[David]

Originally Posted by bushesandbriars

Yes, but when you referred to her as "Ms. Malapropism", it meant she had completely misapplied the term, which she didn't.

I think she did. Here's her concept: It was written about the situation that he and many people that sort of make it to the height of their field. Whether you're a sports figure or a rock star or a doctor or a lawyer, indian chief, you know, candlemaker... whatever it is, when you kind of get to the top of your field and you are, like, really there. And how difficult it is for people to stay there. And how difficult it is for people to not go crazy.

To me, this has nothing to do with Shangri-La in any direct or extended sense. If this elicits the cultural idea of Shangri-La to you, then we're at an impasse.

My point exactly--which is why, when you say she's using Hilton's idea wrongly, it sounds as though you think ideas should remain rigid and unevolved.

You make this a zero sum game: either ideas can be stretched to the connotative breaking point, or they must remain "rigid & unevolved." I stand at neither end of that spectrum.

None of the things you're now saying about reinvention were in the original post. You're explicit that she's objectively wrong, and say little about your definition of precision.

Oh, well I apologize for being unable to jot down my entire poetics right here & now for you, but I'm still going to stand for connotative precision in poetry & in language in its broader sense. Reinvention is unavoidable, obviously -- we all reinvent, all of us who use language. Every day, we employ words & phrases to describe what we're feeling & doing in ways that may not have been used in quite that way before (at least in our experience). Sometimes we "reinvent" & people don't know what the hell we're talking about. Doesn't it happen to you? It happens to me quite often. "Shangri-La" doesn't have to be Chinese or Hilton or anything else specifically in order for it to be widely understood in any community. It need only be common -- it needs to belong to that community if it is to be understood at all. If Stevie wants to use the concept of Shangri-La to describe a slaughterhouse she once visited, either it's going to be understood only in the most severely ironic way, or it's not going to be understood at all. It's not going to be precise; it's not going to be persuasive.

Stevie's taking an idea that exists in the culture and using it in her own way. Most people would agree with her interpretation of Shangri-La, which as I pointed out, is Chinese in lore, and not Hilton's to define exclusively.

As far as I'm concerned, using Shangri-La to describe people who make it to the height of their field & then crash is imprecise. I am resolute -- my mind's made up. If you feel otherwise, go to town. That's okay. The song (or the concept of the whole album) is as much yours as it is mine.

Lumps of clay may be symbolically neutral, but most of us have seen sculptures before, especially sculptors, and sculptures exist in a cultural context just as words do, not a vaccum, so the comparison here isn't quite on. And it's a contradiction to demand that artists reinvent ideas and criticize Stevie for not using Lost Horizon the way Hilton did.

I really don't feel I criticized Stevie for not using "Shangri-La" the way Hilton did. Why don't you read between my lines the way you read between Stevie's? My criticism had a lot more to do with a use of "Shangri-La" that doesn't reflect this community's understanding of it.

Actually, I think that's kinda what you're doing, since I'm not demanding "reportorial or denotative accuracy," but think you were by saying Shangri-La is a malapropism or misnomer. All I'm pointing out, by saying Stevie is post-modernist, is that she is concerned primarily with re-invention, which requires imaginative freedom.

The pomo label is trotted out to explain just about everything these days. Had Stevie actually used "Shangri-La" to write a concept album about a slaughterhouse, I'm sure she'd be applauded as a post-modernist visionary, madly reinventing our tired old signs & hopelessly naive binary opposites as she twirls off into the sunset of imaginative freedom. My own silly view is that meaning is bounded by certain constraints that exist by virtue of the fact that a language -- any language -- is a system; & that if you use "dog" to mean "cat," the community of readers or listeners is going to boggle & therefore your imaginative gesture will be a failed one (unless your readers find meaning in the very discrepancy of the gesture).

My post is all about re-invention, which poets do as well, and must, and about why Stevie's use of Shangri-La isn't inaccurate, just not resonant for you, because as I said, your point previously wasn't about reinvention but about misuse.

The bottom line here is that you think that Stevie uses Shangri-La accurately, precisely & imaginatively, whereas I really don't. I think that she uses the phrase for a slightly more peripheral effect: sonority.

I think maybe it's a little pretentious to hold a rock and roll singer up to Fitzgerald and William James, don't you?

I do, indeed. Who did that?

No one said she did, and I suppose the implication is that I came off as one, which isn't so. And I pointed it out because rather than making a case for what you thought was wrong, you and a couple of others went a tangent as though she'd done some wrong to the English language that was sweeping the nation, which also isn't so.

You're certainly painting with as broad a brush as I ever did! "Some wrong to the English language that was sweeping the nation"?

Not picking a fight; just giving my opinion.

Same here.