About Me
- De.Corday
- Charlote de Corday, a figure of the French Revolution, was a rebel against the rebellion, an individual in a war of sides. Charlotte de Corday has thus become my nom de guerre as an individual caught up in a world that speaks in borders rather than content. I am quite simply a student of philosophy and theories of government, a musician and a coffee addict, returned to my native urban New Jersey to find a place rapidly gentrifying, changing, growing--whatever you want to call it, only to move to Brooklyn and act as the other side of that coin. I am trying to make art after four years of academy, trying to feel for an ever elusive home... also trying to keep my car running. Trying to live and work and create in a way that each is copacetic to the other two. I currently write freelance and work for a newspaper in Lower Manhattan.
1 comment:
Correlation does not imply causation! Really it doesn't!
Anyone planning to do statistical research--or really, anyone who is interested in trying to understand what's happening in the world around them--should say that to themselves regularly. When we fail to remember this, we come to completely nonsensical conclusions about cause and effect that aren't remotely borne out by the evidence.
Kaufman's conclusion: "It is hoped that the data presented here will help poets and mental-health professionals find ways to lessen what appears to be a sometimes negative impact of writing poetry on mortality and mental health." seems to imply that his data shows that writing poetry can negatively impact your mortality and mental health. This is not only in no way proven by the data, but in fact seems to me like the least likely explanation of the poet/early death correlation, given my personal experience with poets. I think the causality runs the other way: people with difficult, precarious lives often write poetry to try to preserve some semblance of sanity. The poetry isn't endangering them! I would bet, in fact, that it is making their sanity and longevity greater than they otherwise would have been, even if they remain at a disadvantage compared to the rest of the population.
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