The blisters are healing and the pain is a slightly better every day. I've been slowly returning to work.
Descending the stairs of the 110th St. subway this morning, I was confronted by a starling flying up the stairs, hovering a few feet from my face, fighting a strong downward draft. I wonder if he made it out...
4.24.2003
4.16.2003
Shingles is likely to be a disease that affects older people. Of the younger people who have shared their experience of having shingles with me, all of them have been poets or musicians. Since it's stress related, I wonder if there is something about the types of psychological stresses that poets and musicians experience that makes them particularly vulnerable to this disease?
One of the things that makes the interminable wait at the 14th St. post office package pick-up window more tolerable (besides running into John Godfrey, who also has a PO box there) is that I will often have a poem-card from Buck Downs in hand, just pulled from inside the little glass door. These one-poem cards just started appearing a few years ago.
I've always been fascinated by the movements of people and machines you can see and hear behind the honey-combed walls of PO boxes -- as though these things existed in some other dimension beyond the barriers of communication. From this realm I pull:
"those looney sexy FBI
misfits on TV got
carried away again
I am having an Actualist moment!
talking about television
talking to the television"
I realized that I’ve read much of Downs' poetry exclusively in this post office. There's something about the tortorous slowness and tense administrative vibe there that, in some ways, makes it the perfect place to read these short, relaxed, and amusing poems. You might say Downs has been blogging for years though the US Postal Service.
I've always been fascinated by the movements of people and machines you can see and hear behind the honey-combed walls of PO boxes -- as though these things existed in some other dimension beyond the barriers of communication. From this realm I pull:
"those looney sexy FBI
misfits on TV got
carried away again
I am having an Actualist moment!
talking about television
talking to the television"
I realized that I’ve read much of Downs' poetry exclusively in this post office. There's something about the tortorous slowness and tense administrative vibe there that, in some ways, makes it the perfect place to read these short, relaxed, and amusing poems. You might say Downs has been blogging for years though the US Postal Service.
I’m surprised that Jim and David didn’t independently invent flarf on their own, like Leibniz and Newton, since they both use humor and oddness in their writings. In fact, I’m not totally sure they haven’t, since I don’t have large amounts of their work available to read.
For me flarf is primarily about absurdity in the service of elation and subversion. That’s the upper limit. Lower limit is making your friends laugh during their tedious day-job work hours.
For me flarf is primarily about absurdity in the service of elation and subversion. That’s the upper limit. Lower limit is making your friends laugh during their tedious day-job work hours.
4.15.2003
Not having a terrific week.
Weird blisters started appearing on the left side of my forehead in a lateral pattern on Sat morning. Katie jumped onto Google and made what turned out to be an accurate diagnosis -- shingles, a recurrence of childhood chicken pox, thought to be caused by stress. The virus is dormant in anyone who has had chicken pox -- it waits in the spine. The blisters follow the nerves, and because of this it is quite painful. It’s like a constant helmet of discomfort with occasional waves of sharp pain dragged over the head like a blanket. It’s basically incapacitated me for the whole week. Some say that it’s possible to get nerve damage from it that can cause pain for months. I started early on anti-viral medication and anti-convusants for the pain. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a kind of writing -- it starts in the central nervous system and is published on the forehead or chest.
I’ve been trying not to go into public for fear of scaring children and pets, but today I had to walk to 14th and 2nd to see an ophthalmologist and make sure it’s not harming my eye. I tied a red bandana around my head, something I haven’t done since seeing Husker Du play at a Rutgers gym in 1986. It kind of brought that feeling back.
It turns out the eye is fine. The ophthalmologist put dilating drops in to check for retinopathy, and this makes it hard to see when you get outside, esp. because of the insanely beautuful 79 degree sunny day blaring in the East Village. Since I’ve had an unrelated problem in one of my ears, I really can't hear properly ether. Squinting and weaving through pedestrians on 1st. Ave, I realized, I have become Helen Keller….
Weird blisters started appearing on the left side of my forehead in a lateral pattern on Sat morning. Katie jumped onto Google and made what turned out to be an accurate diagnosis -- shingles, a recurrence of childhood chicken pox, thought to be caused by stress. The virus is dormant in anyone who has had chicken pox -- it waits in the spine. The blisters follow the nerves, and because of this it is quite painful. It’s like a constant helmet of discomfort with occasional waves of sharp pain dragged over the head like a blanket. It’s basically incapacitated me for the whole week. Some say that it’s possible to get nerve damage from it that can cause pain for months. I started early on anti-viral medication and anti-convusants for the pain. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a kind of writing -- it starts in the central nervous system and is published on the forehead or chest.
I’ve been trying not to go into public for fear of scaring children and pets, but today I had to walk to 14th and 2nd to see an ophthalmologist and make sure it’s not harming my eye. I tied a red bandana around my head, something I haven’t done since seeing Husker Du play at a Rutgers gym in 1986. It kind of brought that feeling back.
