As a result my memories are visual and impressionistic -- Walken's pale face, light and dark, cityscapes, black pools of blood -- with not much in the auditory dept.

I suspect our memories work differently that way. I may not be literally 'tone deaf', by my visual memory is better than my auditory one. I was told this was why I was able to switch from writing about film to visual art, but had more trouble writing about radio.

The film? I remember thinking it was 'restrained' because several other Ferrara movies wallow in splatter, and the b/w gave this a sort of opiated distancing effect.

I've written a few articles over the years on the vampire metaphor ... from Bram Stoker to the current crop of teen romances. In the late 80s, I think, the idea of the vampire/addict emerged, and I thought Ferrara handled it as well as anyone. Anne Rice, despite being a terrible writer, had opened up new spaces by ditching garlic and crucifixes, and turning vampires into romantic/alienated outsiders, with existential angst about their own longevity.

A rich source of ideas, but it seems played out now -- just going by those incredibly popular teen flicks. The vamp as boyband boyfriend.

He's unique. Wrote three or four 'literary' novels, all extremely good, and all firmly in the Bellow/Roth tradition, a younger-generation take on the Jewish wing of the Great American novel. (The other wing is called Pynchon.)

But then Chabon went meta, with 'The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' -- literary fiction with a tragic-comicbook heart. Brilliant.

And since then he's been revelling in the discovery of genres -- sci-fi, mysteries, detectives, irreal worlds, fabulous historic kingdoms ruled by Jewish kings under siege by Vikings (which is even historically accurate: the Khazars on the Caspian embraced Judaism sometime after the 6th century CE, and the Vikinger Rus came down the rivers in longboats ...)

And 'in ever-widening' makes sense.

How does she *do* that?

And why is Her Britannic Majesty's home dominion known as 'Blighty'?

They *say* it's from Hindi 'bilayati' or Arabic 'wilayat' ... or even the old Turkish word 'vilayet', meaning a province.

Well- off to the dentist now, and <Dom>, might I suggest to her, or insist, on a solely b/w setting...distanced and opiated...?

I'm a native speaker and I miss words all the time in English language movies.

Why?

They aren't recorded and mixed properly!!

Either that or there's too much wax in my ears.

You know what else? I have obscenely expensive headphones eh?

They pick up every nuance. And you know on some of these multi-millionaire film productions, there are mistakes my headphones pick up.

Specifically, "pops" on "p" and "f"-

They could have prevented this simply by wrapping a nylon stocking over a coat hanger and sticking it in front of the microphone.

Seriously though, in theory shouldn't these productions have the best equipment available to humanity?

I'm sure they have access to better headphones than I do.

Although I did buy them off the internet under the search heading <world's best headphones>.

heh

Thanks for those encouraging words <Dom> I return tomorrow and I'm excited to see the students again.

I remember Sinatra addressing his 'p' poppin when he was in a recording studio, saying, laughingly: "It's not that bad, is it? You know, I'm a 'sneaky p-popper'..."

;)

<[..] my memories are visual and impressionistic -- Walken's pale face, light and dark, cityscapes, black pools of blood -- with not much in the auditory dept.

With the possible exception of accents, my auditory world is in black-and-white, by comparison.

I'm reminded again of the man with synaesthesia, the Russian that Luria wrote about in 'The Mind of a Mnemonist'. Every word had its own colour, taste, smell.

"The first type of subconscious material belongs to the normal mode of operation of our brain. It is stored in our memory as the original events that occurred, together with the connected physiological content that determines our emotions.

"It is processed by subconscious mechanisms that assign a code to every incoming piece of sensory data. These codes are stored in an index that enables our subconscious brain to use this data as comparison material for future experiences.

"Everything we experience is stored in our brain in what we call 'clusters'. Our clusters determine how we feel and think about what we experience because they act as comparison material."

Just from your summary, I'm reminded of two things:

(1) Douglas Hofstadter in *Gödel, Escher, Bach* ... uses the word 'chunking' to describe the way the brain processes memories etc.

(2) L. Ron Hubbard - way back when Scientology was still called Dianetics and hadn't become so, um, loony - talked about 'engrams'. A fairly primitive metaphor, though he managed to dress it as both science and religion.

Apparently the sheer amount of data now coming in via brain scanning makes old theories date very fast, including most of what I've read.

"That marble index
of a mind
Forever voyaging through
Strange seas of thought, alone."

clusters, chunks, engrams, marble index, code assignment -- as usual you're right on the button.

In a deleted post I compared the "therapy" to a cheap off-shoot of the decoding of Trauma Based mind control victims...

<marble index> indeed, 1820???

Gawd how we've been dumbed down.

Speaking of 'marble', she also wrote "Marble Skin" and How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (1991) -- Balkan Express: Fragments from the Other Side of the War 1992 -- Cafe Europa: Life After Communism (1996) -- They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in the Hague (2005)

I read Holograms and Marble Skin, now curious about her follow up works.

'Marble' can of course serve as a metaphor on quite opposite ends of the spectre.

I may have to become a Rat for the occasion. Or just stick to my Frog guns, but in some line he's never played? Choices, choices.

And Nico, ex-Velvet chanteuse with numerous addictive traits, borrowed Wordsworth's line for an album, The Marble Index. Very chilly and beautiful, as is anything John Cale produced for her. Without his oversight, she could be terrible.

Like the last voice echoing through the ruins of a cathedral half the size of Europe. Old world music, pale and frail, without a hint of Boogie Street.

Uh, where was I?

I think Ferrara's message was mainly to show the images of mass graves and killings, next to an addiction of sucking people dry and draw a life energy from them, individually. Once you're in, there's no way out.

- I know, clearly, one half the truth, and that is one half more than they recognize

- The old adage from Santayana,

- that those who don't learn from history, are doomed to repeat it, is a lie

- there is no history

- everything we are is eternally with us

"<sustaining> energy from that. Once you're in, there's no way out.

He's likely right. Recent history proves it."

<but it's not as if one ever *gets* anywhere with these people, is it?> How did that notion ever develop?

The only positive from Rogoff discussions is to draw some information from "people", "these people", and either subvert or finetune (or something in between) your position on an issue, subject.

Btw I read the discussion over at <Annie>'s and she avoids this place now for some reason - PING - which I find sad for her. I think here's all the breathing space she needs. As I hinted/indicated earlier.

Yes, an interesting analytic system. And a sterling contribution to rodent psychology and citrusology.

Something odd is happening to CG. They're acting like they're suddenly woefully understaffed, or as if a key person quit, taking all the codes and contacts.

I *do* hope Mr Freeman is still with us.

I've learned in RL not to sit tight while your neighborhood goes downmarket, and I'm not gonna do it here either. Let lemmings and trolls pick over the remains, cos I will have moved on.

I mean, Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein -- right, we're talking dictatorial here? -- along with Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon and Sigourney Weaver?