I agree to disagree

[bronzeage]

you two guys are just way too much
I try to so serious


Hey Bronze, have a good Christmas, they still got that in Texas? 'round here all we got is Jingle Bell Rock, and I even didn't know there was more than one version.

I don't know about Texas, but in Louisiana, Christmas is the second largest blow out party of the year.

 

[butters]

"No tops, not bottoms," was one strategy considered by the Clinton administration, before deciding on "Don't ask, don't tell."

Next up, string theory in poetry:

Can you imagine traveling to another planet where they have been monitoring the past century of Earth's radio and TV broadcasts. They revere the limerick as the highest form of poetry, the way some English speaking poets revere Haiku. You try to explain to them, the limerick is a mindless vehicle for bawdy verse and puns, and they insist on hearing every Nantucket limerick you can remember.

life is but a string
and my string is full of nots

 

[bronzeage]

life is but a string
and my string is full of nots

Life is but a string and my string is full of knots,
I bite and chew, but tangles is all I gots.
It's my pajama's drawstring
and if you would just cut the thing,
I would appreciate it lots.

 

[Palba_Noruda]

I have yet to read a definition of deconstructionism which does not sound like a parody of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

The uncertainty principle is a favorite of the postmodernists (poststructionalists/deconstructionists). Also the theory of relativity. Really, much of twentieth century physics really fucked with (or should have fucked with) our human way of knowing anything at all. I believe Neils Bohr had: "The opposite of a great truth is another great truth." Einstein, all those guys, Michael Polanyi, all that shit really fucked with our notions of objectivity and subjectivity and what is truth. Jesus. If it wasn't for physics, we wouldn't have deconstruction at all. Of course, there were many other cultures who were onto all the same things a couple thousand years ago, but in the big Empire building western cultures, we were kind of stuck on enlightenment notions of truth and objectivity for a very long time. Still are LOL.

Derrida was known for talking about how meaning in language is always deferred (there is a very specific French word he had for it). It's kind of a cool concept. Context becomes very important in all meaning, just like in the uncertainty principle, relativity, etc.

don't people ever find it gets in the way of 'feeling' the real poem in front of them?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: See below.

Until fairly recently, the ranks of literary critics contained a predominance of poets. Literary criticism was a discussion of what made literature--trying to define what it was that they were doing, much as we do on forums like this one. But sometime in the past century, the realm of literary criticism was taken over by theorists.

When a person discusses a poem as it relates to a particular theory, the poet doesn't matter. The poem is usually secondary to the theorist's prejudices about social commentary, gender roles, or inherant ambiguity (I could go on, but that would mean grabbing some old books or notes).

Understand, I'm not saying that literary theory doesn't have it's place. In order to understand a poem, it is sometimes useful to apply it to a social construct or to consider what it says about the role of women in society. It may even be helpful to discuss (among friends or in a classroom) how the poem cuts the ground out from under itself in its attempt to make a statement.

.

First: I think you'll find that theory has been around much longer than criticism. And the critical perspective approach to criticism (feminist, marxist, etc) have been around only for less than a hundred years.

Also, you might be interested in a form of writing call ekphraisis. It is an artful response to art.

Authorial intent has been pretty much put down full stop.



Theory has its place. It might not be what you, in particular, want, but that does not make it useless.

I agree with you that theory has its place. Did you check out the section called In Defense of Theory on the textetc link? Quite good, I think.

I don't understand what you mean here: "Authorial intent has been pretty much put down full stop."

I enjoy thinking about authorial intention. I hope I am not wrong?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory
theory refers to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action
which is a good starting place as any to gel your "babel" (I think pabla's just arguing to justify no commenting) around to something approaching a structure behind the structure or in the case of Derrida, et. al. sometimes a destruction behind the structure.
It gives birth to the new. Revitalizes the old. Do you know how much more I got out of Shakespeare from Empson? It's just a different type of enjoyment chipbuddy.

Hmmm, trying to get out of commenting. Kind of but not really. I am addressing in the long-form below.

But yes, I am glad we are making comments about what THEORY is. I think I have had the boundaries of theory, criticism, rationality mixed up in my head. The textetc link was helpful in that regard. I enjoyed the section called In Defence of Theory.

