So Much Fun

Low Brow

I encourage everyone to check out lowbrow.com which houses the lowbrow project 2.0. The project is a collection of stories, thoughts, and messages recorded on audio and broadcast to the world. Anyone could submit with these guidlines: Instructions

* Be depraved.
* Be anonymous. Or not.
* Confess your sins.
* Unload your conscience.
* Share your fantasy.
* Share your shame.

Here's a bit more information:

About The Lowbrow Line

A friend once said that everyone has a story. A person is known for telling the story, and others, often, will beg for the person to tell that story. Culturally, it's been a way for people to introduce themselves -- or be introduced - to new people.

"Hey, tell John that story about how you..."

"Oh! This is John. He's the guy that..."

Everyone has one of those stories. Tell us yours.

Call (206) 984-4959 .

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The Lowbrow Forum
There is a forum that continues to exist with a vibrant and active commmunity. You can find it here.


A note about Lowbrow 1.0
Lowbrow 1.0 was a project that existed from 1996 to 2006, a nearly ten year run of collecting text-based stories of the depraved, the young and the feckless. The run came came to completion when The Management lost interest in the financial care and feeding required to keep it running. The option was extended to the end users to help support the costs of maintaining the project. The silence was message enough. The project continues behined closed doors for those who did step up. If you care to have access to the project, please use the donate buttonsbelow. $10 minimum for the final year of lowbrow.

What'll happen to the moments? They will be buried, on a cdrom, in a timecapsule for the future to find. it'll make a beautiful portrait of humanity.

And so I encourage everyone to go listen to these stories before they are buried forever.

High Brow

Group Presentations Wed April 20th

A little reflection on my presentation experience and then thoughts on others. Well, I wasn't really prepared to present my paper. I suppose looking back at all the creative things people did I could have hired a person to read the monologue with me in order to make it more engaging. Having no plan however, I dug myself into a little grade. I'm comfortable speaking in front of people to be sure, but presenting material I wrote is a whole other story. (Which is probably why I have to imagine no one reads this blog in order to keep myself sane). I knew that Dr. Sexson would probably ask me to read a snippet of my story, but I hoped I wouldn't have to read all of it. But as is the case most of the time things did not turn out the way I wanted. I read my whole story. It was hard to share because I was extremely proud of my work and worried what other people may think. That is to say, I am not my biggest critic, the fear of other critics is. On the bright side everyone seemed to enjoy it and I didn't die of wounded pride. Other notables include Bri Barber's presentation where she performed a rap. Now, I feel fairly comfortable speaking in front of people but performing a rap, by oneself for that matter, is totally different. I applaud her for going all out and fully committing herself to her performance, I think everyone would agree it was an enjoyable experience.

The Dream

I am so ecstatic that Rio has put the video of the dream on his blog. This movie absolutely inspired me and I wanted the ability to torment the masses of people I know with this high brow work. Remembering Classical Literature I knew that the group that contained Zach would be something to marvel at. I wasn't wrong. This film is done so beautifully its really hard to describe it in words. It has references of all our works from class placed in seamlessly along with references that only fit our classes discourse group, Dr. Sexson's granddaughter anyone? I really think that if Dr. Sexson or anyone else should teach this class again this movie should be incorporated into the curriculum. In fact many of the offerings that have come about from this class should be incorporated in. I also love that almost every presentation in the class dealt with Dr. Sexson in some way. The wizard of the class had to be incorporated or it wouldn't be the same.

Reflection over group presentation.

To be honest I am completely surprised that our group presentation came together at all. As James said, we were originally going to mirror what group one did. Then came the problem that group one had switched times and shortened our turn around period. And then we saw group one's presentation and realized it would be so hard to mirror their presentation. Which left us with three days to come up with a whole new idea. I guess our group had met once before, a meeting I could not attend, and come up with a somewhat idea dealing with the sun. When we met Sunday, a day before our presentation mind you, I was terribly worried. We had about four hours to come up with an idea, presentation and script. As we sat there discussing an idea began to form. What if we dealt with the stages of language and ended with the "dude" language quoting the "god" language coming full circle. It was a plan. So we paired off and individually with our partners came up with our sections of the script. Needless to say it helped that we had a group of fantastically brilliant people, but what would you expect in English anyway, that somehow made each script fit together perfectly. We talked about our costumes rehearsed it over once and prayed for the best. Luckily, and I hope you'd agree, we did pretty damn well for ourselves.

