cli­chés are the        com­mon­places by which we begin a dis­course        there is no way to        put down cli­ché in the begin­ning because if there was        nothing in com­mon in the utte­rances with which we addres­sed        each other the­red be no way that we could unders­tand what we        were saying in some sense there is no ade­quate theo­ry of how        we unders­tand what we say to each other one of the most        depres­sing things about the present attempts at know­ledge        is the array of for­mal machines we have for explai­ning how we        know what we say and how poor­ly they explain it…

now lets take a pair of words like        « gene­rous » and « thrif­ty » say we could pro­ba­bly find an axis        that ran through them unfor­tu­na­te­ly we could find many more        than one axis but lets take an axis an axis is a good        word it sug­gests so much a kind of space through with        it runs a kind of seman­tic globe domain ? hyper­space ?        any­way lets call it an axis        […]        but what could that mean that        a word could lie clo­ser to the same axis than ano­ther it could        mean that we will have to find only pure oppo­sites or anto­nyms        lying at ends of fea­ture axes and that all the words in…

about two years ago elly and i deci­ded we nee­ded a new mat­tress        or maybe elly deci­ded it        because i didnt pay much atten­tion to the        pro­blem        we had an old mat­tress wed had it for years and the sales­man        wed bought it from had assu­red us it would last us a life­time        and it        was get­ting older and lum­py or lum­py in some places and hol­lo­wed out        in others and        i just assu­med it was part of a nor­mal pro­cess of aging        it was get­ting older we were get­ting older and wed get used to it        but        elea­nor has a bad back and she was get­ting des­pe­rate to get rid of this…

there are sto­ries without nar­ra­tives in eve­ry news­pa­per in the        coun­try        a hur­ri­cane swung inland and hit the coast of flo­ri­da        once        there was a pea­ce­ful town cal­led tal­la­has­see and now its in ruins        […]        and as i see it a sto­ry is all about plot        a        sto­ry is the repre­sen­ta­tion of a series of events and parts of events        that result in a signi­fi­cant trans­for­ma­tion        its a logi­cal form        but a        nar­ra­tive is a repre­sen­ta­tion of the confron­ta­tion of some­bo­dy who        wants some­thing with the threat and or pro­mise of a trans­for­ma­tion        that he or she struggles to bring about or prevent or both        these are        two dif­ferent cog­ni­tive moda­li­ties addres­sed to the pro­blems posed…

Probably this is one of the main rea­sons that 60s moder­nism dis­pen­sed with all notions of “com­po­si­tion, ” because of the dead­ly way in which “arran­ge­ment ” smo­thers any inter­est in the pre­sen­ted object in favor of a banal plea­sure based on recur­rence phe­no­me­na or else treats it to the red car­pet pre­sen­ta­tion of a “lit­tle king.” They rea­so­ned quite cor­rect­ly that if there are pieces there is arran­ge­ment, and all arran­ge­ments, no mat­ter how “ran­dom,” are appre­hen­ded as some kind of order, because ran­dom­ness is concei­vable but not per­cei­vable. Personally I share this dis­taste for ideas of arran­ge­ment and I…

“Prose” is the name for a kind of nota­tio­nal style. It’s a way of making lan­guage look res­pon­sible. You’ve got jus­ti­fied mar­gins, capi­tal let­ters to begin gra­phe­mic strings which, when they are conclu­ded by per­iods, are cal­led sen­tences, inden­ted sen­tences that mark off blocks of sen­tences that you call para­graphs. This nota­tio­nal appa­ra­tus is inten­ded to add pro­bi­ty to that wild­ly irres­pon­sible, occa­sio­nal­ly illu­mi­na­ting and usual­ly play­ful sys­tem cal­led lan­guage. Novels may be writ­ten in “prose;” but in the begin­ning no books were writ­ten in prose, they were prin­ted in prose, because “prose” conveys an illu­sion of a com­mon­sen­si­cal logical…

I think it is clear that the rela­tion of poe­try to truth, which is a ques­tion of domain, not of medium, haunts all great Romantic art, which had rejec­ted the more modest role of exis­ting “to divert and to amuse.” Poets like Wordsworth laun­ched a power­ful claim to truth through a com­pli­ca­ted poe­tic argu­ment that adjus­ted mind to nature in the medium of the image, while poets like Keats split “truth” from “value” and lined up poe­try on the side of “value,” giving this new domain of truth­less value the name Imagination.…

je me sou­viens j’étais assis sur les marches à l’entrée d’une mai­son avec        une poi­gnée d’autres gamins et nous devions avoir entre trois et cinq ans        tous assis sur des marches à brook­lyn        à teni­rune réunion        et on essaie de déter­mi­ner quel âge on aime­rait avoir        parce qu’on n’est jamais content d’avoir trois quatre ou cinq ans        c’est une mau­vaise période        qui vou­drait avoir entre trois et cinq ans ?        (…)        nous sommes assis à tenir cette        réunion sur l’âge        et un gamin dit oh comme j’aimerais avoir treize ans        ça avait vrai­ment l’air d’être un âge d’homme puis­sant        je pense que tous les gamins étaient des gar­çons mais je nesuis même pas sûr…

