Since we don’t have cable and the only Colbert we’ve ever seen in our lives is pirated from a friend, and this we haven’t seen in almost close to a year (it was really curious, we’d get John Stewart and Stephen Colbert a few weeks to a few months after their original airdate. it was very much like laughing at aunt sue falling in the lake, not only doing so after her death several months later from the pneumonia she caught.)
Anyway, since we don’t watch the Colbert report anymore, we don’t know if he still has his bear phobia, or if he continues to mention that they are the number one threat to America or not. This introduction, I will now state, is precisely why “raw, authentic reactions” sometimes fail. What in the world does Colbert have to do with the emblem above? Which is about a bear, by the way. And, I should also state that my use of precisely, though used appropriately and used precisely in the manner that many use the adverb, is anything but precise. It is only one of the many reasons why “RARs” fail—and my use, though precise, is rather quite imprecise. Indeed, most people are at their most imprecise when using precisely to mark the spot.
The above bear is a momma bear and the bundle of unformed matter she is licking is her newborn cub.
The banner above her reads:
LAMBENDO MATER IN ARTUS FINGIT
The poem that accompanies the visual symbol reads:
Despues de aver compuesto, y acabado
El parto dulce, del entendimiento,
Deve ser advertido, y remirado,
Por mas que satisfaga, y dé contento:
Pare la ossa un vulto mal formado,
De carne, y sin distinto o movimiento,
Pero lamiendo algun tiempo procura,
Darle su propia y natural figura.
The explication tells us that Apeles never put his brush down until his friends wrestled it from his hands.
The advice is that those who would dare to write should always polish it up as much as possible before setting it loose on the world. That those who would dare to write should imitate the she bear, who, it seems, births little but an unformed mass of meat covered in a viscous matter, but, who, through constant licking, uncovers the hidden perfection of her cub.
How quaint!
Seriously, the advice is sound up to the demands of whatever genre one wishes to write. If poetry, then let words be carved to stone; if blog (or in an earlier age, pamphlet), then let it be bread: either way, something is considered and worked over, though the latter needn’t have the refinement of the former. RAR, at any rate, doesn’t quite get it.
It’s odd, because I know in the past somewhere I’ve argued in favor of considering blogs as conversational, and I don’t intend to lose sight of that idea. But I think JCC’s point was less considered than that.
by greg—May 14, 08:47 PM
oh, undoubtedly you have stated that, and undoubtedly you do think this, that they are conversations… and i may have another quaint post with a different analogy, only not tonight. (this sounds like the promise of a post never to come.)
indeed, blogs are not articles… but, blogs that are worthwhile are more than RARs…even if they are little but conversations.
they are, at best, eraser boards, to almost literally translate the spanish word (borrador) for rough draft or scramble pots to almost literally translate the french word (brouillon)... at their worst they are what would have wisely been erased or the egg shells that were placed in the compost heap. and there is nothing more uninteresting than what joe finds fascinating this week, if what joe finds fascinating is little more than the dazzle of the lights of other’s opinions.
however, if you want to be the curmudgeonly “professional” blogger… wait, why that hiddeous orange color? do they think shrill, tinny colors will make people stay and read?... if you want to go and sow your seed in other fields… make sure they're your wild oats and not your tame wheat berries.
by Balthasar Gracián—May 14, 09:21 PM
I think the color’s part of the corkboard theme. Anyway, not to worry; oats to be sown elsewhere by me won’t be on a blog (with one possible exception).
by greg—May 14, 09:28 PM