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"I must emphasize a prominent aspect of the name-listing that gave it legs in grad school among my peers: the fact that a person with a precious lot of serious work to do and not much time to do it would be compiling lists of silly names or any names. It was a living conceptual performance (like The Dangling I enacted). Superfluous busy-work. In a light spirit of exaggeration, somewhat allegorically, I likened it to some inevitable institutional aspects of our own (or any) research programs-- righteously self-justifying, obsessed, detached from life's grander schemes. I feel that several fellow students couldn't have helped but appreciate those ironies. This playful, mildly intellectual aura lent the names a vitality or charisma. ... I note that among my complex of reactions to a professional school into which, years later, I matriculated with new ambitions, this history of name-cookery eventually repeated, and again peers were amused. And certainly at some point I had to question whether the detachment might in fact originate inside myself. I think my conclusion is that there's 'detachment' or space inside & between everyone and everything, and I happen to have been exploring it in my own way. --By the way, I did graduate from both schools; the result is intense, perpetual pride.
"One or two practicalists have thrust forth from the crowd to assert that anybody can sit around and make up names! Yes, indeed, anybody can-- and so my secretly sought-after inquiry will always be raised, 'Why on earth would anybody do this, on and on and on...?' It is THE QUESTION; it is THE POINT. A couple of partial answers occur. 1) To me, the image of a sentient blighter bent over the page, intent at such work as this, is a giggle. Onlookers befuddled, stuck with their irrelevant speculations. If I must be the one to bring this into our reality, so be it, I shall do my duty. There must be humor, and humor can be invented out of very thin air. Of course, funnybones vary. 2) A full answer might involve some elements of, 'Why NOT make names? It's a doable thing, not dangerous like mountain-climbing, and it seems to irritate some great thinkers, which is fascinating. Take an objective look at the whole spectrum of human pastimes. Then, measuring against some high percentage of them, try to prove that namestakeage is somehow worse, more foolish, less constructive, ultimately less okay.' It's only after this question is romanced that we begin to consider this-or-that merit of this-or-that name, and actually get down into issues like technique and skill and all that jazz. Discussion of the qualities of the names is pretty much ancillary. " |
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luminance