It turns out the eye is fine. The ophthalmologist put dilating drops in to check for retinopathy, and this makes it hard to see when you get outside, esp. because of the insanely beautuful 79 degree sunny day blaring in the East Village. Since I’ve had an unrelated problem in one of my ears, I really can't hear properly ether. Squinting and weaving through pedestrians on 1st. Ave, I realized, I have become Helen Keller….
Gary wrote-
"But Reifenstahl, remember, was naive, or in denial. And her work is not an attempt to explore anything--it's very much about surfaces. And "ideals"--physical ideals. To me, however, this is more closely related to a blind sense of "craft"--a puritanical strain in the arts--than it is with consciously allowing yourself, as an artist, to go somewhere you'd been avoiding. For instance, Kathy Acker, especially early Kathy Acker. Whose book, Great Expectations, when I first read it, horrified me--but in a very different way than thinking about Riefenstahl horrifies me. Acker horrified me because she saw the world in a particular, horrifying, way. Riefenstahl horrifies because she *doesn't* see it."
Yes, after I saw that documentary, I thought, anyone who says poetry isn't political- it's a just craft and formal art, is on the same page as Reifenstahl. Triumph of the Will does explore something, though.
Though Reifenstahl's artistic denial is probably the most spectacular example of an artist's denial that the world has ever known, this doesn't change the fact that her art embodies the absolute blind love of unregulated authoritarian state power. That's what Triumph of the Will gets across, that's what it explores. Political values can’t be kept out of art because the unconscious is political. The mind is political.
Acker is maybe the exact opposite of Reifenstahl. She intentionally locates and scrutinizes messed up internalized states and dramatizes them. It almost always comes across as dead-serious social critique. Acker's is a ethical and moral writing, like Oppen's, though it operates with a different mechanism.
"But Reifenstahl, remember, was naive, or in denial. And her work is not an attempt to explore anything--it's very much about surfaces. And "ideals"--physical ideals. To me, however, this is more closely related to a blind sense of "craft"--a puritanical strain in the arts--than it is with consciously allowing yourself, as an artist, to go somewhere you'd been avoiding. For instance, Kathy Acker, especially early Kathy Acker. Whose book, Great Expectations, when I first read it, horrified me--but in a very different way than thinking about Riefenstahl horrifies me. Acker horrified me because she saw the world in a particular, horrifying, way. Riefenstahl horrifies because she *doesn't* see it."
Yes, after I saw that documentary, I thought, anyone who says poetry isn't political- it's a just craft and formal art, is on the same page as Reifenstahl. Triumph of the Will does explore something, though.
Though Reifenstahl's artistic denial is probably the most spectacular example of an artist's denial that the world has ever known, this doesn't change the fact that her art embodies the absolute blind love of unregulated authoritarian state power. That's what Triumph of the Will gets across, that's what it explores. Political values can’t be kept out of art because the unconscious is political. The mind is political.
Acker is maybe the exact opposite of Reifenstahl. She intentionally locates and scrutinizes messed up internalized states and dramatizes them. It almost always comes across as dead-serious social critique. Acker's is a ethical and moral writing, like Oppen's, though it operates with a different mechanism.
4.12.2003
Brian suggests in an email that drawing parallels between the rise of the Nazis and the current US government might do more harm than good in alarming people about the erosion of their civil liberties. What would it take to properly alarm people? Do they even know what's in Patriot II, or the current efforts to make it permanent?
I can't help thinking, though, while doing my daily ten minute Fox propaganda check, that the relation of art to power on that network is the same as it is in Triumph of the Will, though with less talent.
I think it's appropriate that the Fox computer animation of a American fighter jet morphing into an eagle is shooting its missiles at the viewer, since the war is being fought on two fronts, in Iraq and in the American imagination.
I can't help thinking, though, while doing my daily ten minute Fox propaganda check, that the relation of art to power on that network is the same as it is in Triumph of the Will, though with less talent.
I think it's appropriate that the Fox computer animation of a American fighter jet morphing into an eagle is shooting its missiles at the viewer, since the war is being fought on two fronts, in Iraq and in the American imagination.
4.08.2003
Rubber Bullets in Oakland
Bring body armor and a motorcycle helmet to the next protest. The police department is now firing into the crowds.
The use of this weapon against protesters is a significant and disturbing act of repressive political violence on the part of the Oakland police dept. It's attempted murder. Pretty simple. I think it's also meant to demonstrate that protesters will have to put their lives on the line if they want to make a statement about the war.
Stephanie Young writes about the Oakland police department's acts of violence against protestors as being an escalation in response to an attack on the war's supply line. No doubt. David Perry wonders on the sublist if this is part of a set of new instructions from "higher up." Maybe. I'm sure Bush will be waiting breathlessly to see if a new Kent State will fly as a patriotic thing.
These weapons kill people and blind people.