Group Presentations Monday April 26th

All of the group presentations today were fabulous, I mean who will ever forget Lisa's ribbon dance performance my four year old self was jumping for joy on the inside over her stellar moves, and what I have come to expect to see in a Sexon class. There were a few that really stood out to me though. First off would be Zach's performance on his guitar. Any time I have had the pleasure to read or hear anything Zach created is a treat and this held true yet again. The lyrics to his song were absolutely beautiful as well as the melody. I also liked the fact that he switched mid way through and refined a song he had previously written because he hadn't understood what he needed to yet. I had the same experience in this class so this really resonated with me. I also really enjoyed our resident business majors take on lowbrow and comic books. In Literary Criticism last semester we explored the idea of graphic novels in a classroom and the implications with which people view them. This presentation brought me back to that idea and how people often judge things without really looking deeper and finding meaning. I also really loved Christina's presentation and look forward to reading her whole paper. Great job again team.

The Paper

I guess I should clarify. Even though the following story does have some fictitious elements (I may or may not have altered people's words to make it more interesting) it was for the most part a true account. And when I proclaimed that I wrote it dealing with what I know now that I didn't know before I meant it. I now know I should never have been dating that boy and no longer do. So here is the full copy of my paper. Enjoy!

The Coffee Shop
…moved deliberately, her hands cupping the books she would ponder over, into the coffee shop that she loved so much. He followed closely behind her with books of his own and the heels of his chestnut cowboy boots clicked rhythmically after them. The air around them was filled with a stagnant annoyance it seemed to hover around them more often each passing day. They had bickered over the arrival to the coffee shop, where they would go, and now where they would sit. She was beginning to think it was the only way they knew how to converse anymore. With rapid steps she placed her things on one of the available arm chairs thinking he would do the same; he did not. Joining him at the counter her face wore a sullen look as she folded her arms refusing to speak. Glancing over her shoulder she watched as the seat next to her things was quickly taken by another tense college occupant.
“Great, now where will you sit,” she hissed tersely. He threw a look towards the seats. “Somewhere,” he muttered with an accompanying shrug. Her eyes darkened as her body tensed and she tossed her straw colored hair over her shoulder. “Fine.” Sitting down she grabbed her book and tried to immerse herself into the pages wishing to escape from the narrative that was seemingly her life. The book was the most beautiful at the last page, in her opinion, and so she began there. “…a last a loved a long the” She turned the words over in her mouth, at first whispering them and then speaking them to no one. It troubled her that she could not make them sound as exquisite as the girl in the class who had recited the passage. The words were written a dozen times over in her notebook in varying script and yet they never lost their meaning unlike most.
He sat across the room from her and she stole looks at him from time to time. It was a sight she had become familiar with after three years or so. Head in hand, shaggy auburn hair splaying across his face that held a look of deep concentration. Headphones in. A short sleeve shirt featuring some obscure band or the more embarrassing cartoon character. Slim dark wash jeans that were just too short to meet their mark and of course the ever present cowboy boots tap tap tapping. A seat had emptied beside him and he motioned her over. Her eyes became slits as she glared back at him; he knew she detested shifting places once she had settled in one place. It was part of her neurotic obsessive compulsive disorder which included counting the number of sips she took of a drink and how long she could inhale the smoke from a hookah. And yet, still he called to her and she found herself making the way across the tables. Having previously been lonely in her tiny corner she determined to revive the evening and positioned a smile upon her face.
“What are you reading about?”
He looked at her fleetingly before returning to the book. She wondered if he even noticed her anymore and it reminded her of a quote. Perhaps it was Mark Twain who had once described how various people could lose the ability to see beauty. He spoke of the sailor who could only see channels and pitfalls in the rivers instead of the splatter of colors and life and the doctor who only saw sickness in the blush of a striking woman. Had he lost the ability to see her splendor she thought as she read her cherished lines again, “…a last a loved a long the”
