11/19/2008 notes

Assignment #16: what is your Daemon?????????
Term paper presentations begin next Wednesday Nov 26 ( Z to A : class roster by last name)

Lyra, Alice, Dorothy

myth | dream | coincidence | art | history
Talbot anchors everything in history

Pullman calls himself a “stark realist”
objects to Tolkien and C.S. Lewis fantasy

mulefa

p. 281 the idea of North

metaphysical as opposed to geographical
the imagining of the North
frontier, edge, portal
"things as they are" not as we wish them to be...
“a mind of winter”...
"For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive."


p. 280 the ambiguity of Lyra’s parents

Ode on a Grecian Urn Keats -- can you hear the piper? the music of the spheres? John Donne
forever young Dylan 1973
read the Renaissance philosophers
assigning sentience to the inanimate

p. 364 “Dust knows we’re here”

misinterpretations of Christianity

the Daemon: in children, metamorphasis -- awareness of self, sexuality, experience, sacrifice -- fixed in adulthood? sacrifice -- begins to be more obvious in Subtle Knife
Will and Lyra both have to sacrifice their instruments

Eric Shanower + Skottie Young -- Marvel Comics -- The Wonderful WOZ Sketchbook

Taylor’s response --- no loophole -- saw it coming from far away -- “please don’t do that”
Aristotle’s theory of catharsis
Northrop Frye "depressing?" something wrong w/ the reader or the writer
exultant even tho filled with sorrow

TM: the selflessness is both realistic and Romantic
the romance of Quixote -- that they never meet
The Idealist and Realist, Andre and Wally, Quixote and Sancho Panza
Findhorn

divination, fortune cookies, horoscopes -- what you bring to the experience, the nature of the divining instrument, imaginative devices -- imagination is what makes things happen -- Northrop Frye -- literature is about the possible

"Even a broken clock is right twice"

TM: the Daemon paintings, (erotic) attachment
in Mongolia last summer she bought a beaded bag w/ sheep bones from an old woman

• Dreams will come true
• Weather will win

Ryan’s blog -- symbols on the Aleithiometer
Sam’s blog -- I Ching

Ronnie -- symbolic interactionism
what CONNECTS us, not what SEPARATES us from animals, daemons, anima

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Well. It was snowing as we left class.
And. As I drove into the canyon, the electronic billboard, which usually says "BUCKLE UP -- IT'S THE LAW" or "DIAL 511" or "ROADWORK AHEAD" was now saying

ANIMAL CROSSING
BE ALERT
USE CAUTION

By the time I got to the canyon, the snow was swirling round as tho I were inside that crystal ball with the little pine tree and little deer that my seven-year-old neighbor gave me for Christmas last year and the radio was playing "Man of my heart"

"More Than You Know"
Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson

In my enchantment, I didn't realize that I'd forgotten to stop for gas as planned ... coasted into Livingston on fumes. My dear departed lover Michael used to say that for a woman with such a fine mind, I was shockingly oblivious to the obvious at times...

p.s. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was written by the incredible black-listed lyricist Yip Harburg who also ended up writing a significant portion of the film's dialogue ...