Saturday, April 03, 2004

We Are All Poets, or Explanations For Icelander Belief In Elves Which, Considering The Isolation Americans Experienced In The Me Deacde Of The Seventies, And The Resultant Oversensitive Social Postmodernism Of The Eighties And Nineties, Might Also Explain Why We Create Cybercommunities

"Icelanders were frequently all alone in the wilderness, with no blossom-heavy branches concealing countless magical fairies. The spaces yawn open, wide, and disconnected. And it is our nature to connect, to create for ourselves a fully formed community where none exists. We are hardwired for it. As Theseus says:

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."

[From Hidden People, in David Rakoff's marvelous essay collection Fraud.]

posted by boyhowdy | 12:38 PM |

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