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authorCase Duckworth2015-04-18 13:59:29 -0700
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1---
2title: Autocento of the breakfast table
3subtitle: about this site
4genre: prose
5
6id: about
7toc: "_about Autocento_"
8
9project:
10 title: Front matter
11 css: front-matter
12...
13
14## Introduction
15
16_Autocento [of the breakfast table][]_ is a hypertextual exploration of the workings of revision across time.
17Somebody^[[citation needed][]]^ once said that every relationship we have is part of the same relationship; the same is true of authorship.
18As we write, as we continue writing across our lives, patterns thread themselves through our work: images, certain phrases, preoccupations.
19This project attempts to make those threads more apparent, using the technology of hypertext and the opposing ideas of the _hapax legomenon_ and the _cento_, held in tension with each other.
20
21I'm also an MFA candidate at [Northern Arizona University][NAU].
22This is my thesis.
23Let me tell you about it.
24
25[of the breakfast table]: http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/owh/abt.html
26[citation needed]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Dealing_with_unsourced_material
27[NAU]: http://nau.edu/CAL/English/Degrees-Programs/Graduate/MFA/
28
29### [Hapax][] legomenon, or _You are special_
30
31_Hapax legomenon_ ([ἅπαξ][] λεγόμενον) is Greek for "something said only once."
32It comes from the field of corpus linguistics, where it causes problems for translators of ancient texts.
33Because it only happens once in its corpus, a _hapax legmonenon_ is an enigma: there's only one context to guess its meaning from.
34This means that many _hapax legomena_ remain untranslated, as in Mayan tablets, or are questionably translated, as in the Bible.
35
36Given the way we use language every day, treading over the same words and thoughts in a way that is nonetheless comforting, and given the fact that a _hapax legomenon_ is, by its definition, the rarest word in the place it appears, you might think that _hapax legomena_, as phenomena, are rare.
37You'd be wrong.
38In the Brown Corpus of American English Text, which comprises some fifty thousand words, [about half are _hapax legomena_][].
39In most large corpora, in fact, between forty and sixty per cent of the words occur only once, and another ten to fifteen per cent occur only twice, a fact that I imagine causes translators all sorts of [grief][].
40
41This seeming paradox is reminiscent of another in biology, as summed up by this infographic I keep seeing around the Internet[^1]\:
42![Really. I see it everywhere.](https://i.imgur.com/Dub8k.png)
43
44Apparently, the chances of you, dear Reader, being born is [something][s1] like one in 10^2,685,000^.
45The chances of me [being born][] is [something][s2] like one in 10^2,685,000^.
46The chances of the guy you stood behind in line [for your coffee][] this morning?
47His chance of being born was [something][s3] like one in 10^2,685,000^.
48The thing is, a number like one in 10^2,685,000^ stops meaning so much when we take the number of times such a "rare" event occurs.
49There are about seven billion (or $7 \times 10^{9}$) people on Earth---and all of them have that same small chance of one in 10^2,685,000^ of being born.
50And they all were.
51
52It stops seeming so special after thinking about it.
53
54[Hapax]: hapax.html
55[ἅπαξ]: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=a%28/pac
56[about half are _hapax legomena_]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapax_legomenon#cite_note-6
57[grief]: one-hundred-lines.html
58[being born]: about-the-author.html
59[for your coffee]: yellow.html
60[s1]: music-433.html
61[s2]: poetry-time.html
62[s3]: dollywood.html
63
64### _Cento_, or _just like everyone else_
65
66_Cento_ is Latin, stolen from the Greek κέντρόνη, which means "patchwork garment."
67A _cento_ is a poem composed completely from parts of other poems, a mash-up that makes up for its lack of originality in utterance with a novelty in arrangement.
68
69If we apply the _cento_ to biology, we can win back some of that uniqueness, we can resolve some of that paradox of the _hapax legomenon_.
70Sure, [nothing is new under the sun][], but it can be made new if we say it differently, or if we put it next to something it hasn't met before.
71We can become hosts to the parties of our lives, and rub elbows with the same tired celebrities everyone's rubbed elbows with, but make it different.
72Because _we_ put the [tables on roller skates][].
73Because _we_ told [the joke][] this time with a Rabbi.
74Because _we_ are special [snowflakes][], and it doesn't matter that there's more of us than there is sand on the beaches at Normandy.
