Kit Robinson, Poetry Project, 4/6/05
"in poetry, you are given all the letters and have to arrange them yourself"
Quick, fluid crosshatching of seamless, interdependent layers built up into a kind of resonant image -- speech rhythm, overheard phrases, re-contextualized parts of language, recorded thought and sensation evoked with a minimum of words.
"the inhabitation of a weird head" -- poetry as escape into someone else’s head…or into one's own.
On the page, Robinson’s line energy might suggest a subdued delivery, but he has a lot of forward momentum live, without sacrificing any of the nuances of inflection.
Checking one’s own wakefulness on a micro-scale.
"Hundreds of thousands of email messages gone forever." -- the sense of the ephemeral…
"writing goes it’s own way -- you have to supply the synthesis" Like Morton Feldman’s "don’t push the tones around, let them be."
The work has a feeling of providing much information about life – about the social environment and the environment of the mind -- while supplying very few details. Listening to it, you can feel the data decompressing. The flexible and evocative qualities of language are used as a bridge across contexts, gaining resonance and impact from the spaces of daily human ephemeral life that would normally go unmentioned. In this sense this is a dynamic Zen poetry.
"play scales, watch for whales."
4.07.2005
4.03.2005
Saw the colorized version of the Bollywood classic Mughal-e-Azam at the Imaginasian theater after last minute heads up from Sandhya. Arrived a half hour early to excited party vibe in lobby, wine and cheese, video interviews etc. Filed in early, used to NYC competition for seat real estate. The early crowd was pushed to the back of the theater, rather than middle, the reason for which became clear soon enough: the volume of the film was the loudest I'd ever heard, rock club loud. Pulled out my spare earplugs.
The Prince's love of a handmaid dancer threatens King/father's (Rumsfeld?) military dictatorship succession plans. Love threatens class structure. Does this translate to: amorous love = working class power? Familial love = authoritarian power?
Mainly developed into the prince's power struggle with his remote, absentee father who values social power over love. Also -- reaction against arraigned marriage? The affect of the love affair is intense, but it is left without any substance or development, not so the father/son dynamic.
Crazy combination of vibes: like a Disney / Busby Berkeley / Ken Russell collaboration with a soundtrack provided by Ravi Shankar/Butthole Surfers. Insane and beautiful and poetic and odd.
Strangely two-dimensional three dimensional spaces of the sets, like a video game or a pop-up book. Extremely psychedelic colors.
Increasing intensity of affect from actors using, cartoon-like melodramatic set-ups. The father king's neck swells up like a frog when overcome by rage, which is often.
The Prince is introduced as a warrior/poet, complete with frilly feather pen, but the poet thread is dropped from the character. The figure of the sculptor who introduces the dancer handmaid into the picture knowing the Prince's love for her will be a creative subversion of the authoritarian social structure he hates. We know the Prince is not truly subversive, or else he would flee with the dancer and give up power. The sculptor (director?) is the one reacting against an imbalance in the social order.
Interesting, persistent sound textures throughout the soundtrack. Constant ringing of ankle bells reminds the audience of the corporeality of the actors apart from the drama. Chains dragged across surfaces -- the inflexibility and inhumanity of oligarchy.
Beautiful sound moment outside during the Prince's execution scene. Outside but with an indoor-sounding small-room reverb. Exceedingly strange and compelling -- as though the outdoor public drama were taking place inside your head.
Crazy dance song sequences with poetry as lyrics -- corny, absurd, but also magisterial and with an odd intensity. Carl Dryer-grade close ups.
A few moments where still photos are used for shots -- the most amazing being the moment the dancer maid gives herself up to save the Prince -- time seemed to stop at that moment in the film, and even though the movie continues, there is a lingering feeling that time never re-started for this character, because the self-sacrifice for love was her defining moment of consciousness.
The movie ends on a reactionary note, though Gary says this has to do with attitudes about the family and the fact of censorship at the time....
Script shot through with poetic metaphor, and an intense feeling of fused dramatic arts increasingly felt as the dance /poetry song sequences build within the dramatic framing.
The Prince's love of a handmaid dancer threatens King/father's (Rumsfeld?) military dictatorship succession plans. Love threatens class structure. Does this translate to: amorous love = working class power? Familial love = authoritarian power?
