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Abstraction Appeal, and Current Events
Jun. 23rd, 2006 03:17 amI just wrote the following for my Myspace blog, but it's hardly appropriate. So. Here it goes.
"Generalizations" are an instance in a broader category of things that interest me. This category approximates the practice of--well, of characterizing or approximating something. Generalizations, summaries, groupings, trends, tiers: if you can look at a couple of things and draw a connection, make an inference, somehow interpret that data and assign a value to that, or otherwise construct an artificial representation of that imagined relationship, I'm intrigued. This is the most abstract way I can word it, which probably doesn't help the appeal. Let me try again.
Let's pick a subject at random: say, Cubism. It's easy to say things like "Cubism was an important form of abstract art in the early 20th century." Cubism, however, is just an amorphous term referring to the specific artists and the works they made in a specific style; it's a social fiction like the value of money, or Douglas Adams's belief in "the idea of a god."
Whenever someone declares an opinion on things like this, be it baroque architecture, punk rock, object-oriented languages or "these kids today", I'm fascinated. I start to wonder about the individual components of the broader category being discussed, and more often than not, I wind up missing the point... but it's rare that I find that I care.
Anyway. Now that you've seen the kind of drivel I generate when my girlfriend isn't able to keep me distracted, I should probably mention that my current relationship isn't the one I mentioned back in April. In fact, it's hard to find an entry as misleading as that one for describing the current state of affairs; I've been dating Angie for 17 days, I've been able to drive again for two, and I've got fencework to do in the morning, so I'm going to bed.
"Generalizations" are an instance in a broader category of things that interest me. This category approximates the practice of--well, of characterizing or approximating something. Generalizations, summaries, groupings, trends, tiers: if you can look at a couple of things and draw a connection, make an inference, somehow interpret that data and assign a value to that, or otherwise construct an artificial representation of that imagined relationship, I'm intrigued. This is the most abstract way I can word it, which probably doesn't help the appeal. Let me try again.
Let's pick a subject at random: say, Cubism. It's easy to say things like "Cubism was an important form of abstract art in the early 20th century." Cubism, however, is just an amorphous term referring to the specific artists and the works they made in a specific style; it's a social fiction like the value of money, or Douglas Adams's belief in "the idea of a god."
Whenever someone declares an opinion on things like this, be it baroque architecture, punk rock, object-oriented languages or "these kids today", I'm fascinated. I start to wonder about the individual components of the broader category being discussed, and more often than not, I wind up missing the point... but it's rare that I find that I care.
Anyway. Now that you've seen the kind of drivel I generate when my girlfriend isn't able to keep me distracted, I should probably mention that my current relationship isn't the one I mentioned back in April. In fact, it's hard to find an entry as misleading as that one for describing the current state of affairs; I've been dating Angie for 17 days, I've been able to drive again for two, and I've got fencework to do in the morning, so I'm going to bed.
