Class Notes 2/10

What Qualifies Star Trek as low brow?
cheesy....bad acting, but it still works, we are still moved by the plot and sentimentality.
Lower the bar to include more people.
High brow needs the low brow, feeds off of the low brow.
Low brow passively engages us, but we should be engaged, made to think, but no one likes that, they'd rather watch Dumb and Dumber.
We all need low brow, can't be engaged 24/7, but not so much low brow
No question Ayn Rand and Steven King are lowbrow, but everyone reads it. Their books are enormously popular, and we're not making fun of it, because we like it. We just need more highbrow.
(This is all paraphrased from lecture/Dr. Sexson by the way)
Nothing wrong with low brow, but the satisfaction and payoff are not as great as high brow. We need the low brow though, so let's try not to knock it.

Read Generosity by Richard Powers. I have a copy if anyone is desperately searching for it.
Joyce is generous for writing Finnegans wake for us, dedicating 17 years of his life to it. Our book of the dead.

Dead Man with Johnny Depp is high brow. (In class I was wondering if the movie Sixth Sense was the low brow version)

Where is the 20 minute lifetime in the Four Quartets?
Listed in class was, page 44, page 31, page 16 - see people's blogs

Lowbrow people are living in time, to become conscious is to live out of time, by living in time a person is unconsciously living. We have to be in time, then be out of time reflecting on it, page 32 of Four Quartets, "We must be still and still moving."

Words inadequate to express what we need to express - via negativa, describing something by what it is not. (the via negativa is a way the Upanishads and the Dao de Jing function)

Story Time: Since this class is so elite and so cool Dr. Sexson decided to tell a personal story in class. He only got through part of it and will continue on Friday.
I don't want to summerize any of it because that would be doing an injustice to the story. However I will tell you that Dr. Sexson is on a plane and a white haired woman is telling him a story.

recontour
The Beggar King
Sheherezade
The King and the Corpse

****Also, now is the time to be responding to other people's blogs. James the Rat has made an interesting comment/response to my blog below this one (20 minute lifetime in Four Quartets on Feb 10th), to which of course I responded, and hope he responds back. The idea is that we are in conversation with eachother. And also, someone else's blog may inspire you to respond to theirs with one of your own with a different view or taking it even further! Happy reading and blogging.