1/9 train wall - lens crafters ad - model with one front incisor blacked-in with ball point pen. the simplicity of the gesture, crosshatching, traces of the human hand on the surface of the photographic reproduction, so effective at destroying the commercial usurpation of this small public rectangle of space. completely takes it back.
on the train to NJ – sun waning in smeared gray sky – Arthur Dove-style but with more menace. beautiful industrial blight with tall march weeds. the stranger's conversation in the next seat. giant letter "A" filling with neon light atop the huge evil-looking anheuser busch brewery. the graffiti out here, on a tanker train among the trees and rusting warehouses stands out strongly. on an iPod ad in the NYC subway graffiti is almost invisible.
the sky changes again. salmon plum clouds against blue.
---
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Gary Cooper. naive, tuba-playing poet inherits millions, feeds doughnuts to a horse, is exploited by and falls in love w/ gossip columnist and has his social conscience awakened by a destitute, homicidally enraged farmer.
hilarious court scene to prove his insanity for giving away his money - diagnosed manic depressive. "He feels total elation when he plays his tuba and writes his poetry."
"Pixilated" meaning crazy – as in visited by pixies – "He sure is pixilated!"
"everyone in Mandrake Falls is pixilated"
12.26.2004
12.21.2004
Jordan weights in on clarity, a topic that can make poets nervous. One default assumption among some of our more opaque writers seems to be that all clarity is bad clarity -- unconscious patterns of communication which reinforce power structures through faulty associations. This take on clarity is more about the institutional maintenance of categories of thought, mass psychology and suggestibility. It’s not about clarity per se.
What is bad opacity? Rumsfeld’s poetry embodies opacity as calculated obfuscation. The language he used in the press conference where he told soldiers they should get used to dying because it’s not convenient for him to deal with getting armor for vehicles is in exactly the same register as his poetry and press conferences. When he was caught off guard and out of context, though, the obfuscational power of the language, the suggestive vagueness, broke down. It’s all about the framing.
Is vagueness, a factor so prevalent and yet presently so un-discussed from within avant-garde poetry, parallel in some way to the Rumsfeld thing? Create vague word sequences and frame them in such a way that people accept the whole shbang as social power? Is this acceptable as a mirror-critique, or could this be thought of as a mere symptom?
Is there an element of the anti-social which operates separately from clarity as such? Ashbury or Tina Darragh can be very unclear but neither ever sounds anti-social. Can the genX punk concept of antisocial as a good thing -- a big NO -- be said to apply to obscure poetry? Maybe not, since Punk was simple and antisocial and that’s why it worked. It was extremely clear.
Cecil Taylor is difficult, baroque and anti-social, and covers a wide spectrum from unclear to lucid. Maybe difficulty, or challenge, should also be separated from questions of clarity. Ninja Gaiden is considered very challenging, but it’s also very popular. Some of the more challenging poets I like, Carla Harryman, Alan Davies, etc. rarely strike me as unclear.
I do like some unclear poetry (David Melnick anyone?). I am also very uncomfortable with the idea that challenging writing has to be a collectors’ cult you have be initiated into and have to pay a tithe for – poetry as antisocial in a bad way.
If I look at clear poetry that I dislike, it’s never because of the clarity. It’s because of the cluelessness, awkwardness, and bland pandering.
What is bad opacity? Rumsfeld’s poetry embodies opacity as calculated obfuscation. The language he used in the press conference where he told soldiers they should get used to dying because it’s not convenient for him to deal with getting armor for vehicles is in exactly the same register as his poetry and press conferences. When he was caught off guard and out of context, though, the obfuscational power of the language, the suggestive vagueness, broke down. It’s all about the framing.
Is vagueness, a factor so prevalent and yet presently so un-discussed from within avant-garde poetry, parallel in some way to the Rumsfeld thing? Create vague word sequences and frame them in such a way that people accept the whole shbang as social power? Is this acceptable as a mirror-critique, or could this be thought of as a mere symptom?
