Will’s poem got me to thinking about the nature of memory, and how when we are trying to recall something, we are in an almost thought-less mode of being as we try to access information buried somewhere in our grey matter.

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OUTTAKE

TRUTH

Photo by Paul Carlon - www.mynameispaul.com

Much like with the consumption of meat, there was a time in the history of markets and exchange when marketing and advertising were not only important but necessary for maintained health of the economy; that time has clearly passed.  In a time when distances were real, that is to say accompanied by time, the dissemination of product information was limited by the spatial exposure of the market.  The growth of specialization and international trade lead to a distancing of the consumer from the point of production of goods. Marketing at its best was a form of education, an aid to the consumer who became increasingly unable to “see for themselves” the quality and contents of those things that they were buying.  Marketing was an aid to the consumer, a nourishment, an enabler of informed decision making.  Marketing hastened product knowledge.

Today the informational landscape of the market is wildly different, and by necessity the form of the market itself has changed dramatically, one might even argue that it has disappeared.  In this new arena, the need for marketing, understood in the terms which it was conceived, is increasingly convoluted; however, paradoxically, its prevalence has only increased.  This is because the myth of modern advertising still adheres to the antiquated form taken upon its inception. The spaces that we explore both digitally and physically are increasingly encroached upon by advertisements. This change was gradual, and we grew tolerant before we had a definitive opportunity to choose.   The ends of advertising remain comparable, the facilitated buying and selling of goods and services, yet the means have changed.   The information we receive today is highly processed and abstracted from the essence of the good or service; we passively consume such information and are left feeling empty and unsatisfied, and therefore we agree to take more, and more.  Sites, both physical and digital, perceived to be public are now clogged with banner and billboard or worse.

It is true that meat was once an important part of a nutritious diet, yet today the system has dramatically reconceived and repackaged a different product under the same name yet at a greater distance.  The new product is not only devoid of substance but also detrimental to our health.  Such is the case of marketing in the economy.  Just as contemporary meat is no longer food, marketing is no longer information, and both are machines for the gluttonous slow demise of their consumers.  Marketing no longer provides for a healthy economy, it subverts it in ways we have yet to see.  What we could use are more vegetarians.

Often, and too often, I see a mathematical equation is exposed awkwardly and nakedly out of context, that is to say in the place of language.  Such equations, composed of annotated variables, or worse, word themselves, might appear amidst a discussion of important abstract concepts.  Take the following example which I recently saw: “Belonging + friendship + romantic attraction = Love”.  Nobody has trouble “reading” the intended meaning of the structured equation.  The concept, in this case “Love”, is a multifaceted concept composed of several necessary elements.  We understand the symbols of math and because we know their absolute nature we then extrapolate, forcedly and unexpected, the meanings of the factors, and we then take the outcome, or sum in this case to be necessarily true.  We read the equation like a sentence which is the critical error.  We unknowingly “concretize” the abstraction without the appropriately primed ability to do so and therefore we frame the thoughts and concepts imbedded in the abstractions in a prescriptive, simplified manner, as opposed to a descriptive, complex manner.  To appropriately concretize the concepts holistically in an equation as such would only be appropriate if the we assume that the reader has full knowledge and understanding of the entirety of the abstraction prior to encountering the equation,  and therefore the writing of said equation would be redundant and demeaning.  The use of language however allows for the subtle evocation of the nature of abstractions in a way which is descriptive not prescriptive like math.

Cities are often contrasted with other places of inhabitants by discussions of speed and rapidity.  People move quickly and talk fast.  Buildings go up and come down.  Neighborhoods flip residents.  Populations grow, disperse, and diminish in matters of years.  To Speak of change in the city is indeed a cliché. The city is a place of transience, of movement.  A plane passes, a train passes, a car passes, a stranger passes, whether or not on choose to stand still or not.  In many cities a river passes, and the city itself sits more like an eddy.  It is a point, for certain, a phenomenon, yet no matter how forceful or focused the motion, the eddy it is never as solid or as real as the land it flows over or the rocks that divide its waters downstream, such is the nature of the city. City dwellers might return to a more rural setting they once knew – perhaps in their childhood – and be taken back by the sameness of that place.  When returning to the city one is hard pressed to find the same sentiment for the city as whole. One may concede that a building or a person remains unchanged, yet the city could never. This nature which I find to be true in all the cities which I have known and known again begs the appropriateness of the term place in any discussion of the city a whole.  With the myth of place is crucial to define terms as well as scale, yet on those definitions of place which I will soon dedicated this investigation I find the city to be undeniably deficient.  By clarifying the definitions of such rhetorics, the ontological discourse of urban issues might be more appropriately addressed.