Sunday, February 17, 2008

An I for an Eye?

"Don't you think that modern authors are not willing to vanish--that they so desperately want to be part of the story. Yes? No? Maybe so?"

And my response:

There are different flavors of 'I'. The I that I like is the one wears a mask. That I that wrote that is no longer this I. What mask was that? This I reads that I and wonders who that I was. Though this I that pops up here so insistently likes to play with meta-bursts where the I mimics and pretends to evoke real time communication... as you read this I am writing this but no, actually, I am driving now in my truck to the fish market but you cannot see that because I left this message for you at the time it is marked and now it is not me here speaking my I to your I. The modernist technique of removal of the I from the narrative context of the text is as inauthentic as to push the author's I into your face... but my you is not you as your I is more you than it is me. Then there are those narrators who are simply liars like a trickster. I am not actually in my truck going to the fish market.

So the other day on the way to the fish market I could not remember Heidegger 's name and got it confused with Heisenberg... could remember there was an 'H' there somewhere.

But by the time we had completed the fish market run I remembered Heidegger and also vaguely remembered why I had got confused with Heisenberg.

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is the statement that locating a particle in a small region of space makes the momentum of the particle uncertain; and conversely, that measuring the momentum of a particle precisely makes the position uncertain.

If 'I' is a particle then obviously it is confused whenever examined, particularly when self-examined as to where.

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is often associated with the term 'observer effect' that refers to changes that the act of observing will make on the phenomenon being observed.

Then there was the entire question, "Why would anyone in their right mind worry about any of this on the way to and from the fish market?"