In the scientific world, a theory can become accepted as fact if nothing is ever observed which contradicts its suppositions. Its status as fact is cemented in place if it predicts observations which have not yet been made. Einstein's Theories on Relativity are now accepted as valid descriptions of the known universe because when scientists went to look for the phenomena it predicted, they found it.

The trouble the scientists run into is guys like Thomas Kuhn. Hypothetically, some day even relativity may be looked upon as a seriously flawed paradigm. Kuhn was a good score for the post-modernists and the relativists.

And that is where theory fails. Most literary theory is not focused on artistic merit at all. Theoretical readings are less about the work than about the theory that the reader is using to discuss the piece. And, unfortunately, the art of a poem is usually irrelevent to contemporary literary theory.

When a reader concentrates on the aesthetics of a poem, discussing the artistic merit of the poem itself (irrelevent of the author and subject matter), the theorist returns to the true realm of criticism. He begins to talk about the poem itself and what makes it art. That is critique.

The idea that art has merit is only a theory itself. Whether you like it or not, you are committing to theory with just about every declaration you make. That's the thing about theory. It's a slippery sucker.

Your last statement begs the question: if art is so important to the conversation, why not approach the conversation artfully, as in, with a poem. The poet you are discussing has come to the conversation armed with a poem. Now you are going to hold up your side of the conversation with prose? Why?

Why respond to poetry with prose? Why try to talk about an orange with an apple? Why bring a knife to a gun fight?

***
Part 1

I would like to put forth a hypothetical theory that I don't think has been discussed yet:

I don't think this theory is absolute truth, but like a good post-modernist, I would like to ask you to treat the theory as a lense, as a brief thought experiment:

Imagine if all speech utterances and all pieces of writing were placed into categories. And now imagine if Poetry was the highest category. In other words, let us assume for a moment that categories of language use are, in fact, forms of poetry.

Types of POETRY:
The story
The command
The description
The exposition
The theory
The critique
The forum post
The confession
The rational argument
The generalization
The poem
The grunt
The email
The conversation
The play
etc.

Let us imagine they are all forms of poetry. And let us imagine they are all human activities.

An important thing to consider for me, is that each form of language-act listed above interacts with the human practitioners differently. Each use of the language draws upon different human capacities.

For example, if I am an attorney preparing a case, I am strongly employing the rational part of my brain. If I am going to make an inspiring speech, I am going to draw on the rational part of my brain, but I might also draw on the emotional part of my being.

If I am a literature professor or a graduate student in a literary criticism course, I will be more like the lawyer, I will be drawing upon the rational part of my brain. If I am a poet, I will draw more upon the emotional part of myself.

***
Part II

Now consider the history of letter forms. The history of words. The history and traditions of the different language acts, the history and traditions of the different forms.

Letter forms have a history. The letter A for example, comes from an ox head (upside down). Words, obviously have histories. Phrases, languages, and the language forms themselves have histories.

Numerologists believe the letters and words vibrate with certain frequencies. Extending that (hypothetical) theory (strictly for the sake of argument), we can conclude that the traditions and histories of the men and women who have practiced the different language forms listed above have imbued the languages with their vibrations. (Still doing the brief thought experiment. Please stick with me.)

(I know that sounds like woo woo bullshit, but it must be the reason we read Yeats and Anne Sexton and listen to John Prine. Something of their spirit or being comes through. I am calling it vibration for lack of any better noun.)

As a student, I spent A LOT of time doing rational argumentation. It is what most of the humanities and sciences teach. Rational argumentation has been an important part of education at least since the enlightenment, and really went into high gear in schools during the industrial revolution.

(Rhetoric--which was taught for hundreds if not thousands of years before literary studies as a discipline was even invented--encompasses the composition of poetics, the appeal to emotion, while the rational argumentation techniques taught in literary studies programs strictly forbid appeals to emotion or expressions of emotion for that matter.)

For many reasons, I became a very miserable person while at university. For one thing, I am gay, but I really could not deal with that at that time. For one thing, homosexuality makes no rational sense. There is more, of course, but this post is long enough, and being gay is enough for now.

I spent many years trying to use the techniques of rational argumentation I had been taught to try to figure out what the fuck my problems were. Those techniques didn't work. I tried for many years. Many wasted, bullshit years.

