Re: What is a Boojum? « Reply #30 on Jun 2, 2008, 3:31pm »
Thanks for carrying out that exercise Bettyboop. In eturn can I recommend an excellent noel that deals with the Schredinger paradox and many world interpretation in a delightful and ey readable manner. It's called 'Mobius Dick' written by Andrew Crumey and is available as a Picador'
Re: What is a Boojum? « Reply #31 on Jun 3, 2008, 3:53am »
John,
With respect, it's always dangerous to comment emphatically about something you've not seen or read! "Boojum!" is not a theatrical adaptation of The Hunting of the Snark, an amusing collage of music and dance, or a dramatisation of the text but an exploration of Carroll's life through some of his characters and ideas. Snark provides an overall structure - with the Boojum probably being the dreaded realisation that Dodgson's passions were all nonsense. The creators like to think it is more than a mere entertainment - and we remain greatly disappointed that it has never been given the serious analysis and discussion which we think it deserves. Maybe the Boojum turned out to be a Snark ...
Re: What is a Boojum? « Reply #32 on Jun 3, 2008, 5:45am »
Dear Peter,
I stand corrected and wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments. I had no intention of sounding 'emphatic' intending only to pass on third party comments about something I admitted to not having seen.
I would certainly like the opportunity gie Boojum the 'serious analysis' that you feel it deserves. In the meantime I shall refrain from passing on any third party comments!
Re: What is a Boojum? « Reply #35 on Jun 3, 2008, 1:32pm »
It's had several productions in Australia, and two in the US (La Jolla and Pasadena), but none in the UK (in some respects its natural home) despite various efforts to promote it there. It's probably best performed by a large choir, which rules it out for Broadway!
Re: What is a Boojum? « Reply #36 on Jun 3, 2008, 5:46pm »
Nothing in New Zealand Peter? I ask because, as you're probably aware, there has been a lot of Carrollian activity going on there recently, especially around the Snark. I'd have thought there would be quite an attraction for a production such as yours.
It's had several productions in Australia, and two in the US (La Jolla and Pasadena), but none in the UK (in some respects its natural home) despite various efforts to promote it there. It's probably best performed by a large choir, which rules it out for Broadway!
Tha Pasadena Playhouse? Cool! Is it just choral, i got the feleing it was sort of operatic.
Re: What is a Boojum? « Reply #39 on Jun 6, 2008, 3:09am »
Jules, the Pasadena production was twelve or thirteen years ago and I wasn't there, but I'm told that the venue was the Neighbourhood Church - which doesn't sound quite as cool as the Playhouse. It's a choral work with soloists, probably best semi-staged and described as a musical, though it really seems to fall between the two stools of musical and opera. No choral society worth its salt can afford not to take it on, in the creators' opinion, and of course it ought to be presented at annual general meetings of any LC society worthy of the name ...
Jules, the Pasadena production was twelve or thirteen years ago and I wasn't there, but I'm told that the venue was the Neighbourhood Church - which doesn't sound quite as cool as the Playhouse. It's a choral work with soloists, probably best semi-staged and described as a musical, though it really seems to fall between the two stools of musical and opera. No choral society worth its salt can afford not to take it on, in the creators' opinion, and of course it ought to be presented at annual general meetings of any LC society worthy of the name ...
Have you thought of offering it for performance at Christ Church?
Re: What is a Boojum? « Reply #41 on Jun 15, 2008, 9:31am »
Jules,
I thought I answered this yesterday but now can't find my reply. I'll risk the embarrassment of providing two similar responses thus:
Many years ago I was in touch with a choral person at Oxford, perhaps at Ch Ch, but there wasn't much interest. I suspect it's a general law that no original work will ever be performed without some immediate personal contact. (Incidentally, Boojum! was written before Karoline's contribution to the topic and I would want to revise the text before the musical were performed again. Also incidentally, the music was composed by Martin Wesley-Smith. He gave a paper on it at the Carroll conference in Cardiff 1998.)
Re: What is a Boojum? « Reply #42 on Feb 27, 2009, 3:13pm »
Re: Reply #14. Although Ex 33.20 seems to be based on Ex 10.28, your idea of the Boojum as the reader would be a good way to interpret Ex 33.20. Anyone who wishes to get close to God is risking serious mental illness, based on becoming aware of oneself for what one really is. One might propose, to the contrary, that this is becoming completely sane because of the sudden and precipitous (8.4-5) stripping away of ones personal illusions. Who wants to suffer from that malady? The Baker seems to have been somewhat mentally ill to begin with (1.8-13; 8.3-7), and perhaps what was left of his rather fragile identity was disintegrated. One wonders if mental illness is a placebo for sanity, which is the real threat to one's identity? Perhaps the Snark, who contested with the Baker in his dreams, and from whom the Baker received a few sparks of self-awareness (3.13) was an angel from the Boojum.
I like the idea of the Boojum being the reader. Most people have a view of themselves that is totally dissociated from reality and if they ever were to come face to face with their true selves (boojums), then they would disappear. I like it. This isn't what Carroll meant when he wrote it, this is what I meant when he wrote it.
To be honest, if Carroll was as good of an artist as he seems to have been, you really don't know what exactly he was talking about. The above analysis seems to be barking up the "right" tree in my opinion.
