{"id":6080,"date":"2014-10-07T21:49:36","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T20:49:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/?p=6080"},"modified":"2014-10-07T21:49:36","modified_gmt":"2014-10-07T20:49:36","slug":"untitled-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/2014\/10\/untitled-post.html","title":{"rendered":"[untitled post]"},"content":{"rendered":"

They sent their sonnets off to a newspaper, which printed both. The honest Smith called his “On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below.” Shelley called his “Ozymandias.” Genius may also be knowing how to title a poem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

— Guy Davenport<\/p>\n

I am learning to accept that titles are as important as I have always wanted them to be. It seemed like an easy distraction, that one could dream up titles all day for works that would never be started, let alone finished; that a mediocre work could be elevated to the illusion of greatness by a few choice words to flatter the audience’s sensibilities. How many works of art exist as little more than armatures for the finer feelings expressed in the title?<\/p>\n

“I thought it would be a waste to condemn it to such anonymity,” said Krzysztof Penderecki of his work originally titled 8’37”<\/em><\/a>. Some works can find a match in subject and surface; others can’t bear the weight of expectations<\/a> the title imposes upon them. The title finds its purest expression in John Barton Wolgamot’s trilogy<\/a>: the titles are the Substance which live through the text’s Accident (thus beating Alain Robbe-Grillet by at least 20 years). <\/p>\n

For years I laboured under the illusion that disregarding the frippery of the title for the real meat of the work itself was a sign of maturity. It’s a simplistic position. A few years back I heard Helmut Lachenmann praising Morton Feldman’s use of titles and I’ve been reconsidering ever since. <\/p>\n

A while ago I finally got to hear Apartment House play Harley Gaber’s masterpiece The Winds Rise in the North<\/a><\/em> live. Afterwards I kept thinking, “what a great title.” The string quintet keens and sighs for two hours, always changing but never deviating from what it first presents itself to be. The title’s a reference to ancient Chinese poetry and Taoism, which invokes a whole other realm of associations, but throughout it all is the evocation of wind, wind as a portent. It may rise to a murmur or a roar, either of which may be imagined at any point in Gaber’s music. A merging of subject and substance, between categories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They sent their sonnets off to a newspaper, which printed both. The honest Smith called his “On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below.” Shelley called his “Ozymandias.” Genius may also be knowing how to title a poem. — Guy Davenport I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6080"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6080"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6087,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6080\/revisions\/6087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cookylamoo.com\/boringlikeadrill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}