Is there an element of the anti-social which operates separately from clarity as such? Ashbury or Tina Darragh can be very unclear but neither ever sounds anti-social. Can the genX punk concept of antisocial as a good thing -- a big NO -- be said to apply to obscure poetry? Maybe not, since Punk was simple and antisocial and that’s why it worked. It was extremely clear.
Cecil Taylor is difficult, baroque and anti-social, and covers a wide spectrum from unclear to lucid. Maybe difficulty, or challenge, should also be separated from questions of clarity. Ninja Gaiden is considered very challenging, but it’s also very popular. Some of the more challenging poets I like, Carla Harryman, Alan Davies, etc. rarely strike me as unclear.
I do like some unclear poetry (David Melnick anyone?). I am also very uncomfortable with the idea that challenging writing has to be a collectors’ cult you have be initiated into and have to pay a tithe for – poetry as antisocial in a bad way.
If I look at clear poetry that I dislike, it’s never because of the clarity. It’s because of the cluelessness, awkwardness, and bland pandering.
This week’s essay in The New York Times Book Review features Jim Behrle, who is quoted at length on the question of techniques needed to achieve groupie-worthiness. Hot author photos, ACDC T-shirts, and an aura of availability are some of the trade secrets he imparts based on his years of observation organizing readings in Boston. If there is ever a Sex and the City reunion show Jim is going to be the go-to guy for writerly crushes.
The majority of a piano's range uses notes which are produced by a single hammer hitting not one but three strings simultaneously. We hear it as a single tone.
You would assume that the best quality of sound would be achieved by tuning all three strings to the same exact same frequency -- in unison, but this isn't the case. The three strings are detuned slightly -- this produces a better tone with a longer sustain. The strings are intentionally put out of tune make them sound better.
Poetry with overly meticulous lines falls into a similar pattern -- they need to be more out of whack!
You would assume that the best quality of sound would be achieved by tuning all three strings to the same exact same frequency -- in unison, but this isn't the case. The three strings are detuned slightly -- this produces a better tone with a longer sustain. The strings are intentionally put out of tune make them sound better.
Poetry with overly meticulous lines falls into a similar pattern -- they need to be more out of whack!
12.17.2004
The Pixies, Hammerstein Ballroom
When the Pixies where happening in the late 80s I enjoyed what I heard but didn't get deeply into them. I was foolishly purist--the MTV presence and pop riffs kept me at arms length. The last few years I've been listening to the CDs and asking myself, "What the hell was wrong with me that I didn't like this more at the time?"
We got to the Hammerstein early knowing the show would fill up fast. It did. The crowd was much younger than I would have expected -- mostly mid-twenties, through there were a few people my age. Very excited people. Heavy competition for floor real estate. We stood down front, Kim Deal side.
Opening were Le Tigre -- a band I had read about but never seen: three young women doing peppy retro-disco/punk with feminist/queer framing. The music was almost all laptop tracks. One guitar got traded around occasionally, and the odd keyboard doodle was thrown in here and there, but this was all about singing over the hard drive. They did cute orchestrated disco party moves and wore sparkly outfits -- queer political performance art rock with karaoke party as model?
I have to admit I was struggling to access the music, which seemed shockingly sleepy. Maybe this works better on CD? It was hard to discern much content apart from the framing. "All feminists report to the front desk" is as far as they could take the material? The tone was trying to be fun and serious at the same time(Margaret Cho influence?), but it too often veered into a preachy/awkward/immature zone.
The drum machine and synthbass sounded brittle and one-dimensional, like a storefront façade for a western done in high-contrast black and white halftone. The song writing was all bare minimum retro-formalism, though two or three of the tunes toward the end of the set had better dynamics and actually developed some forward momentum and contrast. Maybe I don’t really get this music, but it's still good to see younger musicians trying to keep some kind of politics upfront without loosing a fun vibe entirely. It could also be there is a generation gap between me and Le Tigre?
I did notice, in the overall performance, something that resonated though -- the unhealed, rejected teenager in me that still needs to bond with others who also don’t fit in to their larger social world for some reason, though my identification to this as a straight male happens on a different scale.
