ATDTDA p 552 Ukulele

[Cometman]

great expatiation on the ukulele on p 552, anticipating
James Wood's criticism ("a story for children")

"...the widespread contempt in which ukulele players are held -
traceable, we concluded, to the uke's all-but-exclusive employment
as a producer of chords - single, timeless events apprehended all at
once
instead of serially.  Notes of a linear melody, up and down a staff, 
being a record of pitch versus time, to play a melody is to introduce
the element of time, and hence of mortality.  Our perceived
reluctance to leave the timelessness of the struck chord has 
earned ukulele players our reputation as feckless, clownlike
children who will not grow up."

speaks, maybe, to a Pynchonian theory of poeisis?
Echoes Zoyd's intimations of immortality on acid.
Confounds those who wish to trace a single line or theme
in a novel; reinforces the Iceland Spar refraction of light
with a similar application to sound.

Miles and Thorn having this conversation - agreeing, 
rather than arguing as Bummer and ? in GR - Miles, the
most perceptive, least hoodwinkable Chum - creature of his
time (I see him as James Joyce maybe, and Thorn as Pynchon's
shadow Trespassing in the time period) and Thorn, a relatively
assimilated Trespasser - accepted enough to give lectures
at Candlebrow, overwhelmed by the tragedies about to take place...






"So listen to my song of life -
you don't need a gun or a knife:
successful conversation will take you very far" - Pete Ham

"It is not difficult to define the place that Linux should occupy in a well- ordered social life. It should be its spiritual core"-Simone Weil, from 'The Need for Boots'

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