I ended up after many years moving to a large city and getting a job in a gay coffee shop, where I flirted with all the boys and FELT MY SOUL for the FIRST TIME I guess since I was a child. Twenty years?

Now I want to spend my time writing in language forms that have a history of being related to the soul. Of the soul. Of the spirit. An expression of something even further in myself I may not even be aware of yet. I want to use ART to travel deep into myself and open myself to the world, to both give myself and receive into myself.

I worry that criticism and rational discussion are often of the brain, not of the soul.

I am not just trying to avoid commenting.

I have thought hard with my brain and it didn't do shit for me.

When I comment, I want to comment artfully. I find words in the poems of others and spin them with my own poems (I do that in my suddenly passion threads...not great poems or anything, but it's a kind of EKPHRAISIS. Ekphraisis is using art itself as a critical perspective and using art as an analytical tool. I haven't been as active here because I have real world venues to exercise those parts of myself). That is how I receive and process the poems of others. I try to receive the vibrations they have put into their words to mix the vibrations with my own.

I admit there is a way to comment artfully. I haven't found it yet. I don't know how to go to literotica.com and read poems and bring my artistry, bring my spirit, to the comments section. Maybe I'm overthinking it. For one thing, I sit at the computer A LOT. When I read and write, I do it at the library with physical books, notebooks, and pens.

***
Part III

Oh, my other big point. All the language forms are human activities, I will acknowledge that. And as such, I believe it must be possible to reach and feel and expose the soul with all the writing forms. Even rational argumentation and criticism and all the rest.

For some reason, for me, there is a block. I just can not get to where I want to be with some of those language forms. I believe some people can. Maybe some day I will be able to.

Perhaps I am a bit unbalanced because of my experiences, physiology, etc.

I'm glad we're having this conversation because it has given me an opportunity to think about these topics differently, and this is the first time I can see that I have set up, I believe, a false dichotomy between poetics and rationality.

There is a dichotomy there, but I do like to believe ALL is a form of poetry, so therefore, there must be a way to approach ALL poetically, and that includes rationality and theory.

I am glad we found that textetc link. The section entitled In Defense of Theory was very helpful to me. I believe I had some of the boundaries of criticism and theory wrongly drawn in my mind. It will be good to be able to pull them apart some.

Did you know that I even get a bad physical feeling when doing argumentation? I get all compulsive and twitchy and fixated, hunched over my computer all bug eyed and blood shot, it's miserable. And yet I always come back to it LOL.

 

[vrosej10]

The uncertainty principle is a favorite of the postmodernists (poststructionalists/deconstructionists). Also the theory of relativity. Really, much of twentieth century physics really fucked with (or should have fucked with) our human way of knowing anything at all. I believe Neils Bohr had: "The opposite of a great truth is another great truth." Einstein, all those guys, Michael Polanyi, all that shit really fucked with our notions of objectivity and subjectivity and what is truth. Jesus. If it wasn't for physics, we wouldn't have deconstruction at all. Of course, there were many other cultures who were onto all the same things a couple thousand years ago, but in the big Empire building western cultures, we were kind of stuck on enlightenment notions of truth and objectivity for a very long time. Still are LOL.

Derrida was known for talking about how meaning in language is always deferred (there is a very specific French word he had for it). It's kind of a cool concept. Context becomes very important in all meaning, just like in the uncertainty principle, relativity, etc.



Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: See below.



First: I think you'll find that theory has been around much longer than criticism. And the critical perspective approach to criticism (feminist, marxist, etc) have been around only for less than a hundred years.

Also, you might be interested in a form of writing call ekphraisis. It is an artful response to art.



I agree with you that theory has its place. Did you check out the section called In Defense of Theory on the textetc link? Quite good, I think.

I don't understand what you mean here: "Authorial intent has been pretty much put down full stop."

I enjoy thinking about authorial intention. I hope I am not wrong?




Hmmm, trying to get out of commenting. Kind of but not really. I am addressing in the long-form below.

But yes, I am glad we are making comments about what THEORY is. I think I have had the boundaries of theory, criticism, rationality mixed up in my head. The textetc link was helpful in that regard. I enjoyed the section called In Defence of Theory.


The trouble the scientists run into is guys like Thomas Kuhn. Hypothetically, some day even relativity may be looked upon as a seriously flawed paradigm. Kuhn was a good score for the post-modernists and the relativists.


