Joni Mitchell worship thread

version

version

Well-known member
Have you watched the Abel Ferrara film of that Gibson story yet, @sus? You'd like it. It's all about these layered games of seduction and who's really seducing who. A really intriguing film.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
Yeah I enjoyed it I think but don't remember anything. Passed through me. Probably on me, wasn't equipped to receive it at that particular moment.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Just that symbols (in the complex sense of the rose symbology) seem to have been more prevalent in the pre-mass media age—poetic and religious associations. I suppose if I thought for not very long I could come up with plenty of modern symbols, and plenty of physical phenomena that have symbolic applications.

Anyway, I guess I would expect people who aren't constantly distracted by screens (and even leaving those aside, books/comics etc.) would be less liable to invest natural objects with symbolic overtones. Just as I remember being a child and not having access to an endless stream of entertainment, and fixating on certain objects/scenes and investing them with a sort of magical/symbolic quality, as children often tend to do I think, as Dickens captures in 'David Copperfield', 'Great Expectations', etc.

Symbols in the modern world are emojis, with multiple meanings but all of them simple.

BURN IT ALL DOWN, IS WHAT I'M SAYING
 
version

version

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
Just that symbols (in the complex sense of the rose symbology) seem to have been more prevalent in the pre-mass media age—poetic and religious associations. I suppose if I thought for not very long I could come up with plenty of modern symbols, and plenty of physical phenomena that have symbolic applications.

Anyway, I guess I would expect people who aren't constantly distracted by screens (and even leaving those aside, books/comics etc.) would be less liable to invest natural objects with symbolic overtones. Just as I remember being a child and not having access to an endless stream of entertainment, and fixating on certain objects/scenes and investing them with a sort of magical/symbolic quality, as children often tend to do I think, as Dickens captures in 'David Copperfield', 'Great Expectations', etc.

Symbols in the modern world are emojis, with multiple meanings but all of them simple.

BURN IT ALL DOWN, IS WHAT I'M SAYING
Click to expand...

The arguments I've read have usually been the opposite, that we're living in a world overrun by symbols. I suppose these are competing definitions of symbolism though.
 
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Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I'm willing to hear it

I think of symbols like the cup of water on a plate by zurbaran which symbolises (according to the notes) the virgin Mary, the NEED for religion to embody the transcendental in common objects. To the extent that some objects (the communion wafer say) ARE what they symbolise.

I guess an iPhone (say) is a symbol of affluence and perhaps of an attitude to life or whatever.

Anyway I think there's a related and (to me) interesting thing about how we now have the means to never have to reread anything or relisten to anything, what difference does that make? I'm glad for the options but I think there's something very powerful about that thing of the one book you have as a kid that you read again and again or whatever.
 
version

version

Well-known member
Corpsey said:
I'm willing to hear it

I think of symbols like the cup of water on a plate by zurbaran which symbolises (according to the notes) the virgin Mary, the NEED for religion to embody the transcendental in common objects. To the extent that some objects (the communion wafer say) ARE what they symbolise.

I guess an iPhone (say) is a symbol of affluence and perhaps of an attitude to life or whatever.

Anyway I think there's a related and (to me) interesting thing about how we now have the means to never have to reread anything or relisten to anything, what difference does that make? I'm glad for the options but I think there's something very powerful about that thing of the one book you have as a kid that you read again and again or whatever.
Click to expand...

The definition I'm talking about is the one you get from the French writers with an interest in semiotics. They talk about signs and symbols as things representing other things, so yeah, like your iPhone example rather than just something more commonly thought of as symbolic, like the crucifix.

The idea's that nowadays with modern communications we're completely swamped by signs/symbols and that there are more of them than there are things for them to represent, so they just float around or end up symbolising other symbols. Think about how much you see online or in the media that doesn't really correspond to anything in real life, but keeps circulating and generating more and more things online and in the media.
 
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woops

woops

is not like other people
version said:
The definition I'm talking about is the one you get from the French writers with an interest in semiotics. They talk about signs and symbols as things representing other things, so yeah, like your iPhone example rather than just something more commonly thought of as symbolic, like the crucifix.

The idea's that nowadays with modern communications we're completely swamped by signs/symbols and that there are more of them than there are things for them to represent, so they just float around or end up symbolising other symbols. Think about how much you see online or in the media that doesn't really correspond to anything in real life, but keeps circulating and generating more and more things online and in the media.
Click to expand...
i think simulacrum is the word not sure might have to look it up
 
sus

sus

Moderator
I feel like the enmeshment of mental & material worlds is key to romantic poetry. Probably someone's said this before and/or it's a totally stupid thing to say.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
There is a mental landscape and a physical landscape. The attention of the poem toggles between them but they're very enmeshed, one reflects the other a la poorly named pathetic fallacy.
 
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