Mainly developed into the prince's power struggle with his remote, absentee father who values social power over love. Also -- reaction against arraigned marriage? The affect of the love affair is intense, but it is left without any substance or development, not so the father/son dynamic.
Crazy combination of vibes: like a Disney / Busby Berkeley / Ken Russell collaboration with a soundtrack provided by Ravi Shankar/Butthole Surfers. Insane and beautiful and poetic and odd.
Strangely two-dimensional three dimensional spaces of the sets, like a video game or a pop-up book. Extremely psychedelic colors.
Increasing intensity of affect from actors using, cartoon-like melodramatic set-ups. The father king's neck swells up like a frog when overcome by rage, which is often.
The Prince is introduced as a warrior/poet, complete with frilly feather pen, but the poet thread is dropped from the character. The figure of the sculptor who introduces the dancer handmaid into the picture knowing the Prince's love for her will be a creative subversion of the authoritarian social structure he hates. We know the Prince is not truly subversive, or else he would flee with the dancer and give up power. The sculptor (director?) is the one reacting against an imbalance in the social order.
Interesting, persistent sound textures throughout the soundtrack. Constant ringing of ankle bells reminds the audience of the corporeality of the actors apart from the drama. Chains dragged across surfaces -- the inflexibility and inhumanity of oligarchy.
Beautiful sound moment outside during the Prince's execution scene. Outside but with an indoor-sounding small-room reverb. Exceedingly strange and compelling -- as though the outdoor public drama were taking place inside your head.
Crazy dance song sequences with poetry as lyrics -- corny, absurd, but also magisterial and with an odd intensity. Carl Dryer-grade close ups.
A few moments where still photos are used for shots -- the most amazing being the moment the dancer maid gives herself up to save the Prince -- time seemed to stop at that moment in the film, and even though the movie continues, there is a lingering feeling that time never re-started for this character, because the self-sacrifice for love was her defining moment of consciousness.
The movie ends on a reactionary note, though Gary says this has to do with attitudes about the family and the fact of censorship at the time....
Script shot through with poetic metaphor, and an intense feeling of fused dramatic arts increasingly felt as the dance /poetry song sequences build within the dramatic framing.
3.18.2005
3.17.2005
Great reading from Kasey last night at St. Mark's. Appropriated/ networked social word alchemy/comedic subversion.
Since thoughts and consciousness are types of networked computing, this is a kind of electronic social thought? The verbal materials are taken from the internet, and then changed-up in the mind-net. Very energized and funny, sweet but also demanding. Demanding that you be willing to try on a dozen different human perspective-goggles to dig it and check yourself at the same time. Kasey is insisting that these processes be a pleasure.
Signs from some of the older listeners, if I’m reading them right, that they are not understanding. I take this as a good sign:
How do you know if something is new? You don’t like it!
Since thoughts and consciousness are types of networked computing, this is a kind of electronic social thought? The verbal materials are taken from the internet, and then changed-up in the mind-net. Very energized and funny, sweet but also demanding. Demanding that you be willing to try on a dozen different human perspective-goggles to dig it and check yourself at the same time. Kasey is insisting that these processes be a pleasure.
Signs from some of the older listeners, if I’m reading them right, that they are not understanding. I take this as a good sign:
How do you know if something is new? You don’t like it!
3.16.2005
The thought of what America would be like if Robin Williams read Harry Matthews novels troubles my sleep.
3.14.2005
Brandon Downing and Steve Benson
St. Mark's Church, 3.9.05
Brandon Downing
“one of those muppets was feeding on me when I came to”
personality / fantasy / joke / push-pull theater
“greedy. I always come in 4th in poetry”
huh?--effects.
Stoned, splintered echos of private jokes.
An odd, tweaked poetic immobilization created by the simultaneous contradictory embrace of wacky, relaxed and likeable / nervous tense and uncomfortable.
Picking odd objects of appropriation (films, cartoons, commercials) and then using them privately to keep the poem in a state of dissociation. The effect a funny and friendly energy bending itself into a pretzel to avoid directly addressing the dirigible-scale questions about failures of communication that the whole thing sets into motion.
