Why I am narrow.

[Alan Sondheim]

Why I am narrow.

I am narrow, minded; it is difficult to follow any stream, much less any
particular stream, of thought. On an analog/digital forum I have been
reading, there was already a worry expressed, take the division and run
with it as if something were being said/done. It's on the edge/verge of
nonsense. To be strict with oneself is to mine the sememe, abandon it in
large part. What's left is practically non-existent. For example, issues
of raster: increase the digital raster to the infinitely, small and create
an identity map - that seems simple enough. But then quantum effects come
into play - in fact the wave equation collapse enters here as well. Back
out and try the other - the digital to the infinitely large. Then one has
monotheism, totality. Try from the analog side - nothing occurs. Surely
one integrates the digital to arrive at the analogic, but to begin with
the analogic? To differentiate it? This might map, but then there is still
the question of the raster. The raster? The question of the wave equation
again. Try the abacus. Base 1: counting, enumeration, matching one-to-one.
Base infinite: each number a symbol, memorization of ideograms (English
spelling, kanji). But given infinite memory in the latter, zero memory in
the former, they are both procedural; it's just that in the latter,
nothing carries.

This goes on and on. So far so good, these are abacuses, objects counted,
not too much out of line. If metaphor's involved, it's indexical. But then
perhaps I bring in libido (Dionysian, analogic) and superego (Apollonian,
digital), and I'm off and running. Before long I'm tied in Lacan's knots,
a slippage that's always productive - how can it knot be? Language begins
to curl, everything proceeds with a poetics of the real, and I'm lost, I'm
lost...