Down Low DDR: Opera as Hypermedium: Meaning-Making, Immediacy, and the Politics of Perception by Tereza Havelková

So here's the thing. I'm just getting started on my latest DDR--Blue Lard by Vladimir Sorokin. It's only 360 pages long, so it shouldn't take me more than ten more days to finish it off. HOWEVER...I also just received Opera as Hypermedium: Meaning-Making, Immediacy, and the Politics of Perception by Tereza Havelková, an Interlibrary Loan book, so I dast not be late getting that back (so there's another 170-ish pages of DENSE text)...and I just got a call from the LFPL that my requested copy of Wellness by Nathan Hill is waiting for me, and that one weighs in at 607 pages--and as this is a very hot item, I doubt that I'll be able to renew it, which means I need to be finished with that by April 17th.  So that's 300 + 170 + 607 = 1,077 pages. And 21 days. Let's see... that's slightly over 51 pages a day. Sounds do-able. But I don't want to do more than 30 pages a day of Blue Lard. Matter of fact, I was thinking about cutting that back. I think I like it, but reading it is 💪WORK💪, man. 

So I said to myself, "Self...why don't you start a Down Low DDR and get at Hypermedium, knock back 10 to 20 pages a day for 9 to 17 days. You'll have finished Blue Lard by then, so you can turn full bore to Wellness, which you can either immediately quit if it's not your cuppa...or maybe bury the pedal if it's good. 

Yeah, I think I'll do that.

Here's the lowdown on the down low:

xii + 186 (with text proper ending on 166) = 198 pages.

So let's go.

Day 1 (DDRD 2,340) March 28, 2024

Read to page 15. Just reading the descriptions on the Illustrations pages (ix & x) made me stop to see if I could find videos of Sunken Gardens, Rosa: A Horse Drama, and Writing to Vermeer, as they all sounded super cool. Alas, it was no, no, and no on that score.

The writing here is a tad bit over my head, so I'm having to read on tip toe, but hey, it toughens the nipples, at least. And it's interesting stuff, for sure. But I do wish I could find those (☝) operas on video. Isn't that what the internet is for?

Okay. I'm going back in.

And hey, I found a video of Rosa: A Horse Drama. It's at https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=t09PCPJGlh8 ...but caution: it contains NUDITY!

Read to page 30. It's interesting, but tough. Went from reading on tip toe to reading jumping.

Day 2 (DDRD 2,341) March 29, 2024

Read to page 40.

Well, here's some heaviness:

"If representation reproduces the other as the same... performance can serve as a model for another representational economy, 'one in which the reproduction of the Other as the Same is not assured...." (31)

That would, of course, be scanned.

It begins with Dr. Peggy Phelan's idea that "one sees oneself in terms of the other and the other in terms of oneself....  Not only does [this] result in the failure to see oneself, but it also leads to the reproduction of the other as the same...." (31) So (I think) she's saying that when we look at a painting or watch a movie, we interpret what we see in terms of ourselves. (Thus "representation reproduces the other as the same.") But when we attend a performance, we have a chance to see beyond ourselves.

The question, of course, is why. I've got no answer for that just now, so I'm hoping that Tereza Havelková is going to set me straight at some point. It might be awhile, I suppose, as I'm still in the Introduction. (Which, by the way, goes to page 37...and the text of the book ends on page 166. That's A Whole Lotta Intro. 🎸

✓↑ I've hit a combined DDR total of 60 pages on days 1 and 2, so that puts me just under 18 pages ahead of goal. Woo hoo!

P.S. Uh oh.

Day 3 (DDRD 2,342) March 30, 2024

Read to page 52. 

Ah...A bit of clarification, I think. Havelková quotes (and affirms) Michelle Duncan: "...a performance generates or disrupts levels of meaning by doing...."  Well, that's obviously true, right? But the level(s) of meaning referred to here aren't solely generated by the Viewer. The director, the actors, etc. have together decided upon an interpretation, and the act of performance is an attempt to reveal that interpretation to the audience. Thus instead of the Views attempting to generate his / her own meaning, s/he is (unless s/he is particularly stupid or otherwise recalcitrant) attempting to grasp a meaning generated by the Other.

Maybe?

Combined 72 pages today. About 38 pages ahead.

Day 4 (DDRD 2,343) March 31, 2024

Read to page 60. Only read a little bit of this today because (1) Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (for Joe), (2) X-Men '97 (for Joe), (3) NC State vs. Duke, and (4) 70 pages of Blue Lard. And because this book, like Math, is hard.

Combined 78 pages today. About 64 pages ahead. Sounds like somebody's earned a Day off, doesn't it?

