June 28
I had a professor in college who said: "All parenthetical information is superfluous. Never use parenthesis! Work it into your sentence!" I think that that's bullshit. Don't know what made me think of him now, today, as I am all tied up in working on this gigantic pain in the ass of a grant, but his name was Seikou Sundiata. I never knew how he felt about me. The truth of the matter is that he probably didn't think of me at all, which is fine. I don't believe that I was ballsy enough at the time to stand up and shake my fist and say "That's bullshit, however you need to get your message across is fine! Don't listen to him, he's no more right than anyone else. This is all guesswork! How can you teach someone poetry? How can one person make a blanket statement like that? What in the motherfuck is wrong with using parenthesis? They are a tool, like everything else in writing. They don't weaken anything, unless you are a weak writer!"
That class was a little ridiculous anyway, as was most of my college education. This is not to say I didn't like Seikou. No, actually, wait--this IS to say that I do not think I liked him, but it would be hard for me to say why. The never use parenthesis thing was part of it. The fact that he called me a racist for quoting a line of Dead Can Dance as a preface to a poem was also part of it. Him being a butthead might have had more to do with it than anything else. Parenthetical information superfluous, indeed.
(and by the way, the Dead Can Dance lyrics were:
Murder! Man on fire.
Murder! I've seen the eyes of the living dead.
It's the same old game. Survival.
The great mass play a waiting game.
Embalmed, crippled, dying in fear of pain,
all sense of freedom gone.
Black sun in a white world.
Like having a black son in a white world.
I have a son, his name is Eden.
It's his birthright beyond estranged times.
give me 69 years, another season in this hell.
It's all sex and death as far as eyes can tell.
Like Prometheus we are bound.
chained to this rock of a brave new world.
Our god forsaken lot.
And I feel that's all we have ever needed to know until
worlds end and the seas run cold
Give me 69 years, another season in this hell.
There is sex and death in mother natures plans.fucking college. I don't miss you at all)