A Brief History of the Dictionary
A dictionary historically and predominantly has been a
collection of definitions of words and sometimes brief phrases—often including etymologies, grammatical functions, pronunciations— ... definitions which are
proper—that is, oriented to the serious and firm operations of society. Exceptions—primarily the notable Bierce and
his less notable successors—exist; (Bierce might be said to contain more truth
but less utility than his mainstream equivalents, even as we aim here for
more—not truth, for who aims for that
these days? but—love, viewing utility merely as a function [and hardly one of its
most important] of love).
Yet there is a gap.
There are always gaps. (Gaps exist
to be filled so that new gaps can be created.
This is not an error: we can’t
help but be the homo gapus gapus that
we are. Error—itself a form of truth;
thus, like utility, now subservient to love—creeps in when value is inevitably imposed
onto the gaps, the filling, the creating.
We do what we must do, even as trees leaf and shed and cockroaches scurry
and startle. Homo errorus errorus.)
We, thus, being made to fill and create gaps and not much
more, fill and create this gap: the dictionary of modern times. Which seeks to capture less the technical
definitions of an age than free the spirits of an age by means of the caprice
of defining, thus subverting the definitional task and engaging in the poet’s
perpetual task of the (re-) liberation of language. (Knowing caprice is the beat of love’s
dancing stable heart.) It aims less to
please the serious operations of society and more to please that which those operations are devoted to denying. It
aims to be systematic, but according to the systems that create new worlds
rather than those that ossify existing ones.
If these creative systems are not well understood, well then, perhaps
this dictionary can be an aid to further understanding—not necessarily in the
individuality of any entry, but in the conglomerate effect of the whole. And, truly, is not this the only way we
effectively understand anything?
For no word exists in isolation; there is no platonic word: this is the error of the conventional
dictionary which, while it seeks—it must seek—to define a word with other
words (even our dictionary does not attempt to escape this directly, but indirectly, by travelling to the center of language itself), still maintains the pretense that certain other particular words and
sets of other particular words, set in certain styles against certain backdrops,
are closer to what we should expect are the truth of the word being defined
rather than only one of an infinite myriad of possibilities, restricted only by
the fetters we put on imagination and freedom.
In other words, the conventional dictionary approaches language from the
necessary societal perspective of death whereas our dictionary—for the first
time—approaches language from a necessary aesthetic perspective of life. This, then, is the first gaseous dictionary,
a dictionary of the spirit, of things not as they are—or seem, or pretend to
be—in themselves, but as they are—or seem, or pretend to be—in others or,
rather, in that ineffable numinous space between. Even as each of us is recognized only in the
dissolving mirror of the other (or the same in ourselves as we see ourselves
dissolving in that other mirror that dissolves, in another).
One might also call it a mystic’s dictionary—and this would
be less and more precise, but possibly misleading (for the pretentious
overtones which would likely be imposed by a naïve readership—for which mystic
has cared about language as a face of god ... or, rather, cared about god as a
face of language?) From an eastern
perspective (if we are permitted [but being westerners, we permit ourselves]),
we could think of the Dictionary of Modern Times as a haiku dictionary—not,
naturally, in any literal sense, but as if the definitions were written by a
haiku, a haiku made flesh.
(One might also call it Humpty Dumpty's Dictionary, but this would be too easily misunderstood by all the false eggs out there.)
A dictionary not of and by and for the people—not user-led
and edited: some tricktionary—but of and
by and for language. We introduce to you
the first dictionary of language; all dictionaries to date have, most
misleadingly, been dictionaries of words—worse, of Word: offering solid mental images of artifacts and
concepts of human projection, a form of the puerile project of god. Instead, i place Word, word and words where
they belong—in language: that is, as
gas, of feeling. For most, language—and
so a dictionary—is a monument, a stolidity, a once-and-for-all ... but
dictionaries should dance: everyone
should have their own!: the dictionary
an unchoreographed choreography of each, all dictionaries!
The reader should be aware that grammatical functions are
not provided (all language parts are verbs), etymologies are not provided (all
language derives from darkness), and pronunciations are not provided (the
reader should attempt to read the text aloud in Westminster and if she be
understood she may interpret this as her having pronounced improperly).
Finally, it has been suggested by some—some of whom
some don’t consider entirely “with it”—that the entries in DoMT (pronounced
dom-tea), as it is sometimes affectionately known, are in the order of degree
of irony: though from greatest to least
or least to greatest it is debated.
Others, however, disagree, and posit an order not unrelated to the
recent coup in Guinea-Bissau.
Regardless, the one thing almost all agree on (Flipp, an accomplished South
Dakotian cowherd, is a notable exception) is that the entries are not in
alphabetic order.
A Note on Method
We use—that is, we embody—the claimed values and valued
methods and methodical claims of modernity:
narration, diversity&multiperspectivity, absurdity, non-linearity, mutability,
ellipticality, relationalicalness, fleetingness&momentariation &
gasity.
