something like intertextuality on the loose

[iceinyourmusic]

Annoyed: my overwhelming tendency to copy other people in my writing (and speech), consciously and unconsciously and somewhere in between. I steal your speech patterns and wear them out with constant repetition and misuse. I feedback about your fic in a style that is a vague mockery of that of the story, and when I answer your email, I’ll be trying to adapt my language to yours. And all the time, all over, I quote you without ever knowing it.

And when I don’t, I think I might: especially in foreign languages, I sometimes have the creeping (creepy) awareness that every single phrase I utter is just a collection of bits and pieces parroted, parroted, not mine. Not mine. Remembering this always annoys me,

I said and casually observed the office. A spot of coffee had yet again formed on the table under the nozzle of the thermos, and as I moved, determined to absorb it into a paper towel, I briefly entertained the thought that my interest in the spot might be developing into an obsession, eventually making me wholly unable to pass the kitchen without checking for coffee stains. This idea felt oddly satisfying, the experience accentuated by the sight of the brown liquid smoothly transferring into the cloth and leaving the desktop white and sanitary again. Then I snapped out of the image before it drowned me entirely. You learn to do that in my line of work: I’m a girl slacker. (It’s a tough job and someone’s gotta do it.) My place isn’t in the best parts of the town, but it’ll do: I keep it messy and it keeps me uncomfortable.

Status: all alone but for a liberated plastic frog.
His name is Oscar, and he’s my best friend ever.
Together, we fight alien invaders.

And you, lady – put down the coffee pot and step away from it.

- -
Also, I wrote: I’m so dull and dumb these days (years?), brain still full of feather. And strangely starving, pseudo-intellectually: I’m craving for snobbery, for gratuitous quoting of Foucault and Derrida, I want quasi-academic pissing-contests, loan-words and discussions that none of the participants really understand, all the things I can’t do it myself, feather-brained, dumb and dull, but I want to watch... Then it suddenly occurred to me that I haven’t received a single issue of the local magazine for the young, literate and pretentious trying to outwank each other since January (and that I haven’t really missed it at all). My god. No wonder the world seems out of place. (I called them.)

Comments

[unwinding.livejournal.com]

mä rakastan sinua!
mä osaan suomea mutta mä en ymmärrä suomea.

certainly, i wouldn't know where to begin talking about foucault and derrida in finnish. don't sell yourself short.

because some of the greatest people in history have become obsessed with coffee stains.

but seriously, i think it might be love.
because, you know, when people would stare at my fumbling through lame arse attempts at speaking finnish, i'd finally just stare at them and say, "ilman jäitä, kiitos."
(the first thing i learnt in class....)

[unwinding.livejournal.com]

and when i say, 'don't sell yourself short', i don't mean that in the fucking condescending way it sounds. i just, you know, i tried to write this whole thing in finnish & was too paranoid that i'd fuck it up. is what i'm saying. the ability to slip through languages is a fucking beautiful, poetic thing. which may be completely separate from any slightly stalker-ish qualities you're talking about. (!!ha!!)
so, you know, what the fuck am i saying?

tired, now.

xx

[leksa.livejournal.com]

I'm sound stalker-ish again? mwahahaha.

(Really, though, I wasn't, really - selling myself short - it's more about the influence anxiety and the fear of loss of indentity - I think - but, yes: definitely: "Ilman jäitä, kiitos." - that's exactly what I mean, I'm pretty sure, only put in a far more concrete way... You Finnish-speaker, you!)

[teanna.livejournal.com]

Woman, I love you, so much. I won't talk Derrida because I'm a fre agent, I am not academia's slave no more, haha! but I will talk Elijah (age 21) and Daniel (age 13) with you, and say, and say this is our time, and yes.

[leksa.livejournal.com]

And you know I love you right back, mah dear urpser.

[teanna.livejournal.com]

baah!

Anyway, I'm off to work, but but BBC is killing me (esp. radio four) See, Queen Lizzie seems to have told Diana's butler:

"There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge."

*crazed laughter* she's a nutcase too! Ta-da, London Bridge is falling down, fa-aling dooown!

[leksa.livejournal.com]

"There are powers at work in this country about which we have no knowledge."

Oh gawd I so needed to know that now. Whee!

[babylil.livejournal.com]

God bless the Queen.

I love my country so much ::sigh::