Affability with a strong undercurrent of anxiety.
Also, gleaner-mind seeing discarded culture as possible alternate fuel source?
Purina Cat Chow commercial slowed down until it became a nightmare.
The fact that Downing is showing cable access shows or forgotten cartoons about Paul Bunyan means that for him poetry is state of looking at things, not necessarily a sequence of words.
Steve Benson
Benson started with a sequence of questions from a new book. I had heard a version of this material before, when it was being written you could say. He generated it at a performance a few years ago at the Bowery Poetry Club. At the Poetry Project, he started with written questions, but then started to make up answers, and, I think, to make up new questions, departing from text. A method of entering the improvised performance. Pondering riffs, expressions of self doubt riffs . "Is this entire thing fatuous?" Riffing from the vocabulary. Chains of puns. Tense, torturous, hilarious, depressing, amusing. The best sequences were on topics of "insecurity" and "certainty." He crawled from word to word, clearly navigation the energy from individual word to individual word. How they branch in associations. Descriptions of mental states. The mind reeling against an unacceptable environment. Against itself. Against an uncooperative language. This was free association, adapted to the needs of performance art, not exactly free. And it is performance art. Not sure if it would work if he read it straight from the page, but it's great with the wandering around and tortured expression.
St. Mark's Church, 3.9.05
Brandon Downing
“one of those muppets was feeding on me when I came to”
personality / fantasy / joke / push-pull theater
“greedy. I always come in 4th in poetry”
huh?--effects.
Stoned, splintered echos of private jokes.
An odd, tweaked poetic immobilization created by the simultaneous contradictory embrace of wacky, relaxed and likeable / nervous tense and uncomfortable.
Picking odd objects of appropriation (films, cartoons, commercials) and then using them privately to keep the poem in a state of dissociation. The effect a funny and friendly energy bending itself into a pretzel to avoid directly addressing the dirigible-scale questions about failures of communication that the whole thing sets into motion.
Affability with a strong undercurrent of anxiety.
Also, gleaner-mind seeing discarded culture as possible alternate fuel source?
Purina Cat Chow commercial slowed down until it became a nightmare.
The fact that Downing is showing cable access shows or forgotten cartoons about Paul Bunyan means that for him poetry is state of looking at things, not necessarily a sequence of words.
Steve Benson
Benson started with a sequence of questions from a new book. I had heard a version of this material before, when it was being written you could say. He generated it at a performance a few years ago at the Bowery Poetry Club. At the Poetry Project, he started with written questions, but then started to make up answers, and, I think, to make up new questions, departing from text. A method of entering the improvised performance. Pondering riffs, expressions of self doubt riffs . "Is this entire thing fatuous?" Riffing from the vocabulary. Chains of puns. Tense, torturous, hilarious, depressing, amusing. The best sequences were on topics of "insecurity" and "certainty." He crawled from word to word, clearly navigation the energy from individual word to individual word. How they branch in associations. Descriptions of mental states. The mind reeling against an unacceptable environment. Against itself. Against an uncooperative language. This was free association, adapted to the needs of performance art, not exactly free. And it is performance art. Not sure if it would work if he read it straight from the page, but it's great with the wandering around and tortured expression.
3.11.2005
Autolux. Corecraft, Secret Machines
Irving Plaza, 3.7.05
Last minute Ave/ D bus bolt to Irving Plaza after a call from Alex of Prosolar Mechanics to check out Autolux.
Autolux is a trio. They knocked out appealingly noisy, introverted-but-social grooves made out of elements that were simplified at every turn. The tasty drummer held back her chops, using traditional grip. All of them were resisting complexity, or sneaking it in tiny micro-dilutions. You feel the invisible hand of complexity pressurizing the songs from the outside like homework you’re blowing off for now but intending to do. It's like the band was saying: "no, this is all you should need." I've been wondering when someone was going to pick up on the Sonic Youth side of the 80s historical blender we've apparently set to frappe. Here you go. They were literally looking at their shoes for the whole concert.
