Jamie Antonisse

Part 1: Pick 3 objects

a) Something significant from your childhood, something important to you - a toy, a talisman a momento.

A shark's tooth necklace, given to me by a kid named Grant Sabean when I was a third grade teacher.

b) An inspiration - a quote, a song, a book, a lyric, a piece of art, an experience, a philosopher, a scientist, just ONE.

Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saint's album is what I brought in. But what I MEANT was 45 seconds in the song Cool River. Which all sounds quite ridiculous, even for those who don't mind Paul Simon. Cool River is, for it's first three minutes, a rambling sketch in an aggravating time signature. But at this one moment, it all comes together, and Paul Simon asks one question and answers another:

Who says "Hard times, I'm used to them
A speeding planet burns, I'm used to that
My life is so common it disappears

And sometimes even music
Is no substitute for tears"

That's just one of those moments for me.

c) Something you've done or pursued on your own initiative (scholarly or otherwise) that is deeply interesting/satisfying to you.

For some reason I dug up Asheby's Book of Superlative Claims for this... it's an incomplete short story collection I was working on from 2005-2006. Pieces of it are out there on the internets, but the entirety, in sequence, is still a long way off. I've had a blissful amnesia about this project... flipping through it was like reading letters from an ex-girlfriend. Except we never broke up, she just started visiting less frequently, first weekly, then monthly, then once a year... and I no longer expect her, but I can't bring myself to say she'll never be back.

From here on out, these complicated Things will be reduced to numbers. It's just safer that way.

Part 2: Questions

a) Why this item is interesting/meaningful/important to you (or universally)?

1) Because it reflects an almost forgotten piece of my childhood, the search for shark's teeth on the beach. Once I found it I knew I wanted to carry it around my neck (a rare impulse for me, I haven't worn a tie in a year and a half).

2) Because it's about the way we turn from sensitive to hardened things, and the way Art addresses, but does not solve, that insistent tragic tendency to "go numb".

3) Because it's about labels and what is underneath them. Labels, even badges of honor, change their subjects in strange, funny, sad, interesting ways. This in turn changes the meaning of the labels. The stories are all, to some degree, about that interaction and how it makes meaning.

b) What are the issues, concerns, principles, processes or attributes that surround each item?

I sort of feel like I answered this respectively above and below.

c) How is each item relevant: socially, technically, politically, phenomenologically?

1) Socially, it connects me to the ocean, and to the tanned and half-happy race of Beach People. Politically it makes me Anti-Seal.

It's relevant as a non-self-explanatory artifact linked to my childhood, with an explicit meaning that's different from my taken meaning.

2) Potentially it dates me, puts me in a grey ponytail and sandals, to care as I do about this album. The song itself is an inaccessible and less-loved track with a beautiful moment available only to those who bother to find it.

3) Asheby's is an anti-social piece o' writing in some ways. I wrote the bulk of it three years ago, before I started shoving words online, when my audience maxed out at five because publishing was such a frightening prospect. The first book I ever read as a kid was "The Berenstain Bears Learn About Strangers" and I guess I took its warnings to heart. According to this ingrained advice, you're not supposed to wear your name on your shirt, much less set your invented worlds on the laundry line... considering they are more central to me than my name, address, or ATM pin, I wanted to keep them safe. I have tried my best to loosen up on this mentality, though it's an uphill battle.

d) What do you not know about the item, and would like to investigate?

1) Is this a Great White Shark tooth, as I often imagine? Or just some lesser Bull? When will the string break?

2) I know everything I need to know about these 45 seconds. I'm curious whether Paul Simon will ever put out a genuinely good album again.

3) Will Asheby's ever show up at my doorstep, ready to pick up where we left off? There's a lot more in my head that I never wrote down... but there's some amount of adhesive missing, something central I lost or never had that stopped me in my tracks halfway through Successful, Part Two.

All varieties of the same question... what's next?

Which dovetails into

Part 3: Similarities and Issues Raised.

I think there's some spread of theme across these items, which I'm fine with, but it did occur to me that all of them are in their own way esoteric. Their obvious meanings and elements do not line up with the meaning I found in / ascribe to them. You need to ask about the shark's tooth to find out why I'm wearing it, and even then, "it's a bit complicated". You need to listen close to find the truly great moment in the thorniest part of the Paul SImon album. Asheby's is half comedy, it's true, but there's other stuff going on beneath the juggling of the bizarre, and that's what I'm proud of, the underlying connections, the bones.

So I guess it boils down to the fact that I have no particular love of a straight answer... or more accurately, no love of an EASY answer. I like elegant solutions to complex problems. I like strong conclusions as well... no stronger conclusion than a goddamn shark's mouth. I'd even like a strong conclusion here, in this post. But like Asheby's I'm going to leave it u

[An inexcusable way to end an assignment. I'd like to apologize. But even more than that I'd like to sleep. Sorry and goodnight.]