Moderator:
Jonathan Serviss, former KPCC Patt Morrison senior producer; current KNX 1070 Morning Drive writer/editor/producer.

Panelists:
David Simpson, author of 9/11: The Culture of Commemoration
Erin Aubry Kaplan, author of Black Talk, Blue Thoughts, and Walking the Color Line: Dispatches from a Black Journalista

Notes:
-restorative vs retributive justice (see truth and reconciliation)
-consensus reality
-forgotten reality/history; who writes history? who remembers history?
-alternate historical universe

Gods, Graves & Scholars by C.W. Ceram:
“Humanity, which used to be so entirely absorbed in the daily assaults of contemporary events and future threats, has learned to be curious about its past and even fascinated by it.”

• You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.
• You cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are continually flowing in.
• You cannot step twice into the same stream. For as you are stepping in, other waters are ever flowing on to you.
• You cannot step twice into the same river.
• You cannot step into the same river twice.
• It is impossible to step into the same river twice.
• No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

or, I think, a variant: “you can never go home again”

see previous

UPDATE 11/18/11: watch (now you can check if I misquoted anything! and I can figure out what my various illegible notes said…)

http://www.lfla.org/event-detail/666/An-Evening-with-Joan-Didion

Notes:
started with a reading of the beginning of The White Album — For the life of me I still couldn’t remember what Aristophanic meant. “Of or pertaining to Aristophanes” isn’t enough data to hold onto, like meeting a person and trying to remember their name before knowing any facts to hold it in place in your memory.

She talked about learning to live without a narrative and realizing her life didn’t have one.

Blue Nights — began as a book about parents and children and became about aging and death

“No one told me I was going to get older.” [audience chuckle]

how hard it is to allow yourself/accept that you have the “right to write” about someone else

Where I Was From — facing the lies other people had told her about California, realizing she was guilty of lying about CA (ex. imagining you come from an Oregon Trail California, well that’s true, but not true because “it didn’t mean what I thought it meant.”) — tearing down narrative

She’s never written anything not for readers. While working on The Year of Magical Thinking play, she realized that plays are a nightly collaboration between the audience and the players, likewise, writing is a collaboration between the reader and the writer. She doesn’t keep a journal.

passage from Blue Nights about keeping mementos

ice cream? whipped cream? I know peanut butter goes with jelly, butter goes with bread, and steroids go with most pro sports. Now I know that cream goes with apple pie (at least in British). Cricket and gambling aren’t like chalk and cheese, I can tell you that much, unless chalk and cheese are like peas and carrots, and then I have no idea.

My goodreads review:
Bill Bryson, as always, covers his topic in an educational, but not dryly academic, manner. The book is easy and really enjoyable to read and full of so many facts and anecdotes that I don’t remember even half of them. He references his sources, so the reader can delve deeper into the topic if so desired, and, (I appreciate this) calls out when the tidbits and *facts* he’s sharing are a bit apocryphal.

Topics: the beginnings of language, the beginnings of English, pronunciation (old and new), spelling (old and new), accents and dialects, creoles and pidgins, English around the world, the present and future of English, &c.

___
Words I learned:
concomitant — accompanying especially in a subordinate or incidental way (Note: This is just one of those words that he uses a few times and I’ve heard several other places lately, so I hope to learn and remember it’s meaning.)
velleity — that “which describes a mild desire, a wish or urge too slight to lead to action” (Note: This word is not so much in common use.)
polysemy — the capacity for a word (or other signifier) to have multiple meanings (eg., boil = as in heat or skin ailment, policy = plan or in insurance policy, excise = to cut or customs duty)
contranym — a word that means the opposite of itself (eg., sanction = to permit or a measure fordidding, cleave = to separate or to cling to, sanguine = hotheaded or calm and secure, bolt = take off running or hold down, quinquennial = lasting 5 years or happening once every 5 years)
orthological — the art of correct grammar and correct use of words

and many more facts and words and concepts than I can begin to remember

“There was a time before the Internet. Innovation and creativity were different then…” p. 104 The Future of Ideas

copyright, patent, intellectual property rights, end to end, World Wide Web, media, the future of technology, the history if the internet, commons

the tragedy of the commons

a list of changes I wasn’t looking for, but have now made actual by witnessing them, r.i.p.:

• Rite Aid — closed, empty
• Hollywood Video — closed, empty
• Circuit City — all remnants of the red now gone
• Mann Festival on Lindbrook closed — “thanks for your patronage”
• National Theatre on Lindbrook closed and demolished (you can still see in on Google Maps street view for living in the past)
• Native Foods — you no longer order at the counter? it’s still as tiny as in memory though
• gift store on west side of Westwood Blvd. where i once bought a prism — closed, empty, along with nearly everything else on the block. There was once a Hawaiian BBQ place.

This is just recent changes. This is just in an accidental few-block tour of the mini-city.

There have been other slower and faster deaths through the years. There are other disappearances I didn’t bother to seek out.

“The years… when I pursued the inner images were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me.” — C.G. Jung reflecting on Liber Novus (The Red Book)

“Like all stories of creators who bring life from the dead, his story began with a struggling butcher, who chased a gray cat, caught it, took off its studded collar, and slit its throat.” The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia

a lifelong suspension of disbelief amongst knights of faith

also, what makes magic realism different than science fiction.

in philosophy
Søren Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling — Abraham as more than the knight of infinite resignation, as the knight of faith, facing down the absurd, and furthermore willing it

in philosophy / philology
Crispin Sartwell: End of Story: Toward an Annihilation of Language and History — references Job and Abraham (à la Kierkegaard) as examples of loss of telos / loss of plot / loss of a “sense of narrative coherence” (18)

in sociology
Stanley Milgram: Obedience to Authority — cites the Abraham story as an example of the age-old “dilemma” of obedience (preface)

in song
Bob Dylan: “Highway 61 Revisited” — “God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son.’ Abe said, ‘Man, you must be puttin’ me on.’”

in fiction
Neil Simon: God’s Favorite — Job modernized and made comical

in philosophy / anthropology
René Girard: Job the Victim of his People — Job as scapegoat (not yet read)

in psychology
C.G. Jung: Answer to Job and Edward F. Edinger: Transformation of the God-Image: An Elucidation of Jung’s Answer to Job (not yet read)

other disturbing lessons:
Cain and Abel (in fiction: East of Eden by John Steinbeck)

David and Bathsheba and Uriah (in fiction: God Knows by Joseph Heller)

the prodigal son (As a child I objected to the prodigal son getting a feast while the “good” son gets no reward. As an adult I’m frustrated that my brain is stuck believing “prodigal” means someone who has gone away and now returned. I always have to concentrate to land on the right definition.)