One of the things I noticed about The Beaches of Agnes was that it consisted of a pretty loose narrative arc. I mostly felt like I was just hearing dozens of different stories that weren't really related. It kind of reminded me of listening to my grandmother recall her childhood, which is appropriate, as Agnes is a grandmother herself. It didn't remind me of a "traditional" documentary with a certain goal in mind that then follows the events surrounding the arrival at that goal. I suppose her main purpose was to expose her life and personality to an audience. She used so many different techniques to tell her story that I had to try to stop caring about what she was doing. For example, in some parts of the film, she used actors to recreate her younger experiences and act as her siblings. She didn't stay consistent with this technique though. Somewhere along the way I think I just let myself give in to the visual imagery.
I think in "Borges and I" Jorge Luis is expressing what most writers feel when they reach some point of success. It's like the writer in them becomes a separate identity and their real 'self' is only living to provide material for the writer to write. "I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me," he says. Borges is also the one that "things happen to." I think this piece speaks to the feeling that writers can sometimes feel like frauds, making things seem a lot more interesting with their words than they actually were. So this persona that they create by writing seems to have all of this exciting experience to draw from when in reality it was the product of "falsifying and magnifying things."
It's clear that "I" lives within Borges and knows of him, but the text does not say whether or not Borges knows about "I" (do that even make sense?) Whether or not "I" and Borges knows of each other's existence, they cannot exist separately and need each other to define themselves.
The text plays with the question "who am I?" After reading, I felt that the text demonstrates how a person can have multiple identities and roles (like how Borges is an author). The text ends with "I" being consumed by Borges and has lost "its" identity. In my opinion, Borges is an identity that is overlapping "I," an initial conception of the self.
It seemed to me to be a struggle of the "I" and how the world interprets and perceives that "I." It expresses the same sentiment that was discussed in class: the feeling that the world doesn't "get" Borges and the outward-expressing half of Borges will also never "get" the "I"
One particular theme that has been recurring throughout the semester is the power of memory as a narrative tool. Several of the films we have seen and texts we have read are told as they are remembered by the narrator. This film is no exception. Agnes tells the story as it exists to her and no one else. She leaves out the fact that Jacque left her, but it is important to her that he came back so she includes this. In this way, memory works sort of like editing in that almost without effort, it selects and arranges the way in which we experience a memory. Of course Agnes edited the film and chose the specific things she would leave in and out, but it is quite possible too that this is the way things exist within her memory. In The Virgin Suicides the narrator functions in a similar way. The only thing we know about the Lisbon girls is through the collective memory of the boys who knew them. In these types of narrations, it is almost as if the act of remembering itself is what forms the story instead of the subject matter.
I agree with Elna, in that the structure of the class has been to engage with HOW narrators tell a story. What is left out of a story is equally important as what is told.
If in a very excited manner I try to relate the awesomeness of the second side of Abbey Road, the way in which the music moves from track to track (beginning with "Sun King"), bridging one to the next in effortless transition (e.g., "Mean Mr. Mustard" become "Polythene Pam"), stopping one beat and immediately switching to another (here, consider the move from "Golden Slumbers" into "Carry That Weight" then into "The End") ... If I did all this and more, we would find the other thing (as if there are only two) about 'creative writing' (screenplays or whatever): the challenge of relating singularity.
The struggle with relating singularity centers on the notion of the individual experience. Dr. Roberts could spend hours providing a detailed description of Abbey Road and what makes it so awesome, yet his description would still fall short in enabling us to experience the thing exactly as he does. There will always be a shortcoming in the re-creation of experience because each person experiences things in a different way. Although we may appreciate his passion for the album and we may have similar feelings about the album, something about the essence of his singular experience with the music is lost in its reenactment. How do we attempt to overcome this obstacle in creative writing? If re-creation falls short, what else can we do? Perhaps there is a link here with the objective correlative. If the experience itself is unable to be recreated, perhaps its essence can be conveyed through a different outlet. Does this type of “metaphor” bring us closer to the experience itself or does it distance us even more? Hence, the dilemma of relating singularity…
So, to join Sarah's thought, we could say that the challenge is weakly thought of in terms of "relating" through "description," an effort that produces mere description. "What does it do?" might be a more precise way to engage the challenge of "thought." 'Cause, I'm with Sarah's use of quotes around "metaphor," 'cause such things (metaphors) always already fall short, 'cause the "thing itself" isn't something else; or, to shift to the equally lame simile, the event (the thing itself) isn't "like" anything. It just is.
