Your Personal Mt. Rushmore

[Hamletmaschine]

Your identity is a mystery enciphered in four different regimes of discourse:

FAMILY -- parents, grandparents, siblings and whatever you learned as a result of your familial life
SCHOOL -- teachers, coaches, peers, classmates, etc.
DISCIPLINE -- i.e., whatever craft or profession you align yourself with, whatever course of study or apprenticeship you've chosen to subject yourself to
ENTERTAINMENT--pop culture, in the broadest sense: mass media forms like TV and pop music or oral traditional forms like folklore, folk songs, etc.

You unlock the mystery of your identity by answering the call of certain representatives from these four discursive arenas, who function as guides, witnesses, suspects in helping you answer the riddle of who you are.

The “Personal Mt. Rushmore” is your monument to the four individuals whose influence has been the strongest in your quest. The goal of this little diversion is to name the four individuals—one from each of the above-named areas—whom you would enshrine on your personal Rushmore.

If you can explain why you’d put them there, how they’ve helped or influenced you, that’d be cool, too.

And for those of you who are good at that Photoshop stuff, maybe you could even take a pic of Mt. Rushmore and replace the dead presidents’ faces with those of your personal idols. . . .


Anyone interested in reading the densely theoretical work from which this is borrowed, see Greg Ulmer's HEURETICS

 

[riff]

Is this gonna be on the test?

 

[Hamletmaschine]

It's not a test, you Pretty thing, you. It's a game.

 

[lavender]

 

[riff]

Well, I am too braindead to think seriously right now. I feel so silly. Giddy from lack of sleep because I got woke up from a phone call at 7am after going to sleep at 4AM.

I'll have to nap on this one!

 

[Hamletmaschine]

Understandable. That's why I didn't put my own up yet.

 

[alexandraaah]

This is really interesting, I know I'm going to screw this up, so someone, please correct me. It's based on an old African, I believe, greeting, which loosely translates to:

From what river do you come? And, from what mountain do you come?

It's in those answers that the story of one unfolds.

 

[Hamletmaschine]

Interesting connection. I haven't heard of any African sayings like that--which doesn't mean there isn't one, of course.

 

[Myrrdin]

From what river do you come? And, from what mountain do you come?

It's in those answers that the story of one unfolds.

Much like the old system of Welsh naming, patronymics. When people were named like, John ap Thomas ap Hywel ap Meurig. Ap means son of.
Nowadays all the neighbours are known by the farm they come from. Like Dai, Pentre or Mike the Wern.

 

[modest mouse]

Everyone above me is a douchebag.




On with it though the categories are ridiculous for anyone interesting enough to talk to.

Stepfather.
Ms. Felch.
Curt Flood.
Thurston Moore.

 

[GreenEyedGirl]

Hamlet - this is a great question. It is really difficult to think of just one person for each category.
But here I go:

Family would be my sister. Undoubtably the person who knows me best in this world.
School is harder. I am going to have to go with my high school literature teacher. He opened my world to all sorts of art that was not mainstream.
Discilpine is the easiest of the bunch. Theatre. Throw those damn masks up for me.
Entertainment. Not an easy area, but my choice would be Mr. Vonnegut. Best writer ever spawned in my mind.

So there is my monument. Where's yours?

 

[Jimi]

HOLY SHIT...

Is this gonna be on the test?

Riffie, what happened to your face? Too much Crystal on the beans & rice?

 

[Reverie]

Family: Very hard choices. My Mom. I spent the first 20 years trying my best not to be like her and the last nine years realizing I could learn a lot from her.

School: My eighth grade history teacher. Pushed me to be my best, beleived I was smart and special long before I ever did. Amazing man.

Discipline:since my field is Education, I'd have to list my 8th grade history teacher again.

Entertainment: Ekaterina Gordeeva, olympic figure skater. Admire her grace, class, beauty and strength in the face of tragedy. Oprah runs a close second.

 

[BustyTheClown]

Wow, what a great and thought-provoking thread -- great work, hamlet! Here's my personal Mt. Rushmore:

My mom... as much as I'd like to deny her existence sometimes
My best friend... Dani
My favorite professor of all time... Professor Bloom -- I love her!
Freddie Mercury... of Queen fame

I'm amazed there isn't a place for a significant other, or some similar kind of position. I'm sorry I can't include mine here since he doesn't fit in any of these categories for me. Anyway, if I was allowed five, he'd be my number one choice for sure.

 

[Hamletmaschine]

Okay, I guess I should try to do this myself.

Family - my grandfather, who basically raised me for the first five years of my life, was a drummer in jazz joints, speakeasies, burlesque houses, vaudeville houses back in the Roaring 20s. When those joints closed down, he never worked another day in his life. When I was in h.s., he asked me if I'd ever smoked marijuana, and I said, "No, Grandpa, of course not!"
His answer: "Well, you ought to try it some time."

School - A h.s. English, Speech, and Drama teacher. I was terminally shy in h.s., and she helped bring me out of my shell. That's all I can say. Thanks, Ms. W.

Discipline - Bertolt Brecht, the German playwright and theorist. Taught me that art matters, that it can make a difference; that reality is a shared social illusion no more fixed or given or natural than a play; and, hence, that it can be unmade and remade.

Entertainment - David Byrne. Genius.

 

[riff]

FAMILY -- parents, grandparents, siblings and whatever you learned as a result of your familial life
SCHOOL -- teachers, coaches, peers, classmates, etc.
DISCIPLINE -- i.e., whatever craft or profession you align yourself with, whatever course of study or apprenticeship you've chosen to subject yourself to
ENTERTAINMENT--pop culture, in the broadest sense: mass media forms like TV and pop music or oral traditional forms like folklore, folk songs, etc.

FAMILY- I am doing a lot of work on this right now. I want to say it is my father, but I want to be more like my mother. Then again, I think of my grandfather who recently died. While being chastised by his wife for not going to Mass, he looked to me and said: "But I like to go fishing."

SCHOOL: My contemporary American poetry and literary theory teacher in graduate school. I worshipped him. He told me I was one of the smartest people he knew. He gave me a B on a paper I wrote on a book of his, but gave me wonderful praise. I went to his office and said "Why did you give me a B?" He said nothing to me, just grabbed the paper out of my hands, scratched out the B and wrote A+ on it. "Happy?" he asked.

DISCIPLINE: Albert Camus. When I read "The Myth of Sisyphus" something inside me snapped and I have never been the same sense.

ENTERTAINMENT: The Beatles. Born in '63 they were my first experience of music. I have never been the same sense.