75Because _we_ are still all different somehow.
76
77[nothing is new under the sun]: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes+1%3A9&version=NIV
78[tables on roller skates]: call-me-aural-pleasure.html
79[the joke]: creation-myth.html
80[snowflakes]: snow.html
81
82### On _n_-grams
83
84What we have so far:
85- A _hapax legomenon_ technically refers only to _one word_ in a corpus.
86- A _cento_ technically refers to a poem with _whole phrases_ taken from others, patchwork-style.
87
88These concepts get more interesting as we play with their scopes.
89To do that, we need to take a look at the _n_-gram.
90
91In linguistics and computational probability, an _n_-gram is a [contiguous system of _n_ items from a given sequence of text or speech][ngram-def].
92By looking at _n_-grams, linguists can look at deeper trends in language than with single words alone[^2].
93_N_-grams are also incredibly useful in natural language processing---for example, they're how your phone can guess what you're going to [text your mom][] next[^3].
94They're also the key to fully reconciling the _hapax legomenon_ and the _cento_.
95
96If the definition of _hapax legomena_ is expanded to include _n_-grams of arbitrary lengths,
97 including full utterances, complete poems, or the [collected works of, say, Shakespeare][],
98 then we can say that all writing is a _hapax legomenon_,
99 because no one else has said the [same words in the same order][].
100In short, everything written or in existence is individual.
101Everything is differentiated.
102Everything is an [island][].
103
104If the definition of what comprises a _cento_ is minimized to individual trigrams, bigrams, or even unigrams (individual words), or even parts of words, we arrive again at Solomon's lament: that no writing is original; that every utterance has, in some [scrambled][] way at least, been uttered before.
105To put it another way, [nothing][] is individual.
106We're stranded [afloat on an ocean][] of language we did nothing to create, and the best we can hope to accomplish is to find some combination of flotsam and jetsam that hasn't been put together too many times before.
107
108This project, _Autocento of the breakfast table_, works within the tension caused by _hapax legomena_ and _centi_, between the first and last half of the statement _we are all unique, just like everyone else_.
109
110[ngram-def]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-gram
111[text your mom]: mountain.html
112
113[same words in the same order]: http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/07/poetry-best-words-in-best-order.html
114[collected works of, say, Shakespeare]: http://shakespeare.mit.edu/
115[island]: island.html
116
117[scrambled]: howtoread.html
118[nothing]: no-nothing.html
119[afloat on an ocean]: riptide_memory.html
120
121## Process
122
123In compiling this text, I've pulled from a few different projects:
124
125- [Elegies for alternate selves][elegies-link]
126- [The book of Hezekiah][hez-link]
127- [Stark raving][stark-link]
128- [Buildings out of air][paul-link]
129
130as well as [new poems][], written quite recently.
131As I've compiled them into this project, I've linked them together based on common images or language, disregarding the order of their compositions.
132What I hope to have accomplished with this hypertext is an approximation of my self as it's evolved, but [all at one time][].
133Ultimately, _Autocento of the breakfast table_ is a [long-exposure photograph][] of my mind.
134
135[elegies-link]: elegyforanalternateself.html
136[hez-link]: prelude.html
137[stark-link]: table_contents.html
138[paul-link]: art.html
139[new poems]: last-passenger.html
140[long-exposure photograph]: building.html
141[all at one time]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJjcF2DmFFY
142
143### A note on terminology
144
145_Autocento of the breakfast table_ comprises work of multiple genres, including prose, verse, tables, lists, and hybrid forms.
146Because of this, and because of my own personal hang-ups with terms like [_poem_][] applying to works that aren't verse (and even some that are[^4]), _piece_ applying to anything, really (it's just annoying, in my opinion---a piece of what?), I've needed to find another word to refer to all the _stuff_ in this project.
147While the terms "literary object" and "intertext," à la Kristeva et al., more fully describe the things I've been writing and linking in this text, I'm worried that these terms are either too long or too esoteric for me to refer to them consistently when talking about my work.
148I believe I've found a solution in the term _page_, as in a page or [leaf][] of a book, or a page on a website.
149After all, the term _page_ is accurate as it refers to the objects herein--each one is a page---and it's short and unassuming.
150But it's probably pretty pretentious, too.
