Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Damion Searls & the Significance of a Teapot

At the Significant Objects project, Damion Searls — translator of the soon-to-be published new selection of Rilke, The Inner Sky — writes about a bubble bath teapot: “She had gotten used to the long subway ride, the 3 uptown and past uptown to what came after. She usually saw patients in her office near NYU, but Damien Toussaint was admitted to Mercy’s the week of the earthquake and she treated him there, then thought she’d keep seeing him somewhere familiar for their follow-ups after he was discharged. . . .” Visit Significant Objects to read the rest!

Not familiar with the site and its goals? According to their site, the basic idea is that if a “talented, creative writer invents a story about an object” then that otherwise mundane object becomes “invested with new significance by this fiction,” and should “acquire not merely subjective but objective value.” They test this theory via open auctions on e-bay; the project is now immersed in Stage 2: Charitable Fund-Raising & Data-Crunching.

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