| spelling |
ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-osu13275239042021-08-03T06:04:33Z Floating lessons Ferrandi, Georgina <p>Every summer I drive with my parents at least half way across the country to some other city with a good mall and a motel. Every year my dad insists on renting a white Lincoln to impress his World War II buddies who will be waiting for him at the bar in the lobby.</p><p>After I finally relinquish the wheel to him, my dad wakes me from my stress-induced nap in the back seat. He will wake me an ungoddamnedbelievable number of times during this trip. He wakes me up to turn the radio on. Or turn it off. Or turn it up. He never pulls off at an exit for a small town to figure it out (the town or the radio). He never asks me how it works and he never looks in the glove compartment for the manual. Neither does my mom. But my parents are not at all lazy or unintelligent or severely intimidated by technology. My parents are Hoverers.</p><p>They hover just above reality without ever fully touching down with a solid understanding of how it works - the radio, their mortgage, their long distance phone service, their heart medicine, whatever. They hover close enough to the sidewalk so that it looks like they are walking, rather gracefully to the bus stop. In actuality though, they are being nudged along just above the ground by a persistent blue collar momentum. It's important that they stay this close to ground level. It is that very proximity to a solid reality that makes them feel convincing. That proximity to the ground is, in fact, what grounds them.</p><p>If my parents were ever accused of being somehow less than real, because they never fully anchored themselves in reality, my mom would pull her pocketbook strap tight on her shoulder like other people's grandmothers do and say, "Aw bullshit; look how close we are."</p><p>That is where I would like my work to operate - hovering slightly ouside the Real, but close enough to it -via materials or scale or site or image- that it insists agressively on belief, rather than suspension of it.</p><p>Every year my dad tells them that the car is rented.</p> 1996 English text The Ohio State University / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1327523904 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1327523904 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.
|
