“The metaphor I suggest is of Jenga: discourse Is (sic) the overall structure, increasingly destabilized by individual acts of rhetoric until finally it toppled (sic) and is constructed and deconstructed anew, interfering with the rules of the game.”

January 14 2020

The above comes from some sad outtake of an attempt to describe rhetoric after half-reading and poorly writing about a handful of books from the world of rhet-comp for the fake portfolio FM had us do at the end of Introduction to Doctoral Studies.

But it might well also describe certain ways that the brain (mine, but anyone’s) changes over time. I think the main thing I wonder about is this three step process of destabilizing and collapse (per the game’s natural rhythms), followed by reassembly and re-de-assembly, ending with what I call an interference of the rules, or maybe just a deeper understanding of them that includes the acceptance that this is always going to end in collapse, in failure, in a crashing, tumbling mess.

I also woke up this morning with a line from the Notorious B.I.G. in my head, “Spread love, it’s the Brooklyn way.” Somehow this got stuck in my head, probably from thinking about Hanif Abdurraqib, who I’m teaching this semester. I suppose it’s not the worst way to start the day. “Birthdays were the worst days, now we drink champagne when we’re thir-stay.”

I’m struck by so much about that line: the play of the last syllable of thirsty, the curving of language to fit the rhyme and the rhyme echoes the power that the speaker has accrued since the childhood he describes there. But what I’m really struck by is the shift in the MC’s lyrics from “I” to “we”. I’m thinking about the early draft “we” for younger writers of color, and about the MC-DJ relationship; how similar is it to a care relation (the DJ to the crowd, the DJ to the MC, the MC to the DJ) and how does capitalism and individualism divorce those components in the process of making the MC an isolated star? In America we like the story of nothing was here before me, we like the story of pulling up by bootstraps, we like the story of extreme, extraordinary individual success. Rappers feed this story. DJs don’t. And that’s where the DJ really went, maybe. And how does work like that of Amanda Gorman make that “we” into one that not just includes black voices but is led by them? 

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