These weapons are usually used to kill and injure powerless oppressed people and their children -- mostly Palestinians and Irish are killed by them but also black people in Watts. You can now add American anti-war protesters to that list.
I saw the documentary on Leni Riefenstahl and the beginnings of the Nazis on cable last week. Does anyone else think the country could head in this direction? Ron and Gary both seem to share my fears…
I quote Jordan Davis: "Dude, you've seen the National Guardsgirls with their fingers on the triggers of their assault rifles in the subways. We're already half way there. First comes martial law, then comes war on California and NYC."
Bring body armor and a motorcycle helmet to the next protest. The police department is now firing into the crowds.
The use of this weapon against protesters is a significant and disturbing act of repressive political violence on the part of the Oakland police dept. It's attempted murder. Pretty simple. I think it's also meant to demonstrate that protesters will have to put their lives on the line if they want to make a statement about the war.
Stephanie Young writes about the Oakland police department's acts of violence against protestors as being an escalation in response to an attack on the war's supply line. No doubt. David Perry wonders on the sublist if this is part of a set of new instructions from "higher up." Maybe. I'm sure Bush will be waiting breathlessly to see if a new Kent State will fly as a patriotic thing.
These weapons kill people and blind people.
These weapons are usually used to kill and injure powerless oppressed people and their children -- mostly Palestinians and Irish are killed by them but also black people in Watts. You can now add American anti-war protesters to that list.
I saw the documentary on Leni Riefenstahl and the beginnings of the Nazis on cable last week. Does anyone else think the country could head in this direction? Ron and Gary both seem to share my fears…
I quote Jordan Davis: "Dude, you've seen the National Guardsgirls with their fingers on the triggers of their assault rifles in the subways. We're already half way there. First comes martial law, then comes war on California and NYC."
4.07.2003
4.06.2003
Panic!, Richard Foreman, Ontological Theater, 4/5/03
Set design even more baroque than usual. Lots of dolls.
I had told Gary that there would be plastic separating the actors from the audience, as I’d seen in other Foreman plays -- to continually emphasize the artificiality of the drama? To present the audience with a screen of their own reflection through which to watch the play? No plastic this time. Later we get the voice-over explanation -- "…protect yourself by wearing the transparent blinders with which you have been provided – oh, forgive me – I see you’re already wearing them!" So our own glasses serve as the barrier -- also -- our "perspectives."
Lots of string and rope tied across various parts of the stage.
The protagonists in these plays are always bifurcated. The polarities of inner conflict. In Panic there is a dual bifurcation -- two males and two females.
Crazy Infantile Pirate vs. Tough Guy Burning Man Saracen.
Soft Spoken Girl vs. Angry Dominatrix.
He hugs her -- she feels him up for his wallet.
Magician’s closet on wheels -- chorus (class structure?) stick swords through it. It doubles as outhouse -- and a negative image of self -- bones rattling in a dry box.
Singing Dominatrix stabs guy in ass with sword.
"My mouth is sealed with gold."
"Kiss me, kiss me, where I am most ruined inside myself."
Painfully bright light shining in the audience’s eyes for most of the play. Totally headache-inducing. Intentionally making the audience uncomfortable. At some point a voice over says "watch THIS you bastards!" Art as sadistic gestures toward audience? Like Bruce Andrews' poetry?
The hoodwinked master statue busts used as stools. Vision for the reception of artistic tradition.
The patented Foreman painful electric zap sound that scatters everyone on stage in wincing retreat. Major pain causes major scene changes, as in life.
Shaking the giant bees into the giant vulvas
Vulvas become furry medieval hats. Exit stage left.
"A new perspective can only repeat old patterns."
Licking today’s baked goods
Fish hooked.
Mayhem / see-saws are police dividers.
"This is my ticket to a much better world"
Five foot mobile disco ball phallus.
Lights up and down -- day and night -- like large amounts of time passing -- Cecil B Demille…
Beating on everything with huge plastic clubs.
Beautifully choreographed riff-switching between static dramatic scenes and complex layers of lateral movement. Everything here is choreography, include the acting and the text.
Sporadic uncomfortable laughter from audience.
The contradictions involved in the competition for happiness. The contradictions of guarding happiness.
"Catastrophe is right around the corner."
Giant phallus-gun with white money basketballs as ammo.
Coming out of the bathroom with a decapitated head.
Nothing to join.
Hara-kiri for everyone!
The themes build paratacticly.
"Only my enemies convince me the world is real."
Everyone goose stepping.
The Augusto Boal / Brecht polarity between character as object of history and character as isolated subject is very blurred here. You could think of the drama as an absurd expression of subjective inner conflict, but the conflict always feels equally imposed from history and from the internalization of the terms of exterior conflict, in a comical-schizoid style.
"It’s… Not… Fair…"
"I need tools to accomplish redundant behavior, please"
Getting what you want is an ice cream cone.