héra­clite a fait obser­ver        qu’on ne sau­rait entrer deux fois dans le même fleuve        voi­là qui avait pour moi­beau­coup de sens        parce que cela sem­blait confir­mer une conclu­sion à laquelle j’étais arri­vé il y a long­temps        que l’expérience vous pré­pare à ce qui n’arrivera jamais plus        mais com­ment cela cadre-t-ilave cle sar­casme de cra­tyle qui a sui­vi        on ne peut entrer une seule fois dans le même fleuve        c’est tou­jours bien d’avoir un élève intel­li­gent pour vous pous­ser plus loin        et c’est ce que le sar­casme de cra­tyle semble faire        le fleuve change si vite        que le temps d’y entrer c’est déjà un fleuve dif­fé­rent        mais à la réflexion la remarque…

quand nous par­lons d’expérience nous ima­gi­nons que la mémoire a une valeur posi­tive        mais le terme de mémoire ne fait qu’amplifier le pro­blème        les gens quand ils parlent de mémoire ima­ginent vague­ment une sorte de coffre de sto­ckage neu­ral        peut-être comme un clas­seur        tout comme ils se repré­sentent le sys­tème de sto­ckage d’un ordi­na­teur        où chaque sou­ve­nir a une place assi­gnée dans un dos­sier dis­tinct dans un tiroir par­ti­cu­lier de ce clas­seur ima­gi­naire        le pro­blème c’est que per­sonne n’a jamais été en mesure de trou­ver ces coffres        même si lorsque j’étais étu­diant un grand psy­cho­logue phy­sio­lo­giste qui s’appelait donald hebb a sug­gé­ré que la mémoire        qui embar­ras­sait depuis…

j’ai don­né son titre à cette pièce [« accor­der », tuning] bien avant de venir ici        et        si le titre que je lui ai don­né n’était pas cen­sé vous don­ner une image très pré­cise de ce que j’allais faire et si vous me voyez tri­po­ter ce magné­to­phone        c’est sur­tout parce que je n’ai pas d’image très pré­cise de ce que je vais dire        même si j’ai une très bonne connais­sance du ter­rain        sur lequel en géné­ral je me déplace        et que la seule façon pour moi de voir si cela valait le coup de le faire ou non        c’est d’entendre ce que j’ai        de quelle façon je me suis moi-même…

but    to the       aus­tra­lian abo­ri­gine    an aran­da say    among the aran­da      there is i take it   a dif­ferent way of loo­king at all this    or at       least a dif­ferent way of tal­king about what we have just been      loo­king at     for in aran­da     in the ver­na­cu­lar aran­da sys­tem    as it exis­ted in the 19th cen­tu­ry    there were accor­ding to the       people fami­liar with them      four      or actual­ly five      fun­da­men­tal color terms    two blacks    white    red       and one other term for all the rest    one black was pur­ka        used of char­coal    and the other was uru­pul­la    which inclu­ded      brown and a fair range of greys    white was chu­run­gu­ra        red tutu­ka    and the other was tier­ga    the sky was tier­ga a       green leaf was tier­ga   and yel­low ocher was also tierga…

i had an image        we were tal­king about cele­bra­ting bir­th­days and        people wan­ted to know if i wan­ted a bir­th­day par­ty        and i said i dont        know if i want a bir­th­day par­ty because bir­th­days are a lit­tle bit like        being in a fal­ling ele­va­tor and cele­bra­ting at eve­ry floor you fall        and        then i thought about this again and i rea­li­zed id only thought about this        since i got to be thir­ty        because when i was a real lit­tle guy i always        thought of get­ting older as an ascen­sion        you know how you have a        dif­ferent image of get­ting older when youre a kid        how you cant wait        i remem­ber i was sitting…

to rea­lize how fun­ny it was you first have to remem­ber that        ronald rea­gan was gover­nor of cali­for­nia        nixon was in the white        house and h.r. hal­de­man nixons chief of staff was on the board of        trus­tees that the dis­neys had set up for cal arts        while mar­cuse was        the dar­ling of the new left or of its youth move­ment        in spite of the        fact that he was real­ly an elder­ly ger­man intel­lec­tual whose radi­cal­ly        revi­sio­nist mar­xian ideas of the libe­ra­tio­nal pos­si­bi­li­ties of the sexual        revo­lu­tion were inva­ria­bly expres­sed in the pedan­tic prose of the        hege­lian dia­lec­tic        so he must have loo­ked to the sou­thern cali­for­nia        right wing like a com­bi­na­tion of bakunin…

i walk over and i        look at the rou­lette table while she stands there silent­ly wat­ching        i        look at the num­bers the num­bers are strange        3        π        ε        α        δ        σ        i pick ε        some­how thin­king its the natu­ral log e so i pick ε        hands        a trans­cen­den­tal num­ber        the ball goes round and round        her hands again        my crou­pier claps her        and it stops on ε        she claps        and an elder­ly gent­le­man in a tuxe­do without a tie        comes out of a back room car­rying what looks like a vio­lin case        comes in takes out an old vio­lin and starts to play        he plays        he        in this        odd        bro­ken        way        for moments he plays brilliant­ly        a paga­ni­ni caprice        which you shouldnt play…

now of all the phi­lo­so­phers i know        the only one who tried to        make a case for the mea­ning of expe­rience is john dewey        actual­ly tried to think it through        although his most tho­rough        thin­king through took place in a very spe­cial situa­tion        to des­cribe the expe­rience of art        which was not an acti­vi­ty he was        very know­led­geable about        but he was know­led­geable about human        acti­vi­ty        and he pro­po­sed that art making was very much like any        other form of human acti­vi­ty        and that at its cen­ter is the expe­rience        it pro­vides you with        in order to des­cribe this he had to work out his        idea of what an expe­rience was        and this tur­ned out to be…