Several subsidiaries of The Corporation have their annual shareholder meetings this week. The Corporate Me might be a little slow with the comment collection and cooking. So, a Day 0 post. In other words, just some big ideas on a page. It might also provide a tantalizing glimpse into the secret lives of Corporation members, and the Ferraris they have sex in.
Two Corporation members had an interesting conversation about the (non)random nature of The Notebook entries. One posited (before denying) that the “notebook may be a random thought generator.” To which the other replied that it seemed very far from random. In fact, certain words seemed contagious, moving from one entry to the next. These words usually summed up or contained an idea that seemed to be floating in the air around the bench. On the 6
th when it was beautiful, that word/idea was beautiful. When the weather turned on the 7
th, beautiful was still overlaid the sensory world and the conversation became, “Today is not a beautiful day.” So it was the weekend of beautiful, one way or the other.
A similar viral idea was to tell your humble creators and/or the world that the book was a good/great/wonderful/beautiful idea. In version 1 of The Notebook, no one said anything of the sort. Every third entry in version 1.1 contains a variant, including the newest, which you haven’t even seen yet, “This book sucks dick.” (A: “Hello contrarian, thanks for not stealing the book. Your no makes the yes mean something. Also, consider new sexual partners for a more satisfying user experience. P.S. How’s high school? Don’t worry, it will all be over soon. Best, – The Corp”)
Anyway, we are left with two conclusions about the way humans communicate. One, we are shameless copycats willing to pilfer and borrow from any available treasury. Two, given a specific place and a date and space to think, many people share the same thoughts. Co-location, in this scenario, leads not to theft but natural empathy and a quick reach into the collective unconscious. Two seemingly starkly different views of the world and the humans that reside here:
1. Bench as scene of crime; humans as thieves.
2. Bench as bridge; humans as (un)willing empaths
These could lead to radically different judgments about the nature of womankind.
And yet. To steal another’s words to describe one’s own feelings is operational empathy: using words as a form of telepathy (or even psychokinesis). One is not standing alone in the world; there are others with the same feelings, the same thoughts, even the same expressions to summarize the complicated muddle of a moment in the life of a brain in a body on a bench.
A six word story following from the above: “Psychic by trade. Then it worked.”
1 comment:
You know, this is a great post. My friend, who I turned onto the site, and I just had a similar discussion yesterday. We were talking about how it was sad someone stole version 1.0 of the book, because the collective history of comments would undoubtedly have some, large or small, impact on future readers and note-makers. That the theft somehow robbed the collective influence of the project a little, while at the same time the theft itself was a comment (sad though it may be) on culture/society/the project. By stealing they left an important, if somewhat stunting, comment on the proejct. Anyway, glad you pegged this up and wrote it down...as your readers are having similar discussions (or at least two of them...and yes, those two are big dorks).
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