The visceral child-nightmare X monster at the end -- "the thing entering the room -- I don’t remember what to name it."
Set design even more baroque than usual. Lots of dolls.
I had told Gary that there would be plastic separating the actors from the audience, as I’d seen in other Foreman plays -- to continually emphasize the artificiality of the drama? To present the audience with a screen of their own reflection through which to watch the play? No plastic this time. Later we get the voice-over explanation -- "…protect yourself by wearing the transparent blinders with which you have been provided – oh, forgive me – I see you’re already wearing them!" So our own glasses serve as the barrier -- also -- our "perspectives."
Lots of string and rope tied across various parts of the stage.
The protagonists in these plays are always bifurcated. The polarities of inner conflict. In Panic there is a dual bifurcation -- two males and two females.
Crazy Infantile Pirate vs. Tough Guy Burning Man Saracen.
Soft Spoken Girl vs. Angry Dominatrix.
He hugs her -- she feels him up for his wallet.
Magician’s closet on wheels -- chorus (class structure?) stick swords through it. It doubles as outhouse -- and a negative image of self -- bones rattling in a dry box.
Singing Dominatrix stabs guy in ass with sword.
"My mouth is sealed with gold."
"Kiss me, kiss me, where I am most ruined inside myself."
Painfully bright light shining in the audience’s eyes for most of the play. Totally headache-inducing. Intentionally making the audience uncomfortable. At some point a voice over says "watch THIS you bastards!" Art as sadistic gestures toward audience? Like Bruce Andrews' poetry?
The hoodwinked master statue busts used as stools. Vision for the reception of artistic tradition.
The patented Foreman painful electric zap sound that scatters everyone on stage in wincing retreat. Major pain causes major scene changes, as in life.
Shaking the giant bees into the giant vulvas
Vulvas become furry medieval hats. Exit stage left.
"A new perspective can only repeat old patterns."
Licking today’s baked goods
Fish hooked.
Mayhem / see-saws are police dividers.
"This is my ticket to a much better world"
Five foot mobile disco ball phallus.
Lights up and down -- day and night -- like large amounts of time passing -- Cecil B Demille…
Beating on everything with huge plastic clubs.
Beautifully choreographed riff-switching between static dramatic scenes and complex layers of lateral movement. Everything here is choreography, include the acting and the text.
Sporadic uncomfortable laughter from audience.
The contradictions involved in the competition for happiness. The contradictions of guarding happiness.
"Catastrophe is right around the corner."
Giant phallus-gun with white money basketballs as ammo.
Coming out of the bathroom with a decapitated head.
Nothing to join.
Hara-kiri for everyone!
The themes build paratacticly.
"Only my enemies convince me the world is real."
Everyone goose stepping.
The Augusto Boal / Brecht polarity between character as object of history and character as isolated subject is very blurred here. You could think of the drama as an absurd expression of subjective inner conflict, but the conflict always feels equally imposed from history and from the internalization of the terms of exterior conflict, in a comical-schizoid style.
"It’s… Not… Fair…"
"I need tools to accomplish redundant behavior, please"
Getting what you want is an ice cream cone.
The visceral child-nightmare X monster at the end -- "the thing entering the room -- I don’t remember what to name it."
4.03.2003
For me it's not helpful to imagine language as an all-inclusive category of consciousness and conflict. Doing that blurs the focus on the inter-dependant mechanisms of power and mind that get people into these disastrous situations in the first place. The problem isn’t language, the problem is an elite with limited accountability waging an unnecessary war for their own enrichment and empowerment using the resources of a complacent population. The war is obviously not in the interest of the people of the US, so the people have to be managed by lying to them. Lying is one of functions language can be used for. Exposing lies is another. Analyzing the propaganda is obviously important, but the strategy used in the propaganda is so rudimentary, it’s persuasive power so weak yet so effective, that I immediately move on the question -- what is the psychological dynamic of the population that wishes to accept stories and rationales that are so obviously not the case?
In the few discussions I’ve had with those who believe, for instance, that the war is being waged as a response to 9-11, I find that people believe this because that is what the TV said. That’s the end of their logical conception of it. It’s not stupidity exactly, it’s that the lack of interest in facts is the direct result of imagining yourself as being on the power grid -- it is ego inflation. My team is strong and knowledgeable and does what’s right so what they say must be true. To do even a rudimentary investigation into their preposterous lie would be a opening into the perception that, in fact, as a citizen of the US, you could be more reasonably described as a part of a group being exploited by it’s elites in the course of this war. You pay for their oil war. Your children die for their personal enrichment and empowerment. Not an acceptable thought. This may even lead to hints of a further unraveling of conceptions of nationality, to the perception that the war is actually a mutual exploitation by the respective elites in each country of the respective populations. The logical conclusion would be to decapitate both sets of elites, and do away with the concept of a “country“ as anything but a dangerous fantasy.
