Stop - Drop - Kaboom: Clarity Unfolded

I have been fortunate enough over the past six months to  have enjoyed an interesting experience, similar to the literary work by Professor Robert Burton in Artists of the Floating World. This experience has been a floating experience for me, as I am in between two places in my life, but not in any hurry at all.

This year in my life has been my ‘year off,’ in between my undergraduate education and my law school education. This year in my life has given me much to learn about and taught me many lessons on life. The other day my roommates and I decided to go ahead and float down the Sacramento river, something we have been eager to do since our move up to this small college town of Chico, California.

One important idea that I have come to accept is the importance of perception. Although action is definite in this lucid world, the understanding that the way someone may see an action differently is quintessential in analyzing a realm as complex and misunderstood as culture. This semester I have been in a different position than I have been in my past, as I am no longer a full time student, but instead I am in the workforce, with my foot still stuck in the academic doorway. Within a larger stream of cultures there are spheres of variance, spheres that direct who we are, or what our interests are and how each individual fits into the larger system of communities. Burton’s idea is borrowed from the scientific, physical meaning buoyancy and suspension between two or more states of being” (Burton 10), this reasoning parallels my livelihood here in Chico, staying afloat waiting to hear back from law schools across the country, while finishing up classes that I should have wrapped up last year.

This semester we have read a mix of varied authors from across cultural borders. In order to create a relationship between the novels I believe utilizing Samuel Huntingtons’ Clash of Civilizations. This paper was written in the mid nineties, calculating that the future of warfare will no longer be between national borders, but instead trouble will rise out of the clash of cultures. I have read and studied Huntington’s work and am intrigued by at as I feel it is grounded in an understanding of reality. Huntington is perceptive of reality and how the world has come to interact between cultures, which is a great canvas to paint on. Two novels in specific give greater clarity to the ideology of Professor Burton, one focusing on the importance of a narrative, and the other questioning the need for framing.

In Kazuo Ishiguru’s novel, An Artists of the Floating World, we are introduced into the mind and culture of Masuji Ono, an artist whose memory has been splattered by the onslaught of World War II. Ono faces realities that have slipped by him for years, learning to cope with who he truly is, in a world shaped by perception. This novel investigates the need for narrative in our lives. As our protagonist Ono is seemingly one dimensional at times, self centered and flat, he stretches his reality to where he would like it to be instead of being analytical of himself. Ono commanding his tone over the thoughts of others has impacted the question of our need for narrative, as this novel is interestingly written, escaping linear reality as much as possible. Ono has the surprisingly strong ability to bond with others when he feels the need, which in effect helps create his narrative even more so as he would say “if an artist refuses to sacrifice quality for the sake of speed, then that’s something we should all respect. You’ve become fools if you cant see that” (Ishiguro 68-9). Ono does concede the point that his memory has slipped, but always tends to place himself in the whitest of lights.

In approaching each novel, we are carried with the evils of the ‘love it or leave it’ regiment. In reading both the Ishiguro and Bessie Head novels (amongst others), the need for a paradigm shift is clear. There is an obvious middle ground that we should be able to find ourselves at, accepting the benefits of cultural identity and exploring the realism engulfed in it. Ishiguro’s idea of a floating world is across space and time, from the perspective of an interesting character to the backlash of actions remembered. In a different light Bessie Head, author of A Question of Power has placed a lens over the need for framing.

Framing is the way in which we position ourselves within a greater context of reality. For Bessie Head this was not an easy thing to do, as she suffered from mental illness and her ill conceived autobiography of Elizabeth is choppy and a bit painful. The story of Elizabeth as a lost soul in a reality based on identity, and understanding oneself is an introverted assessment of cultural conditioning. The now infamous line of Head that [she] has always been just me, with no frame of reference to anything beyond myself” (Head 3) has made clear that there is no longer a need for establishing where one rests as compared to the rest of the world. Head, like anyone else in her position is “forced her to exist in the middle of nowhere, between nothing and nothing” (125), a place where most are fearful to take flight, but Bessie Head had learned to excel. Heads ability. Heads ability to dissolve relationships into that of power relationships, the dichotomy between self and other has allowed her to find her niche in the literary world, creating a voice rarely extracted from the mainstream, as she “floated slowly back to everyday reality on this huge tidal wave of peace” (54). With Bessie Head I feel like the pull for a ‘love it or leave it’ reaction is unwarranted, as it is hinged on all or noting idea, very different from the Head ideology. Head is able to mesh with the situations she is put in, and able to smoothly adjust her living within harsh realities.

All in all, the world as a commune of cultural civilizations carries a different sense of warnings than that of national independence. The fear that is estranged by cultural relativism bears weight on all people and cultures differently, some are accepting, and some are alienated. Through these two novels we are able to pull apart some specifically atypical scenarios. Bessie Head and Kazuo Ishiguro are authors that have displaced this autonomous world with a stiff drink of reality. On that note, as I am coming to the end of my buoyant year here in Chico, I too must expose realities and not be fearful of the unknown or the misunderstood, as there is sometimes clarity in what we understand to be unclear.