The Pixies came on after the traditional unnecessary rock-concert-torture-waiting-period, which is designed, I suppose, to frame the music with a giant block of tedium and thereby have the featured act come as a kind of relief. From the first few seconds of the opener -- Wave of Mutilation, it was obvious the show was going to be incontrovertibly awesome.
The formula for the songs worked over and over with variations: great verse vocal melodies with odd and inventive lyrics, solid but aggressive pop groove with simple propulsive drumming, bringing the energy up three or four notches on the chorus with the beautifully vivid Frank Black scream (I kept thinking: Glenn Danzig!) and Kim Deal harmonizing. Piercing single-line guitar riffs repeating the vocal melody. Every element of the song added a strong element.
The mix, which started a little muddy, got progressively worse, eventually degenerating into a pulpy, over-processed blob that actually obfuscated the last few songs, including Debaser.
They broke the set in half with a twenty minute guitar feedback solo with some antics involving a drumstick and a bottle of beer while the rest of the band stepped to the side. It was almost like a magic routine -- the drummer's influence at work perhaps, since he has been a professional magician.
There is often a trace of something embarrassing about watching a rock stars, but this was entirely lacking with The Pixies. No chat or commentary between songs. Hardly any stage movement from anyone. The Doolittle-heavy set didn't slow up for a second. They mostly went straight from one song to the next. It actually got faster and more aggressive as the evening went on: One great song after another for an hour and a half.
The band was visibly happy at how much people loved the music, how happy they were to be there. The Pixies play a music that is a fusion of exuberance and unhappiness, maybe trying to purge the unhappiness, but also using it as depth, holding the unhappiness up the light of exuberance to see what it is.
When the Pixies where happening in the late 80s I enjoyed what I heard but didn't get deeply into them. I was foolishly purist--the MTV presence and pop riffs kept me at arms length. The last few years I've been listening to the CDs and asking myself, "What the hell was wrong with me that I didn't like this more at the time?"
We got to the Hammerstein early knowing the show would fill up fast. It did. The crowd was much younger than I would have expected -- mostly mid-twenties, through there were a few people my age. Very excited people. Heavy competition for floor real estate. We stood down front, Kim Deal side.
Opening were Le Tigre -- a band I had read about but never seen: three young women doing peppy retro-disco/punk with feminist/queer framing. The music was almost all laptop tracks. One guitar got traded around occasionally, and the odd keyboard doodle was thrown in here and there, but this was all about singing over the hard drive. They did cute orchestrated disco party moves and wore sparkly outfits -- queer political performance art rock with karaoke party as model?
I have to admit I was struggling to access the music, which seemed shockingly sleepy. Maybe this works better on CD? It was hard to discern much content apart from the framing. "All feminists report to the front desk" is as far as they could take the material? The tone was trying to be fun and serious at the same time(Margaret Cho influence?), but it too often veered into a preachy/awkward/immature zone.
The drum machine and synthbass sounded brittle and one-dimensional, like a storefront façade for a western done in high-contrast black and white halftone. The song writing was all bare minimum retro-formalism, though two or three of the tunes toward the end of the set had better dynamics and actually developed some forward momentum and contrast. Maybe I don’t really get this music, but it's still good to see younger musicians trying to keep some kind of politics upfront without loosing a fun vibe entirely. It could also be there is a generation gap between me and Le Tigre?
I did notice, in the overall performance, something that resonated though -- the unhealed, rejected teenager in me that still needs to bond with others who also don’t fit in to their larger social world for some reason, though my identification to this as a straight male happens on a different scale.
The Pixies came on after the traditional unnecessary rock-concert-torture-waiting-period, which is designed, I suppose, to frame the music with a giant block of tedium and thereby have the featured act come as a kind of relief. From the first few seconds of the opener -- Wave of Mutilation, it was obvious the show was going to be incontrovertibly awesome.
The formula for the songs worked over and over with variations: great verse vocal melodies with odd and inventive lyrics, solid but aggressive pop groove with simple propulsive drumming, bringing the energy up three or four notches on the chorus with the beautifully vivid Frank Black scream (I kept thinking: Glenn Danzig!) and Kim Deal harmonizing. Piercing single-line guitar riffs repeating the vocal melody. Every element of the song added a strong element.