There is also a displacement of anger at work. Many people have trouble directly expressing their anger in appropriate way toward the actual object of that anger. It is often deflected toward some other unrelated object of frustration. This is esp. disastrous when it is picked up and used by elites, and coupled with the irrational ascribing of collective guilt. Since there’s no evidence to justify making a connection from 911 to Iraq, those who accept it must feel that any Arabs out of favor with western power will make an appropriate target of their vengeance.
Accepting the war also seems to involve clinging to naive ideas about the motivations of those in power, wanting to think the best of people, and esp. of those supposedly representing you -- self images and parental images. I’ve been dumbfounded by conversations with otherwise intelligent and sensitive people, political liberals, who really believe that our leaders must be good people who don’t mean harm. More and more I think of this “optimism” as something dangerous to humanity.
In the few discussions I’ve had with those who believe, for instance, that the war is being waged as a response to 9-11, I find that people believe this because that is what the TV said. That’s the end of their logical conception of it. It’s not stupidity exactly, it’s that the lack of interest in facts is the direct result of imagining yourself as being on the power grid -- it is ego inflation. My team is strong and knowledgeable and does what’s right so what they say must be true. To do even a rudimentary investigation into their preposterous lie would be a opening into the perception that, in fact, as a citizen of the US, you could be more reasonably described as a part of a group being exploited by it’s elites in the course of this war. You pay for their oil war. Your children die for their personal enrichment and empowerment. Not an acceptable thought. This may even lead to hints of a further unraveling of conceptions of nationality, to the perception that the war is actually a mutual exploitation by the respective elites in each country of the respective populations. The logical conclusion would be to decapitate both sets of elites, and do away with the concept of a “country“ as anything but a dangerous fantasy.
There is also a displacement of anger at work. Many people have trouble directly expressing their anger in appropriate way toward the actual object of that anger. It is often deflected toward some other unrelated object of frustration. This is esp. disastrous when it is picked up and used by elites, and coupled with the irrational ascribing of collective guilt. Since there’s no evidence to justify making a connection from 911 to Iraq, those who accept it must feel that any Arabs out of favor with western power will make an appropriate target of their vengeance.
Accepting the war also seems to involve clinging to naive ideas about the motivations of those in power, wanting to think the best of people, and esp. of those supposedly representing you -- self images and parental images. I’ve been dumbfounded by conversations with otherwise intelligent and sensitive people, political liberals, who really believe that our leaders must be good people who don’t mean harm. More and more I think of this “optimism” as something dangerous to humanity.
4.01.2003
3.31.2003
My hero, Marianne Shaneen, on getting arrested while getting her civil disobedience on at the die-in protest in mid-town Manhattan last week.
3.29.2003
3.27.2003
My normal state of mind after getting home from work, eating dinner, reading the NY Times and watching the TV news is a simmering despair, with anger, and intense pulsations and rivulets of depression. Tonight I implemented a no-TV or NY Times rule. Instead I listened to the original Sun Ra CD Nuclear War (very beautiful and relaxed) and then put on WBAI for the rest of the night. There was a live broadcast from Riverside Church with many activists and poets speaking. Amy Goodman gave an excellent talk. Michael Moore came on and said he wanted to finish the speech he started the other night (at the Oscars). He said the Bush regime was now pursuing a policy of "compassionate terrorism." This got a lot of laughs.
To others not feeling so hot about the human race, I recommend a similarly large dosage of Sun Ra and WBAI.
To others not feeling so hot about the human race, I recommend a similarly large dosage of Sun Ra and WBAI.
I highly recommend the new Yo Lo Tengo EP Nuclear War. Mostly drums and vocals. One version has a children's chorus. It's a Sun Ra cover:
Nuclear war yea, yea, yea, they're talking about nuclear war / it's a Motherfuck-er, don't you know / if they push that button, your ass gotta go / and whatcha gonna do without your ass?"
Despair, hope and absurdity come together in a way that's easy to relate to these days.
Nuclear war yea, yea, yea, they're talking about nuclear war / it's a Motherfuck-er, don't you know / if they push that button, your ass gotta go / and whatcha gonna do without your ass?"
Despair, hope and absurdity come together in a way that's easy to relate to these days.
3.24.2003
Anti-War March, New York City:
Mike Scharf and I wondering what it would be like if the blades locked on the helicopters hovering above the crowd: plummeting.
The guy crossing us as we approached 42nd St. saying "think about September 11th." I say "you’re misinformed!"
Lee Ann Brown breast feeding her child as she marched against war.
The swinging Dixieland clarinet player.
The 95 year-old woman in a motorized wheelchair protesting with the crowd.
The group of nuns next to the group of gay teenagers.
The rippling waves of cheers moving over Broadway.
Chanting at the NBC truck: "Tell it like it is! Tell it like it is!"
The roving percussionists.
The poets of different "camps" and ages, together.
