Summing Up the Philosophy of Art

            On the Monday morning of December 5^th, after yoga I put aside guitar practice and just went right into studying for my Aesthetics quiz. I had woken up a little later than usual though so I didn’t get started till almost 7:00. My method of studying was to put all of the main points from my lecture notes into one document and then to make separate documents out of all the PDF files of my readings and then to edit them down to their main points. I also tried to find PDFs of the readings from the $160 textbook that I’d been forced to buy for the course. I was able to find versions of some of the essays in other anthologies that I was able to download from Gen Library, like the ethical analysis of Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will”. I actually ended up transcribing Ted Cohen’s essay of “Jokes”, which took quite a bit of time. I took a siesta in the afternoon and then continued my work. I realized though at around 18:00 that I wasn’t going to get all the essays re-read. I really had to get going with my Canadian Poetry essay, which was due in 24 hours and which was worth 20% of a full credit and worth about four times more in the long run than the quiz. So I took all the aesthetics stuff that I’d digitized and put it onto a flash drive, which I loaded onto my laptop and set that up near the computer. I bookmarked with strips of paper the three articles from the reader that I hadn’t managed to get onto the computer, and then I went online and wrote the quiz. None of the readings that I’d digitized or bookmarked were of any use to me during the quiz because there was no time to search through them for answers. However, the process of digitizing them had put some stuff in my memory, so I think it was helpful in the long run. I only earned 58% on the previous quiz, so it would be interesting to see how things went with the second.

            With my Philosophy of Art course finished, I took a shower for two reasons. One reason was because I was dirty and I had to work the next morning, but the other was symbolic. My shower was a ritualistic cleansing of the Philosophical material so I could prepare my mind to tackle my English essay.

            I already had two or three pages written towards the seven-page essay, so I knew the direction that I wanted to take to show that the avoidance of confession in poetry nonetheless does not stop the confession from at least partially getting through to serve as illumination of the poem.

            I worked for a couple of hours, then made a quick dinner of heated up frozen French fries and already cooked Italian sausages. I ate at the computer while continuing to read the paper and see where I was going to go next. I burned out earlier than usual though and went to bed more than an hour before midnight.