Message-Id: <9208201212.AA22363@relay1.UU.NET>
Date: Thu Aug 20 11:53:11 1992
Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!viikki21.helsinki.fi!vilva
Sender: Lojban list <cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!LOJBAN>
From: cbmvax!uunet!viikki21.helsinki.fi!VILVA
Subject:      Re: Kalevala Project -response to Veijo
To: John Cowan <cowan@snark.thyrsus.com>
Status: RO

>Date:         Thu, 20 Aug 1992 01:06:37 -0400
>From:         Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>
>Subject:      Kalevala Project -response to Veijo

>The people at LogFest I think disagree strongly with what you say in
>this message.  The stories indeed stand on their own, but if we are
>to have any cohesiveness to a set of stories written by a a variety
>of people, many with no particular talent for literary writing, we
>need some common setting that is well enough developed that the
>stories hang together.  Otherwise we just have an anthology of random
>stories, which loses the joint-ness of the project.

  I don't think it would be *absolutely* necessary to be restricted to
  a single coffeeshop -- just to have the general settings defined.
  If all the storytelling would take place in just a coffeeshop this
  would tie the stories together almost as well as having just one.
  However, I have *already agreed* to go along with this single
  coffee-shop. It actually doesn't make much difference as a writer
  can always be very vague about the settings or see them in a quite
  personal or even distorted way.

>The effort of those who worked hard to come up with the scenario, and
>the rather inspirational effect it seemed to have as the coffeeshop
>came together in peoples minds, is just the type of consensus work
>that we lojbo do well, and I want to see more of it.

  I agree with that. The disagreement we had could be reformulated
  as follows: your coffeeshop is a lujvo and what I had in mind is
  more like a gismu. But perhaps an a priori lujvo doesn't necessarily
  mean that an observer starting as from the gismu will arrive at
  exactly the same lujvo. There'll always be some extra rafsi.

>Indeed, the better writers can invent stories and worlds of their
>own, and characters as well.  Others may choose to have their story
>rest in an interaction between patrons and staff in the coffeeshop,
>which itself is a basis for a lot of powerful story imagery, and,
>given some preparatory work in character development of the staff,
>allows people with perhaps less skill or imagination to still tell a
>reasonable story, concentrating on the Lojban and NOT on the creative
>work that not all of us do so well.

  There are many facets to creativeness. It is, of course, quite
  difficult to create truly flesh-and-blood characters. But telling
  about a person known to everybody may be equally difficult. To be
  consistent with the characterization without merely copying,
  to add something or just to express it somewhat differently takes
  skill at many levels. Actually, it might be much more difficult
  than making a quick sketch of a stranger or adding depth to some
  your own creation -- even in your own native language. Fitting
  a limited expressiveness in Lojban to a detailed microcosmos
  may be in fact harder than creating the details on the fly from
  the bits and pieces of the Lojban you do master. Brainstorming
  in English at a LogFest may give you quite a skewed view.
  There people are using the imagery of their native English to
  create the ckafyzda and everything flows smoothly. A detailed
  English plan is, however, a double-edged sword. It helps, as
  you said, people to visualize this microcosmos. On the other
  hand people must get rid of this visualization not to be hampered
  by it (Jumping from English -- or Finnish or what so ever -- to
  Lojban already requires a certain amount of flexibility of mind).
  It will also be quite necessary to transform the plan into a Lojban
  plan to help the less experienced Lojbanists to handle the basic
  premises. I used the word 'transform' quite intentionally instead of
  the word 'translate' as I feel that a translation isn't sufficient,
  it is quite necessary to try to remove the 'alien' imagery. At
  another -- simpler -- level it is necessary to give the required
  lujvo and the ways of describing certain quite elementary things:
  distances, relationships, the way things hang together. It might be
  useful to have a kind of workshop (on the List) where the novice
  lojbo would be taught to navigate in this verbal VR (virtual
  reality). There might be teams of two or more people working on a
  person or even a table to get it just so.

  We could tackle this storywriting also from another angle
  starting from the fact that most of us aren't very advanced in
  Lojban. If we consider the writing not as an 'instantaneous' act of
  creation but as a lengthy process coincident and in synchronism
  with learning Lojban, we could see a writer entering a 'gismu-type'
  ckafyzda and slowly working his way towards a lujvo like a sculptor
  uncovering his masterpiece from beneath the enclosing mass of
  stone. For the writer the story wouldn't be just a story but a
  record of his journey to la jbotur -- lojbo tutra, the domain of
  Lojban, Lojbania -- not in the form of a description of the
  process but as an allegorical map where distances are measured on
  the scale of the language. At the end of the road may be le
  ckafyzda xire but the marble might also expose some other locale.
  Those more proficient would start somewhat nearer and would no
  doubt arrive at le ckafyzda xire and wait there for the late
  arrivers (hopefully not petrifying the place in the meantime).
  This kind of process might help people to find their own voice and
  to cultivate the innate creativity each one of us is sure to
  possess.

  ------------

  The name of the Project:

    The Kalevala got to the name of the project more by way of
    accident than by volition. It is in a way quite fitting as the
    Kalevala (or the epic poems/songs on which it is based) was
    created by numerous anonymous people during several centuries.
    The '-la' at the end of the name corresponds roughly to the
    '-ia' of 'Lojbania'. Most of the action, however, takes place
    outside this land/domain of Kaleva which actually remains quite
    vague and so, in a way, the name tells nothing of the contents --
    it just kind of sets the reference point.  So I think we might
    as well replace 'The Kalevala' with 'la jbotur.' (lojbo tutra =
    the domain of Lojban) and call the project 'The Jbotur Project'
    / 'le la jbotur. fitpla' or something like that (for the time
    being). Here I am thinking of tutra in quite a figurative sense,
    more as a mental territory/domain/sphere of influence than as a
    geographical territory. I also thought of various other
    possibilities but none were as concise or descriptive.


    Veijo
------------------------------------------------------------------

 Veijo Vilva       vilva@viikki21.helsinki.fi