The woman on the balcony at Broadway and 27th blowing a conch shell. Her four-year old daughter coming out on to the balcony defiantly, demanding the shell, and then playing it even louder than her mother -- to the vivid cheering of the marchers.
Literally dancing in the street.
Purposeful.
The weird tape loop emanating from the police van at the end of the march at Washington Square Park: "The march is now over. Please leave the area, and let the other marchers finish, as you have done." Exactly the don’t -pay -attention -to -the man -behind -the -curtain –tone of voice.
The calm, bored, irritated look on the faces of the police.
"Hussein, Bin Laden, Pinochet, all created by the CIA!"
The lack of ANY story about the march in the print version of the New York Times.
Guaranteed access for The New York Times "newspaper." Great footage.
New York Times is wholly owned and operated by the US state department.
I associate the word "embedded" with deer ticks.
Nada Gordon writing down the slogans of the marchers.
Marianne Shaneen filming, filming.
At Union Square, the emotion of the thing finally hitting me. Suddenly a good slogan occurs to me "Invest in Haliburton now! You’ll make a Killing!"
Very disoriented shoppers at Herold Square.
Is being a protester now like a being a poet. You do this thing that makes so much sense to you, that you are so committed to, and that seems so valuable, and you and everyone with you, is totally and effortlessly ignored.
New tactics?
The guy in the bunny suit.
Arriving at Washington Square Park at 4:30. Not wanting to leave.
Futility or a river of sanity? Or both?
Seeing poets more at protests than at readings.
Headline:
POETS STOP WAR AND REMOVE DANGEROUS ASSHOLES FROM POWER,
NEW WORLD-WIDE ANARCHO-PACIFIST ATHEISTIC CREATIVE HEDONISM PREVAILS, Sat, March 22, New York City:
Ann Waldman. Ron Pagett, Ammiel Alcalay convince Donald Rumsfeld to stop the war and step down.
Simon Pettet, Mike Scharf, Toni Simon convince Paul Wolfowitz to stop the war and step down.
Nick Piombino, Mitch Highfill, Sue Landers convince Dick Cheney to stop the war and step down.
Allison Cobb, Katie Degentesh, Nada Gordon convince George Bush to stop the war and step down.
Marianne Shaneen, Sherry Brennen, Cecilia Vicuna convince Richard Perle to stop the war and step down.
Brenda Iijima, Jeff Derksen, Lee Ann Brown convince Colin Powell to stop the war and step down.
Carol Mirakove, Jen Coleman, Gary Sullivan convince Condoleeza Rice to stop the war and step down.
Brian Stefans, Karen Weiser, Joe Safdie convince Tommy Franks to stop the war and step down.
The sun pouring down on the stream of humans in the street…
Mike Scharf and I wondering what it would be like if the blades locked on the helicopters hovering above the crowd: plummeting.
The guy crossing us as we approached 42nd St. saying "think about September 11th." I say "you’re misinformed!"
Lee Ann Brown breast feeding her child as she marched against war.
The swinging Dixieland clarinet player.
The 95 year-old woman in a motorized wheelchair protesting with the crowd.
The group of nuns next to the group of gay teenagers.
The rippling waves of cheers moving over Broadway.
Chanting at the NBC truck: "Tell it like it is! Tell it like it is!"
The roving percussionists.
The poets of different "camps" and ages, together.
The woman on the balcony at Broadway and 27th blowing a conch shell. Her four-year old daughter coming out on to the balcony defiantly, demanding the shell, and then playing it even louder than her mother -- to the vivid cheering of the marchers.
Literally dancing in the street.
Purposeful.
The weird tape loop emanating from the police van at the end of the march at Washington Square Park: "The march is now over. Please leave the area, and let the other marchers finish, as you have done." Exactly the don’t -pay -attention -to -the man -behind -the -curtain –tone of voice.
The calm, bored, irritated look on the faces of the police.
"Hussein, Bin Laden, Pinochet, all created by the CIA!"
The lack of ANY story about the march in the print version of the New York Times.
Guaranteed access for The New York Times "newspaper." Great footage.
New York Times is wholly owned and operated by the US state department.
I associate the word "embedded" with deer ticks.
Nada Gordon writing down the slogans of the marchers.
Marianne Shaneen filming, filming.
At Union Square, the emotion of the thing finally hitting me. Suddenly a good slogan occurs to me "Invest in Haliburton now! You’ll make a Killing!"
Very disoriented shoppers at Herold Square.
Is being a protester now like a being a poet. You do this thing that makes so much sense to you, that you are so committed to, and that seems so valuable, and you and everyone with you, is totally and effortlessly ignored.
New tactics?
The guy in the bunny suit.
Arriving at Washington Square Park at 4:30. Not wanting to leave.
Futility or a river of sanity? Or both?
Seeing poets more at protests than at readings.