The songs were consistent. I think they suffered from opening band bad-mix-itous. not enough mid-to high end tonalities, too much bass, vocals too low. Listening to the CD would tell me more. Anytime they brought the higher guitar tones up, or doubled the vocals the whole horizon of the song would shift from quite good to great. I wish they had done more of this. I guess there is a kind of tacit agreement in certain bands to not think too much about structure and contrast, as a kind of perceived implicit resistance to certain social strucures? They brought their own Christmas lights mounted to cardboard squares. Does it seem insane to be from LA playing music like this?
Corecraft is a J. Mascis's group, a drummerless free-rock improv thing, more like something you might hear at ABC NO RIO at the Sunday night COMA series than Irving Plaza: bass, flute, slide guitar, guitar, tape loops.
I had listened to Dinosaur Jr. all through the 80s, esp. Bug and You're Living All Over Me, but had never seen them live. Mascis, with shocking, long, totally white-gray hair, sat for the whole set. His guitar tone, when it came to the surface for air, was piercing and rich. The sound man, big surprise, didn’t understand what to do with the flute.
Messy one-chord swells and ebbs. Everyone half-thinking about the other players, half trying to hold their own direction down no matter what. Mixed feelings about independance, competition, collaboration, and collectivity: it can be like that. There were maybe three swells which where marvelous -- stoner rock meets Phil Niblock. The high volume level brought out all the crazy undulating partial interactions in the drone. The ebbs were like places you have to go before you get to where you want to be -- musical bus stations, and too much of set consisted of this mode. If this band had a heavy drummer behind it, and sounded like the high moments the whole time, it would be mind-boggingly great.
I always get as much information about the music by turning around and reading the faces of the audience as I get from listening. I had no idea what to expect, since the audience here was way too young to remember Dinosaur Jr. I assumed they would hear this as an odd or laughable hippy stoner noise anomaly? What I saw was fatigue, yes, but also curiosity of a kind I don't always associate with rock shows. Sometimes the social style affiliation with bands shows itself as a closed off, competitive kind of excitement -- no trace of that left here, it had been erased. Also no bewilderment, which is what I expected.
Secret Machines light show was better than the music. I went home after the 2nd song.
Irving Plaza, 3.7.05
Last minute Ave/ D bus bolt to Irving Plaza after a call from Alex of Prosolar Mechanics to check out Autolux.
Autolux is a trio. They knocked out appealingly noisy, introverted-but-social grooves made out of elements that were simplified at every turn. The tasty drummer held back her chops, using traditional grip. All of them were resisting complexity, or sneaking it in tiny micro-dilutions. You feel the invisible hand of complexity pressurizing the songs from the outside like homework you’re blowing off for now but intending to do. It's like the band was saying: "no, this is all you should need." I've been wondering when someone was going to pick up on the Sonic Youth side of the 80s historical blender we've apparently set to frappe. Here you go. They were literally looking at their shoes for the whole concert.
The songs were consistent. I think they suffered from opening band bad-mix-itous. not enough mid-to high end tonalities, too much bass, vocals too low. Listening to the CD would tell me more. Anytime they brought the higher guitar tones up, or doubled the vocals the whole horizon of the song would shift from quite good to great. I wish they had done more of this. I guess there is a kind of tacit agreement in certain bands to not think too much about structure and contrast, as a kind of perceived implicit resistance to certain social strucures? They brought their own Christmas lights mounted to cardboard squares. Does it seem insane to be from LA playing music like this?
Corecraft is a J. Mascis's group, a drummerless free-rock improv thing, more like something you might hear at ABC NO RIO at the Sunday night COMA series than Irving Plaza: bass, flute, slide guitar, guitar, tape loops.
I had listened to Dinosaur Jr. all through the 80s, esp. Bug and You're Living All Over Me, but had never seen them live. Mascis, with shocking, long, totally white-gray hair, sat for the whole set. His guitar tone, when it came to the surface for air, was piercing and rich. The sound man, big surprise, didn’t understand what to do with the flute.
Messy one-chord swells and ebbs. Everyone half-thinking about the other players, half trying to hold their own direction down no matter what. Mixed feelings about independance, competition, collaboration, and collectivity: it can be like that. There were maybe three swells which where marvelous -- stoner rock meets Phil Niblock. The high volume level brought out all the crazy undulating partial interactions in the drone. The ebbs were like places you have to go before you get to where you want to be -- musical bus stations, and too much of set consisted of this mode. If this band had a heavy drummer behind it, and sounded like the high moments the whole time, it would be mind-boggingly great.
