0.0 Foreword

Growing up in a Catholic environment, that is, a Catholic primary and middle school education along with a church-going father, I was exposed from an early age to a multitude of hymns, prayers, parables, biblical tales, sentiments, sayings, phrases, metaphors, stories, analogies, songs, and poems to do with the Christian faith. One of these articles, the subject of this inquiry, was a particular favourite both of my school and of my paternal family, pa included, but it was not until my late teens that I actually considered the poem in any depth. Throughout my childhood it had simply been, along with many other texts in the same category, a thing which the authoritarian people around me, i.e. adults, found incredibly interesting, and yet which I did not. I attributed my disinterest to simply being too young to understand, however once I grew older, and was confident that my capacity to understand incredibly interesting texts was sufficient, I was surprised to find that I still failed to be awed by it to the extent that the elders of my youth were. Indeed, perhaps this failing caused me to resent the poem itself, or perhaps my resentment was due to disliking the poem of its own merit, but regardless, I eventually decided to compile this analysis, in order to bring to bear, or perhaps uncover, some of the issues with the text, both in composition - the construction of a comprehensive narrative - and in interpretation - how the poem might affect people’s decisions and indeed lives. In the former I feel I have succeeded, although in the latter I have failed. Over the course of writing this analysis I lost track of the second goal, and instead focused completely on a number of specific interpretations. I feel that while this analysis does admittedly contain a certain amount of unverifiable speculation, I have not sufficiently studied ethics to say whether or not the poem gives an appropriate message to those who have lost hope or may otherwise turn to religion in a time of strife. Because of this, the analysis will remain solely a literary one, without delving into such meta-issues.

Cultivated identity, the Saw franchise, a shady past

Before I came to Canada, and as my moving date approached, I and some other people jokingly threw around the idea (some with concern) of me creating a new persona - Canada Felim.
According to Beatrice, I've been prone to do this in the past. She used the example of the stageplay I worked on with UniSA in 2011, where she was surprised to find that everyone involved knew me as "Philly", and probably had totally different perceptions of me as my parents do, or she does, or you do. They treated me differently and I probably even acted differently. When I was around those people only, and not around other people, I was, more or less, a different person. However I didn't mean to be, my transformation was unintentional. It was merely because they were exposed to attitudes and behaviours in me which other groups of people do not get a chance to observe. You obviously act differently at work than when around family, or your friends, or an intimate partner, or alone. When you go for a job interview you dress nicely and speak clearly to try and convey an image which may be a slight variation on any of your others. Does this necessarily make you a different person? This is getting dangerously close to a philosophical discussion about the Ship of Theseus (that had all it's components replaced with newer ones until none of the original material remained, and asking whether it's the same ship or not.) Let's steer away from that. That way madness lies.

So you've spent your entire life cultivating a certain persona, and as you've aged your ideal may have changed, so your instantaneous persona - your thoughts, beliefs, actions - at a particular time are different from those at another time in life. Maybe you're stressed one day, or a neo-con, etc. An observer, say a friend or family member, who's known you for all that time would aggregate these historical aspects and come up with an interpretation of you that is different to someone who's only known you for, say, a week. Maybe it was the week you were really into hairstyling and doesn't really reflect who (you think) you are. As more pieces of your personality are revealed to that person over time their idea of you will adapt and, probably, approach what lifelong friends think. Obviously bar any fundamental changes to your character that happened before they meet you. In fact, the new friends perception might be a truer description of you than the old friends, as the latter will be influenced by actions you might never repeat, or beliefs you no longer adhere to. Old friends views are tainted by vestigial components of your ex-personality, and new friends lack exposure to create a complete description of you.

I met someone who's seen the latest Saw movie only and because of that, obviously hated the entire series. (I should point out I haven't seen the latest saw, the 3D one. I think I've seen up to five. I'm just extrapolating and assuming any that follow are just as bad or worse) I asked if she'd seen the first one, which she hadn't, and no matter how much I tried to I couldn't convince her that the original Saw is an amazing film. Because of the first one (and to a certain extent the backstory introduced in two and three) my opinion of the Saw series is higher than hers. If someone was lucky enough to have only seen the original one, or the first three, they would hold the series as a whole in higher esteem than I do. As a side note, Tarantino said that the Matrix sequels made the first one a worse movie, because of the backstory introduced.

In this metaphor, you're the franchise, and chapters of your life are films (in case you didn't get it). So, make sure people see the best ones and retroactively credit yourself as Alan Smithee on the bad ones. It's still you that they're seeing.

Is that bad advice? Maybe you're a Julian Assange, information transparency type and want people to see the whole lot, even bits that no longer accurately reflect who you are presently. Is that worse? Sounds almost like lying.

Project list

Here is a list of all of my current projects and their stages of development.

Footprints
This is the academic satire, critical analysis of the Footprints In The Sand poem. It's more or less complete and has been for some time now. I'm leaving it for a few months to later come back to with a fresh head and decide if it needs more work, or is ready to publish, and more importantly, where to publish. If it can get into a real publication that would be... interesting, but my hopes are low. This will probably wind up being independently sold as an eBook.

Race Theory
A multi-part essay about competitions. Currently sitting at three and a half thousand words, it might go to four thousand, or it might go to ten thousand. There is very little way of knowing, but I feel I'm running out of things to say. This is a fairly dry, serious thing, but interesting nevertheless.

Sophomore novel
This one doesn't have a name yet. A time-travel story featuring aliens and/or ghosts who torment anyone who comes into contact with a little thing. First draft is unfinished so don't hold your breath.

Fiction piece to accompany Race Theory.
It involves a train, a device which can construct anything from anything (post-scarcity), and a big global race like a modern version of Hidalgo. It's basically not even started yet.

Wilkinson IV
This one only needs marketing. I've also had the idea of, down the track, re-releasing it with some changes. These changes would be conducive to and exist within the fiction, so, where the original volume is labelled "Second Edition", this one would be "Third Edition".