The idea that art has merit is only a theory itself. Whether you like it or not, you are committing to theory with just about every declaration you make. That's the thing about theory. It's a slippery sucker.

Your last statement begs the question: if art is so important to the conversation, why not approach the conversation artfully, as in, with a poem. The poet you are discussing has come to the conversation armed with a poem. Now you are going to hold up your side of the conversation with prose? Why?

Why respond to poetry with prose? Why try to talk about an orange with an apple? Why bring a knife to a gun fight?

***
Part 1

I would like to put forth a hypothetical theory that I don't think has been discussed yet:

I don't think this theory is absolute truth, but like a good post-modernist, I would like to ask you to treat the theory as a lense, as a brief thought experiment:

Imagine if all speech utterances and all pieces of writing were placed into categories. And now imagine if Poetry was the highest category. In other words, let us assume for a moment that categories of language use are, in fact, forms of poetry.

Types of POETRY:
The story
The command
The description
The exposition
The theory
The critique
The forum post
The confession
The rational argument
The generalization
The poem
The grunt
The email
The conversation
The play
etc.

Let us imagine they are all forms of poetry. And let us imagine they are all human activities.

An important thing to consider for me, is that each form of language-act listed above interacts with the human practitioners differently. Each use of the language draws upon different human capacities.

For example, if I am an attorney preparing a case, I am strongly employing the rational part of my brain. If I am going to make an inspiring speech, I am going to draw on the rational part of my brain, but I might also draw on the emotional part of my being.

If I am a literature professor or a graduate student in a literary criticism course, I will be more like the lawyer, I will be drawing upon the rational part of my brain. If I am a poet, I will draw more upon the emotional part of myself.

***
Part II

Now consider the history of letter forms. The history of words. The history and traditions of the different language acts, the history and traditions of the different forms.

Letter forms have a history. The letter A for example, comes from an ox head (upside down). Words, obviously have histories. Phrases, languages, and the language forms themselves have histories.

Numerologists believe the letters and words vibrate with certain frequencies. Extending that (hypothetical) theory (strictly for the sake of argument), we can conclude that the traditions and histories of the men and women who have practiced the different language forms listed above have imbued the languages with their vibrations. (Still doing the brief thought experiment. Please stick with me.)

(I know that sounds like woo woo bullshit, but it must be the reason we read Yeats and Anne Sexton and listen to John Prine. Something of their spirit or being comes through. I am calling it vibration for lack of any better noun.)

As a student, I spent A LOT of time doing rational argumentation. It is what most of the humanities and sciences teach. Rational argumentation has been an important part of education at least since the enlightenment, and really went into high gear in schools during the industrial revolution.

(Rhetoric--which was taught for hundreds if not thousands of years before literary studies as a discipline was even invented--encompasses the composition of poetics, the appeal to emotion, while the rational argumentation techniques taught in literary studies programs strictly forbid appeals to emotion or expressions of emotion for that matter.)

For many reasons, I became a very miserable person while at university. For one thing, I am gay, but I really could not deal with that at that time. For one thing, homosexuality makes no rational sense. There is more, of course, but this post is long enough, and being gay is enough for now.

I spent many years trying to use the techniques of rational argumentation I had been taught to try to figure out what the fuck my problems were. Those techniques didn't work. I tried for many years. Many wasted, bullshit years.

I ended up after many years moving to a large city and getting a job in a gay coffee shop, where I flirted with all the boys and FELT MY SOUL for the FIRST TIME I guess since I was a child. Twenty years?

Now I want to spend my time writing in language forms that have a history of being related to the soul. Of the soul. Of the spirit. An expression of something even further in myself I may not even be aware of yet. I want to use ART to travel deep into myself and open myself to the world, to both give myself and receive into myself.

I worry that criticism and rational discussion are often of the brain, not of the soul.

I am not just trying to avoid commenting.

I have thought hard with my brain and it didn't do shit for me.

When I comment, I want to comment artfully. I find words in the poems of others and spin them with my own poems (I do that in my suddenly passion threads...not great poems or anything, but it's a kind of EKPHRAISIS. Ekphraisis is using art itself as a critical perspective and using art as an analytical tool. I haven't been as active here because I have real world venues to exercise those parts of myself). That is how I receive and process the poems of others. I try to receive the vibrations they have put into their words to mix the vibrations with my own.

