Note from Jess: For years now, Beverly Nelson has been writing a book based on the index of a book never written. This is a long-term project. Beverly is not finished with the book. She has, however, been kind of enough to share how she’s writing it.)
Douglas Blau’s Index was used as an essay in Alexis Rockman’s exhibition catalogue: Second Nature. It is an index for which there was never any book written.
Foundations
In Blau’s Index there are 4 topics which stand out merely on the basis of their visual characteristics. They are:
ants
Beverly.Index Ants
german cock roaches
Beverly.Index.GermanCockroaches
horror vaccui
Beverly.Index.HorrorVaccui
obsessive compulsive disorder
Beverly.Index.ObsessCompuls
Blau’s Index was originally written in two columns. These four topics are shown in the scanned copies as they appear in the original. Each of the topics defined includes an element of excessive accumulation. Ants and compulsive disorders accumulate in an excessive orderly fashion driven by orderliness, whereas german cockroaches and horror vaccui behavior accumulate in a chaotic swarm driven by fear.
Phase 1: De-alphabetizing Blau’s Index
A Plan
List the 750 page numbers on the left.
Take the first topic listed in the Index (“aardvark”) and type it next to every page number on the list where it was supposed to show up in the book. Then progress, in the same way, until all the topics, (a to z), are listed next to the page numbers on which they appear.
The file’s pages have grown to 68 after all the Topics are dealphabetized and listed next to their corresponding page numbers. The topics have gone from being read according to the first letter in their spelling, to being read in numerical order as they appear in the book. Although the list fills out at this stage, it is still only the bare bones of the book as I imagined it would be when finished.
Phase 2: Gathering and Editing
Gathering
Every word’s use in language is based upon its definition. The topics comprise both common nouns and proper nouns. I found the definition of each word either in the Oxford English Dictionary or online, and cut and pasted it into the topics’ document. I used the OED for the common nouns but, since the OED doesn’t have proper nouns, I had to use the internet (Google search) for proper nouns. I gathered images as well as text but was undecided if I wanted to use the images because of copyright.
When I was gathering text for the different topics, I read only what I needed to. Everything was cut and pasted with little thought to content other than to identify the text as the definition of the word.
(Note from Jess: For time’s sake, only the words gathered from the word “Collection” in the index are gathered here.)
Beverly.index.Collection.21-23
Editing
Once the gathering was done for each of the topics, I then began to glean what I wanted to use. At times I used the constraints 1 and other times I didn’t, for no logical reason.
What remained of each topics’ definition after the editing was done, was used to substitute for each particular topic, wherever that topic appeared in the 750 pages.
(Note from Jess: Here is what became of the word “Collection” in the index after editing.)
The Final Edit
Once all the words have been substituted with edited text, I will go back and freely rearrange whatever text is on each page without adding or subtracting any words. The constraint that I will have to manage with is the literal size of the page and its margins. Some pages have no topics and others have a list that extends beyond the page.
The finished work will be the book (or a book) that was generated by
Blau’s Index.
1 Count the lines of any given entry. Divide the total by 2. The answer decides which line to select. Own judgment used on whether to stop at a period, if it happens before the end of the line; or to select all the words in that line. When there is only 1 or 2 lines, count the sentences and select the one in the middle. If there are only one or two sentences in one or two lines, select the one with the most words. When an entry is longer than one page select a paragraph by counting all paragraphs and divide by 2; the answer decides which paragragh to select. For images, if there is only 1, select the one. If there are 2, select either. If there are three or more, use own discretion.
At the author’s discretion, these constraints may be modified.
Phase 3: (e)Merging Text
This phase is a merging between the text that was gathered and edited for each word and substituting it for the topic on the page it corresponds to.
A line or two of text, or words that amounted to a line or two, were selected out of what was gathered for each word. Then those lines would be substituted for the word they corresponded to on every page where that word was found.
The blue lines are the topics not yet replaced with their text. The black text is everywhere the topic did get substituted.
Hypothesis: Since the words were culled from the definition of each word, they contain the kernels of that word’s meaning(s) so that the topic’s essence is present. This comes out of a faith in language that, although meanings of words can shift within structural context, their meanings are limited and static.
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