9 28 2008

New Terminology

I've made some changes in terminology. I often refer to the regions within a cycle as 'coordinates', 'stations', 'longitudes', or 'degrees'. They all mean the same thing. Recently, I've chosen the term 'pitch' because it conveys the idea of being part of a cycle, and for convenience sake, it is only one syllable long. It just takes too long to keep repeating 'coordinate' or 'longitude'. 'Stations' and 'degrees' are too clinical. But 'pitch' relates to music or sound, and I think it's a warmer concept.

The pitches themselves, of which there are six, have been undergoing name changes as well. Their traditional names were:

1. (first coordinate): Torso
2. (second coordinate): Limbs
3. (third coordinate): Pose
4. (fourth coordinate): Cavity
5. (fifth coordinate): Shadow
6. (sixth coordinate): Void

. . .

You may be able to tell how the new names are derived from the older ones:

Torso > Torsative (TOR-sa-tiv)
Limbs > Scionative (a scion is a branch) (sigh-ON-a-tiv)
Pose > Corpusative (from corpus: body) (corp-YOU-za-tiv)
Cavity > Cavative (CA-va-tiv)
Shadow > Ombrative (from Latin meaning shadow) (OM-bra-tiv)
Void > Nullative (from null) (NUL-a-tiv)

I apply names to pitches because it is misleading to describe the progressions of pitches within a given text by numbers. If I say the sentence in coordinate 2 is followed by a sentence in coordinate 4, then the idea that pitches are related to numbers might be erroneously mistaken. While it's true that each pitch builds upon the previous, the attributes are not numeric, but rather possess individual qualities. When taking the same example of coordinates 2 and 4, it might come across less formulaic were the numbers replaced with the terms scionative and cavative.

. . .

9 17 2008

Iambic Pentameter and Tinderbox

I haven't read any more lately about Tinderbox software, because so far, the very elementary introduction has been sufficient for my purposes. No doubt as my book grows, there will be other features I will need to study. Even though Chapter One of my Alice in W version is only in its very beginning stages, I'm starting to list other chapters as well, since I tend to work up my story pattern in many areas at once. With Tinderbox, even if I totally change the structure of the chapters in the future, it would be easy to rearrange things. I really like the way flexibility is welcome in this program.

Because Lewis Carroll wrote many poems into Alice in W, I want my version to coincide with that tendency in mind. To that end, I'm anxious to learn the design of traditional poetry. I've just begun reading a book by Timothy Steele on Verse. It's called "all the fun's in how you say a thing". Two days ago, I didn't know what iambic pentameter meant, much less how to pronounce it (iAmbic penTAmeter). The concept is simple: iambic means that you accent every other syllable, where the second syllable of each pair is accented. Ex: how DID / you KNOW / paTRICE / would COME / so LATE. In that example, you might notice that there are 5 pair. That's what pentameter means, that there are 5 pair of syllables on each line. The sentence itself is therefore 10 syllables long. This formula has been one of the most commonly used for Western poetry since before the time of Shakespeare.

With that said, here's a little about my activity so far, which I will explain via iambic pentameter just for the fun of it:

. . .

Right now I have new software that I love,
Which keeps my thoughts arranged in simple charts.
Before I used to waste a lot of time,
With scribbled words and other jumbled parts.

So why should I decide to poetize?
It takes much longer than to write in prose.
Perhaps the fact that glyphs can sympathize,
With cyclic* grammar's challenge to compose.

. . .

*In case you haven't seen other parts of my site, cyclic grammar refers to a system I devised for Tapissary that deals with the movement and evolution of a given sentence. It's much easier than it sounds, but like poetry, it requires careful consideration to how you wish to convey your ideas.

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