Structural Epicac
Since I’m jet lagged, still mentally slugging pints with pals in Muncie bars, and getting used to this insufferable new acquaintance of mine – the quarter system – I’m keeping this short, so I can wake up early and read manuscripts detailing bougainvillea. Maybe I’ll get to read about bougainvillea jutting from a hillside, punctuating something or other. (Two more overused words – I’m just sneaking in comments intended for Kathryn’s post, in an effort to lengthen my own. See what I did there? I’m like Rub Squeers from Nobody’s Fool, productively ignoring the task at hand.)
Anyway, we kicked off nonfiction form and theory 3 tonight, Natalie Kusz at the helm. Around the middle of class, Natalie handed out a rather curious worksheet, detailing information theory and its relationship to music and writing. My current faculty for pretending to understand the contents of this worksheet is scant, but we eventually began discussing predictability in the information we receive, and how we react to it. Some predictability we don’t even register, such as any meaning whatsoever from pop songs’ lyrics. Other times, the very action of predictability can make one sick. Natalie told us of a friend, for example, who, while grading a paper filled with one austere subject-verb-object sentence after another, began to feel nauseous, and actually considered calling an ambulance. The flow of this student’s sentence structure literally threatened violent illness in their instructor. Although this seemed absurd, if not hilarious, I then thought back ten years.
One of my friends back home who, while perfectly intelligent and wonderful, spends an unbearably long amount of time telling stories, which rarely go anywhere, and are often depressing. Because of the pacing of a story he was telling me one particular night at a friend’s party, I did, in fact, throw up loudly and painfully on the ground next to the lawn chair I was sitting in. I’d had like two beers – that’s it. Although I have forgotten every detail of my friend’s lugubrious tale, I specifically remember thinking, just before expulsion, “If he wasn’t talking right now, telling me this fucking story, I would not be feeling this sick. I’m absolutely sure of it.”
I realize I’m digressing with personal narrative, as obnoxious novice essayists like myself tend to do, but it is interesting to see that predictability in the structure and manner in which language and story are conveyed, have the power to induce vomiting. What about you? Has predictability ever made you literally throw up, or react in a physically uncomfortable way?
Here’s some information on information theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory
I found the lecture rather interesting, and I’m glad that you posted something about it, Sam.
To sum up what we talked about: one’s information (from syntax to content) ranges from banal to original, predictable to improbable. Sometimes people want predictable (“How are you?” “Good.” or genre fiction or pop music) and some want the surprise factor, to step out of the Frame of Predictability and into emotional resonance (literature)…