Archive of things to do with 'character'

• 03.22.08 Some reconsiderations:

  Well, that’s frustrating. I was going to write a post about the Kalevala poetic meter and illustrate its rules with samples of traditional songs performed by the Finnish folk group Värttinä, but I’ve just spent a couple hours looking, and I can’t seem to find a single stanza of theirs that doesn’t violate at least one of its rules. It must be said that the rules of the meter are really complicated, and in general, Värttinä’s songs do appear similar - accentual trochaic tetrameter, longer words tending towards the end of the line, no splitting four-syllable words across the caesura, end the line with a short vowel - until you look in detail. If you enjoy poetic meters, you can read about it here.

  But that’s the truth about inspection and consideration. You go in with an idea of what you’ll find, it looks like what it looks like from a distance, and sometimes your idea is changed, and sometimes you have to drop your idea entirely; it looks different from close up. I thought of even writing a post illustrating the rules of the meter by Värttinä’s songs’ departures from it. But that seems inappropriate or even ungrateful, and happily, there are other things to talk about. I was thinking last night about a novelist, I haven’t read too many of her books, and haven’t re-read any of the ones I have read, but she’s made a distinct impression on me, and there is a certain fundamental pattern that persists unchanged from book to book. I said: she is like a Dostoevsky or a Shakespeare crossed with a choreographer.

  
  Tags: writing, iris murdoch, art, pace, character, novel, style, dostoevsky, shakespeare.
• 03.21.08 Learning about character:

  A friend of mine surprised me last night. I know him about as well as I know anyone, though I don’t see him that often - he doesn’t see anyone that often. I know his interests, I know how he behaves when he’s upset, I know how he’s most comfortable and I know his own particular way of undermining himself. I am familiar with a range of motions and postures and it’s easy to pose him in my mind to match whatever position in whatever diorama I want to fit him in. But I didn’t expect to see what I saw and it makes me wonder what I have learned about him at all. Learning as a concept has been tying me in knots recently, and I get lost trying to think about what makes up character as well.

  We biked up to visit him with a bucket of compost from our apartment, we’ve been helping make mulch for the garden.

  
  Tags: reading, personality, thinking, money, anxiety, perception, character, politics, learning.
• 11.27.07 Message in a bottle:

  Listening to the radio the other day I heard a program (sort of) about the 1977 Voyager spacecraft, launched into space with a golden record and other goodies; the hosts of the show talked to several moderately well-known people and asked what they would include. Philip Glass, for instance, would include Bach and Tuvan throat-singing (details unspecified); Neil Gaiman would include the The Wizard of Oz, among other things. Several of the folks interviewed included things it would be difficult to include on a gold record: mandarin oranges in syrup, or an entire meal at Chez Panisse. Naturally, this got me thinking…

  
  Tags: self, reading, personality, change, taste, travel, detail, project, boredom, philosophy, thinking, water, fear, library, future, letters, language, context, value, music, unfinished, rhythm, mood, pace, time, smell, idle, anxiety, performance, perception, concept, kaleidoscope, level, character, arrogance, navigation, politics, cicada, memory, dream.
• 04.10.07 Stray thoughts:

  I used to think: faces are like characters, or they match them. It might seem that people don’t look like who they are, but you think that because you haven’t understood yet what they look like. I also used to think (and I’ll still say it, if I’m feeling pressured) that people aren’t who they are:

  
  Tags: personality, work, management, turkey, philosophy, simile, money, idle, perception, character, arrogance, politics, history, comics, illustration.
• 04.06.07 Sketch of character:

  If I’m going to write I’d better do it. (It’s easier to steer a moving ship.) I might make a series: people I have known. Character sketches. I’ve never liked the idea of writing about people. It seems somehow disrespectful. People are large, and mostly invisible. How can I claim to know them well enough to represent them? They could always come back at me and deny my representation: I’m not like that at all.

  
  Tags: self, blog, shame, travel, writing, project, siberia, draft, composition, fear, failure, unfinished, ambition, anxiety, character, arrogance, navigation.