My new boss is working on a film about a friend of his. She doesn't want to be filmed, so he's constantly filming everything around her - except her. This is an interesting form of Ellipsis: Aposiopesis. Wikipedia says:



The last part is critical: ' The ellipsis or dash is used.' Aposiopseis is a sentence-level device. "Well, I lay if I get ahold of you I'll–."

I wonder if the term applies to a narrative strategy: "I came home to find two thieves making off with my tv. I took off my gloves. They left without the tv or their wallets."

I'm curious about (literary?) terms for other kinds of ellipsis or omission.

I'm thinking about Peter Jackson's King Kong and Madison Smartt Bell's All Souls' Rising.
I found the natives in King Kong colonial and racist - first a terrifying menace, then a pathetic rabble. One of the details that stuck with me was how the natives were always going into ecstatic states. First the frenzy of combat, then of sacrificial ritual. In addition to shaking and babbling in tongues, their eyes would roll back until only the whites of their eyes were visible. I don't know why, but this detail - their eyes - fascinated me.

After all, ecstatic states (speaking in tongues, possession) are a dicey subject. Inherently interesting, but disatisfying to read about, talk about or see represented (in a film, say).

Now, a series of quotes (from a single chapter of All Soul's Rising):


This passage is narrated by Riau, a slave caught up in the Haitian uprising. Like most of the other slaves, Riau is a practioner of Voodoo. His point of view is curious: he is always slipping into and out of possession by a loa, or voodoo spirit/god. Accordingly, he speaks sometimes in the first-person and sometimes in the third, and most often in both.

In this passage, we see French-educated Toussaint Louverture's presence tugging Riau toward a Western rationality and sober individuality.



The book raises all sorts of interesting questions. How does one write the ecstatic consciousness of Voodoo? How can a white writer work with this distinctly black experience without entering a minefield?



Once again, we have the eyes rolling back...



Riau is very aware of his different states of minds and prefers possession. Possessed, he is passive, watching himself perform. In a way, he uses possession - as an escape, as a coping mechanism, as a way of doing the undoable.

In the novel, the ecstatic state of possession isn't romanticized or degraded. It's just a fact; an alternative that the slaves can access but the colonials can't. The slaves enter it en masse during combat or ritual (just as in King Kong) but here it also bleeds into their daily existence.

I'm enjoying the novel; it works. But I'm puzzled - it offers such horrific and wierd vicarious thrills - how did it win such a large audience?

Lately I've returned to thinking about Self-Justifying Algorithms (for which there are very few google results - maybe there's another term).

Travelling cross-country, I was constantly using google maps. They're usually great, but occasionally offer strange or inefficient results. Which made me wonder about whether these "bad" results were intentional or not. After all, the results had no explanation and you can't question an algorithm or service.

The problem is that algorithms have been modeled after mathematical functions. The focus is on yielding a result, rather than the process by which it is arrived or any information other than the result (such as info about the result). It's awkward to deviate from this paradigm.

Steps toward self-justifying algorithms

What I'd like to see is maps.google.com:
a) offer multiple results and have their differences described (ie. this is the scenic route).
b) explain unintuitive results (ie. this way is longer but faster).
c) include annotations (ie. it's easy to miss this turn).

Algorithms exist in competition, specifically a Reputation Economy. maps.google will always being competing against yahoo maps, mapquest, maps.live, etc. It's not an algorithms class where the optimal algorithm is efficient & correct. Users prefer the service that makes sense and doesn't let them down. I think that where being self-justifying comes in.

I'll bet the smart people at the map services got this long ago. I'll bet they'll be more self-justifying soon.

Most services aren't like map-directions services, which do little more than expose algorithms. Of course, algorithms are usually hidden from users. Self-justification has a place here too.

Went to MOMA and saw some amazing pieces for the first time. Discovered a wonderful restaurant right around the corner, Tanoreen. It's Palestinian (mediterranean) food - pleasant atmosphere, delicious, affordable, generous portions. I will be back many times.

We visited the Virginia Museum of Fine Art which is undergoing massive renovations. It was definitely worth the while, despite being mostly closed.

Finally saw the High Museum.

Story Idea:
Why is that child running around with a kitchen pot on his head? Why is the mailman wearing a helmet? Every year, Reverend Cobein climbs up a hill overlooking the small, remote town of Cobein. He climbs the hill with a rifle and, when he gets to top, he fires a single shot down at the town. He does this to mark the anniversary of his daughter's death. He believes that someday God will guide his bullet and kill the man who murdered his daughter twenty years ago. Her murder was never solved.
Everyone knows about the Reverend, and don't make a big deal out of it. People wear a pot for the day and go about their business. No one ever gets hurt... until this year. This year, the Reverend's bullet falls out of the sky and strikes Bob Gasat in the leg.
The town of Cobein is too small to have a sheriff of its own. People tend to work out their problems between themselves. People like it that way.
The people of Cobein get together and decide to hire a private detective. They explain the situation. He says: I'm not the law; I can't arrest anyone. You already know who shot who. That's not why we hired you, they say.
The Reverend believed he would only hit the man responsible for his daughter's death. Some of us think he's right. We want you to look into it, to see whether Bob Gasat was involved in the murder of the Reverend's daughter.
The Reverend's daughter - Augusta - was shot at a Christmas Pageant twenty years ago. Everyone in town was there - its a local tradition. When the lights went down, a shot rang out, and she was dead. Augusta Gasat was married to Bob Gasat's brother, Herman Gasat. The two brothers were business partners.

... The private detective investigates...

Herman Gasat suspected that his brother Bob was having an affair with his wife, Augusta. He tried to murder Bob, but shot his own wife by accident - the lights were out. After the murder, neither Bob nor Herman revealed the affair; it would only cast suspicion on them. Bob has never publically mourned his dead lover; Herman mourned, knowing himself responsible.

Went to The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which has a wonderful collection of jewelry. We also drop by The Rothko Chapel, which moves me, against all expectations.

The Blanton Museum of Art was amazing, totally unexpectedly so. Easily the most wonderful museum we saw on the trip.