Meta 03: Introducing "Symbol"

    For anyone out there who has been reading my blog (besides myself, of course)¹ one unanswered question must still bother them: what the hell is this blog about? Unfortunately, the short answer is "me." Not only is this a terrible way to get people to read my blog (for one thing, it sounds really egotistical, if not extremely boring) but it's also not entirely true, or at the very least misleading. This blog serves mostly as a platform for me to formalize my thoughts on topics which interest me, and (when I made it public) open myself to possible criticism or additional points of fact. This does very little to cohere the themes of the blog, and now I am going to make the problem worse, by adding an additional theme: Symbol

    "Symbol" will consist of critiques of art, most often probably music and literature, since these are the art forms I know most about. If you recall, in a previous "Meta" post I described my use of "Symbolism" in making up my fundamental worldview as valuing the ability to make abstractions, and to use one particular abstraction - language - to communicate. It seems to me that language is not the only form of communication, that all or almost all forms of art express something, link to something, represent something or intentionally fail to be a representation.

    This greatly interests me; the experiencing of a piece of artistic work, the internalizing of its use of symbols and the expression of meaning inside the mind of the audience. Earlier in my life, I had intended on becoming a fiction writer. The more I learned of the craft, however, the more I felt I was not nearly well versed enough to contribute anything meaningful to the field. There is still a story I wish to write, however, and so I am glad for the opportunity to cut my critical chops on other works of art as I learn the tools of the trade from bits of articles that I've read.

    You can expect the following soon: an analysis of the song "Emily" by Joana Newsom, and the highly ambitious and controversial claim that in the "Legend of Zelda" video game series, "Majora's Mask" is a better work of interactive fiction than "Ocarina of Time."² Maybe talking about my generation's favorite game in such an unpopular way will generate some comments for me?


1: The empty set?
2: Some of you will not be surprised to hear that I've actually gotten into shouting matches with people about this topic!