Borges’ trouble seems to be rooted in his attempts to pin down a simplistic understanding of his “self.” He sees the ways in which people perceive him and how it differs from his own self-perception. His distress centers on the duality of his existence as he seeks to understand who he truly is (or to come to terms with the gap between his internalization and his externalization). Borges notes that “all things long to remain in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger.” In this way, Borges shows a desire for the simplistic state of being present in a non-human entity. The problem with this desire, however, is that humans have the capacity to contemplate their existence, their “I,” in a way that animals and objects cannot. Borges struggles over his sense of being rather than understanding the self as becoming (as we discussed in class). Borges is unable to pin down a singular understanding of himself because such a thing does not exist—his “self” is constantly changing with his experience of internal and external stimuli.
To add further to Sarah's mentioning of Borges' "desire for the simplistic state of being present in a non-human entity", I find it curious that Borges does not mention that these "non-human" entities succeed in achieving this either. Like Borges, the stone actually "wants" to be itself, to "persist" in its being. Same goes for the tiger. But Borges, in the poem, is the one stating these "wants". In this way, Borges is projecting what he perceives on both the stone and tiger, meaning they have failed in persisting "in their being". Borges seems to suggest that success in achieving this simplicity is impossible as long as there are, in specifically Borges case, others to perceive you. Not to mention the problems of being self-aware and critical of one's own self, as Sarah mentions.
In these two texts both Varda and Borges take a step outside of their bodies, in order to look at themselves as an-other. What they're looking at is themselves as public figures. We all have multiple identities: daughter, student, citizen, girlfriend, friend, greek. However, they two have another identity that most of us lack, and that is their popular recognition as artists. Being a public figure (and i dont mean a celebrity) brings with it great burden, as it becomes such a powerful part of oneself that it seems to overshadow all the identities one might have. In Borge's text it seems as if Borges (not the writer) feels neglected. Whatever thing he embraces he ends up surrendering to Borges (the writer). The writer then gives it out to the public and suddenly it become part of the cosmos that Borges (not the writer) is not part of. Only some instant of Borges (not the witer) will survive in Borges (the writer), but Borges (the writer) will survive in the history of humanity forever (!?!?). Varda on the other hand uses it like a hiding tool. Making a documentary about one's own self is such a hard subject, firstly because of the impossibility of fully realizing one's own being, but also because it's hard to distinguish what part of oneself belongs to the public, and what part should remain private. Varda is in terms with herself as a filmmaker, and so she doesn't hesitate to show herself and cinema, with cinema, in cinema. Varda the child, and Varda the mother, and Varda the revolutionist were all parts of Varda the filmmaker. She offers herself to the public through all her previous movies as she did with this one. But, Varda the filmmaker does not invlude in her Varda the lover, the wife, or the widow. Yes, the public is aware of the events, but not of her position in it. In other words, Varda uses her public identity to hide behind it her personal erotic identity.
Borges and I can show a side of a person in which we all have but never show. When I was reading it I felt like the side in which I never show anybody was narrating the passage. How I saw this was when the narrator talks about how Borges never uses his skills anymore. Even while I write this, a part of my mind is wanting to write something else about this and feels like it isn't being use.
"Borges and I" brought to mind the paradox(maybe) of the position of an artist, the balance they must find for making art for art's sake, and making art to pay bills and keep food on the table. In writing, Borges words are his own subjective thoughts, but as soon as he releases them as "work," the become impersonal objects. I think this frustrations accounts for the jaded tone he takes throughout the piece.