151
152[_poem_]: on-genre-dimension.html
153[leaf]: leaf.html
154
155### The inevitable creep of technology
156
157Because this project lives online (welcome to the Internet!), I've used a fair amount of technology to get it there.
158
159First, I typed all of the objects present into a human-readable markup format called [Markdown][] by John Gruber, using a plain-text editor called [Vim][].[^5]
160Markdown is a plain-text format that uses unobtrusive mark-up to signal semantic meaning around a text.
161A text written with markup can then be passed to a compiler, such as John Gruber's `Markdown.pl` script, to turn it into functioning HTML for viewing in a browser.
162
163As an example, here's the previous paragraph as I typed it:
164
165~~~markdown
166First, I typed all of the objects present into a human-readable markup format
167called [Markdown][] by John Gruber, using a plain-text editor called [Vim][].
168[^5] Markdown is a plain-text format that uses unobtrusive mark-up to signal
169semantic meaning around a text. A text written with markup can then be passed
170to a compiler, such as John Gruber's original Markdown.pl script, to turn it
171into functioning HTML for viewing in a browser.
172
173[Markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
174[Vim]: http://www.vim.org
175
176[^5]: I could've used any text editor for the composition step, including
177 Notepad, but I personally like Vim for its extensibility, composability,
178 and honestly its colorschemes.
179~~~
180
181And here it is as a compiled HTML file:
182
183~~~html
184<p>
185 First, I typed all of the objects present into a human-readable markup format
186 called <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">Markdown</a>
187 by John Gruber, using a plain-text editor called <a href="http://www.vim.org">
188 Vim</a>. <a href="#fn1" class="footnoteRef" id="fnref1"> <sup>1</sup></a>
189 Markdown is a plain-text format that uses unobtrusive mark-up to signal
190 semantic meaning around a text. A text written with markup can then be passed
191 to a compiler, such as John Gruber's original Markdown.pl script, to turn it
192 into functioning HTML for viewing in a browser.
193</p>
194
195<section class="footnotes">
196 <hr />
197 <ol>
198 <li id="fn1">
199 <p>
200 I could've used any text editor for the composition step, including
201 Notepad, but I personally like Vim for its extensibility, composability,
202 and honestly its colorschemes.
203 <a href="#fnref1">↩</a>
204 </p>
205 </li>
206 </ol>
207</section>
208~~~
209
210For these files, I opted to use John McFarlane's [pandoc][] over the original `Markdown.pl` compiler, because it's more consistent with edge cases in formatting, and because it can compile the Markdown source into a wide variety of different formats, including DOCX, ODT, PDF, HTML, and others.
211I use an [HTML template][] for `pandoc` to correctly typeset each object in the web browser.
212The compiled HTML pages are what you're reading now.
213
214Since typing `pandoc [file].txt -t html5 --template=_template.html --filter=trunk/versify.exe --smart --mathml --section-divs -o [file].html` over 130 times is highly tedious, I've written a [GNU][] [Makefile][] that automates the process.
215In addition to compiling the HTML files for this project, the Makefile also compiles each page's backlinks (accessible through the &phi; link at the bottom of each page), and the indexes of [first lines][], [common titles][], and [_hapax legomena_][hapaxleg] of this project.
216
217Finally, this project needs to enter the realm of the Internet.
218To do this, I use [Github][], an online code-collaboration tool that uses the version-control system [git][] under the hood.
219`git` was originally written to keep track of the source code of the [Linux][] kernel.[^6]
220I use it to keep track of the revisions of the text files in _Autocento of the breakfast table_, which means that you, dear Reader, can explore the path of my revision even more deeply by viewing the [Github repository][] for this project online.
221
222For more information on the process I took while compiling _Autocento of the breakfast table_, see my [Process][] page.
223
224[Markdown]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
225[Vim]: http://www.vim.org
226[pandoc]: http://johnmcfarlane.net/pandoc/
227[HTML template]: https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/blob/gh-pages/template.html
228[GNU]: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/
229[Makefile]: https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/blob/gh-pages/makefile
230[first lines]: first-lines.html
231[common titles]: common-titles.html
232[hapaxleg]: hapx.html
233[Github]: https://github.com
234[git]: http://www.git-scm.com
235[Linux]: http://www.linux.org
236[Github repository]: https://github.com/duckwork/autocento
237[Process]: process.html
238
239### Motivation
240
241Although `git` and the other tools I use were developed or are mostly used by programmers, engineers, or other kinds of scientists, they're useful in creative writing as well for a few different reasons:
242
2431. **Facilitation of revision.**
244 By using a VCS like `git` and plain text files, I can revise a poem (for example, "[And][]") and keep both the current version and a [much older one][old-and].
