"... he uttered a pointless oath," I said. She frowned at that, and asked,
"What's that about? What's an 'oath'?" I answered, "A profanity. An oath is
a curse." "Oh. You should have said so. Sorry to break your chain of thought."

	Depending on the company you keep, and other factors, the forgoing may
illustrate a familiar experience. It also supplies a few observations more
or less pertinent to recent exchanges.
	To define is to express (usually in a language) an understanding in answer
to a question about some thing or event (any range of complexity allowed).
To turn to defining is a normal recurrent function of life on the move.
That forward movement involves us in compositions of dynamic orders of
elements, the interruption or breakdown of which cues, among other
responses, questions. The answer to *any* question whatsoever is a modality
of defining.
	A definition is bound to an-experience-as-questioned-and-understood, but
if called for. Made an issue of and expressed, elements and their relations
constitutive of the ongoing order of the day can be retained or rejected or
shuffled about or revaluated, etc. So definition is also bound to the
collaborative drama of relationships, groups, communities, societies, whole
civilizations.
	The sine qua non of the ongoing, of course, is Quest-ioning. Generally,
there are two questions: The most familiar are questions about the
extrinsic relations of things and events. The not unfamiliar but difficult
are questions about the intrinsic constitution of things and events. The
more nuanced one's knowledge of the extrinsic and intrinsic dynamics of
things and events, the more substance to the challenge of the day's order.
	This brief expression of what, to me, defining is about disallows the
hypostatization of Definition. It is not pallatable to those who balk at my
cavalier use of the terms "thing" and "event". But I neither feel obliged
nor otherwise compelled to hand over the order and ordering of my
ecology-linked-body to the Forms removed from Plato's heaven and installed
in Kant's mind.
	My main point is that defining is a normal, recurrently practical
procedure in the conduct of one's life.  Much more can said about
definition as it pertains to the conduct of scientific investigations. Some
find the normalcy difficult to affirm due to the cultural ascendancy of a
cast of characters who wish to be celebrated as "The Definers".... but
that's another problem.  

	Please accept the following as a contribution to the question regarding
"Film":

	From a base of interest in Communication, I found it necessary to come to
terms with a number of practices, one of which is reflected in the
question, "What is film?". The upshot of my own inquiry allows me to invite
your consideration of the following:
	Telephone, Radio, Records, Tape Recorders, Photogragh, "Film", Television,
and all modifications of these thanks to the microchip, are (=descriptive
definition) 1. instrumental mediations of the visible and/or the audible
*as such*, 2. *for* private or public communications.
	Various collaborative labours will call for a range of operative
distinctions in the use and technical development of one or another
instrument. "Film", for example, is probably a useless term in a Kodac
manufacturing plant. When I use the telephone, am I "dialing her number" or
am I "ringing her up"? Now, someone has already mentioned terminological
squabbles, but the choice may be pertinent to the job of writing an early
20th century novel.
	The above descriptive definition is one that I arrived at some years ago.
It has been repeatedly confirmed as an understanding which has fact on its
side through numerous attempts to take advantage of the work of various
researches in Communication - specialists, for example, who have helped me
sharpen my perception of the *vocabulary and grammar* of A/V "expression",
the organization and manipulation of the visible and audible, the better to
understand what is being communicated.
	Some attention has been paid to the term "image". If I should participate
in a discussion of the meaning of this term, one of the first positions I
would take is that an image is not the visible as such.  
	Anyway, I must admit that like an intruder here. My main interest is in
poems and stories and plays, what they are all about. So, call me your
student.       

Maxim Faust
Ottawa, Canada
     



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