Writing longhand on a train

There's, like, technical shit going down! The diagrams are out and about again, and maybe making more sense! Meanwhile, I'm experimenting with writing longhand after a gap of ~20 years, and really not sure how that's going to play out. Also, I am waiting for the Eurostar.

Guattari is talking (and drawing diagrams) about the formation of... lots of things, one of which is subjectivity? or different kinds of subjectivity? I think the former, but this is definitely open to revision (I'm still reading The Machinic Unconscious, btw). The problem then being what to call that which is formed - not things, perhaps entities? Phenomena? Guattari calls them "assemblages," so let's go with that, and the mental note that I want to call them things, entities, beings etc but that this does then a disservice. Sometimes it's helpful to know what you've been mistaking something for/misreading it as, even if it's not that. It is that which may be mistaken for that.

I've taken notes - notes! - but I'm going to try to see what emerges from memory... different assemblages all contain different aspects/components which can interact with/impact upon one another in different ways, depending on the different "problems" set by different combinations of assemblages. I feel like I used the word "different" too many times in that last sentence, and didn't really explain anything. Ah well. WIP.

But! Guattari describes the way in which these assemblages differ from each other in terms of a change of emphasis or accent - perhaps there are the same components that construct the assemblage, but::

Within each particular assemblage, the accent will be placed upon such and such type of redundancy, but no hierarchy, no priority of right could be established between the seven semiological redundancies [that pose the problems that subjectivity responds to] (p.209)

[Terms to explore/explain: redundancies]

(later!)

Accent! Stess! In My PhD (I feel like that needs an acronym/shorthand, but I've just been watching Helluva Boss (would recommend) so I'm going to avoid the obvious one) one of the things I explored (I think? If I am remembering correctly) is the way that in stress-based rhythms (the kind of rhythm the English language uses, for example, in which we emphasise syllables by making them louder), the danger is that it often does become hierarchical. If you have four beats per bar, the first and third beats are the "on" beats, stronger than the second and fourth "off" beats. Strongest of all is the first beat of the bar, the downbeat of the composer's baton (come on, gravity, down we gooooo!). Nietzsche thought that other kinds of rhythms might resist this slide a bit better - ancient Greek, for example, used time rather than force to provide emphasis, in which the emphasised beats would be longer rather than louder. Ultimately, of course, time-based rhythm turned into stress-based rhythm anyway ("Entropy! Entropy! They've all got it entropy!"), so I don't know how well this holds up as a judgement aside from a general fluttering of the eyelashes and sighing "ohh, ancient Greece..." that even (particularly) the most untimely of us are sometimes prone to. But, the point being, that Guattari seems in this moment to be working with a non-hierarchical concept of accent/rhythm. And this rhythmic difference is what makes different assemblages... different.

I kind of feel that stress-based rhythm might be easier to shift emphasis with? Like, from bar to bar, retaining the same note durations and changing the stress feels like a more subtle shift but.. more like what Guattari's talking about, than durational changes? Of course, there's also pitch-based rhythm, that again feels like you can play around more with changes within the "same" combination of notes.. shifts in time feels more fundamental, and I don't know whether that's a bad thing or not.

Train's on the UK side of the tunnel now. Writing longhand I think leads to longer sentences.. and takes me longer than typing.. maybe fun nonetheless though? Answers in the non-existent comments, please! The winner will get a scribbled copy of one of the Guattari's subjectivity diagrams (you're all winners, of course).