The mix, which started a little muddy, got progressively worse, eventually degenerating into a pulpy, over-processed blob that actually obfuscated the last few songs, including Debaser.
They broke the set in half with a twenty minute guitar feedback solo with some antics involving a drumstick and a bottle of beer while the rest of the band stepped to the side. It was almost like a magic routine -- the drummer's influence at work perhaps, since he has been a professional magician.
There is often a trace of something embarrassing about watching a rock stars, but this was entirely lacking with The Pixies. No chat or commentary between songs. Hardly any stage movement from anyone. The Doolittle-heavy set didn't slow up for a second. They mostly went straight from one song to the next. It actually got faster and more aggressive as the evening went on: One great song after another for an hour and a half.
The band was visibly happy at how much people loved the music, how happy they were to be there. The Pixies play a music that is a fusion of exuberance and unhappiness, maybe trying to purge the unhappiness, but also using it as depth, holding the unhappiness up the light of exuberance to see what it is.
12.02.2004
I’m loving Shanna’s Gamers, which is finally out from Soft Skull. The Boston Globe mentions my article in it about vector graphics games and physics. I’ve only had time to read a few of the pieces, but here are some highlights so far:
The book kicks off with this Charles Bernstein quote: “If a typewriter could talk, it probably would have very little to say; our automatic washers are probably not hiding secret dream machines deep inside their drums. But these microchips really blow you away!”
Daniel Nester: a fascinating and slightly frightening portrait of ex-competitive gamer and tarantula rustler Todd Rogers.
Mark Lamoureux: Barthes collides with the Atari 2600. Writing on the primitive bit map graphics of the system, Lamoureux says,"The images are incomplete, standing upright only upon the crutches of context and metonymy. It is through those holes in the extremities of representation that the creatures of myth are allowed to enter."
Katie Degentesh unpacks the internalizations of late capitalism via the Atari800.
Shannon Holman: Finally, a lesbian perspective on Moon Patrol.
Ernest Hilbert: a fellow Jersey-boy gamer on golden age coin ops.
Mark Nesbitt reports from beta-tester hell.
Bill Spratch: The best walkthrough for playing George W. you going to find anywhere.
Nik Kelman walks a few MMOE miles in the shoes of a female, and learns to his irritation that “men call you ‘bossy’ when you make any kind of suggestion as to what might be the best course of action.”
At the release party this Sat at the BPC, I’m going to play some improvised music with my laptop and midi controller using sampled sound effects from the game Gravitar as the only sound sources.
The book kicks off with this Charles Bernstein quote: “If a typewriter could talk, it probably would have very little to say; our automatic washers are probably not hiding secret dream machines deep inside their drums. But these microchips really blow you away!”
Daniel Nester: a fascinating and slightly frightening portrait of ex-competitive gamer and tarantula rustler Todd Rogers.
Mark Lamoureux: Barthes collides with the Atari 2600. Writing on the primitive bit map graphics of the system, Lamoureux says,"The images are incomplete, standing upright only upon the crutches of context and metonymy. It is through those holes in the extremities of representation that the creatures of myth are allowed to enter."
Katie Degentesh unpacks the internalizations of late capitalism via the Atari800.
Shannon Holman: Finally, a lesbian perspective on Moon Patrol.
Ernest Hilbert: a fellow Jersey-boy gamer on golden age coin ops.
Mark Nesbitt reports from beta-tester hell.
Bill Spratch: The best walkthrough for playing George W. you going to find anywhere.
Nik Kelman walks a few MMOE miles in the shoes of a female, and learns to his irritation that “men call you ‘bossy’ when you make any kind of suggestion as to what might be the best course of action.”
At the release party this Sat at the BPC, I’m going to play some improvised music with my laptop and midi controller using sampled sound effects from the game Gravitar as the only sound sources.
