12.01.10
FOUR
adam
fitzgerald
fitzgerald
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12.14.2010
GORGIAS, OR HOW TO WRITE
GORGIAS, OR HOW TO WRITE
We were born without anthems. Where our forebears converged in arenas, waving white flags, we listened passively.
One month before my fifth birthday, my historian mother forced me to watch CNN as Berlin's citizens destroyed a wall. Not all my peers had such a prescient tutor, but the moment molded our collective memory. As adolescents, we witnessed the collapse of Cold War systems in society and politics. But as war fermented, and a recession festered, we abandoned our duty to history. From a failing hegemony came contested campaigns, moral panic and auto-tune on the airwaves. It was a time of dangerous lullaby.
One month before my fifth birthday, my historian mother forced me to watch CNN as Berlin's citizens destroyed a wall. Not all my peers had such a prescient tutor, but the moment molded our collective memory. As adolescents, we witnessed the collapse of Cold War systems in society and politics. But as war fermented, and a recession festered, we abandoned our duty to history. From a failing hegemony came contested campaigns, moral panic and auto-tune on the airwaves. It was a time of dangerous lullaby.
Then, we connected. Online, we watched together as secret information begat public access. Fortnight Journal documents 14 nascent minds formed in the moment when free information burst open ancient constraints of lucky birth.
Like an anthem, this journal is structured on call and response. Fortnight looks to reconcile precedent and pedagogy to the outspoken tendency of the internet cohort. Each Quarter One contributor seeks humble initiation. Emerging talents—from artisans, to polymaths—they work in common pursuit of rigor and authenticity.
In a post-career world, they have instead elected vocations. Though variant in genre, origin and persuasion, each of our 14 ask to parse lasting value from passing trend. Uniquely, we are a collaborative bunch, but Fortnight is our formal overture for guidance. We are thus blessed that writer, performer and artist Patti Smith serves in this issue as our first luminary mentor.
An "anthem of a generation" too often implies burning self-concern; let us now reclaim a genre intended for tribute.
Yours,
Samantha Hinds
GORGIAS, OR HOW TO WRITE
Song: Live in Calgary, Alberta by Stars of the Lid
In part 4, "Gorgias, or How to Write," all the first, false starts of writing a prose poem are arranged with autobiographical objects (letters, ephemera, photographs). Inspired by the genre of composition instruction manuals, this section emphasizes language cleaved apart and together. At the limits between fiction and fact, how does one write a memoir of the imagination? Bibliographies, art catalogues, personal correspondence—does genre make a difference if all writing is persuasion; a form of rhetoric?
Keats: "We see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight. However, among the effects this breathing is father of, is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart and nature of man, of convincing one's nerves that the world is full of misery and heartbreak, pain, sickness, and oppression; whereby this Chamber of Maidenthought becomes gradually darkened, and at the same time, on all sides of it, many doors are set open - but all dark - all leading to dark passages. We see not the balance of good and evil; we are in a mist."
Full piece coming soon.
Full piece coming soon.
