The beginning of the end of the beginning.

I thought I should post something about the processes of writing since it is the URL for this blog. This blog was a project for my rhetoric class, but I wanted to keep it going, keep it as a journal for the things I may learn as I continue to be an English major and work at the writing center at FIU. So, here are the things I learned from my Major Carribean author's class. Use concrete, simple language. Don't be intimidated by the people who use words that are 18 letters long (they're probably using it wrong). Over use of big words can disingage your audience from your message at hand. Remember, it's a lot less scary than you imagine it to be.

The process of finding a thesis for my final rhetoric paper part I.

I usually use my facebook as means of storing random info I find on the web as well as share it with my "friends" so I can get a reaction out of them and maybe inform them about something I like. . .
So basically, I use my Facebook for self-centered, boring, here-are-my-thoughts reasons.
BUT, I was talking to my friend Lo yesterday, and we decided that hey, I spend half my time in the U.S. watching U.S. news, and the other half in Europe watching news from all over the World. I'm in a position where I can share different news perspectives with my friends. So why don't I do it!

And so yeah, this just furthered my thesis thinking process as I attempt to come up with . . . a thesis for my rhetoric final paper.

End of useless blog entry.

Rhetoric, the art of b***s***.

Let's be honest here, we've all thought it, we've all been waiting for it, it's been in the back of our minds for a long time, but we haven't said anything because it seemed rather stupid and obvious. Rhetoric is the art of fanciful lying! No, no one else was thinking it? It was just me? Okay, so it's just me that thought rhetoric was the art of manipulation, lying and deception? A two faced coin? A double edged sword? A multi-sided dice? A mirror in a mirror in an . . . ash tray?
Rhetoric is misunderstood. Like that creepy dog that sits on the curb down your block, and who actually turns out to be really sweet and loving. I think, perhaps, the key to this misunderstanding lies in the verb "to persuade". One of thefreedictionary.com's definitions for persuasions was "to cause to believe," and sometimes, it happens that when people of situations where you have cause to make someone believe something, meaning to re-invent reality, is in lying and manipulating.
Rhetoric, as Dr. Martin Jacobi states in the video "In Defense of Rhetoric", is epistemic, meaning it creates reality. But not in the way you're thinking (i.e. a magical way. I know, it would be cool, but it ain't happening.) It may not create a wall, for instance, but it might create the perception, understanding and way in which you view that wall.
Okay, that still sounds like manipulation. You're manipulating my perception of the wall to make me see your perception of it and blah blah blah. Listen, yes, it still sounds like it. But there is this fine line rhetoric threads on, and that fine line divides manipulation, from persuasion, from opinions, from competitive sources of knowledge. At the end of the day, there is nothing that I, for instance, can make you do that you don't want to do, or think, or say.
Cool transition.
A rhetor has a message, alright? You're a rhetor, I'm a rhetor, the toothpaste on isle 4 that wants to be bought is a rhetor, your dog that really, really wants to pee is a rhetor. All these things have something in common, and that thing is their possession of a message. And they want to share that message. But, many of us find barriers between our messages and audiences. Rhetoric is the sledge hammer that breaks that barrier. Rhetoric can't promise to persuade your audience, it can't promise to make people follow your every word, but it can safely and clearly deliver that message from one side of the wall to the other. To your audience. It can help you be understood. As someone quotes in the video "In Defense of Rhetoric",  rhetoric is "an academic discipline in the modern day University. To create and assess messages clearly."
More fun quotes:

"Rhetoric is the science which refreshes the hungry, renders the mute articulate, makes the blind see, and teaches one to avoid every lingual ineptitude." - Anonymous.

Continuing on . . .

What people don't know is that they use rhetoric everyday, almost all the time, for a variety of reasons.
God, what a paranoid World. Has the definition of rhetoric become too broad, just like in art? Anything is art, anything is rhetoric. Everything is everything. Anything is anything. Rhetoric is a huge part of our society, our culture and therefore, our lives. It's everywhere: on book covers, on the TV, your computer, stickers, ads, hanging off your friend's lips, in the cyber world we call the internet . . .

Speaking of . . .

 In the confusion and war between the real world and the cyber world, who are we really? Who is our audience? Does it even matter anymore? Of course it does, it's just our purpose has shifted, and so has our audience.
But that's the thing, our audience has become everybody and nobody at the same time. It's as though the liberty to express ourselves publicly has given us this illusion that we are doing something private with the possibility that someone else is watching. It's a bit like that sexual fetish people have where they have sex in public places or masturbate with the blinds open; they want to leave that window of opportunity for having an audience look into to something private about themselves. A taboo spread out into the public unknown.
The internet's rhetoric is like an organized mess of people throwing signs at each other and hoping someone will catch them.

A semester of rhetoric and I still don't know how to do rhetoric, how to express myself clearly.
Ethos, pathos, logos, stasis theory, kairos. People will tell you there's a right time, and a right place for the right thing at the right moment, and some others will tell you there's a b***s*** excuse not to do something and to put it off and delude yourself into waiting for "kairos, the right moment in time and space." But I say, there's the people who just sit by with the right ethos, and the right pathos, and the right logos and they watch kairos waddle on by. Then there's those who just get up, put it all in a neat, fine line, and boom, kairos. Boom, rhetoric at it's finest. No more b***s***.

