Freewrite 5: In Response to the Words of Others

After re-reading Jan Reiman's essay "Composing Through Distraction" I decided to emulate her by coming up with my own helpful section titled "Tools for Avoiding Distraction". See below:

Tools for Avoiding Distraction

GO ANALOG

If I’m feeling distractible, I may shut off the computer completely and work with a pen and my sketchbook—I will go outside or sit in a different place—find somewhere else to work….somewhere less connected.

FRONTLOADDING

I will front-load my work time by looking at the things that usually distract me. If online shopping is the thing, I will be sure to unsubscribe from mailing lists and remove my credit card info from any sites I’m registered for so it will be a huge pain in the ass to buy anything.

TRY WALKING

If I’m distracted by emotional stressors—like bad health stuff going on in my family or the loss of someone or the arrival of someone who is hard to be around—I will often take a walk. Walking rewards distraction. I think in many ways you can use walking to help focus your mind—there’s something about the sound of your gait. (There, I did it, I connected with sound, didn’t think it was going to happen but I did it without trying to.) The sound of one’s gait. It says a lot. The other day, I was watching an old Bob Ross video. He was painting one of his perfect landscapes that you think is unrealistic until you actual go somewhere like Austria or Corsica or Engelberg or wherever there are snow swathed Alps to look at at sunset and you will see all of his cheesy colors there and, in your memory, he will be standing there with his big hair and his pot belly coaching you through the whole process of seeing and enjoying the beauty before you. He said all he needed to know to do a painting was what time of day and what time of year it was. Well, I’d say when it comes to a character, where they are in their lives, if you are representing them as walkers, then all you really need to know is the time of day and the time of year that they are walking. It will help to know the place they were and the place they are going too—but they are not as necessary….

CLEAN YOUR HOUSE

A lot of people think this is just a form of procrastination, but there is something to this. Einstein called the phenomenon “combinatory play”—when he would play the violin in order to work through a math problem that was giving him trouble. The same thing happens as you organize your environment. Your mind is cleaned up at the same time and when you are finished and you sit down to do the work at last, you may have much less time to work with, but you will have a much clearer perspective with fewer distractions and a general feeling of accomplishment that will make you feel like you have your sh*t together enough to get started.

WRITE THROUGH IT

One term that is used often in Writing Studies is the term “writing to learn”. The idea here is that forcing our minds to articulate themselves in writing will help us learn what it is we are trying to articulate. That was horribly articulated by the way, but what I mean is writing about your confusions or questions or concerns can actually help you solve/answer/address them. In fact, I hate to say it, but doing this project brought to light a few things. The importance of walking to my life’s work—and its importance to this project. When I initially started working, I wanted to do a SOUND WALK….then it was a SOUND SCAPE. I have struggled with both of these concepts technically, but there is still time to figure these out.

On the Writing Above

So, I don’t usually write in this format—this helpful hints genre, though as a teacher, I probably do it more than I realize. I notice that there is confidence here, though I have not yet finished my final project—in ways, it almost seems arrogant. There are lies there too—I’m not as good at not getting distracted as I let on and there are days when I just let my blues get the best of me, but there is also truth in what’s above. Walking, cleaning, unplugging, I would add reading or listening/watching someone else who is not having the problem with being distracted that you are having—or read someone like Walter Benjamin (he is the scholar I wrote my dissertation about for my doctoral these)—he talks about this phenomenon called “reception in distraction”—it’s something he connects with the art of walking as well. The idea is that distraction is productive sometimes—as with combinatory play, distraction allows you to bring the oft unseen lesser inspirational elements of your environment, the people who surround you, the texts that you are already drawn to and are already consuming—it allows you to bring all of those things to play on your current task. These diversified, less linear pathways can enrich your line of questioning and broaden your thinking on issues about which you have become too narrowly decided. Even now, just talking about Walter Benjamin, I find myself reverting to an old tone, it is the tone of someone who has not quite found their footing…perhaps that is the tone that inquiry should take from the outset—something to think about……….

Inquiry 5: Reflection on SLOs

I feel fine about the SLOs. It's an institutional tool designed to create a sense of consistency between section of this course and it aims to provide students with a vocabulary which they can use to discuss the listed concepts with students who took course sections with processors other than their own. There is a bit of recursion in the list, but this is necessary in order to highlight the items that connect with writing program administrators' perceptions of what is important. The terms will never alone quantify

Rhetorical Knowledge

For me the concept of rhetorical knowledge reads better as rhetorical awareness. Since awareness is difficult to measure, however, we will use rhetorical knowledge instead. I like to provide students with a few images from rhetorical studies—namely triangles, some combined with other triangles, some with circles around them, others with squiggly lines. We talk about ethos, pathos, and logos and about audience and text and venue and media—we discuss the way that media affects content, the way content affects message, the way tone and mood and use of humor or data all works together to make the text and the context that frames it. While knowing is something a little different, I think, becoming more aware of these aspects of rhetoric is helpful as we try to become more mindful of our writing process and the manner in which our writing is disseminated.

Critical Reading

Critical reading of sounds, of images, of scholarship concerning these things, of current rhetorical conversations engaged in which encountering sound as an agent of rhetorical thought. I distanced myself from the sounds I was immersed in and read their effects on my thinking about sound. I am still continuing to do this as I push through with the completion of my portfolio.

Knowledge of Conventions

Knowledge of conventions is always necessary—whether or not one chooses to abide by them. I became aware of the conventions that surround the medium of sound as an art form. I found it interesting that so much soundwork that separates itself from music is disharmonic and dysphonic and destructive sounding. So often, the white noises of high tech or the industrial clamor of metal on metal, so often the shrill winds of frustration magnified, multiplied and amplified. Though I am still not finished with my final project, I am getting close and I find myself asking about what conventions surrounding this art form are most useful to me at this stage of the game, at the point where I try to coalesce all of these seemingly disparate pieces into something that can be recognized or at least encountered by other people.

Critical Reflection

So much of this kind of work is inward seeking and private. My most critical moments of reflection certainly never made it into this portfolio—in my writing, where I discussed influences of a personal nature and how they affected my thinking about the projects I was doing. There are the paintings—some of them will not be included here as they are too personal to share without proper introduction. A few images created from this inquiry were somewhat sacred to me and I wrestle with whether or not to include them here.

Process

The run-down, looking over all these “system requirements” imposed on this class from the higher levels has brought something to my practice, just now. As I’ve gone through the motions of considering each SLO, one at a time, in a way that seems a bit forced and uninspired, I’ve been reminded to do all of these things as I put together the last of my portfolio work. This process of assembling the final product can be a part of the reflective process—reflecting through actions, and being reflective in the decision-making process that will determine what is contained in the portfolio and what becomes just remnants. At this point in the process, I have not finished yet. I’m still awaiting that 11^th-hour stroke of genius that is going to help me pull this all together. Once that has happened, I will come back to this piece of writing and work through it with a better understanding of the final product, but in the mean time, I have met the requirements fort this studio. I have reflected on the SLOs in the language of the SLOs and while I am still not sure of the Final Project yet, I feel a bit closer to done…..