Quick – Experience

Oh, Festina Lente (Hurry Slowly) – I think that this phrase will be burned into my brain forever since I’ve been over this concept of Quickness so many times. Calvino described quickness in writing that has speed, not haste. I am reminded of the man on horse who told the story so badly he was cut off mid-sentence!

I think I chose the perfect book for the quality of Quickness because comedians make the best storytellers! I definitely felt that Tina Fey exhibited this quality when she relayed her experience of working with the Second City improvisational group. During this experience, Tina Fey and her improv group, BlueCo, drove for days on end just to perform in front of audiences for very low pay. But they loved it! From the book, it sounds like they were able to express themselves by throwing out the “best of” sketches that they were supposed to perform and instead made up new sketches where they could play the parts they wanted. I think it is here that Tiney Fey learned some of the best storytelling abilities. In improv, you need to be able to think quickly. But not only that, you need to be able to do it in a way that is interesting or funny, or else you will lose the attention of your audience. Fey mentions that one of the rules of improv is that you need to be apart of the solution. You should follow the “YES, AND” rule:

If I start a scene with “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you just say, “Yeah…” we’re kind of at a stand-still. But if I say, ” I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you say, “What did you expect? We’re in hell,” now we’re getting somewhere.

Quickness: Graphics

Finally! When looking for an entry that could relate to Quickness I immediately went to the chapter on Time & Motion thinking that surely, I could find something that related to time… and motion. But nothing really jumped out of the page at me. I really played around with the idea of doing something relating to musical notes but I decided against it. Then as I was flipping through, I saw the Design Project for Typographic Layers: 

Typographic Layers In everday life as in films and animations, multiple stories can unfold simultaneously. A person can talk on the phone while folding the laundry and hearing a song in the background. In films, characters often carry on a conversation while performing an action.

This typographic exercise presents three narratives taking place during a two minute period: a news story broadcast on a radio, a conversation between a married couple, and the preparation of a pot of coffee. Typography, icons, lines, and other elements are used to present the three narratives within a shared space. The end result can be obvious or poetic. Whether the final piece is an easy-to-follow transcription or a painterly depiction, it is made up of narrative elements that define distinct layers of visual channels

Let’s backtrack.

In Calvino’s memo on Quickness he tells a story from one of Boccaccio’s novellas. It’s about a man who is telling a story to a woman he is escorting. He’s trying to tell the story well but he’s doing a terrible job; he forgets events, the details and overall he has no rhythm. The mistress gets tired of his story and says “Sir, this horse of yours has too hard a trot, and I pray you to set me on my feet again.” Essentially, she was saying that his storytelling skills were terrible and she would prefer it if he would just stop trying. His story was bad because he didn’t have the quality of Quickness.

Now to the graphic pictured above.

I think that this graphic is a good representation of Calvino’s Quickness because it utilizes time in different manners. If I had to judge, I would say that the graphic in the bottom right hand corner, by Menon, is the best example of Quickness. It is obviously the most simplistic: it looks like Arial font with different colored highlighters which allows the reader to assume the sequence of events. It is the easiest to understand and the sequence of events isn’t convoluted like it is in the other examples. The only other contender would be the graphic in the top right hand corner, by Osmanof, but the lack of line breaks between the text on the right margin of the canvas makes it really difficult to understand. After reading the graphic in the bottom right hand corner, I have no desire to look for meaning in the other 3: they are examples of the horseman’s bad story telling skills.

Quickness: Emblem

At first I thought that I would want my emblem for quickness to be the ring with a precious stone from the story of Charlemagne. But then I remembered that Calvino said that in many stories that have the quality of “Quickness,” there is often a magical object that is endowed with particular qualities and usually has some sort of symbolism. Then I realized that my analogy to Hermione’s Time Turner was a perfect example! It’s a necklace that would otherwise be mundane if it weren’t endowed with special magical qualities!

Hermione’s necklace is in the form of an hourglass and it has the following engraving: “I mark the hours every one nor have I yet outrun the sun. My use and value unto you are gauged by what you have to do.” I tried to logic out a connection for the motto to quickness but I couldn’t really come up with one that wasn’t a bit of a stretch. So I’ll settle for it to be the emblem.

I think the Time Turner is a really good emblem for quickness because it has the ability to make time an ally instead of something to be conquered. Hermione was able to handle her heavy course load with the help of time. I think it’s a more modern adaptation of an emblem than Calvino’s emblem for quickness: the horse.

Quickness: E-Lit Example

Tao

As this poem of less than twenty words runs its course, video of zooming down a road explodes across the screen accompanied by the music of passing wind. Tao is a momentary experience that attains a meditative pace very unusual in computing and in modern life, while at the same time evoking the reality of violence.

