English Club Chatter

Reality is whatever your consciousness percieves.

Art is real because it exists.

Realistic art is that art created as a response to the perceptions of the artist's consciousness.

Also, just because all of you are just constructs of my consciousness that I percieve to have interactions with doesn't make you any less real or important. I hope everything I create has a life of it's own.

I'll get back to his soon....

And why limit reality to consciousness? If everything real is perceived through the mind, then why can't the subconscious realm also be considered reality? It's still a mind's perception.

Thanks for making my dreams reality, Jim. No one has ever done that before.

haha.

Life seems to me to be neither inherently tragic nor inherently comic. I guess the question is whether tragedy or comedy exist without our assigning some sort of meaning or definition to those concepts. I'm not even sure if I can call them concepts or constructs or anything meaningful to my particular view at the moment. Life begins. Shit happens. Life ends. Some of the shit seems tragic and some of the shit seems comic. Everyone has their own particular shit lens in which to react to the shit. Is the end of life tragic or just a part of the crap shoot? And did we learn to feel tragedy or comedy or is that inherent? Some of the stuff our society used to think was funny back in a day seems rather simple now. Are we more jaded or more sophisticated? Has comedy changed? What about tragedy? Does or will the glut of violent images available lessen the notion of tragedy? A girl was trapped in a well and the whole nation felt it and was riveted to the news. Now it seems to take 9/11 to do that. Every day we hear a body count in Iraq or other parts of the world. I don't know what I'm saying anymore, but always there are questions of degrees of comedy and tragedy.

The art/reality question is too big for me. I'm not sure I even understand it. Are we separating "reality" and something representing "reality"? Can art then be more real to some people if they are better able to comprehend more of the representation? Or does that work the other way? If you see art as an obect in and of itself, but not what it represents, does that make it more real?

Or is this a question of something like whether a straightforward still life painting is more real than some abstract rendering of the notion of what is in the still life? I had a manager once who always saw things in tems of a snap shot. He could stop at any moment and see violations, even though the job required more of a motion picture mentality. To me still life seems unreal in the sense that the transfer of reality has captured what can no longer exist exactly as it was. See, I told you this question was too big for me. For the moment, I'm inclined to lean toward the notion of art being a separate reality. Obviously it exists, so that is one form of non-serparate reality, but what is going on in the art seems to me as a representational reality of a different kind of reality. I don't want to contradict myself, so I think I'll qualify that subconscious perceptions of the mind are also a separate kind of reality.
Art takes one reality, processes it in some way through the reality of thought, and transfers it into some alternative pattern or whatever of reality.
Never mind!

What if our reality is actually a piece of art by some great creator and we are just hanging in a nice 8 by ten in the corner of some gallery of the gods? Perhaps that's too lofty. We might just be the start of some piece thrown on the trash heap so the big artist could move on to something better. Woe to us our armeggeddon trash burning day. I see the comedy in this tragedy and the tragedy in this comedy.

Nice, weirdgirl. Do you know Pirandello's play Henry IV? A rich man goes mad and thinks he is the historical King Henry IV. His friends and servants decide the best thing to do is play along, so they all get up in period costume, and treat him like the king. Meanwhile, he regains his sanity, but has to figure out what he is doing in the middle of another time as King Henry IV.

"All the world's a stage" (or is all the stage the world?)

I'll have to read that HH; it sounds like something I could identify with, always wondering if I'm crazy or if it's everyone else. I sincerely hope, though, that this world is only one of the many stages of this universe thingy. It would be truly unjust if this world was all the stage there is. But, I'm sure, as in previous experience, I am just a dreamer, dreaming my life away... (Sir Oz[wald] de Osbourne, a great literary figure)

Speaking of Ozzy, I recommend two Black Sabbath songs:

After Forever
The christian song

and

Children of the Grave
The war protest song

Check out the lyrics, they are good.

On the subject of comedy vs. tragedy...have you guys watched the Woody Allen movie, Melinda, Melinda? It juxtaposes the same plot as both a comedy and a tragedy...all centered around the debate of some intellectuals at a coffee shop...hmmm...sound familiar?

never seen it

Come to think of it, Ive never seen a Woody Allen movie. Weird.

Of all the things, Nic, that is possibly the weirdest thing I've seen from you.

I think we should have an Eng club Woody Allen marathon:)...but a short one because I get sleepy.

sounds good. what are the must see woody allen films we should include?
Hannah And Her Sisters
Manhattan
Sleeper
Bananas
What's Up Tiger Lily
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About...
Annie Hall
Love And Death
Interiors
Sweet And Lowdown
Bullets Over Broadway
Mighty Aphrodite
Alice
Radio Days
Broadway Danny Rose
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Zelig
Manhattan Murder Mystery
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Deconstructing Harry
That one about the jade scorpion
Stardust Memories

I'm thinking I've seen more than these, but this is all I can recall off the top of my head.

Melina, Melinda is a first pick, of course, after our blog topic...after that, my personal favorite is Annie Hall...ahhhchoooo!

I'm down. It sounds like a good idea. But real quick on the topic of the thread. The question of comedy versus tragedy..... Is it just me or is a great deal of comedy in life and fiction based of the tragedy of others? Does that make life both tragic and comedic, or is comedy our way of coping with the inherent tragedy of never being able to get everything you want in life? To deal with that sense of always lacking something? Or is comedy a manifestation of some kind of desire to see others fall because then we are further on the climb?

Funny scene. Bless you.

don't think i ever saw a woody allen film. none of those titles look familiar. I feel kinda sheltered now.

you know i dont know if i want to get into defining things, everytimes we end up doing that do we get anywhere... define comedy...define tradgedy... relative to who you are... Because i find horror movies funny, and i think it is a real tradgedy when a nice love story uses some sort of cliche phrase to end...

right. now. lata.

everytimes* = everytime .. i when i mispell on an english-club site...

so nic, im confused, are you saying you think people like me crucified Christ and i march with hate in my heart? thats not very nice. but i suppose your entitled to your opinion.

where did that come from....

from the ozzy songs. nevermind. gosh!

did you write that or is it from the song?

yeah and jessica. sorry i got it... i was just blinded a little. mybad.

you dont have to be sorry, i was just being silly as usual

silly jesi silly jessica

Ok. looks like people are a little confused so I’ll help. Reality is what I say it is. Comedy is what I say it is. Tragedy is what I say it is. If you need further clarification I will be happy to tell you what to think (for a small fee of course, Visa and MasterCard accepted)

Are the dreams where demons poke at me with butterknives real?

Yes, that will be $3 please.