The Muse

Albert Brooks, Sharon Stone and Andie MacDowell all star in this interesting take on writers and their muses

He also directed 'Defending Your Life'

He draws heavily from mythology for his movie ideas

Walking back from class...

Today as I was walking back from Linfield I got stuck behind someone walking very, very slowly. At first I was annoyed thinking "why is this person sooooo slow?!" Then, as I realized that she was so slow because she was wearing heals, in the snow!? I became even more annoyed. Then I started to think. Perhaps she is not walking slow because of her shoes, perhaps it is another reason. Maybe something horrible has happened to her, and she is walking slowly because she is in pain? Or maybe she has an injury that I cannot see. Or maybe she is just taking her time. BAM! That hit me like a ton of bricks! She is taking her time... hmmm. Maybe she doesn't like to hurry, perhaps she likes to look around her and take everything in. Then I started thinking... why don't I do that? Is it because I am stressed about school? Home? My family? Friends? Or for another reason? Why am I always in such a hurry? Have I forgotten how to look around me and see the beauty that is there? So really, am I in the wrong instead of 'slow girl' ahead of me? At that moment a thought struck me, have I been traveling through life too fast, and missing out on what is important? Do I stop to smell the flowers? Or look at the beauty around me, or am I too busy thinking about all that I have to do? Am I wasting my life? Do I stop to make connections between things like Dr. Sexson? Or am I too busy looking at the 'big picture'? In our society, where everything is so fast paced, are we all missing out on something? Where are the times of a long Sunday walk? Of the family dinner?Where have these days gone? Are they a figment of your youth, that you experience only once, or should they be an everyday part of daily life? Perhaps we need a change. A time of connections and 'mything' is needed. So perhaps I took this class at the perfect time in my life. Perhaps looking at the past will help me to see the present as what it truly is: a gift. Or maybe i'm reading too much into things and she was really just walking slow because of her high heals.

week 2

Monday January 22

Agon: a contest or battle between combatants or adversaries

Comedians are the only ones who have license to do whatever they want, they can be:

• foul
• grotesque
• offensive

obscene or ob-scene: meaning 'off stage'

incest is a large part of many ancient civilizations

Although it is humorous in ways, and is always being mocked with phrases like "Keeping it all in the family" or "all in one point" it is a serious offense in many countries these days.

Things to remember:

• What are the chances? 1 in 3!!
• Clueless is not in our vocabulary in Classy Lit
• think of the current and how it is interwoven in the myth

The Tempest by Willy Shakespeare

Act 1, Scene 2

PROSPERO
No harm. I have done nothing but in care of thee,Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who art ignorant of what thou art, nought knowing of whence I am, nor that I am more better than Prospero, master of a full poor cell, and thy no greater father.

MIRANDA
More to know did never meddle with my thoughts.

PROSPERO
'Tis time I should inform thee farther. Lend thy hand, and pluck my magic garment from me. So:
Lays down his mantle lie there, my art. Wipe thou thine eyes; have comfort.The direful spectacle of the wreck, which touch'd the very virtue of compassion in thee, I have with such provision in mine art so safely ordered that there is no soul--No, not so much perdition as an hair betid to any creature in the vessel which thou heard'st cry, which thou saw'st sink. Sit down; for thou must now know farther.

MIRANDA
You have often begun to tell me what I am, but stopp'd and left me to a bootless inquisition, concluding 'Stay: not yet.'

PROSPERO
The hour's now come; the very minute bids thee ope thine ear; obey and be attentive. Canst thou remember a time before we came unto this cell? I do not think thou canst, for then thou wast not out three years old.

MIRANDA
Certainly, sir, I can.

PROSPERO
By what? By any other house or person? Of any thing the image tell me that hath kept with thy remembrance.

MIRANDA
'Tis far off and rather like a dream than an assurance that my remembrance warrants. Had I not four or five women once that tended me?

PROSPERO
Thou hadst, and more, Miranda. But how is it that this lives in thy mind? What seest thou elseIn the dark backward and abysm of time? If thou remember'st aught ere thou camest here, how thou camest here thou mayst.

MIRANDA
But that I do not.

PROSPERO
Twelve year since, Miranda, twelve year since, thy father was the Duke of Milan and a prince of power.

MIRANDA
Sir, are not you my father?

PROSPERO
Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and she said thou wast my daughter; and thy father was Duke of Milan; and thou his only heir and princess no worse issued.

MIRANDA
O the heavens! What foul play had we, that we came from thence? Or blessed was't we did?

PROSPERO
Both, both, my girl: By foul play, as thou say'st, were we heaved thence, But blessedly holp hither.

MIRANDA
O, my heart bleeds to think o' the teen that I have turn'd you to, which is from my remembrance! Please you, farther.

George Steiner's Antigone pg 121

"On the contrary: the poet, the dramatist, calls upon, compacts, the disseminated energies and authority of myth in order to give to a current, circumstantially bounded event or social conflict to 'visibility', the compelling dimensions, the inexorable logic and extremity of the mythical. The myth precipitates and purifies the agitated, opaque elements of the immediate situation. It enforces on them distance and the definity of the insoluble. But to do this it must internalize the local occasion. It is willed attempts at 'timelessness', such as we find them in neo-classical art or in nineteenth-century epic sublimity, which bring on rapid datedness. Universal texts and works or art guard within themselves a life-giving parachialis...

But it does not tell us why the graft 'took' on the millennia; why it is that Antigone, together with a handful of other figures- Orpheus, Prometheus, Heracles, Agamemnon and his pack, Oedipus, Odysseus, Medea- should constitute the essential code of canonis reference for intellect and sensibility across western civilization."

pg 231-277 for test

Here is a link to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle

epiphany: Will Dr. Sexson ever reveal what his epiphany was about the BDC?

"Isn't it better if things go over your head, than under?" ~Dr. Sexson

Victor Borge

Week 1

Friday January 19

ANTIGONE:

Invloves conflict between:

1. a man and a woman
2. the young and the old
3. an individual and society
4. living and the dead
5. humans and the god(s)

originary: going back to the origins of things (going back to creation)

Class theme: NEW VS OLD

It is more important to ask "What is old?" than "What is new?"

Because the Trojans weren't allowed to talk about anything current (social or political), they would show their feelings opposing or supporting what was currently going on by using things that had happened long ago. For example, they would show how they disagreed being in a war, by making creating a comentary on an old war. They would talk about something old that pertained to current events.

"Why do most people think that whatever is new is the most important thing, when it is really the old that is important?" ~George Steiner

Simone Weil