Author Archives: jack mosher

Bring out the tin foil hats and slap on your anti 5g necklaces the government is up to something FUNKY

Join us as we dive into the deep and seedy world of the tumultuous Bucharest.

My question is, what was your experience of confusion and disorientation reading the book? how do you think it added or subtracted to the story

war from the ground floor

A wonderful little vlog convo for a rainy Sunday (Tuesday) night. Enjoy! Merci!

Apologies for the poor video quality, zoom kinda blows.

 

 

My question for viewers is what do you think of the ending of the book and Natalia’s view of her life and the apparent shift in her feelings? did you find it to be more of a melancholy or a happy ending?

Proust and his love of kisses

I found myself getting easily away from the page when reading this, something about the verbiage of Proust would lose me every so often. I think that it’s because he would tend to go on precise tangents that were longer and more winding than I was used to which made it trickier for me to read, however, I did for the most part enjoy the reading. I don’t think that I’ve ever read a boo here the narrator was a child recounting their memories in this way and that allowed Proust to bring bourgeois French society to the page in a defamiliarized way. Instead of reading about a family drama where we sit within the family, the narration from a child’s perspective allows us to inhabit a pseudo fly on the wall. Not only do we experience the intricacies of the family through the child narrator but we also experience the thoughts of the child pre-repression. This allows the reader to examine scenarios, for example, the families’ obsession with class and their relation to M. Swan through both our adult lens and the child’s lens. Sometimes this proves to be a bit frustrating, for example when Swan is over for dinner I would’ve been interested in hearing what he was discussing with the family but the narrator was barred from the conversation and far more focused on getting his goodnight kiss from his mother. I also found it quite interesting that Proust would include such detail about his love for his mother, it makes me wonder about the timeline of Freud’s theories compared to when Proust was writing this novel and if he engaged with any of Freud’s theories at the time. It’s also interesting that this love and desire is such a large focus for Proust, choosing to finish the novel with a mention of again his mother’s kiss; on page 185, he talks about “which no mistress has been able to give me since that time because one doubts them even at the moment one believes in them, and can never possess their hearts as I received in a is my mother’s heart.” The strange personality quirks are carried from character to character and the narrator allows a unique perspective on this again because of the position of the child as someone who is not really listening or they can be here and listen because they’re just a child. I think my favourite quirk of the characters is Francoise who has an apathetic attitude towards human suffering but when faced with it in an immaterial way gets thrown into emotional turmoil. Overall I’d say it was an interesting read that I struggled to fully grasp at times but one that made me connect with my inner little child again.

My discussion question is about memory and how much you think of the story is tangible memory and how much was it embellished/made up

Introduction blog

Hello! My name’s Jack I’m a fourth year student studying theatre design. I’m a theatre lighting and set designer, which means that I design the objects on stages or choose how they’re lit, this extends to not just theatre but also opera, dance, and live music. I am also a theatre director and enjoy taking what I’ve learned from classes outside theatre and bringing them into my practice. I’m originally from Edmonton, and back home I have three dogs, Tucker, Lucy and Linus. I enjoy listening to podcasts like Truanon and listening to music, some of my favourite artists are Injury Reserve, Anna Von Hausswolff, Viagra Boys and Billy Woods. I enjoy telling little white lies at parties and talking with the elderly.

I am excited to dig into the material this semester, I’ve always wanted to be a better reader and someone who’s more well-read so I am looking forward to taking steps towards achieving that goal. I am really excited to dig into some more of the texts that dig into the idea of family and the complexities that surround it, some of my favourite theatre texts revolve around family dramas and the internal politics associated. I am also looking forward to reading more post-colonial texts, a lot of media and previous literature that I have enjoyed touches on what post-colonialism looks like and how we can move towards a more progressive future. I am expecting lots of late reading nights and lots of rereading

Speaking of post-colonial, one of the topics in the brotherly conversation that caught my ear was the discussion of a second wave of bastardization of language as a result of colonial means. I think it’s quite interesting and I’m excited to explore how language has evolved in this new manner, hopefully through this study, I can also discover more about the bastardization of the Latin languages into what we have today. It also makes me think about in what ways has language been turned back onto itself as a form of resistance to imperial powers.  Another interesting topic to me was the focus on the language part of the literature, in my background as a theatre artist the syntactic elements usually take the forefront of analysis instead of the words themselves. I think this ties nicely back with the spreading of language through empire, through digging through the language side of the literature I hope that it will deepen my understanding of the history of these locations.