I always get as much information about the music by turning around and reading the faces of the audience as I get from listening. I had no idea what to expect, since the audience here was way too young to remember Dinosaur Jr. I assumed they would hear this as an odd or laughable hippy stoner noise anomaly? What I saw was fatigue, yes, but also curiosity of a kind I don't always associate with rock shows. Sometimes the social style affiliation with bands shows itself as a closed off, competitive kind of excitement -- no trace of that left here, it had been erased. Also no bewilderment, which is what I expected.
Secret Machines light show was better than the music. I went home after the 2nd song.
3.08.2005
Checked out some blogs on my friend Sandhya Jain's Blackberry 7100 cell phone yesterday. Loads at old 28.8 speeds, and breaks down the pages into a single little column. Nice color display.
Blogs with tons of links in left margin (Nick Piombino and Ron Silliman) don’t work well because you have to scroll through the links to get to the body text. The Jim Side comics were too small to read.
Jordan faired best -- fast load in and minimal link clutter to thumb scroll past -- not bad.
You could easily blog on this phone, which actually looks like a phone.
Blogs with tons of links in left margin (Nick Piombino and Ron Silliman) don’t work well because you have to scroll through the links to get to the body text. The Jim Side comics were too small to read.
Jordan faired best -- fast load in and minimal link clutter to thumb scroll past -- not bad.
You could easily blog on this phone, which actually looks like a phone.
Bonnie "Prince" Billy & Matt Sweeney. Kim’s downtown. Free in-store show. 3.5.05
A duet in a space not meant to be performed in. Music store consumer grid,isles flooded by 25-35ish scruffy hipsters, nobody going anywhere without a lot of trouble. I feel like an element of plaster poured into a mold.
No elevated stage or lights or forcing the audience to wait interminably to prove that the musicians are superior. The pleasantly envious and/or adoring goggling of the listeners (by gender?) from a power imbalance created partly by the appeal of the music, partly by the appeal of the indie-hero personas, not by the venue. The vibe is close to a house party, except everyone is uncomfortable.
Mountain music adapted to urban indie mind. Totally fluid fusion of elements. The opposite of the going NYC trend of purely gestural referencing / imitation of 80s music.
Though there may be a sardonic quality, it is not at all ill at ease with itself, as Beck is with his references. Mixed feelings flow undefensively, marvelously -- stylistic time made to twist over itself to create an image of the present.
A duet in a space not meant to be performed in. Music store consumer grid,isles flooded by 25-35ish scruffy hipsters, nobody going anywhere without a lot of trouble. I feel like an element of plaster poured into a mold.
No elevated stage or lights or forcing the audience to wait interminably to prove that the musicians are superior. The pleasantly envious and/or adoring goggling of the listeners (by gender?) from a power imbalance created partly by the appeal of the music, partly by the appeal of the indie-hero personas, not by the venue. The vibe is close to a house party, except everyone is uncomfortable.
Mountain music adapted to urban indie mind. Totally fluid fusion of elements. The opposite of the going NYC trend of purely gestural referencing / imitation of 80s music.
Though there may be a sardonic quality, it is not at all ill at ease with itself, as Beck is with his references. Mixed feelings flow undefensively, marvelously -- stylistic time made to twist over itself to create an image of the present.
2.13.2005
1.28.2005
Report from Amsterdam Ave.
Delicately spinning gyre of pigeons high above the buildings, set off in bright white specks of sun.
Strange, filthy four-foot piles of snow halfway into the street -- better than anything in the museums. No millionaires threatening to own them. Jordan also noticing this.
All art should be meltable art.
Delicately spinning gyre of pigeons high above the buildings, set off in bright white specks of sun.
Strange, filthy four-foot piles of snow halfway into the street -- better than anything in the museums. No millionaires threatening to own them. Jordan also noticing this.
All art should be meltable art.
