"Whatever, in my reading, occurs concerning this our fellow creature, I do never fail to set it down by way of commonplace."--Swift.
Have you ever kept a book of commonplace? A commonplace is defined as follows:
Commonplace n.
Have you ever kept a book of commonplace? A commonplace is defined as follows:
Commonplace n.
1. An idea or expression wanting originality or interest; a trite or customary remark; a platitude.
2. A memorandum; something to be frequently consulted or referred to.
Commonplace book,n. a book in which records are made of things to be remembered
Commonplace book n. A personal journal in which quotable passages, literary excerpts, and comments are written.
I began my current book of Commonplace on 5/5/00. It was easy to do, as I could use a computer. You can download an iteration of it here, but it is probably not the current version, but you can get the idea. My working title for it was "An Impossible Cuckold’s Penrose Tribar Faintly Redolent Of Archaen Spikenard Balm In Gilead Alabaster". I don’t know why really but it makes sense somehow, doesn't it?
But actually think I began the thing years before this…probably around 1978 or 1979. I typed up four small pieces of cheap stationary paper on an old beat up manual typewriter I used in high school. It may have been m y dad's typewriter from college. I typed out three blurbs from books I was reading at the time and one of the records I was listening to. The books were Eldridge Cleaver's "Soul on Ice" and the Jack Kerouac's "On the Road". The record was Lou Reed's "Street Hassle". I wanted to keep these papers as a record of were I was and when. I kept them hanging on various walls and cork boards that always hung over my desk.
When I moved to Los Angeles and took my first real academic job, I never hung those pieces of paper up. It is certainly temporally related to the time when things started their big slide down hill. Coincidence?
I found that bulletin board in a box recently, and those four pieces of paper. They were tattered and faded and full of old pushpin marks. I scanned them and here they are. If I put them up on this blog, that might help keep them in front of me. And what is a blog if it isn't a kind of commonplace. Or at least this one is...in part.
Commonplace book,n. a book in which records are made of things to be remembered
Commonplace book n. A personal journal in which quotable passages, literary excerpts, and comments are written.
I began my current book of Commonplace on 5/5/00. It was easy to do, as I could use a computer. You can download an iteration of it here, but it is probably not the current version, but you can get the idea. My working title for it was "An Impossible Cuckold’s Penrose Tribar Faintly Redolent Of Archaen Spikenard Balm In Gilead Alabaster". I don’t know why really but it makes sense somehow, doesn't it?
But actually think I began the thing years before this…probably around 1978 or 1979. I typed up four small pieces of cheap stationary paper on an old beat up manual typewriter I used in high school. It may have been m y dad's typewriter from college. I typed out three blurbs from books I was reading at the time and one of the records I was listening to. The books were Eldridge Cleaver's "Soul on Ice" and the Jack Kerouac's "On the Road". The record was Lou Reed's "Street Hassle". I wanted to keep these papers as a record of were I was and when. I kept them hanging on various walls and cork boards that always hung over my desk.
When I moved to Los Angeles and took my first real academic job, I never hung those pieces of paper up. It is certainly temporally related to the time when things started their big slide down hill. Coincidence?
I found that bulletin board in a box recently, and those four pieces of paper. They were tattered and faded and full of old pushpin marks. I scanned them and here they are. If I put them up on this blog, that might help keep them in front of me. And what is a blog if it isn't a kind of commonplace. Or at least this one is...in part.
PS You can view a higher res look at this picture by clicking it...
No comments:
Post a Comment