245 This lets me hold onto every idea I've had, and "throw things away" without _actually_ throwing them away.
246 They're still there, somewhere, in the source tree.
2472. **Future proofness.**
248 By using a simple text editor to write out my files instead of a proprietary word processor, I've ensured that no matter what may happen to the stocks of Microsoft, Apple, or Google in the following hundred years, my words will stay accessible and editable.
249 Also, I don't know how to insert links in Word.
2503. **Philosophy of intellectual property.**
251 I use open-source, or libre, tools like `vim`, `pandoc`, and `make` because information should be free.
252 This is also the reason why I'm releasing _Autocento of the breakfast table_ under a Creative Commons [license][].
253
254[And]: and.html
255[old-and]: https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/commit/61baf210a9d0d4fffcd82751ba3419dd2feb349d#diff-8814290de165531212020a537e341e44
256[license]: license.html
257
258## _Autocento of the breakfast table_ and you
259
260### Using this site
261
262Since all of the objects in this project are linked, you can begin from, say, [here][possible-start] and follow the links through everything.
263But if you find yourself lost as in a funhouse maze, looping around and around to the same stupid [fountain][] at the entrance, here are a few tips:
264
265- The &xi; link at the bottom of each page leads to a random article.
266- The &phi; link at the bottom of each page leads to its back-link page, which lists the titles of pages that link back to the page you were just on.
267- Finally, if you're really desperate, the &loz; link sends you back to the [cover page][], where you can start over.
268 The cover page links you to the [table of contents][toc], as well as the indexes of [first lines][fl], [common titles][ct], and [_hapax legomena_][hl].
269
270[possible-start]: in-bed.html
271[fountain]: dollywood.html
272[cover page]: index.html
273[toc]: _toc.html
274[fl]: first-lines.html
275[ct]: common-titles.html
276[hl]: hapax.html
277
278### Contact me
279
280If you'd like to contact me about the state of this work, its history, or its future; or about my writing in general, email me at [case dot duckworth plus autocento at gmail dot com][email].
281
282[email]: mailto:case.duckworth+autocento@gmail.com
283
284[^1]: Which apparently, though not really surprisingly given the nature of the Internet, has its roots in [this][born-blog] blog post.
285
286[born-blog]: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/abinazir/2011/06/15/what-are-chances-you-would-be-born/
287
288[^2]: For more fun with _n_-grams, I recommend the curious reader to point their browsers to the [Google Ngram Viewer][], which searches "lots of books" from most of history that matters.
289
290[Google Ngram Viewer]: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=technically+refers&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1600&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Ctechnically%20refers%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Btechnically%20refers%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BTechnically%20refers%3B%2Cc0
291
292[^3]: For fun, try only typing with the suggested words for a while.
293 At least for me, they start repeating "I'll be a bar of the new York NY and I can be a bar of the new York NY and I can."
294
295[^4]: For more discussion of this subject, see "[Ars poetica][ars]," "[How to read this][how-read]," "[A manifesto of poetics][manifesto]," "[On formal poetry][formal-poetry]," and [The third section] of "Statements: a fragment."
296
297[ars]: arspoetica.html
298[how-read]: howtoread.html
299[manifesto]: manifesto_poetics.html
300[formal-poetry]: onformalpoetry.html
301[The third section]: statements-frag.html#declaration-of-poetry
302
303[^5]: I could've used any text editor for the composition step, including Notepad, but I personally like Vim for its extensibility, composability, and honestly its colorschemes.
304
305[^6]: As it happens, the week I'm writing this (6 April 2015) is `git`'s tenth anniversary.
306 The folks at Atlassian have made an [interactive timeline][] for the occasion, and Linux.com has an interesting [interview with Linus Torvalds][], `git`'s creator.
307
308[interactive timeline]: https://www.atlassian.com/git/articles/10-years-of-git/
309[interview with Linus Torvalds]: http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/185-jennifer-cloer/821541-10-years-of-git-an-interview-with-git-creator-linus-torvalds