics, by using language, but who has also, maybe, made him or herself a little robotic, as robots do not know stories, do not make connections between events in that way

humans do; they see the connections, the plot

robots see the zeroes, the ones

robots practice objectivity and are geniuses, and einstein (i think) said genius is imagination; but humans are not robots

because robots do not have consciousness—right?

robots cannot see the life barking at the bottom like a dog)