That Memphis Conference

If you scour the web, you will find the participants summarizing the main profile and most interesting presentations, as I intended to do initially and would had I another dimension. They dwell in that headspace. But I left it some time ago and woops, now it I depend on my memory. Even now time is bearing me away from the moment so the memory must suffice in some way or other so what do I remember now of all the papers and ideas bumping into each other like timber floating down the river?

The perfect balance of theory and practice in one paper on communal ethos by a PhD student from Copenhaged: her prose was pellucid; crouching on the floor at AWs presentation which I always forget to book early and so I run into throng, me an embodiment of the ear; the hermeneutic antics of Mailloux and Davis who shared an argument and chocolate martinis begrudged them by some; Davis's dry-mouthed espousal of the naivete of Levinas which for a moment I thought interesting but only because of his insistence on "face" which I still muse on from time to time; "compassionate listening"; the misleading titles which are often as pretentious and bumbling as a bearded Oxford professor after five scotches and seriousness of people who have reason to be serious: they have worked on an idea, an argument, a position so long that they have become married to it, which kinda kills the romance. 

 I intended this conference as a reminder, a review or revisitation of a scene I had never mastered or mistressed and feel I lack the ability or desire to. Still, I like the idea of rhetoric, poise and pathos and principle unified in some sort of stylistic elegance. And some of the sentences and encapsulations struck me as quite fine and interesting--the term "space" has become a "breach" now and some of the turns of phrase were quite compact and clear. I love a just so sentence as I love a pointed portrait, and that can be anything odd yet pointed. But often the sentences do not cohere and there are gaps as there should be and yet, yet, a conference is testimony to a tireless spirit to produce. 

AWs CV is 12 pages long. Eve already has 5 articles out. These people care. They care. They care about their issues and I am excited by them, tickled, buzzed and then I wake up and think, scratch head, just what do I remember? And remembering takes time. Of all the pictures I know take (and why) I think, which is the one picture I will save and consider not worth remembering because I cannot do it now, but which is the one I will be pleased to be reminded of in the future? 

Since I have been tossing files on files and pictures on pictures, trimming and divesting, this is the main question for my future--which will be the image the memory that I will want to be reminded about in the future? And tough, but it is crouching on the floor listening to heady theory and that first panel, in the Ben Hollander room when Thomas Rickert talked about the "leap" in rhetorical theory and logic. How will I remember the conference and what will be its flavor? And the ice cream and superb chocolate cake, of course. By Erica, the pastry chef. So next stop, that image. Which bears a significant symbolism.