Kairos in Love?

From the artist wimpydrawings
http://wimpydrawings.com/post/13585537692/something-special-happens-when-the-timing-is

Kairos, Science, and the right moment.

Rhetoric is about making plans. Plans need a time frame. A plan is divided into individual time frames within a bigger time frame.

Putting that aside to open a short parenthesis, if we look at the creation of our planet through scientific eyes, it will become apparent that the Earth, out of all eight planets in our Solar system (sorry Pluto), has a perfect balance to sustain life. Let’s look at a simple example for the sake of time and remaining on topic: Mercury is too close to the Sun, and Neptune is too far from the Sun. And the Earth, well, Earth was in the right place, at the right time for life to flourish on its surface.

Coming back to rhetoric, writing, advertisement, speeches, the media, all those things need to occur at the right time, in the right place with the right message to create something, anything. That’s what Kairos is; the in-betweens of those individual time frames within a bigger time frame of making plans in rhetoric.

Kairos, more than Stasis, made me rethink my rhetorical analysis piece on Speed Levitch’s monologue in “Waking Life” and made me question whether the movie, with its messages on existentialism, consciousness, reality, and free will, occurred at a kairotic moment. Was the message heard? Was it heard by its intended audience? Who was the intended audience? Why was the film released in 2001? What seemed so right during that time to release such a film? Was the message the “right” message for those times? How about now?

If anything, Kairos, through all these questions I will have to answer through Stasis like research, refocused my rhetorical analysis. I don’t know, I think I see a thesis in the making.

Speed Levitch on Existentialism in “Waking Life.”

                                    

In his monologue, Speed Levitch emphasizes the importance to live life in the moment without hindering oneself with the past or hardships through ethos; quoting famous writers, poets, and artists to emphasize his point, pathos; Speed Levitch uses passionate language to engage the audience, and logos; sharing philosophical ideas. The movie itself deals with very philosophical subjects on dreaming, existentialism, consciousness, love, etc. . . .  And there seems to be a need to express the confusion and haziness those subjects bring to mind (for instance, the usage of rotoscoped animation) while still wanting to be taken seriously (for instance, using scientists, or acclaimed thinkers to speak in the movie.)

Speed Levitch is engaging because of his voice, vocabulary and sentence structure. He has a passion for what he is speaking of, “the ongoing wow” that is life, and a desire to share with the audience and teach. If one is a listening audience, meaning if the audience is watching the clip, his passion can be detected through the enthusiasm in the tone of his voice and one can observe the grand gestures and exaggerated facial expressions he makes. But, if the audience is reading the monologue, the passion is not lost. Speed Levitch uses words such as “dream,” “wow,” “exuberance,” “exciting,” “flabbergasted,” “vitality,” etc. . .  which can all be considered to be synonymous with passion and awe. Through this, he is luring the audience to feel exactly how he wants them to feel about life, how he says he feels about life “[a]nd on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.” To live in an “ongoing wow.”

Federico Garcia Lorca based speech in the movie "Waking Life."

Recently, I was given as an assignment by my Rhetoric teacher to pick a piece of writing/video/lyrics/song to rhetorically analyze. As he later mentioned in class, we were going to rhetorically inception our chosen piece. And what he meant by that was this: an advertisement, comic strip, piece of writing, video and other elements of popular culture are rhetorical. And here we are, a group of college students, analyzing rhetorically the rhetoric of a rhetorical piece. On rhetoric using rhetoric right?
Anyways, "Waking Life," a mainly existential and scientific based movie has Speed Levitch take from Frederico Garcia Lorca's poem: "City Does Not Sleep." The aforementioned speech is the one I choose to analyze.

“On this bridge,” Lorca warns, “Life is not a dream. Beware. And beware. And beware.” And so many think because Then happened, Now isn’t. But didn’t I mention the ongoing “wow” is happening right now? We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance where even our inabilities are having a roast. We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel, starring clowns. This entire thing we’re involved with called the world, is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be. Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments, flabbergasted to be in each other’s presence. The world is an exam to see if we can rise into direct experience. Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it. Matter is here as a test for our curiosity. Doubt is here as an exam for our vitality. Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write 100 stories. Giacometti was once run down by a car, and he recalled falling into a lucid faint, a sudden exhilaration, as he realized that at last something was happening to him. An assumption develops that you cannot understand life and live life simultaneously. I do not agree entirely. Which is to say I do not exactly disagree. I would say that life understood is life lived. But the paradoxes bug me, and I can learn to love and make love to the paradoxes that bug me. And on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion. Before you drift off, don’t forget. Which is to say, remember. Because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting. Lorca, in that same poem said that the iguana will bite those who do not dream. And as one realizes that one is a dream figure in another person’s dream, that is self awareness.