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<\/a><\/p>\nDaisy, I say, it\u2019s time to put you in a blog post.<\/p>\n
Not likely, she says and starts to squeeze out of it.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t mind this. The whole point of the blog post is to see how Daisy gets out of it.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m just an experiment to you, she says, not an animal at all.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s try rhyme, I say, or sonnet or perhaps something more Heideggerian like being thrown into the kitchen.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re lucky I\u2019m not a cat, she says.<\/p>\n
Daisy hates cats.<\/p>\n
The cat that was put in a box was pretty cheesed off, she adds.\u00a0 Whipping about like a mad thing.\u00a0 It wouldn\u2019t tolerate this.<\/p>\n
A blog post is not a box, I say.<\/p>\n
Speak for yourself, she says.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
We are silent for a while as I try to think of a way to coax Daisy towards the blog.\u00a0 The trouble is that her eyes are full of the outside.\u00a0 That was Rilke\u2019s insight about the face of an animal: we know what is out there only from its gaze. That\u2019s the starting premise.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
Daisy, it seems, has become fixated on the cat.\u00a0 That Dear Reader chap, you like so much, she is saying, had a cat.\u00a0 An insistently real one.\u00a0 It unsettled him by padding about and following him into the bathroom.\u00a0 We can try that out, if you like, she says.\u00a0 Would you like to get undressed?<\/p>\n
She is getting cross now.\u00a0 Little by little, I find she is stepping onto the page.\u00a0 Is that how the outside comes in?<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
Hey Daisy! I say. Have you ever wondered what Shakespeare would sound like on a kazoo?\u00a0 Daisy raises an eyebrow.\u00a0 She is curious.\u00a0 So I pick up a kazoo (doesn\u2019t everyone own a kazoo?) and speak a few lines of Hamlet<\/em> into it.\u00a0 Famous lines. Lines everyone would know. That gets Daisy\u2019s attention. It turns out that Hamlet<\/em> on a kazoo sends her wild.\u00a0 It\u2019s not because of the words, she says. It\u2019s because they have been taken back to the borders of meaning. To be or not to be? is Hamlet\u2019s question \u2013\u00a0but on a kazoo it\u2019s a more pressing matter. To mean or not to mean? The suspense keeps me playing all afternoon.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n That\u2019s an example of a blog post.\u00a0 One animal at the mercy of language and one who is not.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n You are talking about the cat again, says Daisy. (She doesn\u2019t like to be tricked like this.) I wish it would just die, she adds matter-of-factly.<\/p>\n The whole point about the cat, I say, is that it is in two states at once.<\/p>\n Like your precious Literature, says Daisy.<\/p>\n Exactly, I say.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n We proceed like this.\u00a0 Daisy trots up and runs on (enjambement), brings me a rag (a text), jumps at her own farts (the ghosts of her desire) and props herself at the bar (well, Saussure\u2019s). We work our way through everything: images, shadows, beginnings, translation and interpretation, poetic feet and poetic fallacy, rhythms, excesses and lacks, machines and nature and wonder. What have we discovered?<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n You know, says Daisy, you remind me of one of your eighteenth-century friends: Very Stern. Didn\u2019t he give a macaroon to a mule just to see what it would do with it?<\/p>\n I\u2019m sorry about that, I say.<\/p>\n That\u2019s just what he said, she replies.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n I\u2019m glad Daisy has brought up the eighteenth century. I wasn\u2019t sure how to go about it. I muse upon its gruff critical spirit.\u00a0 Its experimentation. \u00a0It was a time when a writer could be a critic but (because of an enthusiasm for quotation) not a real critic, or a historian who (because of a talent for abridgement) was not a true historian or a novelist who (because of a love for borrowed plot lines) was not a true novelist.\u00a0 It was a time of writers who (because some Victorians did not think so) turned out not to be real writers.<\/p>\n I sum up these musings by saying: talking to a dog is not real critical work.<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s Daisy\u2019s turn to take pity. Her eyes are full of the force of somewhere else.<\/p>\n The only way to find out, she says, is to look in the blog.<\/p>\n We tiptoe up to it.\u00a0 Prepare to take a look.<\/p>\n Wait, she says all of a sudden. (Or was it woof<\/em>?) Best stop here, she says.<\/p>\n __________<\/p>\n Note<\/em><\/p>\n The cause of this commotion is the blog antiphysis.com,<\/a> on which a new post can be found from time to time. Even though a link to the blog has been provided, there is perhaps more to be gained by not<\/em> clicking on it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Richard Jones, Lecturer in English Literature Daisy, I say, it\u2019s time to put you in a blog post. Not likely, she says and starts to squeeze out of it. I don\u2019t mind this. The whole point of the blog post … Continue reading