I remember I was watching a Dane Cook standup on Comedy Central (I hate his comedy, and the joke he used it in was awful, but whatever) when Cook used the word "snarky" to describe someone who was criticizing his religion. The joke sucked and I disagreed with Cook in general, but he used "snarky" to describe a man who generally "tore down without building up"--essentially, the prototypical critic...well, the bad kind of critic. I remember hearing a criticism of Nietzsche as "his writing is persuasive, but he tears down without building up", and that fits in pretty well, Nietzsche was definately a snark. But was he a Boojum? Never mind all of that.
So later on I saw this book at the library titled Snark. It was great. The book goes from ancient Greece to Maureen Dowd, identifying snarks of old, before the term was ever invented. He analyzes what he thinks the snark is (in the Platonian sense) and generally provides an original, unsnarky (yet clever) commentary on the whole situation, and made me laugh my face off in the process. Amazon.com slammed the book, but if I might be a snark myself (but heavens no, not a Boojum!) for a moment, they're obviously just a bunch of benighted plebes. (hey!)
So the book talks about the Snark. Its definately worth checking out, especially if you're interested in the Boojum.
But back to the observer talk. I believe thats exactly what Carroll is getting at. Notice how in the poem the Bellman marginalizes peoples stories before they even begin, essentially for the reasons that he has heard it all before. The Bellman, excitedly twinkling his little bell, seems to be a snark.
It really goes back to the observer bit. The commentary on Schrodinger's Cat, a "psychadelic" anecdote for young physics students, indeed is also beating at the same bush. Quantum physics states that the observer is inseparable from the "object" (another important dichotomy for this topic---subject/object metaphysics, etcetera) which he is trying to observe. Indeed by observing the, say, particle, he is somehow altering the particle itself. But apart from the subject/object duality bit, physics might be straying from the trail a little bit.
Snarks are observers. And Boojums are snarks that have a vein of antisocial, anti-Jesus, anti-Life, anti-Creation in their gists. Boojums are snarks which annihilate the objects they are observing. They are ego-annihilators perhaps, also.
The ego-annihilation bit reminds me of Buddhist "Dhyana", which is essentially a state of contemplation and nothing else. If I'm not mistaken it is also the Buddhist hell. But Dhyana serves the purpose of annihilating, or at least mitigating the go so that practitioners might experience Samadhi, or Buddhist heaven, enlightenment. But this subject also, like going to far with physics metaphors, strays us off the course.
If life were a game, snarks would be in the bleachers, and Boojums would be those few snarks in the bleachers who marginalize the folks out there playing the game to the point of annihilating them completely, at least in the minds of the people who actually believe them.
(I was excessively assertive in the above remarks, but I'm merely taking a position instead of...well...being a snark about the whole thing. Indeed!)
Re: What is a Boojum? « Reply #44 on Apr 16, 2009, 6:54pm »
Oh yes, one more reference. The whole conversation about the snark reminds me of T.S. Eliot's famous poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". While Prufrock is certainly not a Boojum, he is indeed a snark. But Prufrock doesn't seem to want to be. He talks about the times when he tried to "put the entire universe into an atom in the palm of his hand" [sic!!! extreme paraphrasing here], anunequivocally snarky thing to do! A refrain from the poem is an incessant, "but how shall I proceed?", which seems to be, in my opinion, the mark of the repentant snark....Prufrock, if he comes to his senses, seems to perhaps be on the road to recovery. Regardless, it seems that Prufrock has been infected by a Boojum or, even, has become one. I imagine good mothers and fathers vigilantly hunt for the snark (or heaven forbid, the Boojum) in order to protect their children from them...but then they go off to college....and now we have the internet. Women especially can identify the snark immediately...it stands for man a biological imperative to cure himself from the snarkiness. I don't read much Carroll, but Carroll himself seems to indeed not have been a Boojum, at least for the majority of his life, there has not been one reader on this thread who has been the least bit snarky.
But back to "becoming"---One can only become a Boojum I think, one never is a Boojum...for example there has never been a child who was born a snark or a Boojum! One becomes one of these things (or doesn't become one), "We are all at once victims and benefactors of our culture".
This becoming business implies that (unless you have been annihiliated, lol) there is indeed a cure to the snarky disease...I imagine it involves moving forward instead of back...indeed, the Neo-platonian triple movement---with god, away from god, and back again---and by "god" (note the lowercase) I am not referencing anything but god as a placeholder term for the good, for life, for unity (none of those snarky, solipsistic islands!), etcetera. "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T.S. Eliot
And you might be all, "this is so silly, how can someone be fool enough to talk about Boojums and Snarks as if they were real words??". Well, by that same token, how can we talk seriously about any Platonian ideal (man, woman, horse, the United States, house, car, the earth, the sun, life...note that, physically speaking, there is no clear divide between any of them) as if they were real? To be honest, one can never be a Snark or a Boojum, it would have to be an adjective or a verb, rather than a noun....given all of this "becoming" business.
Prufrock, poor Prufrock. I think every cerebral type has been through a "Love Song" phase. TS Eliot, when asked about the poem in retrospect, dismissed it as merely melodrama. Which is true. But life can be quite melodramatic.
Nevertheless, I will always hunt the Snark. If I were a vampire I'd drink vampire blood. (hey!)
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