I know it's late, but I agree the above comment concerning the paradox of Borges and I in trying to find a balance between personal life and the consequences of what Borges does. Similarly in Beaches of Anya, Anya does something along the same lines. Anya trying to find level ground between her personal life as a director and the pieces of the films she makes. I found it odd that she posits herself as a secondary character like "I" in the Jorge Luis Borges short story. She especially makes directorship come before her when discussing her relationship with Jacques. He is the Borges of Beaches of Anya as she focalizes her emphasis on Jacques more than any other director that she has worked with. Maybe it's just me, but it feels as though she narrates everything that he has done as having greater significance that what she has done in the world. As an effect of this narration where the storyteller/director (Anya) centers the attention on others rather than herself does just that. As listeners and watchers of the carefully-edited images onscreen, we realize that Anya is responsible for such works of art, but we tend to focus more on the work of arts as well as those around her-Jacques-which seemed like her primary focus in making Beaches of Anya.
"Borges and I" left me in an interesting place. The last sentence turned the entire passage into a riddle for me. It's a striking juxtaposition to read the words "I do not know which one of us has written this page," because one would think the the author of that sentence would obviously know who wrote the page. However, the fact that those words were written and that thought was brought to our attention, summarizes every word preceding it. The entire passage is that of a reader who experiences their life through the eyes of the writer, Borges. The passage sets up the relationship between the reader and the writer and illustrates how close they are in personal preferences, ways of thinking, etcetera. The last sentence brings those two ideas together as one by confusing who is who.
In Borges one line in particular stands out, “everything belongs to oblivion.” All belongs to a state of something forgotten and in this forgotten state is where we lose the author. It makes me think about self. Are we the author of lives? Or is life defined by the little pieces of ourselves that we let go into the oblivion? Am I the person the person I set out to be, the man in the mirror or am I the person left behind in the moments forgotten?
Micah puts it in an interesting way. The 'oblivion' could represent our psyche and we as a person growing up try to reinvent ourselves. Each self we invent gets 'forgotten' or lost in the oblivion and replaced with a new conception of ourselves. Well, that's what I thought after reading Micah's comment.
One of the things I noticed about The Beaches of Agnes was that it consisted of a pretty loose narrative arc. I mostly felt like I was just hearing dozens of different stories that weren't really related. It kind of reminded me of listening to my grandmother recall her childhood, which is appropriate, as Agnes is a grandmother herself. It didn't remind me of a "traditional" documentary with a certain goal in mind that then follows the events surrounding the arrival at that goal. I suppose her main purpose was to expose her life and personality to an audience. She used so many different techniques to tell her story that I had to try to stop caring about what she was doing. For example, in some parts of the film, she used actors to recreate her younger experiences and act as her siblings. She didn't stay consistent with this technique though. Somewhere along the way I think I just let myself give in to the visual imagery.
ReplyDeleteI think in "Borges and I" Jorge Luis is expressing what most writers feel when they reach some point of success. It's like the writer in them becomes a separate identity and their real 'self' is only living to provide material for the writer to write.
ReplyDelete"I live, let myself go on living, so that Borges may contrive his literature, and this literature justifies me," he says. Borges is also the one that "things happen to."
I think this piece speaks to the feeling that writers can sometimes feel like frauds, making things seem a lot more interesting with their words than they actually were. So this persona that they create by writing seems to have all of this exciting experience to draw from when in reality it was the product of "falsifying and magnifying things."
It's clear that "I" lives within Borges and knows of him, but the text does not say whether or not Borges knows about "I" (do that even make sense?) Whether or not "I" and Borges knows of each other's existence, they cannot exist separately and need each other to define themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe text plays with the question "who am I?" After reading, I felt that the text demonstrates how a person can have multiple identities and roles (like how Borges is an author). The text ends with "I" being consumed by Borges and has lost "its" identity. In my opinion, Borges is an identity that is overlapping "I," an initial conception of the self.
