TikTok 8: El Fin y El Comienzo (Parataxis)

El Fin y El Comienzo

Hello. I have been thinking a lot over the weekend about what my topic for this blog is. I have come to a revelation. The underlying aspect of this entire blog is not Hamilton, and it’s not Tiktok, and it’s not music, it is me. I myself¹ am the pervading theme. I should lean into that, I think. It is what most interests me, this investigation of myself and this writing about myself. I created this “non-fiction notebook” for a non-fiction class, and in one of the first times we met, I talked about my concerns about writing about myself. Yet, writing about myself is what I am passionate about at this moment and it is the throughline of all these topics I have interested myself in. I should embrace that, not shy away from it.

One of my classmates has chosen to look at video games through the lens of literature, using methods of literary study to analyze different video games. Another classmate is using the creation of a terrarium as a lens to think about a variety of different things, like AI and truth for truth’s sake. Yet another classmate is using a more modern understanding of psychology to look at famous writers. It’s very cool stuff² and there is similarity to each of these. Lenses. Each of these examples is using the lens of one thing to look at another thing. For me, I have been looking at things through the lens of my own emotional reaction to them (although I do my best to back up my thoughts with sound logic and provable facts, necessary components if I am intending to convince others that my perspective is correct). Is this not a valid method of study? I think so.

Last fall, I took a class titled “Methods of Literary Study.” One of the methods of study we learned about was Reader Response. We talked about people like Wolfgang and Rosenblatt and in my final, I wrote about the idea that poetry is the interaction between the reader and the text. Here is a relevant excerpt from that final: 

“When learning about this school of study, we learned that the interaction of the text and the reader is what creates poetry. I find ‘text’ everywhere: I hear it in the future funk songs I listen to every morning; I see it in my favorite movies; I feel it when playing my favorite video games. When I find this ‘text,’ my interaction with it is poetry. To me, that is what art means.”

It’s a pretty Romantic³ view of literature if we think about Rosenblatt’s ideas of the reader as the author. Or at the very least, a flipped version of Romanticism focusing on the reader instead of the author (it makes sense in my head and I hope I’ve explained it well. I may delve deeper in the future). Anyway, I’ve come to realize that this is what this notebook truly is about. These different things I am interested in are the “text” and my interaction with them is the “poetry.” These posts are my “poems.” I myself¹ am the lens through which I am viewing these topics, if that makes any sense. I hope it does, because it makes sense to me. 

This is an extremely helpful revelation and will greatly affect the reading and writing I do going forward. I have a purpose, I have a goal, I have a method, and I have passion. I’m excited for the rest of this class and I’m glad you’re here for the ride. I may have gone too far down the rabbit hole, I’m not sure if any of this makes sense lol. Anyways, here’s some parataxis for you:

They say, “Write what you know.” I know about myself—I write about myself. I like to write about myself and I like to delve into my own mind. I like to share myself with you, the reader. You are my Ideal Reader⁴ and you do not exist. You read my writing and you know me and you do not exist. I write and I understand myself better. Can you know me through my writing alone? Do I exist in these words? Am I the author? Are you the author? I do not know. My “poems” help me better understand myself and they help you better understand me. We will learn together.

Next time, I may talk about who the ideal reader is for this blog. It’s an interesting topic I think.

Thanks for reading. See you Wednesday.

Footnotes:

1. I have been thinking a lot about the way that in Spanish, you would say “yo mismo” or “mí mismo” to mean “myself.” I find this very interesting. In Spanish, a very literal translation would be “I same” or “Me same” or but “mismo” also sort of means “very,” as in “my very self.” Isn’t that so much stronger than just “myself?” Therefore, to add emphasis in English, I say “I myself” because to me, it carries a similar vibe.
2. I debated not sharing the blogs/notebooks/journals of my classmates here, but I think they’re really interesting. If you are reading this and you are not in the same class as me, maybe you’d be interested in their stuff as well. I think that there is not much of a bigger joy as a writer than knowing that your work is being read. I greatly hope to spread that joy to my classmates (and I guess my professor too lol).
   Blog about Media and Technology
   Blog about Video games through the lens of literary study
   Blog about Music, Mental Health, and Ethel Cain
   Blog about the flaws of the Criminal Justice System
   Blog about Internet Horror
   Blog about the history of books
   Blog about building a Terrarium (and other things)
   Blog about psychology and poetry
   (My professor’s) Blog about mostly AI
   Blog about Mythology and the pervasion of symbols
3. When I say Romantic with a capital R, I mean it in the context of Romanticism. If you are interested in Romanticism, I would recommend reading this part of my professor’s blog.
4. The concept of the Ideal Reader