Tao is a short poem that is accompanied by a soundtrack of wind with a video that has some sort of fragmented shape that floats through the air. The poem reads as follows:

earth blown out to stars – stars blown down to earth by fast cars – baghdad and addresses of the invisible

I think that this E-Lit piece demonstrates quickness not only because it is short (the poem itself only lasts for a minute) but because the inclusion of the two screens side-by-side make that amount of time pass by very fast. The ability to flip each screen back and forth is distracting in a way that it pulls you closer into the poem. The poem goes by quickly, but the inclusion of the ambient music and the etherial video don’t give the sense that you are rushed.

Quickness: Calvino’s Quality

In order to explain the quality of Quickness, Calvino tells the story of Charlemagne written by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly:

“Late in life the emperor Charlemagne fell in love with a German girl. The barons at his court were extremely worried when they saw that the sovereign, wholly taken up with his amorous passion and unmindful of his regal dignity, was neglecting the affairs of state. When. the girl suddenly died, the courtiers were greatly relieved – but not for long, because Charlemagne’s love did not die with her. The emperor had the embalmed body carried to his bedchamber, where he refused to be parted from it. The Archbishop turpin, alarmed by this macabre passion, suspected an enchantment and insisted on examining the corpse. Hidden under the girl’s dead tongue he found a ring with a precious stone set in it. As soon as the rung was in turpin’s hands, Charlemagne fell passionately in love with the archbishop and hurriedly had the girl buried. In order to escape the embarrassing situation, Turpin flung the ring into Lake Constance. Charlemagne thereupon fell in love with the lake and would not leave its shores” (Calvino, 31).

Calvino uses this story as an example because it was very well written. Many writers have attempted to re-write this same story (Paris, Petrarch, Errizzo) and they have not been up to par because they are lacking in “Quickness.” They do not have the same speed and the chain of events is not as cohesive. Quickness is the ability of a writer to control the speed of a story. As in Charlemagne’s story, one second and a thousand years can pass by with equal quickness and allure. A master of Quickness is able to make time an ally.

Additionally, quickness in writing has a rapidity and rhythm on the page ; the pronunciation can create a tempo. Calvino uses the art of poetry as an example. Read aloud, poetry changes our perspective of how language can be used. Some poems almost sound like a song when you read them out loud. When a good poem is read, you get the sense that the diction was carefully chosen. Writing with the quality of Quickness should have the same effect. Each word should be so well chosen that it is unalterable. Writing should have rapidity but not so much that the substance suffers. This is when Calvino introduces his own personal motto and emblem which coincides with Quickness:

Festina Lente (Hurry Slowly) is the motto that accompanies this emblem. It means that when working one should strive for haste, not speed. Speed sacrifices quality, haste embodies diligence. One should work and create works in which there is no sense of time passing. Quickness is defined by this motto and emblem.

Quickness: Analogy

I am undeniably and unabashedly a huge Harry Potter fan (like almost every 20something born in the early 1990’s). That being said, I best understand Calvino’s explanation of Quickness through the example of Hermione Granger’s Time Turner. If you’re not an HP reader, here’s the back story:

Hermione Granger is a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardy. She is feeling overwhelmed with her class load (because she’s an incorrigible overachiever) so she is given a Time Turner by Professor McGonnagall so that she can get to her extra classes on time and get her homework done. She has hidden it from her friends for the entire school year.

Towards the end of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hermione, Harry, and Ron are all trying to save the life of Harry’s Godfather, Sirius Black, from death. In order to save him, Hermione must take Harry along with her in time so that they can re-trace their steps and alter the course of time. I’ve included this YouTube video to catch you up to speed:

Harry and Hermione retrace all of their steps and slightly alter the course of time so that Sirius can escape and they can also save the Hipogriff, Buckbeak (an animal) from getting beheaded. Hermione and Harry cleverly evade their past selves.

This scene from HP3 is a great analogy because I think a lot of people my age would be able to relate to it. They’ve likely read the books, or at least saw the movies, so it’s probably somewhat familiar. I also liked it because it involves the aspect of time. Just as in the story of Charlemagne, time passes by very quickly when Hermione uses her time turner. The events in this scene and the ones that follow could very easily have seemed repetitive and droll; however, the reader/viewer is drawn in by the rapidity of the chain of events. It was also very well composed. You’re drawn in and can assimilate with Harry’s character. Hermione succinctly defines the function of the time turner and suddenly they’re zooming through the past, sneaking around pumpkin patches, fighting off dementors and saving the day! 🙂