11.22.2004
11.21.2004
When I noticed the New York Times Book Review did a piece on Lyn Hejinian's Best American Poetry I thought, hmmm... I'm sure this will include an extensive, thrilled quotation from Kasey Silem Mohammad's poem Mars Needs Terrorists. I'm sure they wouldn't just run series of understated, threatened put-downs....
What we get is a picture of Lyn, which is shocking enough to see in the Book Review, with the words What Were You Thinking writ large below it. Then we get complaints that experimental poets are actually established, clearly too established for Orr's comfort. This is followed by complaints that the "traditional" sources BAP is taken from, Poetry, The Paris Review, etc. are missing.
I have to admit that I found Orr's comparison of the relative print runs of Shiny, The Yale Review and Cat Fancy amusing. Then the central complaints: the poetry here is not based on anecdote and "constructing a reliable voice."
Orr uses the second Matrix movie as a metaphor for what he sees as the weakness of experimental poetry. Metaphor can sometimes have a way of magnetically pulling away from uses the writer had intended for it. The closer, related, metaphor here would be the first Matrix film, where Neo, still in the ignorance-is-bliss Fox News/ Yale Review Matrix, is offered the pill and rabbit hole of a less reassuring but more real version of things (less based on anecdote and reliable voice you could say). Maybe Orr will one day go back and decide to take the other pill. You can imagine Lyn offering it to him with a sunglasses and an ankle-length leather trench coat. Lyn is Morpheus. Kasey is the pill itself.
What we get is a picture of Lyn, which is shocking enough to see in the Book Review, with the words What Were You Thinking writ large below it. Then we get complaints that experimental poets are actually established, clearly too established for Orr's comfort. This is followed by complaints that the "traditional" sources BAP is taken from, Poetry, The Paris Review, etc. are missing.
I have to admit that I found Orr's comparison of the relative print runs of Shiny, The Yale Review and Cat Fancy amusing. Then the central complaints: the poetry here is not based on anecdote and "constructing a reliable voice."
Orr uses the second Matrix movie as a metaphor for what he sees as the weakness of experimental poetry. Metaphor can sometimes have a way of magnetically pulling away from uses the writer had intended for it. The closer, related, metaphor here would be the first Matrix film, where Neo, still in the ignorance-is-bliss Fox News/ Yale Review Matrix, is offered the pill and rabbit hole of a less reassuring but more real version of things (less based on anecdote and reliable voice you could say). Maybe Orr will one day go back and decide to take the other pill. You can imagine Lyn offering it to him with a sunglasses and an ankle-length leather trench coat. Lyn is Morpheus. Kasey is the pill itself.
11.15.2004
Stephanie Young and Jordan Davis, BPC, 11/13/04
Came in slightly late to the BPC, where Stephanie had already started, sporting a (new?) rocker-Cat Power-ish look. Almost didn’t recognize her from a distance. I settled in at the bar in the midst of her startling, marzipan-heavy series featuring a haunted talking bracelet and a robot: totally marvelous.
“I lick the plate of macaroni. I have a sincere desire to change.”
“I had gone far to rest among the foxglove.”
Jordan Davis:
Is there a correlation between an appetite for Dub and the relaxed line and welcoming tone modulating themselves to the demands of circumambulation? Am I right in thinking there were more specks of disclosure in Jordan's reading than I'm used to?
“Taco hot dog blooper magnolia.”
“Under interests she listed sex and power, and then crossed one out.”
“It’s got to be overcast to mean business.”
“It repeats it, out to the edge of the pancake.”
Came in slightly late to the BPC, where Stephanie had already started, sporting a (new?) rocker-Cat Power-ish look. Almost didn’t recognize her from a distance. I settled in at the bar in the midst of her startling, marzipan-heavy series featuring a haunted talking bracelet and a robot: totally marvelous.
“I lick the plate of macaroni. I have a sincere desire to change.”
“I had gone far to rest among the foxglove.”
Jordan Davis:
Is there a correlation between an appetite for Dub and the relaxed line and welcoming tone modulating themselves to the demands of circumambulation? Am I right in thinking there were more specks of disclosure in Jordan's reading than I'm used to?
