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09/05/2005 Archived Entry: "The Way to Miami, Florida"

The Way to Gainesville, Florida

Since it connects so well to my previous post, I take your challenge.

1. 461 Ocean Blvd. is the name of Clapton's 1974 record. A song that sticks out for me is the George Terry cover "Mainline, Florida."

My heart was leaping in the sun;
My friends all say that you're the one.
Let me get this one thing very clear:
There ain't enough going on down here.

Mainline Florida, oh say.
Mainline Florida, O.K.

Her arms were open, open wide;
Her invitation's a changing tide.
I could remember not long ago
We took a cruise down on Hotel Row.

The mix of women and Florida, a common trope associated with the Sunshine State. Either heartbreak or passion, the trope captures most of our images of South Florida: beaches and women. In an episode of Miami Vice, Sonny Crockett says of his ex-wife, "She left me at Sears, and had me cryin' all the way to Walgreens."

2. The most popular myth associated with Florida is the Fountain of Youth. When Ponce de Leon made his way to Florida in the name of the Spanish crown, he was in search of the mythical source of life. Like other colonial myths (notably gold), the death and disease that materialized in place of the desired goal is often forgotten. De Leon's quest may have in fact been in the wrong side of the state - he searched throughout St. Augustine, the northern coastal town an hour and a half east of Gainesville, and not Miami Beach, the site of fashionable youth (and women) and its own mythic status as cocaine capital. Miami's 2 Live Crew's "The Real One" emphasizes the point:

Who's puttin' it down on Miami's behalf
Home of the nickel and the raw half
Everywhere we go, the impression's felt
The real is stamped on the bag and the dope is dealt

Gainesville, Ulmer writes, was Bartram's source of the mythical Xanadu. Coleridge made Xanadu the stie of Kubla Khan, but in Citizen Kane, Orson Wells made it a mythical mountain top (mountains in Florida?) where Kane retired.

3. Growing up, the educational myth circulated in our home was that only one school mattered for college, and that was the University of Florida. My parents went to UF in the '60s. I remember a visit we made when I was maybe 10. We drove through the student ghetto; my dad pointed out an old shack he had lived in. By the time I was ready to go off to college, I rejected the UF myth, wanting instead to attend Boston University. But it didn't happen. I went to UF for two years before leaving for a two year break. Dropping out was uneventful and unimportant. But years later, long after I had earned a B.A. at Indiana and long after I done many other things, I felt the call of the myth. A brief visit to Gainesville in the mid-90s for my sister's graduation compelled me to return again (Emmitt Smith was graduating too, his own mythic status long put in place in UF football - I rememberd him from my own freshmen year). Sometime during graduate studies, I went back to Citizen Kane, and I found in Kane's unrealized collection of artifacts piled away in his basement (and from which the allusive Rosebud is found and tossed into a fire) a metaphor for digital writing (which I have since written about).

Female reporter: If you could've found out what Rosebud meant, I bet that would've explained everything.
Thompson: No, I don't think so; no. Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything... I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a... piece in a jigsaw puzzle... a missing piece.

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pedagogy/v005/5.1rice.html

Posted by Jonathan @ 09/06/2005 08:20 PM EST

Can you see the excerpt and citation?
You have to log in to mMse to see any of its contents. This is the cite:
Rice, Jeff (Jeff R.) "Cyborgography: A Pedagogy of the Home Page"
Pedagogy - Volume 5, Issue 1, Winter 2005, pp. 61-75

Posted by jeff @ 09/06/2005 02:52 PM EST

That Muse URL is session-specific.

Posted by Jonathan @ 09/06/2005 02:14 PM EST