Naming things 2: Loving Words and Numbers

Ok. I’m about to change the name of the blog again.

As I do so, I am letting go of the current name, Loving Words and Numbers: Forget(s) Eats Shoots and Leaves. I don’t know what exactly the book (is that what it was) Eats Shoots and Leaves was about, but I have the general idea that it has something to do with the ambiguity in the meaning of the title phrase. So, what was in a name:

1. I like ambiguities like that but recognize that this is lame, so I wanted to imitate and outdo that title with the title of my blog.
2. I also haven’t read Baudrillard’s Forget Foucault, but have thought that was a great title for a number of years. This was another imitation but not really intended to outdo.
3. Ok, I have to face the fact that I can support the claim that I “outdid” Eats Shoots and Leaves.
4. I apparently have love on the brain, since this was the second title involving love.
5. Ir-regardless, I do love words and numbers.

Naming things: make it/love work

When I first started thinking that I should start blogging, I got excited about coming up with a name for the blog. This is just the most recent instance of a constant stupidity.

When was in middle school and high school and I wanted to be in a band, my favorite thing to do was to think of band names. I think I mistook this for an interest in music… or, worse, I mis-equated my ability to come up with band names and my actual musical ability. Similarly, when I was in college and grad school and wanted to be an academic, my favorite thing to do was think of names for articles, conference papers, and other pieces of academic writing. At least for a time, I DEFINITELY confused thinking of titles with actually doing research and writing.

A few weeks ago, when I decided to start this blog, I came up with what I thought were a few good names. Then, by the time I got around to actually getting a wordpress account, I couldn’t remember any of the names I thought of.

The current title, “Bleep,” is a word with a history that I hope to post about some other time. It is meant to be a sort of non-commitment and a sort of onomatopoeia related to the internet and digital technology generally. For now, I’ll just leave it at that.

The current tagline, “Making love work,” was something I had considered making the title. I like this phrase because (no surprise) of its double meaning. This phrase has run through my mind again and again over the past several months, as I prepared to get married, got married, and am now being recently married. I have been thinking that you make love work by making love work, as in, you make it function by turning it into work, a project.

And this phrase and it’s two inter-related meanings have also been resonating with another phrase, popularized, in my sphere, by Bravo star Tim Gunn: “Make it work.” He frequently says this to contestants on Project Runway. I love the relationship he has with these contestants and I love the role this phrase plays in that relationship. Tim Gunn is one of the main reasons PR is so far superior to the next-best reality contest show, Top Chef. There is no intermediary, non-judging expert on Top Chef. There, everyone who’s not a competitor is a judge. Tim Gunn is always interested, always serious and critical, always faithful and encouraging, and always opinionated but nonpartisan. He’s a teacher, father figure, psychotherapist, secular priest.

Anyway, “make it work” is the slogan for the role he plays. He gives advice to each contestant and his advice always seems based in his vast knowledge and well-founded taste, but it always meets the contestant where they’re at. It doesn’t much matter what “it” is, as long as it “works,” as long as it goes somewhere good. Even if it’s fairly clear that he doesn’t really like the outfit and thinks it’s probably doomed, he talks it through with the designer and in the end, tells them to “make it work.” This means, as far as I can tell, both “make it work out” and “work at it.” Crucially, it doesn’t mean, “it will work out” or “just give it your best shot.” It means “this is work and you’ve got to go through with it and it might not be that great but it will be work.” It’s like “just do it” without the assumption that “doing it” will really be “fun.”

after not sleeping

I couldn’t sleep the other night and tried to post this then, but my hijacked internet connection wasn’t working. I have mixed feelings about posting it now. The reason I do is that I want to write things here. If this is only a place for good things or things I really like, it will be really empty and pointless. If it is a place for things, it might work.

At any rate, I’m interested in particulars, but in a general sort of way. For instance, I’m interested in myself, my experience or something, but really only as it relates to or is the general. The General, I suppose, is what I mean.
For instance, I was just lying awake thinking about math, reading Brian Rotman. I was thinking with him and realizing that I’ve thought with him for a while.

What am I doing? I feel like I’m back at stage one with this thing. Stage one as in middle school or something.

Or maybe I’ve just come to the point in the narrative of a young blogger where I question the purpose of my blogging. My friend Jim Brown will question it, in a different way, in the general case, at some point, possibly already past.

But what I thought was keeping me up or what was keeping me up initially was a question about math and finitude and the world-of-(human-)experience. I can’t think of a better way to put it. I was thinking of the discreteness that Rotman was talking about in Chapter 3 of Mathematics as Sign. I couldn’t stop reading it. It was the best reading I’ve ever done, both because it was good and because it was good for me. I mean, my major problem in grad school was reading too slow and too long. This happened fast or seemed to. At least it was painless. That’s probably because it is all I was thinking about doing.

So the talk of discreteness got me thinking about the little I’ve heard about finitude. I need to read more. That’s probably the bottom line.

But what I want to say is that the world is finite, bounded. It’s as big as this: _______. And all those spaces in between… Are they visible? They are gaps, nothings. They depict nothing. They are as much ends as the ends on the ends. It’s all compact, impacted, fractal. But Derrida knew this a long time ago. But it’s moving. He knew this too.

Does the performative give us a way “out” of this? A way to work out (of) the fractal? This is what I want to ask. But I might also… I might just want to know: Does the performative give me something more to say about this? That also connects my particular life with the world-of-(all-)experience(s)…. That makes me feel better about it. I like it better than the other thing. What’s the other thing? What am I scared of? It’s something Theresa hates. It’s the one-man-as-universal thing. Or so it seems. But it makes sense or it’s ok if it’s just about wanting to say something.

These things… They’re comin full circle

What I am doing?

I’m currently on break from grad school. But I’m not spring break or winter break. This break is longer. It will last at least a year. At least. It is marriage break. Or maybe life break. I am not in school right now because of marriage, because of life.

In a sense, this is the first time in my life I have not really been in school or headed to school. I am still teaching at schools, though. So I am still in school in that way. At least, I’m becoming less and less in school.

Once in a while I have ideas, even when I’m not in school. (When I’m less in school. When I’m not so in school.) For a while at the beginning of this semester… (See: “semester”: that means I’m still in school. Or in school-time.) At the beginning of this semester, I was driving very long distances several times a week to go teach at different schools. Often, usually in the nervous adrenaline rush I get after teaching, I would have ideas. Some of these ideas were about teaching. Some were about writing: teaching writing or writing as a thing… an activity, I guess I mean… maybe an institution…? Some of these ideas were about other things. This is my attempt to have ideas and keep them somewhere.

This is not a post title

I have a blog now. I just got it. Just now.