Reading Day 8
TwinklingECF #shortprosaicthing, #journey, #instagram, #vividness
My first dive into the Neutral revealed to me a matrix of, at least, 3 dimensions. And there are probably more, so I’ll be using the mathematical notation (i, j, k,… n) instead of the Cartesian (x, y, z), which detonates a continuum: Axis i: the ‘twinklings’, ‘traits’, ‘scintillations’ Axis j: the marginalia, des ‘traces écrites’ Axis k: the bibliographic references And then it is Barthes himself, his voice, his intimate memoirs that leak all around: The rising flour and binding substance (axis l?). The aim of each lecture, or leg in a journey, is to examine knots, which are the essence of the journey itself. It isn’t an easy task to inspect an n-dimensional knot. You just see a bunch of threads, for a brief moment, whilst they’re being lit by the candle light of your guide, and next instant you see a completely different bunch, or nothing at all. This discontinuity is, precisely, the nature of the scintillation. To scrutinize knots some mastery is required; the help of the guide (the master) is indispensable (but you may not trust him too much, you might get lost after his next detour). Whilst reading the Neutral, the vividness of the images; the continuous variation; the brief, disarticulated, fascicle-like storytelling; the obsession for the minutia, made me think of Instagram. I think Barthes would have been an amazing instagrammer. In fact, he would have been the master mind of Instagram. I can perfectly picture it: The 14th lecture happening in the neutral space of the app. A live stream, a guided tour around the most banal and unexpected realms of the matrix. A worldwide lecture. A total influencer.
248