Headline:
POETS STOP WAR AND REMOVE DANGEROUS ASSHOLES FROM POWER,
NEW WORLD-WIDE ANARCHO-PACIFIST ATHEISTIC CREATIVE HEDONISM PREVAILS, Sat, March 22, New York City:
Ann Waldman. Ron Pagett, Ammiel Alcalay convince Donald Rumsfeld to stop the war and step down.
Simon Pettet, Mike Scharf, Toni Simon convince Paul Wolfowitz to stop the war and step down.
Nick Piombino, Mitch Highfill, Sue Landers convince Dick Cheney to stop the war and step down.
Allison Cobb, Katie Degentesh, Nada Gordon convince George Bush to stop the war and step down.
Marianne Shaneen, Sherry Brennen, Cecilia Vicuna convince Richard Perle to stop the war and step down.
Brenda Iijima, Jeff Derksen, Lee Ann Brown convince Colin Powell to stop the war and step down.
Carol Mirakove, Jen Coleman, Gary Sullivan convince Condoleeza Rice to stop the war and step down.
Brian Stefans, Karen Weiser, Joe Safdie convince Tommy Franks to stop the war and step down.
The sun pouring down on the stream of humans in the street…
3.18.2003
Your tax dollars are now being used to bulldoze idealistic 23 years-old
girls from Olympia to death.
I guess people will get used to this way of answering idealism.
Maybe the reason fish are speaking in New York state is that people want
the end of the world to happen? Does it make them feel important when
they're there to see it, and to help it along?
By the "end of the world" I mean, of course, the mass killing of
civilians by the United States. It's important to conceive of war crimes
as being "inevitable" just because some maniac millionaires will
personally profit from it. It's actually the begining of the world, not
the end -- what world?
I guess it's not hard to get used to bulldozing girls. Get used to
unprovoked invasions of foreign countries. Get used to detainees who
never get trials. You get used to it.
The largest and most unified and peaceful anti-war protests in the
history of the earth have produced this reaction in our leaders: Fuck
you. I'm going to kill whoever I like. You're damn lucky you live in a
country where it’s hard to just kill you for speaking your mind, because
that’s what we’d like to do to you.
Sitting in the coffee shop on Ave. A before going to work this morning.
People dressed sharply for their work day.
Carpet bombing of civilians.
Maybe there's some intrigue or gossip at work.
Destruction of water systems, food distribution, and communications.
Maybe people aren’t working or are working part time or have artistic
goals they are trying to achieve.
Backing the bulldozer up over the body of the 23 year old girl after
running her over once.
On the stereo they played a nice Indie-rock ballad I didn't recognize. I
had an everything bagel toasted with cream cheese and a large coffee.
"The mother of all bombs."
Rachel Corrie was working on wells for drinking water.
Maybe the talking fish in New Square was really protesting the war.
Maybe he knew about the well water -- maybe he understood that working
on water systems was a good use of one's energy and resources -- unlike
the production of depleted uranium weapons.
Fish know the importance of water after all.
The guy injured himself trying to kill this fish.
I wonder who ate the fish.
girls from Olympia to death.
I guess people will get used to this way of answering idealism.
Maybe the reason fish are speaking in New York state is that people want
the end of the world to happen? Does it make them feel important when
they're there to see it, and to help it along?
By the "end of the world" I mean, of course, the mass killing of
civilians by the United States. It's important to conceive of war crimes
as being "inevitable" just because some maniac millionaires will
personally profit from it. It's actually the begining of the world, not
the end -- what world?
I guess it's not hard to get used to bulldozing girls. Get used to
unprovoked invasions of foreign countries. Get used to detainees who
never get trials. You get used to it.
The largest and most unified and peaceful anti-war protests in the
history of the earth have produced this reaction in our leaders: Fuck
you. I'm going to kill whoever I like. You're damn lucky you live in a
country where it’s hard to just kill you for speaking your mind, because
that’s what we’d like to do to you.
Sitting in the coffee shop on Ave. A before going to work this morning.
People dressed sharply for their work day.
Carpet bombing of civilians.
Maybe there's some intrigue or gossip at work.
Destruction of water systems, food distribution, and communications.
Maybe people aren’t working or are working part time or have artistic
goals they are trying to achieve.
Backing the bulldozer up over the body of the 23 year old girl after
running her over once.
On the stereo they played a nice Indie-rock ballad I didn't recognize. I
had an everything bagel toasted with cream cheese and a large coffee.
"The mother of all bombs."
Rachel Corrie was working on wells for drinking water.
Maybe the talking fish in New Square was really protesting the war.
Maybe he knew about the well water -- maybe he understood that working
on water systems was a good use of one's energy and resources -- unlike
the production of depleted uranium weapons.
Fish know the importance of water after all.
The guy injured himself trying to kill this fish.
I wonder who ate the fish.