It seemed to me to be a struggle of the "I" and how the world interprets and perceives that "I." It expresses the same sentiment that was discussed in class: the feeling that the world doesn't "get" Borges and the outward-expressing half of Borges will also never "get" the "I"
ReplyDeleteOne particular theme that has been recurring throughout the semester is the power of memory as a narrative tool. Several of the films we have seen and texts we have read are told as they are remembered by the narrator. This film is no exception. Agnes tells the story as it exists to her and no one else. She leaves out the fact that Jacque left her, but it is important to her that he came back so she includes this. In this way, memory works sort of like editing in that almost without effort, it selects and arranges the way in which we experience a memory. Of course Agnes edited the film and chose the specific things she would leave in and out, but it is quite possible too that this is the way things exist within her memory. In The Virgin Suicides the narrator functions in a similar way. The only thing we know about the Lisbon girls is through the collective memory of the boys who knew them. In these types of narrations, it is almost as if the act of remembering itself is what forms the story instead of the subject matter.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Elna, in that the structure of the class has been to engage with HOW narrators tell a story. What is left out of a story is equally important as what is told.
ReplyDeleteIf in a very excited manner I try to relate the awesomeness of the second side of Abbey Road, the way in which the music moves from track to track (beginning with "Sun King"), bridging one to the next in effortless transition (e.g., "Mean Mr. Mustard" become "Polythene Pam"), stopping one beat and immediately switching to another (here, consider the move from "Golden Slumbers" into "Carry That Weight" then into "The End") ... If I did all this and more, we would find the other thing (as if there are only two) about 'creative writing' (screenplays or whatever): the challenge of relating singularity.
ReplyDeleteThe struggle with relating singularity centers on the notion of the individual experience. Dr. Roberts could spend hours providing a detailed description of Abbey Road and what makes it so awesome, yet his description would still fall short in enabling us to experience the thing exactly as he does. There will always be a shortcoming in the re-creation of experience because each person experiences things in a different way. Although we may appreciate his passion for the album and we may have similar feelings about the album, something about the essence of his singular experience with the music is lost in its reenactment. How do we attempt to overcome this obstacle in creative writing? If re-creation falls short, what else can we do? Perhaps there is a link here with the objective correlative. If the experience itself is unable to be recreated, perhaps its essence can be conveyed through a different outlet. Does this type of “metaphor” bring us closer to the experience itself or does it distance us even more? Hence, the dilemma of relating singularity…
ReplyDeleteSo, to join Sarah's thought, we could say that the challenge is weakly thought of in terms of "relating" through "description," an effort that produces mere description. "What does it do?" might be a more precise way to engage the challenge of "thought." 'Cause, I'm with Sarah's use of quotes around "metaphor," 'cause such things (metaphors) always already fall short, 'cause the "thing itself" isn't something else; or, to shift to the equally lame simile, the event (the thing itself) isn't "like" anything. It just is.
ReplyDeleteBorges’ trouble seems to be rooted in his attempts to pin down a simplistic understanding of his “self.” He sees the ways in which people perceive him and how it differs from his own self-perception. His distress centers on the duality of his existence as he seeks to understand who he truly is (or to come to terms with the gap between his internalization and his externalization). Borges notes that “all things long to remain in their being; the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger.” In this way, Borges shows a desire for the simplistic state of being present in a non-human entity. The problem with this desire, however, is that humans have the capacity to contemplate their existence, their “I,” in a way that animals and objects cannot. Borges struggles over his sense of being rather than understanding the self as becoming (as we discussed in class). Borges is unable to pin down a singular understanding of himself because such a thing does not exist—his “self” is constantly changing with his experience of internal and external stimuli.
ReplyDeleteTo add further to Sarah's mentioning of Borges' "desire for the simplistic state of being present in a non-human entity", I find it curious that Borges does not mention that these "non-human" entities succeed in achieving this either. Like Borges, the stone actually "wants" to be itself, to "persist" in its being. Same goes for the tiger. But Borges, in the poem, is the one stating these "wants". In this way, Borges is projecting what he perceives on both the stone and tiger, meaning they have failed in persisting "in their being". Borges seems to suggest that success in achieving this simplicity is impossible as long as there are, in specifically Borges case, others to perceive you. Not to mention the problems of being self-aware and critical of one's own self, as Sarah mentions.
ReplyDeleteIn these two texts both Varda and Borges take a step outside of their bodies, in order to look at themselves as an-other. What they're looking at is themselves as public figures. We all have multiple identities: daughter, student, citizen, girlfriend, friend, greek. However, they two have another identity that most of us lack, and that is their popular recognition as artists. Being a public figure (and i dont mean a celebrity) brings with it great burden, as it becomes such a powerful part of oneself that it seems to overshadow all the identities one might have.