I admit there is a way to comment artfully. I haven't found it yet. I don't know how to go to literotica.com and read poems and bring my artistry, bring my spirit, to the comments section. Maybe I'm overthinking it. For one thing, I sit at the computer A LOT. When I read and write, I do it at the library with physical books, notebooks, and pens.

***
Part III

Oh, my other big point. All the language forms are human activities, I will acknowledge that. And as such, I believe it must be possible to reach and feel and expose the soul with all the writing forms. Even rational argumentation and criticism and all the rest.

For some reason, for me, there is a block. I just can not get to where I want to be with some of those language forms. I believe some people can. Maybe some day I will be able to.

Perhaps I am a bit unbalanced because of my experiences, physiology, etc.

I'm glad we're having this conversation because it has given me an opportunity to think about these topics differently, and this is the first time I can see that I have set up, I believe, a false dichotomy between poetics and rationality.

There is a dichotomy there, but I do like to believe ALL is a form of poetry, so therefore, there must be a way to approach ALL poetically, and that includes rationality and theory.

I am glad we found that textetc link. The section entitled In Defense of Theory was very helpful to me. I believe I had some of the boundaries of criticism and theory wrongly drawn in my mind. It will be good to be able to pull them apart some.

Did you know that I even get a bad physical feeling when doing argumentation? I get all compulsive and twitchy and fixated, hunched over my computer all bug eyed and blood shot, it's miserable. And yet I always come back to it LOL.

Generally in literary circles, authorial intention is considered a myth, but I am not one of those people who is a theory nazi. If you enjoy trying to imagine what the author was thinking, go for it. I think it can only enhance your enjoyment and that's the point I think. Art is meant to be enjoyable and challenging for the most part ( and there are exceptions to this). Theory is a tool, a single tool in the bag of trick we posess for understanding literature. It should be am eans to an end and it often seems to become an end in itself, which is a bit sad. I think theory is best probably for helping to catergorize works and probably after that should be left out of things, at least in circles where you don't have to justify your opinions about one work or another.

 

[twelveoone]

Derrida was known for talking about how meaning in language is always deferred (there is a very specific French word he had for it). It's kind of a cool concept. Context becomes very important in all meaning,


I spent many years trying to use the techniques of rational argumentation I had been taught to try to figure out what the fuck my problems were. Those techniques didn't work. I tried for many years. Many wasted, bullshit years.

différance
he was quite the punster

I would say I see your point, but more correctly I feel it. Sometimes it is quite rational to arrive at the conclusion that some of your problems are fucking problems that others put on you, because nobody is quite rational. Poetry is nothing more than controlled insanity.
It that I am glad that you either arrived or at least are beginning to arrive, something close to a state of happiness? Best wishes along the way and the coming years.

Which in my case will more wasted, bullshit years.
to paraphase mr. Eliot
So this is the way my world ends
With a shrug...
and laughter

The Eternal Return

Here I stand on the path
by the gate - a grave
with epitath-
"He wept for an Ass"*

did you like my impersonation of Emily Dickinson? It's so much better in Orson Welles's voice.
or if we apply the boson thereory
no charm
strange bottom and down
and something keeps coming
up
to the top


*that was Nietzsche BTW

 

[twelveoone]

I don't know about Texas, but in Louisiana, Christmas is the second largest blow out party of the year.

from the stack poem just figured Houston
Enjoy

 

[bronzeage]

from the stack poem just figured Houston
Enjoy

The Baton Rouge Exxon oil and chemical complex one of the largest operations in the world.

Merry Christmas to you and yours. The temperature today is 72F with a blue sky.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

The Baton Rouge Exxon oil and chemical complex one of the largest operations in the world.

Merry Christmas to you and yours. The temperature today is 72F with a blue sky.

82 yesterday in Houston, today cloudy and just mid-70s, may get down to freezing Sun nite.

 

[bogusagain]

Literary criticism is not literature, it is trying to understand the meaning of life from the point of view of a navel. So, while I enjoy navel gazing, preferably one that decorates a smooth flat belly of young generous female, I am more inclined to write about my animal response to the said navel and use it for a little guidence, knowing that approximately 6 to 10 inches below it is the desired goal.