1.24.2005
Snowbound blizzard weekend. Eight foot plough drifts on Ave A this morning. Difficult snow navigation on unshoveled sidewalks via NewBalance. Everyone walking slowly. The A train standing room only from W 4th all the way to 168th.
Katie’s great mushroom and carrot loaf -- two dinners worth of food. Plenty of milk and espresso. Fighting cabin fever. Metal of Honor: Frontline on the Xbox. Spielbergy soundtrack, intolerable in high drama moments, not bad in ambient stretches. Heavy use of bass/french horn pairings. Undercurrent of tension transmitted via the low and mellow settings on the partial series dial.
The art of video game music requires the composer to be as interesting as possible, while also arranging the material to be able to withstand constant, repeated listening within a single level -- esp. if you’re not doing very well. It must stand up to replay without getting annoying. In replay, pointed musical qualities become a drawback. A similar aesthetic in Brian Eno’s Music for Airports. In Metal of Honor, the musical moments of high drama are redundant -- you’re already actively engaged in the drama -- you’re helping to save the world from Nazis. You don’t need reminding that’s it’s epic and tragic.
Metal of Honor’s graphics are well below what the Xbox can do, being a PSII port, but it doesn’t suffer from the odd blocky green-hue emphasis that seems to inflect older PSII games. Despite this, it’s actually quite good with atmosphere, esp. the night sky against the roof lines and streetlamps of a small town. Pastel quality rather than the CGI movie vibe you get in Halo. Lots of burnt sienna. A beautiful day with burning windmills.
Work alleviates the shut-in feeling from seeing the snow go sideways outside the living room window. Video games, esp. FPS games, are work -- series of tasks that need to be accomplished. You eliminate obstructions and threats, protect yourself and collect resources. Metal of Honor doesn’t try to hide this it -- it emphasizes it. You actually get a to-do list and the game checks tasks off as you finish them.
Katie’s great mushroom and carrot loaf -- two dinners worth of food. Plenty of milk and espresso. Fighting cabin fever. Metal of Honor: Frontline on the Xbox. Spielbergy soundtrack, intolerable in high drama moments, not bad in ambient stretches. Heavy use of bass/french horn pairings. Undercurrent of tension transmitted via the low and mellow settings on the partial series dial.
The art of video game music requires the composer to be as interesting as possible, while also arranging the material to be able to withstand constant, repeated listening within a single level -- esp. if you’re not doing very well. It must stand up to replay without getting annoying. In replay, pointed musical qualities become a drawback. A similar aesthetic in Brian Eno’s Music for Airports. In Metal of Honor, the musical moments of high drama are redundant -- you’re already actively engaged in the drama -- you’re helping to save the world from Nazis. You don’t need reminding that’s it’s epic and tragic.
Metal of Honor’s graphics are well below what the Xbox can do, being a PSII port, but it doesn’t suffer from the odd blocky green-hue emphasis that seems to inflect older PSII games. Despite this, it’s actually quite good with atmosphere, esp. the night sky against the roof lines and streetlamps of a small town. Pastel quality rather than the CGI movie vibe you get in Halo. Lots of burnt sienna. A beautiful day with burning windmills.
Work alleviates the shut-in feeling from seeing the snow go sideways outside the living room window. Video games, esp. FPS games, are work -- series of tasks that need to be accomplished. You eliminate obstructions and threats, protect yourself and collect resources. Metal of Honor doesn’t try to hide this it -- it emphasizes it. You actually get a to-do list and the game checks tasks off as you finish them.
1.12.2005
1.06.2005
New Year’s reading at St. Mark’s. Far too sprawling to ever fully experience, which is part of its appeal. If you stay for five hours it’s still just a window on a much larger event. Friends visiting town, so I couldn’t hang and sell food as I usually do. In and out.
Normally the audio in the main hall would be siphoned off into the parish hall via a single speaker for preparers and sellers to hear everything. It’s a great feeling, like a radio show being broadcast from twenty feet away. Alas no channel could be spared this time around, so I missed much while in the back, readying cymbals and tomtoms for a quick staging. I got there late -- post-Patty Smith. She usually hits at 9:00 with standing room only, and people swarm out of the place after she’s done. That still leaves the house with several hundred people, though, who were still there when I split around 1:00.