ReplyDeleteIn Borge's text it seems as if Borges (not the writer) feels neglected. Whatever thing he embraces he ends up surrendering to Borges (the writer). The writer then gives it out to the public and suddenly it become part of the cosmos that Borges (not the writer) is not part of. Only some instant of Borges (not the witer) will survive in Borges (the writer), but Borges (the writer) will survive in the history of humanity forever (!?!?).
Varda on the other hand uses it like a hiding tool. Making a documentary about one's own self is such a hard subject, firstly because of the impossibility of fully realizing one's own being, but also because it's hard to distinguish what part of oneself belongs to the public, and what part should remain private. Varda is in terms with herself as a filmmaker, and so she doesn't hesitate to show herself and cinema, with cinema, in cinema. Varda the child, and Varda the mother, and Varda the revolutionist were all parts of Varda the filmmaker. She offers herself to the public through all her previous movies as she did with this one. But, Varda the filmmaker does not invlude in her Varda the lover, the wife, or the widow. Yes, the public is aware of the events, but not of her position in it. In other words, Varda uses her public identity to hide behind it her personal erotic identity.
Borges and I can show a side of a person in which we all have but never show. When I was reading it I felt like the side in which I never show anybody was narrating the passage. How I saw this was when the narrator talks about how Borges never uses his skills anymore. Even while I write this, a part of my mind is wanting to write something else about this and feels like it isn't being use.
ReplyDelete"Borges and I" brought to mind the paradox(maybe) of the position of an artist, the balance they must find for making art for art's sake, and making art to pay bills and keep food on the table. In writing, Borges words are his own subjective thoughts, but as soon as he releases them as "work," the become impersonal objects. I think this frustrations accounts for the jaded tone he takes throughout the piece.
ReplyDeleteI know it's late, but I agree the above comment concerning the paradox of Borges and I in trying to find a balance between personal life and the consequences of what Borges does. Similarly in Beaches of Anya, Anya does something along the same lines. Anya trying to find level ground between her personal life as a director and the pieces of the films she makes. I found it odd that she posits herself as a secondary character like "I" in the Jorge Luis Borges short story. She especially makes directorship come before her when discussing her relationship with Jacques. He is the Borges of Beaches of Anya as she focalizes her emphasis on Jacques more than any other director that she has worked with. Maybe it's just me, but it feels as though she narrates everything that he has done as having greater significance that what she has done in the world. As an effect of this narration where the storyteller/director (Anya) centers the attention on others rather than herself does just that. As listeners and watchers of the carefully-edited images onscreen, we realize that Anya is responsible for such works of art, but we tend to focus more on the work of arts as well as those around her-Jacques-which seemed like her primary focus in making Beaches of Anya.
ReplyDelete"Borges and I" left me in an interesting place. The last sentence turned the entire passage into a riddle for me. It's a striking juxtaposition to read the words "I do not know which one of us has written this page," because one would think the the author of that sentence would obviously know who wrote the page. However, the fact that those words were written and that thought was brought to our attention, summarizes every word preceding it. The entire passage is that of a reader who experiences their life through the eyes of the writer, Borges. The passage sets up the relationship between the reader and the writer and illustrates how close they are in personal preferences, ways of thinking, etcetera. The last sentence brings those two ideas together as one by confusing who is who.
ReplyDeleteIn Borges one line in particular stands out, “everything belongs to oblivion.” All belongs to a state of something forgotten and in this forgotten state is where we lose the author. It makes me think about self. Are we the author of lives? Or is life defined by the little pieces of ourselves that we let go into the oblivion? Am I the person the person I set out to be, the man in the mirror or am I the person left behind in the moments forgotten?
ReplyDeleteMicah puts it in an interesting way. The 'oblivion' could represent our psyche and we as a person growing up try to reinvent ourselves. Each self we invent gets 'forgotten' or lost in the oblivion and replaced with a new conception of ourselves. Well, that's what I thought after reading Micah's comment.
ReplyDelete