wow, it's late! i've been up all night reading. the early morning hours are always the best for reading, as the light is artificial. you'll never see a monk out on the beach, will you? no: reading is a task meant solely for solitary darkness, in beds, alone, away from prying eyes...
the assignment was a chapter per day over two weeks. but, these chapters are so short; if i'm going to sit down and read, i'm going to sit down and read a few dozen pages, at least. so, i read the first five chapters last sunday night and the last five chapters tonight. what are my thoughts?
well, i'm told this is a satire of a revolution that occurred in russia almost eighty years ago and that created a communist state called the soviet union, which does not exist any more. i've actually had a longstanding interest in history, albeit mostly ancient history, so i have read books on world war one and have heard of this bolshevik revolution and consequently do have enough historical context to make some sense of the satire, even if the details are rather blurry. while i'm just barely old enough to remember the event of the wall coming down in germany as a concert and cultural event, i have no recollection of the cold war or the soviet union, itself. as such, i'm interpreting this novel as historical fiction, rather than as anything currently relevant.
this is, however, maybe the first time that the instruction in english class is both interesting to me and providing new information for me. i'm so used to these english teachers telling me things i already know, or trying to explain things that are just blatantly obvious. but, i'd never heard of this leon trotsky, before. so, i wouldn't have been able to understand the book, or even make meaningful sense of it, without the instruction from the teacher.
he's both excited and apologetic; he maintains that the text is historical, but he seems to think it isn't relevant anymore, since the fall of communism. he's been quick to point out that orwell is a socialist, but he claims he "won't use it against him". he says the book used to be important because it teaches kids that socialism is impossible because it contradicts the conservative concepts of human nature that have been proven correct through experiment. it follows then, in his estimation, that the book no longer needs to be taught. worse, he claims, is that teaching the book is just needlessly exposing kids to communism.
the context of the text (and the fact that i am legitimately interested in the symbolism) aside, i think the major thing that i'm pulling out of the story is orwell's obvious contempt for the intelligence of workers. it's not clear whether he wishes to claim that workers are legitimately stupid or merely uneducated to a point where they are incapable of fending for themselves, but this seems to be the key assumption he makes that colours the rest of the text in a specific way. if these animals were not so stupid, might the outcome be different? and, is it really a justified assumption?
but, do i accept the premise that this is all inevitable? my teacher has been talking a lot about "human nature". i'm not convinced that this is something that even exists. i mean, we just did shakespeare and talked a lot about free will, so what is this "human nature" that apparently contradicts it? i asked him the other day if he meant that "human nature" is an actually real thing or just a tool of literary analysis, and he paused for a minute before saying "both" and quickly moving to the next question. i recognize this as a dodge...
i wonder if the point that orwell was trying to make has more to do with the nature of the society - that a farm produces a natural order that can only be abolished by escaping the farm. perhaps, then, the real criticism is not about humans and more about technology, and perhaps the conclusion is that if we want technology then we have to accept that some of us will be slaves - or at least will be until the technology advances.
and, of course, i have a song for you, too. i'm just late because i was reading.
this song has also been written out for a while, now. i definitely wrote it in the old house, because i remember jamming on it in the middle of the night in my old bedroom. but, i also remember writing it around my guitar effects processor, so it would have have to have been written in early 1996.
the track was initially just meant to sound creepy. you'll note that it's kind of a gothed up blues riff, followed by a noisy grunge riff, followed by the same gothed up blues riff, but grungified. the overwhelming musical influence on the track is kurt cobain.
lyrically, the lyrics are just a reflection of the mood of the track. i guess i felt that the song was very moody and kind of schizophrenic, so i constructed something like an x-files episode around it. i think it's a little too much to reference stephen king, although he was certainly an aesthetic influence.
there otherwise isn't much of a back story for this song: it's really just an outgrowth of playing on my back, late at night, with the lights off.....and reacting to that atmosphere, conceptually.
i'm going to need to catch the bus in a few hours, so i should try and get an hour or two of sleep, at least. but i can sleep when i get to class, too...