“Enterprise resource planning. It consists of numbers and figures. I hate my business classes with their pompous students whose only concern is what poison they can pour down their throats next.”
“Do you enjoy the subject?”
“No.”
“Then why do you do it?”
“Because it will make me more marketable,” he quipped and gave her an irritated look.
She looks away, faltering as she spoke again, “I see. Well, I quite enjoy the things I read and do. I cannot fathom if I didn’t.” She hoped he could not see her insides slowly caving into themselves. True, she enjoyed the experience, yet somehow she continuously missed the meaning and was often left hoping no one could see through the mirrors. The music wafted between them and it angered her with its carefree crooning. He looked at her book.
"What is this?"
"The most highbrow piece of literature ever written encompassing everything that has ever been written, ever."
She repeated the words that had been uttered so often in her classroom but they were empty coming from her mouth. She had yet to understand what they truly meant only that they should mean it.
"Ok..."
He snatched the book from her lap flipping through the pages robotically. His eyes skimmed the pages but it was clear he had no intention of absorbing. Finally he placed it on the table and turned his attention back to her.
"Well this is utter nonsense."
"Well kind of, you just have to know what to do with it. These words are words you know, they just look different, and see right here it's referencing Adam and Eve. It's like a puzzle."
"Did this man make money off this book? Maybe I should just write a whole bunch of damn letters in a row and call it art. This is gibberish."
She clutched the book to her chest protectively. “It’s like what a math problem is to you. You have to analyze and solve it using prior knowledge. But besides that it is wholly striking and resonant in certain areas. Take this it’s my favorite passage: ‘…a last a loved a long the,’” she peered up with hope in her eyes that the words would take hold of him as they had her.
“It’s nonsense.”
Defeated, she clasps his business book and shifted through the endless pages of cold hard words before throwing it upon the table with a resounding thud.
“This is nonsense.”
“I have a major with actual theory and facts. You have a major where you read pretend books and come to pretend conclusions. You could say the sky was fucking purple and your teachers would congratulate you on your inventiveness. What’s the use of stories that aren’t even real? Numbers are real. Facts are real. These are pretty words arranged in a pretty pattern that “intellectuals” tell us are profound.”
She turned away from him as the tears swelled in her eyes. She would remain silent, she always did. She went back to her book and her words and her fake stories and thought that sometimes fiction was better than reality. Purposefully, she slid her laptop from its container and flicked it on. With a final sigh she began to drum upon her laptop as she typed her ballad of misery.
She staggered into her class the next morning a zombie. The ideas that encompassed her head felt meaningless and vacant. She had lost faith in the beauty she had previously witnessed in the words just the following night. She sunk into her chair and prepared for the nonsensical droning her classmates and professor were sure to offer. They were just words and words meant nothing, they couldn’t defend against a world of numbers.
Her professor cued up her blog and she peered up, awakened from her pitiful fog. He solicited her to read through it, which she did with vigor attempting to add just the right tone to capture the humor of it all. The class filled with laughter and she beamed. She wasn’t stupid to think the words were enchanting.
“You know, you should probably disassociate yourself from this boy,” her professor lectured with a hint of a smirk.
The weeks passed and she further submerged herself into the class and philosophy behind the books. She became raptured by the words that were laid down before her. Swallowing the pill, she chose to not turn back.
For the life of me I cannot remember whatever made us think we were wise. Do we mean love, when we say love? I can't go on. I'll go on. If you do not love me I shall not be loved if I do not love you I shall not love. None that I love more than myself. I don’t think we’ll ever be wise. In my end is my beginning. A lone a last a long the…
She wrote the compile of words on a weathered note card and placed it in her back pocket. As he kissed her his hand grasped the paper.
It was March. She sat in her class and thought of the term paper she was to write. Ideas fluttered in her mind like minuscule gnats. What theme should she choose? What topic could she write about? Her pencil slipped into her mouth and she bit it nervously. “What has this class taught you…” the words echoed in her brain. Her face broke into a grin as she began to write these words, “She…

Ouroboros

from wikipedia:

The Ouroboros or Uroborus[1] is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon swallowing its own tail and forming a circle.