Day 5 (DDRD 2,344 2,345) April  1  2, 2024

Read so much Blue Lard today...and cut the grass, which takes hours...and so didn't read any of this on the first. But got to page 68 today (end of Part 1). Not much (8 pages), but all I had strength for. And I finished Blue Lard!

Day 6 (DDRD 2,346) April 3, 2024

Read to page 78. Only ten pages, but (1) tough going and (2) lots of food for thought...and my stomach is now full and ready for digestion. Which is why, even though I finished Blue Lard yesterday, I'm going to keep this book going as a side project, and start something ekse today for my "real" DDR.

Ya know, I am enjoying this book...even though it is a bit over my head...but there are times when I can't help but think that I'm being bullshitted. Like here: "...the perception of a lack of perspective indicates that there is in fact a perspective at work, and that this perspective has become obscured...." (70) Now substitute any noun you like for "perspective" and have a go at this. Since I have a cat sitting on me as I read and write, I'll use "cat":   "...the perception of a lack of cat indicates that there is in fact a cat at work, and that this cat has become obscured...." Him. So if I don't see a cat, that means there is obviously a cat: an obscured cat.

That would be scanned.

And now, this:

"[Michael] Fried theorizes absorption as a strategy to obliterate the relationship between the observer and the work of art." (75)

I'd quibble with the word "strategy" here--seems to me that the act of getting an observer absorbed into a work of art (or a tractor pull, for that matter) cannot be a "strategy" per se; it's more of a hoped for outcome. If it were as direct as the word "strategy" suggests, everybody'd be doing it, doing it, doing it. But the second part of the sentence interests me. When you "Fall Into" a book (or movie, or painting, or vagina, etc.), you do stop noticing yourself. That might be the most important function of art: to transform the limited individual into a larger consciousness. And that's what happens in orgasm, too, isn't it? At least for a few seconds you are completely outside of your body and mind, absorbed in the intensity of the moment. Maybe it's a reminder that we actually are a part of something larger, that despite appearances, we are not islands, but pieces of the continent, a part of the main.

Yep.

And maybe that's why I'm so aggrieved by works like Blue Lard, which, it seems to me, fights with every sentence to show that you are alone, that despair is the inky proper reaction to life, that only in hopelessness can dignity be found. Fuck that, I want an orgasm!

Day 7 (DDRD 2,347) April 4, 2024

Read to page 90. Starting to want this to be over, I'm sorry to say. The pace is glacial, the tone is high falutin', and the pictures are all black and white. Nathan Link does opera much better.

76 text pages to go.

Day 8 (DDRD 2,348) April 5, 2024

Read to page 100. 

Day 9 (DDRD 2,349) April 6, 2024

Read to page 110. Yep. 56 text pages to go.

Day 10 (DDRD 2,350) April 7, 2024

Read to page 126. Spent some time searching for a video of Writing to Vermeer, which is the main topic of discussion now. It's not to be found, though. 

Day 11 (DDRD 2,351) April 8, 2024

Read to page 135. 31 pages to go.  🚂I THINK I can, I THINK I can.... 🚂

Part of me just wants to sit down and plow through to the end of this dull but interesting book. But a bigger part of me wants to read some more Wellness instead. 

Yeah, I'm going to do THAT.

Day 12 (DDRD 2,352 2,353) April 9 10, 2024

Didn't have the strength on the 9th. And in all fairness, it was a busy dat: volunteering at the hispital, pottery class, kids to the ex, dinner with #1☀ & famly. So... maybe mañana.

Mañana:

Read to page 150. 16 pages to go. So that's pretty good. And since I'm feeling it, I may even have another nibble at this book later today. I want to be able to throw my full attention on Wellness, which has really been pulling at me.

Meanwhile, check this shit out:

"Foster's most important example is the cell phone, a prosthetic device commonly used by the contemporary "cyborgian" bodies, which "catch fugitive, flickering glimpses of one another's corporeal status as it transits, blurred into the prosthetic devices that intensify even as they obscure physicality." (Footnote 9, page 139)

What the fucking fuckity fuck is that about? Sheesh.

In other news: "Anzieu develops the conception of a "skin-ego" that is formed as "a containing envelope, a protective barrier and a filter of exchanges, as a result of proprioception and epidermal sensations and the internalization of skin-identifications...." (142) 

I'll admit that I have to do a lot of legwork to decipher all if thus, but here's what I think it's about: the so-called "skun-ego" is created as a callus to protect the self from an abrasive world. 

ADDENDUM: Had a very long wait in the nephrologist office and...take da!...I finished this fuckin' book. Have to admit that it wasn't worth the effort...though it pains me to say so, since I applied a serious poundage of Brain Power into trying to make my way through this thing. So do as I say and not as I did and pass this one by.