VV(11): Fugue Your Buddy

[Judy]

Taken from Martha Stout's "Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the
Promise of Awareness" (2001) regarding fugue:

"The somewhat old-fashioned term for Julia's departures from herself during
which she would continue to carry out day-to-day activities is "fugue," from
the Italian word fuga meaning "flight." A dissociative state that reaches
the point of fugue is one of the most dramatic spontaneously occurring
examples of the human mind's ability to divide consciousness into parts. In
fugue, the person, or the mind of the person, can be subdivided in a manner
that allows certain intellectually driven functions to continue - rising at
a certain time, conversing with others, following a schedule, even carrying
out complex tasks - while the part of the consciousness that we usually
experience as the "self" - the self-aware center that wishes, dreams, plans,
emotes, and remembers - has taken flight...Clinical fugue differs from
common human experience not so much in kind as in degree. Fugue is
terror-driven and complete, while the more recognizable condition is the
result of distraction, and relatively transparent. As fugue, the car trip
example would involve a driver who failed to remember not just the process
of the trip, but also the fact that there had been a trip, and from where.
Far beyond distraction, the more remarkable dissociative reaction of fugue
would have been set off by something - an event, a conversation, an image, a
thought - that was related, though perhaps in some oblique and symbolic way,
to trauma." (pp. 34-35).

- Judy

> "Fugue Your Buddy" (V. Ch. 8, Sec. iii, p. 223)
>
> From the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary Online ...
>
> http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
>
> Main Entry: fugue
> Pronunciation: 'fyüg
> Function: noun
> Etymology: probably from Italian fuga flight, fugue, from Latin, flight,
> from fugere
> Date: 1597
> 1 a : a musical composition in which one or two themes are repeated or
> imitated by successively entering voices and contrapuntally developed in
> a continuous interweaving of the voice parts b : something that
> resembles a fugue especially in interweaving repetitive elements 2 : a
> disturbed state of consciousness in which the one affected seems to
> perform acts in full awareness but upon recovery cannot recollect the
> deeds.
> - fugue verb
> - fugu·ist /'fyü-gist/ noun
>
> Our fuguists ...
>
>     "The next night Pig Bodine showed up at Rachel's at supper time
> drunk and in search of Paola, who was away God knew where.
>     "'Hey,' Pig addressed Profane.
>     "'Buddy,' Profane said.  They opened beer." (pp. 222-3)
>
> And their fugue ...
>
> "Rachel sat and concentrated on the music while Pig and Profame
> remembered sea stories at each other." (p. 223)
>
> [...]
>
> "Rachel returned to Pig and Profane.  They were discussing Pappy Hod and
> Paola.  Damn, damn, to herself, what have I brought him back to?  What
> have I brought him back to?" (ibid.)
>
> Then back to ...
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