My Musey Room

OOKS:

Dystopian/Post-Apocalyptic Novels

-(1945) Animal Farm, George Orwell

-(1949) 1984, George Orwell

-(1953) Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

(1993) The Giver, Lowis Lowry

-(1932) Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

-(1895) The Time Machine, H.G. Wells

-(2006) The Road, Cormac McCarthy

-(1962) A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

-(1954) Lord of the Flies, William Golding

-(2008) Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins

-(2006) World War Z, Max Brooks

-(1997) Lucifer’s Hammer, Larry Niven &  Larry Pournelle

-(1963) Planet of the Apes, Pierre Boulle

-(1957) Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

-(2008) The Dark Abode, Gambhiri Ghara

-(1977) A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick

The Frontal Lobe:

(FRONTAL LOBE) Prefrontal Cortex: This encompasses all things concerned with control, impulse, reasoning, judgment, and manages feelings of empathy and altruism

A Clockwork Orange: Book deals a lot with control of the brain and controlling of basic human impulse.

Lord of The Flies: Boys on the island must re-learn how to govern themselves and decided right from wrong

Lucifer’s Hammer: Cannibalism and immorality is largely addressed in this novel, and the moral center of the brain relies on the Frontal Lobe,

Planet of the Apes: Apes take over the world because they fully use their skills and particularly their frontal lobe, which is the newest part of our brain

(HIND BRAIN) Medulla Oblongata: Regulates involuntary muscles, or autonomic functions of the body such as heart rate, regulation of breathing, and blood pressure.

Animal Farm: Animals on the farm are linked to the most basic of the functions of the brain like our instincts and basic needs for life.

World War Z: the Medulla Oblongata is the “Zombie” function of the brain in that it only deals with basic needs for food, life, and blood flow regulation

The Dark Abode: This is a love story. Feelings and emotions like love can be noticed by changes in heart rate and blood pressure.

(LIMBIC) Amygdala: Helps in storing and classifying emotionally charged memories. It plays a large role in producing our emotions, especially fear.

1984: This book deals with mind control and regulation, which can largely effect a persons emotions and loss of inhibition.

A Scanner Darkly: Also deals with the control of people through surveillance and moles. Fear is used as a motivator to keep people off drugs.

(LIMBIC) Hippocampus: It’s primary role is in memory formation, classifying information, long-term memory. Like the RAM in your computer it processes and stores new and temporary memory for long-term storage.

The Road: In the post apocalyptic, the two main characters in this novel must resort to basic survival instincts, and re-learn how to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

Fahrenheit 451: This novel surrounds a dystopian future where books are banned and people are made to memorize specific novels.

(LIMBIC) Hypothalamus: It monitors and controls your circadian rhythms, homeostasis, appetite, thirst, other bodily urges and also plays a role in emotions, autonomic functions and motor functions.

Atlas Shrugged: “Stopping the motor of the world”, quote from AS. This is merely a play on words, the hypothalamus plays a large role in motor functions.

Hunger Games: Also a play on words. Have no desire to read the book

(LIMBIC) Thalamus: Most of the sensory signals, auditory, visual, go through this organ on their way to other parts of the brain for processing.

The Time Machine: Thought it would be appropriate considering we see and hear into the past, our brains all contain time machines

(MIDBRAIN) Substantia Nigra: is a brain structure located in the midbrain that plays an important role in reward, addiction, and movement.

Brave New World: This is it’s own little category. Substantia Nigra meaning Black substance, is perfect to describe the role of dopamine in the brain, and without it we are numb, much like the people in Brave New World

(MIDBRAIN) Nucleus Accumbens: It is thought to play an important role in reward, pleasure, laughter, addiction, aggression, fear, and the placebo effect.

The Giver: Fits into another smaller category. The book centers around an eradication of emotional depth, which can be related directly to the Nucleus Accumbens.

TEST 1 Review

How many times was the alphabet invented?
-Once

One thing that's most important when it comes to memorization? (Foer)
-Practice makes perfect

What condition forces you to remember everything? (Foer)
-Synesthesia 

What is Anamnesis?
-Remembering things from a previous existence.

Architectural design to memory palaces? Locations of memories. (Yates)
-Loci

Who was the greek poet who coined the term memory palace? How did this term come into being?]
-Simonides, he attended a banquet, which he stepped out of momentarily only to witness it's collapse. He had to remember where each person was sitting, therefore he created a 'memory palace' in which he placed each dead person accordingly

The 9 characteristics of the Oral Tradition summed up?
-Practical

The Nine Muses and their respective roles:
 Calliope: Epic Poetry
Clio: History
Terpsichore: Dance
Urania: Astronomy
Thalia: Comedy
Euterpe: Lyrical Poetry
Polyhymnia: Hymns
Melpolmene: Tragedy
Erato: Love poetry

12 Tribes of Israel:
Reuben: Water
Simeon: Ox
Levi: Ox
Judah: Lions
Zebulun: Ships/sea
Issachar: Ass/Donkey
Dan: Serpent
Gad: Trampled
Asher: Rish/Money
Naphtali: Deer
Joseph: Fruitful Bough
Benjamin: Wolf

