Tangent - Nik Style

That's what I'm about to go on, just so you know. Hopefully, it relates to what we're talking about. Since I'm highly caffeinated and had this brilliant idea while I was busy not paying attention to my World War II in Asia professor, this is going to run together. Also, I haven't read anyone else's yet. But I will.

Narrative to me is a story. Because a narrator tells a story. Like Morgan Freeman, he's the ultimate narrator to me because he did March of the Penguins. Anyway. Narrative is a story because the narrator tells it.

Technology, well, now I can't really look at it in any other way than the kind we said, with the technique and the words. That's a lot cooler than just some computer kind of thing, though when I go on my tangent I'm definitely going to say something about computers. When I think of technology, the spiderwebs in my head that lead to every other thing possibly even connected to any other thing lead first to techno music. Well, second to techno music. First to... well, to computers. But techno music, I know nothing about other than it sounds like the kind a computer would make. *shrug*

So. About the way these things connect to each other.


START READING HERE:

Stories started as oral things. Word of mouth, you know, sitting around the fire and listening to some old guy tell you a ghost story that just also happens to be Little Red Riding Hood, which really means "don't disobey your parents and don't go into the forest by yourself." Only in a way that would keep someone's attention, you know? Because we have attention spans of peanuts. But as we (humans, or whatever) have advanced, the way that stories and morals that are meant to come from stories, or whatever, have also had to advance.

Adam was talking before about narration being a representation and then asked whose responsibility the reception of the representation is. I ended that on a preposition. Sorry. Is it the narrator or the listener? It's kind of both. I think people have realized that, at least insomuch as stories were told around fires and then in books and then over the radio and now in movies and video games and every freakin other way else. As our attention span gets shorter because of these technological advancements (in the sciencey way, not in the way we talked about), the technology with which we narrate has to advance, too. People remember the movie version of... I dunno, Hamlet, better than they might remember the actual play, read in high school. Everyone knows The Lion King. That's a watered down, happy ending version, but it's the same deal, Hamlet on the African savanna. Or something. I'll probably mention the way that a narrative changes because of technology later, in a comment that I'll make on my own post, after having read it when I'm not jazzed on three iced quad venti caramel macchiatos. Btw, the computer is saying that I misspelled "macchiatos" and that the correction for that word is "psychiatrist." Does that say something about me? Probably.

As someone who wants to write for a living (or at least make a book or something, maybe, once) this means that I'm going to have to be exceptionally awesome because nobody reads anymore just to read it. One of my orchestra directors once said that soon violinists won't have jobs because nobody listens to classical music and everyone's downloading music and why pay musicians anymore? It's gonna be like that, with writing, unless there's another... thingie (for lack of a better, real term) in which to represent your idea. Because I'm a huge dork, I'm really into online forums and message boards and stuff, but not because I have an opinion on something but because the forums I'm a part of are roleplaying forums. Create a character and write them and it's like... telling a communal story in a way that we wouldn't have ever been able to do without the technology of the interwebs. I'm co-writing a story with people who live in Georgia and Kentucky and the Philippines, you know? It's just another (thingie) in which to get the idea across.

That's what I mean.

So, if you've read any of this and understood any of it, then great. And if not, then... yeah, that's ok too. I'm sure I'll comment on this later and realize none of this made any sense. But yay, welcome to my mind!