nkondi

[note #45]

Friends,

Last week I mentioned the idea of the objective correlative (T.S. Elliot’s term), and told a story about how someone I called Jude had transformed himself into a lamp. I said that this week I’d say a little more about this objective correlative idea.

The idea has been around for a long time, and keeps appearing in various forms. The ancient Greeks had the concept of the sema, which is a story made visible: think of the bed in The Odyssey, how it is carved out of a living tree, which represents, on one level, the way the marriage of Ulysses and Penelope keeps growing (see Daniel Mendelsohn’s book An Odyssey); think Freud and Breuer’s the idea of cathexis as a means of achieving catharsis (a child’s teddy bear as a cathectic object, in that it holds many complex emotions—security, home, love, etc); in African cultures, the nkondi (a statue outside the healer’s hut that you can drive a nail into before a major life event—birth, war, illness) contains the hopes and anxieties of the tribe.

No ideas but in things, William Carlos Williams said, which of course has been mirrored into No things but in ideas (who said that?).

Last week I also mentioned that I’d just finished a first draft of this new book project. I sent it off to my agent the day before I went into surgery (with each book I feel I’m going to die before it’s finished, before it has found itself—that seems to be one my complexes).

I have now gotten back many notes, which I’ve yet to read.

Last week I said I’d try to lay out the steps that led to this first draft.