3.06.2003
El Toro
Valencia and 17th. It looks, sounds and smells exactly as it did in 1994. San Francisco has this dynamic in general -- one leaves for six or seven years, and returns with the sensation that the city had frozen for the entire time, despite the shifts in human presentiment, which are were one’s sense of place really comes from.
San Francisco seems to exist only when you are within its boundaries, which contributes to its reputation for embodying the dangers of stagnation given via the twin powers of comfort and splendor. But this is also part of the city’s power. Spicer had a doctrine that poems should not leave the protective confines of the city, a kind of magic circle.
The burritos fall under the spell of this same limitation, you are not going to find them in New York or Chicago or Boston any more than you would find Six Poems for Poetry Chicago in Poetry Chicago.
Entering El Toro, one is presented first with the man chopping on the cutting board, a cleaver in each hand, a percussionist. I prefer sticks and mallets to be lighter, because the muscle motion involved is then capable of more mercurial shifts, heavier sticks are good for volume and groves with a lesser density of pulsation. The tempo here is medium-fast. The sense of practically of dividing the meat is pushed to the background, and the feeling of performance and rhythmic purposefulness is upfront.
Improvisational musics seem to be dividing between revivalism, extreme techno-reductionism, and extended hybridization. Is poetry falling into similar patterns? Are these tendecies themselves already combining? Here we have purposefulness aloft on wood, metal and flesh.
Certainly this could be conceived as falling within the tradition of Milford Graves, Spirit, Gunter Muller. Less so hail or rain. Is it the outboard motor to the hissing of the grill, as Glenn Spearman once said of the relation of William Winant and Donald Robinson to Glenn’s collectivity boat. Aren't our little groups and mags and reading series collectivity boats? Why does it not feel this way?
I pick especial. The searing of the content, the exchange of carbohydrates and proteins for life. The strata of selection, so unlike the draining energy one feels when confronted with a wall of cereal boxes, as though the possibilities of ingredient combinations here were designed for actual problems and situations of life, levels of hunger, needs – it is all so attainable.
I love content. The totally unique savoriness in the overall mixture of the ingredients. They way the differences hold together, remain themselves, mix in the most delicious ways.
Valencia and 17th. It looks, sounds and smells exactly as it did in 1994. San Francisco has this dynamic in general -- one leaves for six or seven years, and returns with the sensation that the city had frozen for the entire time, despite the shifts in human presentiment, which are were one’s sense of place really comes from.
San Francisco seems to exist only when you are within its boundaries, which contributes to its reputation for embodying the dangers of stagnation given via the twin powers of comfort and splendor. But this is also part of the city’s power. Spicer had a doctrine that poems should not leave the protective confines of the city, a kind of magic circle.
The burritos fall under the spell of this same limitation, you are not going to find them in New York or Chicago or Boston any more than you would find Six Poems for Poetry Chicago in Poetry Chicago.
Entering El Toro, one is presented first with the man chopping on the cutting board, a cleaver in each hand, a percussionist. I prefer sticks and mallets to be lighter, because the muscle motion involved is then capable of more mercurial shifts, heavier sticks are good for volume and groves with a lesser density of pulsation. The tempo here is medium-fast. The sense of practically of dividing the meat is pushed to the background, and the feeling of performance and rhythmic purposefulness is upfront.
Improvisational musics seem to be dividing between revivalism, extreme techno-reductionism, and extended hybridization. Is poetry falling into similar patterns? Are these tendecies themselves already combining? Here we have purposefulness aloft on wood, metal and flesh.
Certainly this could be conceived as falling within the tradition of Milford Graves, Spirit, Gunter Muller. Less so hail or rain. Is it the outboard motor to the hissing of the grill, as Glenn Spearman once said of the relation of William Winant and Donald Robinson to Glenn’s collectivity boat. Aren't our little groups and mags and reading series collectivity boats? Why does it not feel this way?
I pick especial. The searing of the content, the exchange of carbohydrates and proteins for life. The strata of selection, so unlike the draining energy one feels when confronted with a wall of cereal boxes, as though the possibilities of ingredient combinations here were designed for actual problems and situations of life, levels of hunger, needs – it is all so attainable.
I love content. The totally unique savoriness in the overall mixture of the ingredients. They way the differences hold together, remain themselves, mix in the most delicious ways.
3.05.2003
Remembered lines from Heriberto Yepez's NY reading:
Writing is always authoritarian and the authorities of language always use silence. That's why we look at the audience when we read.
Choose your ideal dictatorship.
Human poetry I would define as the strange situation where half the page is missing.
Most writing is Spam.
The relationship between the USA and the rest of the world is exactly like the relation between author and reader.
Every time writing ends a reader is born.
Writing is always authoritarian and the authorities of language always use silence. That's why we look at the audience when we read.
Choose your ideal dictatorship.
Human poetry I would define as the strange situation where half the page is missing.
Most writing is Spam.
The relationship between the USA and the rest of the world is exactly like the relation between author and reader.
Every time writing ends a reader is born.
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