fractured semiotic fields

today is resonance’s last day at the 3 pm timeslot. what a crazy timeslot for a radio show. it didn’t seem so crazy when i was briefly unemployed, but now that i work 9 – 5 .. it puts a dagger in the middle of my friday. i like working full time. i like having a good flow to my work, being able to concentrate on something for a full day. that’s when things get accomplished.
last night i was reading the post colonial critic, barely understanding any of it. my first impulse was to just drop the book, but i read a good 9 pages of it (a full chapter in that book) and began to understand some things, despite not understanding the first 7 pages that i had read. what the !@#$ are fractured semiotic fields?!
by the end, i had figured it didn’t matter. and i guess it doesn’t. i have lived this long in life without knowing what fractured semiotic fields are. perhaps i am ignorant.
still, it was interesting to read something i didn’t understand at all. it was humbling, even though i would question the importance of the words that were said. okay. i just looked up what semiotic means.
this is a word that most people don’t use. in the scholarly world i would assume it is tossed around quite a bit, as they suggest in this book.
anthropology has always interested me. for a long while i thought it would be something i would like to take at university. last night i decided i could probably get some good books on it and learn a bunch on my own. i was talking about self-teaching with donna the other night and how it has worked out for each of us. i have taught and learned a lot from myself. maybe i’ll do that.
part of the block i have with reading is not understanding every bit that the author is writing. so, i find myself re-reading paragraphs, wondering what just happened. i think what i must do in order to read books is understand that i wont understand everything that the author is writing; not all writers are great writers, and more importantly, not every writer is compatible with every reader. if i can follow along for the most part and get a feel for the context, i’ll have a better chance of filling in the blanks, which is something i never thought i would have to do with reading.
my turntables need tuning up.

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3 Comments

  1. yeah, try reading some philosophy texts sometime:). Those guys seem to try and use language that makes it hard to understand what they are saying. I always find myself re-reading almost every paragraph many times and even after reading the entire article, or book a couple times over, it can still take time and thought for me to grasp what the author was getting at. Of course, I’ve always read non-fiction. in fact, I hadn’t read any fiction untill I was forced too in an english class in grade 9. The book was called the Chrysalides and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Thus started my short period of reading fiction. Now, however, I’m finding myself worried I won’t be able to read all that I want to, as I have other interests in my life and can’t always take the time nescessary to finish a book. The phenomenon of not understanding things while you read is something that we all go through and you just have to understand that even if you don’t comprehend it while you read it, you will start to make sense of it as you move through the text. Books are much different than video, pictures, or diolouge, in the sense that in these mediums it’s possible to convey information in a much more condensed form, or you may even have the ability to ask for clarification on a topic if the person is available. Part of the fun is discovering the meaning of what you read, not only in terms of what the writer intended, but more importantly, in a very personal sense.
    oh, and how do you tune turntables:) because if you can, undboutably mine need it, having traveled many miles from florida to get to me:) what mine do need are new target lights and one needs a new pitch slider, since when I get to around +6% it goes all wobbly… gonna have to get myself a souldering iron heh.
    a little long? I think so:)

  2. I can lend you some great anthro texts if you want. I’ve kept every single one I ever bought in school.
    peace~

  3. I found reading and comprehending/remembering what you have just read are two different things. What can help is taking short notes as you read so you can go back at the end of the reading session to recap…. it’s easier to digest, at least for me. If I didnt do that, I would sit there wondering what it was I had just read.

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