The backstage activity is where the real show is. Rapid intersections of people. Poets you haven’t talked to in years, people you see often, people you’ve read but never met, all mingling. Friendly talk and the inevitable prickly exchanges. Strobelike conversation. A lot of flip-flopping between contradictions: excited and exhausted, open and wary. On stage it’s a mass encouragement vibe. Everyone gets a lot of clapping.
Gary and Nada read a duo google thing on the word ululations, and talked about the tidal wave and dedicated the poem to the people killed. Many people talked about and dedicated poems to John Fisk and Jackson MacLow. I thought of my many conversations with John -- how we would get on some parapolitical riff and three hours would go by in a blink. I also thought of an evening walking home with Jackson and Alan Davies after a concert at Riverside Church. Talking about intonation etc. The air crystal-clear. A special feeling. Jackson -- interesting, interested and kind.
Hal Sirowitz cracked me up with his perfectly calibrated stupidity. A lot of it is the delivery, too, and the look. Marcella Durand played drums behind Douglas Rothschild reading Ezra Pound -- really great stuff. It was Joe Elliot’s kid’s drumset actually, which I helped Dug tune before he went on -- I love feeling useful!) Great to see Marcella playing drums. CA Conrad used a portable tape player as part of his performance back and forth dialogue and interruptions -- simple and effective. He has a good stage presence --- balanced hamming and nervous energy very nicely, not so easy to do. Frank Sherlock knocked out a strong, straight-ahead reading, no bell or whistles, which is actually one of the hardest things to make work in this context, but he pulled it off. Eddie Berrigan sang w/ guitar -- much more contour to the vocal melody than last time I heard him. Am I hearing some Devendra Banhart influence?
Wish I could have seen more people but what can you do. The marathon, as tiring as it can be, always leaves me with a good feeling -- like having moved through a briefly uncovered massive ambient poetic social texture.
Normally the audio in the main hall would be siphoned off into the parish hall via a single speaker for preparers and sellers to hear everything. It’s a great feeling, like a radio show being broadcast from twenty feet away. Alas no channel could be spared this time around, so I missed much while in the back, readying cymbals and tomtoms for a quick staging. I got there late -- post-Patty Smith. She usually hits at 9:00 with standing room only, and people swarm out of the place after she’s done. That still leaves the house with several hundred people, though, who were still there when I split around 1:00.
The backstage activity is where the real show is. Rapid intersections of people. Poets you haven’t talked to in years, people you see often, people you’ve read but never met, all mingling. Friendly talk and the inevitable prickly exchanges. Strobelike conversation. A lot of flip-flopping between contradictions: excited and exhausted, open and wary. On stage it’s a mass encouragement vibe. Everyone gets a lot of clapping.
Gary and Nada read a duo google thing on the word ululations, and talked about the tidal wave and dedicated the poem to the people killed. Many people talked about and dedicated poems to John Fisk and Jackson MacLow. I thought of my many conversations with John -- how we would get on some parapolitical riff and three hours would go by in a blink. I also thought of an evening walking home with Jackson and Alan Davies after a concert at Riverside Church. Talking about intonation etc. The air crystal-clear. A special feeling. Jackson -- interesting, interested and kind.
Hal Sirowitz cracked me up with his perfectly calibrated stupidity. A lot of it is the delivery, too, and the look. Marcella Durand played drums behind Douglas Rothschild reading Ezra Pound -- really great stuff. It was Joe Elliot’s kid’s drumset actually, which I helped Dug tune before he went on -- I love feeling useful!) Great to see Marcella playing drums. CA Conrad used a portable tape player as part of his performance back and forth dialogue and interruptions -- simple and effective. He has a good stage presence --- balanced hamming and nervous energy very nicely, not so easy to do. Frank Sherlock knocked out a strong, straight-ahead reading, no bell or whistles, which is actually one of the hardest things to make work in this context, but he pulled it off. Eddie Berrigan sang w/ guitar -- much more contour to the vocal melody than last time I heard him. Am I hearing some Devendra Banhart influence?
Wish I could have seen more people but what can you do. The marathon, as tiring as it can be, always leaves me with a good feeling -- like having moved through a briefly uncovered massive ambient poetic social texture.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