I have always found theory and criticism an impediment if writing while conscience of it, while being reasonably certain that I have been influenced by it if I ignore it. After all, one learns to fuck well, not by being explained the mechanics in school sex education lessons but by actually nailing one's object of desire and doing the glorious deed.

 

[bogusagain]

Berlin -2 centigrade, foggy, snow on the way? warmed up from -10 on Sunday, Christmas could be back down to -10, it's going to be a white one. Whatever happened to Bing?

 

[vrosej10]

Coffs Harbour 24c, patchy rain. We actually got snow in parts of Aussie last week. IT'S SUMMER here and it often doesn't snow in these areas in winter.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

No snow here yet this season, just occasional frost and brief freezes.
When such conditions threaten we cover the pots with hot peppers growing in them - still some growth.

 

[Palba_Noruda]

Best wishes along the way and the coming years.

Thanks. Same to you.

Generally in literary circles, authorial intention is considered a myth, but I am not one of those people who is a theory nazi. If you enjoy trying to imagine what the author was thinking, go for it. I think it can only enhance your enjoyment and that's the point I think. Art is meant to be enjoyable and challenging for the most part ( and there are exceptions to this). Theory is a tool, a single tool in the bag of trick we posess for understanding literature. It should be am eans to an end and it often seems to become an end in itself, which is a bit sad. I think theory is best probably for helping to catergorize works and probably after that should be left out of things, at least in circles where you don't have to justify your opinions about one work or another.

Okay, I see what you're saying about authorial intention. I didn't understand what you were saying before because I was thinking of authorial intention in terms of my own personal art. As in, what is MY intention.

I think if a person is interested in writing criticism, that person should write many poems themselves.

How else would they know anything about how artists approach the work?

It seems important in this regard to treat the critique as a venue for personal exploration and expression, instead of treating the comment or critique as a mere response to the expression of somebody else.

It seems like a power issue. Who is the top dog, the writer you're studying or yourself?

Writing a critique with no attention paid to the self's expression is adopting a position of extreme submission.

 

[bronzeage]

Literary criticism is not literature, it is trying to understand the meaning of life from the point of view of a navel. So, while I enjoy navel gazing, preferably one that decorates a smooth flat belly of young generous female, I am more inclined to write about my animal response to the said navel and use it for a little guidence, knowing that approximately 6 to 10 inches below it is the desired goal.

I have always found theory and criticism an impediment if writing while conscience of it, while being reasonably certain that I have been influenced by it if I ignore it. After all, one learns to fuck well, not by being explained the mechanics in school sex education lessons but by actually nailing one's object of desire and doing the glorious deed.

If this method was used to train novice sky divers, there would be fewer experienced sky divers.

Literary criticism is not without value, especially for young or inexperienced writers. It's easy to point out weakness and errors at this point. As a writer learns the techniques of analysis and criticism, their own writing improves. The law of diminishing returns comes into the mix. Since there is no absolute scale to measure against, there will be a time when the critique has less to consider and is a lot more work.

This is where our problem arises. It is very difficult to explain why something is good, when the standard for good is vague, and the standard for excellence is unknown. This drives people to create systems of measure and then go hunting for things to hold against their new yardstick. I don't begrudge them. It's a way to make a living in a field where a lot of people labor and very little money comes of it.

This afternoon a box of books was given to me. There were a couple dozen hardbacks. Most of them were from well marketed literature sets, all bound the same size and color. Treasure Island was on top of the stack. I picked it up and thumbed to the page where Israel Hand chases Jim Hawkins to the top of the rigging. Hand has a knife and Hawkins has pistols. Everyone knows how this ended. I read this passage for the first time about 45 years ago. It made a big impression on me. I consider it to be an excellent example of writing. Many years later I read Absalom, Absalom! Two very different books, but both contain flashes of excellence which make a person stop and retrace the words one more time. If there is anything similar in them, I can't find it.

 

[bogusagain]

If this method was used to train novice sky divers, there would be fewer experienced sky divers.

There are a lot of experienced poets and regiments more of literary graduates, but remarkably few good ones. Literary graduates churned out by the plane load who's literary careers then plummet to earth before they have time to open the chute. Not surprising that only a handfull learn to fly by wafting their arms up and down but it is a glorious sight to behold.