Walter Ong's 9 Oral Tradtions:
1.) Additive rather than Subordinative
2.) Aggregrative rather than analytical
3.) Redundant and Copius
4.) Conservative or traditional
5.) Close to the Human realm
6.) Agonistically toned
7.) Empathetic and Participatory
8.) Homeostatic
9.) Situational rather than Abstract

Foer's 15 random Items:
Pickeled Garlic
Cottage Cheese
Salmon
Six bottles Wine
Socks x3
3 Hula Hoops
Snorkel
Dry ice machine
Email Sophia
Skin-toned Cat suit
Paul Newman film
Elk sausage
Megaphone/Directors Chair
Harness and Ropes
Barometer

Ong's One-liners:
-Sight isolates, sound incorporates
-Think memorable thoughts
-Writing restructures consciousness
-Sound only exists as it's going out of existence

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan,

KUBLA KHAN

 

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced:

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise

 Upon concluding this piece Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I felt the urge to research the drug opium. This drug, a mighty one it is, includes the following side effect: overwhelming sense of euphoria, sense of emotional detachment, absence of pain and stress, sleepiness, inability to concentrate, impaired vision, and often death. Plus the duration of the drug is around 4-5 hours. What insipred me to delve into such a topic was only after my realization that Coleridge was under the influence of opium just prior to writing this piece. Overall this poem, in my own interpretation, was a story of love and betrayal. I imagine a peaceful nirvana-like environment, resembling that of Eden, and was torn apart by jowls of the Earth which hurled them about and threw them upon the altar of the God's. It was then the peace had escaped them and thought it never to return. But when all hopes were lost their paradise was returned toiled and defeated. The warning then was made clear by the Gods in 2 lines: For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. 

Now, back to opium. The reason I had to look into it further was because of the images that Coleridge described.  One of my favorites was, "Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean." because of the seemingly improbable dimensions and personification of nature.  He creates life in his words, makes them move and entrance my mind. So in conclusion, drugs like opium can be taken to enhance your sense of reality and paint images in your minds eye (that can be later written down and studied).

Kane's Wisdom

"The gods".
What could come of such a construction of two words as it has in our modern world? These inquiries lie deep-seeded in all of our minds. Where did we come from? Why are we here? Is there a God?
After reading the first chapter of Sean Kane's "Wisdom of the Mythtellers", I was considerably more aware of my surroundings. The very thought of pre-literate history baffled me to the point of frustration. What are thoughts? Sounds, vibrations, emotions, sensations? The answers to my questions seemed more and more apparent while reading the first chapter. How did the story-telling begin?

"..forms that exist only in the tenuous moment of their actual performance, and forms that take their inspiration, not from texts, temples or other monuments at the center of human effort, but from the life of nature surrounding it."(Kane 33)

This passage screams to me, "Before we could talk to each other, the earth taught us how." This may seem to end my frustrations at once. But nay I was far from an answer, as many of us are. But underneath all of this lies a pattern that lattices our existence. The pattern the perpetuates the cycle of life. This form is embodied by the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker in the Haida traditional 'myth' of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. The beating of his beak on the tree that sends the vibrations seem to jolt the Old Man into a transference of energy. This energy is moving through us at all times, vibrating and shifting, organizing and holding the very cells we consist of in time and space. The symbiotic relationship seems to evoke the theme of oneness and spiritual coexistence.

It seems nature encompasses all that we feel to be god like, according to Kane. Even though the term is used very loosely and to no ends at all, however the belief that they may be of god-like resonance cannot be dis-proven. The language of nature is noticeably more evident of it's incredible structure and symbiotic nature. Though we may not see or hear it, it surrounds us constantly. The seasons of our planet seemingly communicate with the plants and animals, and this can be observed by simply watching a tree lose its leaves, or a polar bear create it's den. ITS ALL AROUND US.

My Memory Theatre

For my memory theater I decided to use the setting of a bar, and it goes like this (Can you guess who is who?):
As I roll up to the open doors at the local watering hole, my gaze turns towards a loopy and seemingly enchanted young girl staring up at the moon and dragging on a cigarette. The first sense of mine to become most enthralled was that of my hearing, when I heard a woman's voice over the speakers. As I sit upon the throne an patiently await the barmaid I encounter the most beautiful girl at the bar, who is getting hit on by half the guys there, and her friend dancing away with the other half of the guys. Then a most disturbing image began acting out behind me. A young woman had brought her homework to the bar, in this case: Homer's Iliad. Then I heard the jukebox play Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots are Made for Walkin'", and thought to myself, ah-a lover of the classics. Then her friends began to sing along with the lyrics of the song. Perhaps the second most shocking occurrence of the night was the incredibly drunk girl crying over her broken heart (and perhaps from alcohol poisoning). And finally as I wrap up my misadventures at the bar, I bumped into an old friend, with whom I shared a laugh at the expense of these hapless bar-goers... And the rest is history.

Begin Oral Traditions

On the first day of Oral Traditions, taught by Dr. Michael Sexson, we discussed the nine Muses and who they were. The list looks something like this:

Mother of the Muses: Mnemosyne

Calliope: Epic poetry
Clio: History
Urania: Astronomy
Terpsichore: Dance
Euterpe: Lyrical Poetry
Polyhymnia: Hymns
Thalia: Comedy
Melpomene: Tragic Poetry
Erato: Love Poetry

There is a handy tool to use for remembering theses nine: CCUTETEMP. It REALLY WORKS!!