The Ouroboros often represents self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things perceived as cycles that begin anew as soon as they end (compare Phoenix). It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished. The ouroboros has been important in religious and mythological symbolism, but has also been frequently used in alchemical illustrations, where it symbolizes the circular nature of the alchemist's opus. It is also often associated with Gnosticism, and Hermeticism.

Carl Jung interpreted the Ouroboros as having an archetypal significance to the human psyche.[citation needed] The Jungian psychologist Erich Neumann writes of it as a representation of the pre-ego "dawn state", depicting the undifferentiated infancy experience of both mankind and the individual child.[2]

Alchemy

In alchemy, the Ouroboros is a purifying sigil. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung saw the Ouroboros as an archetype and the basic mandala of alchemy. Jung also defined the relationship of the Ouroboros to alchemy:[6]

The alchemists, who in their own way knew more about the nature of the individuation process than we moderns do, expressed this paradox through the symbol of the Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. The Ouroboros has been said to have a meaning of infinity or wholeness. In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This 'feed-back' process is at the same time a symbol of immortality, since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he therefore constitutes the secret of the prima materia which [...] unquestionably stems from man's unconscious.

The famous Ouroboros drawing from the early alchemical text The Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra dating to 2nd century Alexandria encloses the words hen to pan, "one is the all". Its black and white halves represent the Gnostic duality of existence. As such, the Ouroboros could be interpreted as the Western equivalent of the Taoist Yin-Yang symbol.

The Chrysopoeia Ouroboros of Cleopatra is one of the oldest images of the Ouroboros to be linked with the legendary opus of the Alchemists, the Philosopher’s Stone.

As a symbol of the eternal unity of all things, the cycle of birth and death from which the alchemist sought release and liberation, it was familiar to the alchemist/physician Sir Thomas Browne. In his A letter to a friend, a medical treatise full of case-histories and witty speculations upon the human condition, he wrote of it:

[...] that the first day should make the last, that the Tail of the Snake should return into its Mouth precisely at that time, and they should wind up upon the day of their Nativity, is indeed a remarkable Coincidence,

It is also alluded to at the conclusion of Browne's The Garden of Cyrus (1658) as a symbol of the circular nature and Unity of the two Discourses:

All things began in order so shall they end, so shall they begin again according to the Ordainer of Order and the mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven.

The Following Story

Nooteboom suggested that the novel "covers the last two seconds of Mussert’s life, one second of memory, and one second of the passing from life into death." With its invocation of Socrates and the eternal return, the book points toward the idea that after death something survives to be born into life again. What do we die for? To become something else or to help other living things continue to live?

"That is the difference between gods and men. Gods can change themselves; humans can only be changed."The idea of metamorphosis in this novel is again a rampant theme. Humans have no control over themselves, over time, over the actions of the world. We are all just living another persons idea of a life another person's story until we die. But even in death we are not free to change but again only be changed. Like the beetle changed the rat we are changed by the factors that continue to live.

"Whosoever attempts to interfere with time, wheresoever that may be, whosoever seeks to stretch it, retard it, channel it, stem its flow, divert it, should know that my law is absolute, that my magisterial hands indicate the ephemeral, nonexistent now, as they always do. They stand aloof from corrupting division, from the mercenary now of the scholar; mine is the only true now, the durable now encompassing sixty counted seconds." -Although humans cannot control time, time can show up in many different forms. If the novel ends where it begins, then has any time passed at all? Time is so apparent in this book it is obvious Nooteboom is extremely perplexed by it. Clocks are described in detail, when the beetles actions have been fast forward Nooteboom says he realizes this is not possible, or is it? I believe Nooteboom is trying to conclude that time is what frees our bodies and minds and allows for the dead to continue on.

"Then an article about the budget deficit, which I have myself, and a piece about corruption in the Third World, but I had already read all about that in Tacitus..." Nooteboom again suggests the myth of the eternal return. Everything that happens has happened before and will continue to happen again.