“Taco hot dog blooper magnolia.”
“Under interests she listed sex and power, and then crossed one out.”
“It’s got to be overcast to mean business.”
“It repeats it, out to the edge of the pancake.”
11.10.2004
Two things from different talks given by Steve Evans and Michael Magee linger together in my mind, though the talks were given months apart. Steve made an off the cuff remark worded with chilling concision about how the world had apparently been reabsorbed into a fundamentalist mind-set -- a perception our recent election confirms and deepens.
Magee's riffing off of the Burke thing about how diversity in America can have an ameliorating effect on the use of negative mass psychological forces for concentrating power - that we can't agree on who to hate, seems like it might be up in the air now that American Republicans/Christians seem to agree to hate Arabs and queers together? Or they agree enough on this that a little voting fraud in the right place does the trick.
Magee's riffing off of the Burke thing about how diversity in America can have an ameliorating effect on the use of negative mass psychological forces for concentrating power - that we can't agree on who to hate, seems like it might be up in the air now that American Republicans/Christians seem to agree to hate Arabs and queers together? Or they agree enough on this that a little voting fraud in the right place does the trick.
11.08.2004
10.27.2004
Notes on Michael Magee's talk
Ralph Ellison: Pragmatism, Jazz, and the American Vernacular
Poetry Project, 10/22/04
Emerson -- "How easily we capitulate to badges and names."
The maintenance of idealism in the face of the myth of democracy.
How to avoid the patterns of getting locked into the traditions that precede you.
Social flexibility vs. stagnant institutional power as a discipline -- that is -- what a process of democratization would actually mean.
Magee paraphrase of Emerson: "part of self reliance is to protect other people from yourself."
History is a text that can be revised.
Symbolic action -- creating new idioms, new dialogue, new ways of speaking -- hence new thoughts reflecting new realities, and: new actions.
"All literary power is social power."
Burke's take on Hitler and his popularity w/ Germans at the time: enforced repetition of thought until it becomes tradition.
Complicity of power and language, which can cut both ways -- the opportunity available to use the social power of language for change.
Burke's take on why America won't ever go fascist -- we can't agree on who to hate.
The polyvocal aspects of jazz -- the including of dissonance -- different needs and voices in the social sense, as enriching and inherently progressive socially.
American culture is "jazz-shaped."
Making players out of audiences: this point made me think of a recent performance of Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning I participated in recently (there was no other way to experience it, really) where the entire audience emptied out from the bleachers and joined the musicians on stage -- players and audience were one, voila!)
Ellison on interdependent form and content -- heavy overlap with Creeley.
The Bill of Rights as improvisation.
Ralph Ellison: Pragmatism, Jazz, and the American Vernacular
Poetry Project, 10/22/04
Emerson -- "How easily we capitulate to badges and names."
The maintenance of idealism in the face of the myth of democracy.
How to avoid the patterns of getting locked into the traditions that precede you.
Social flexibility vs. stagnant institutional power as a discipline -- that is -- what a process of democratization would actually mean.
Magee paraphrase of Emerson: "part of self reliance is to protect other people from yourself."
History is a text that can be revised.
Symbolic action -- creating new idioms, new dialogue, new ways of speaking -- hence new thoughts reflecting new realities, and: new actions.
"All literary power is social power."
Burke's take on Hitler and his popularity w/ Germans at the time: enforced repetition of thought until it becomes tradition.
Complicity of power and language, which can cut both ways -- the opportunity available to use the social power of language for change.
Burke's take on why America won't ever go fascist -- we can't agree on who to hate.
The polyvocal aspects of jazz -- the including of dissonance -- different needs and voices in the social sense, as enriching and inherently progressive socially.
American culture is "jazz-shaped."
Making players out of audiences: this point made me think of a recent performance of Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning I participated in recently (there was no other way to experience it, really) where the entire audience emptied out from the bleachers and joined the musicians on stage -- players and audience were one, voila!)
Ellison on interdependent form and content -- heavy overlap with Creeley.
The Bill of Rights as improvisation.
10.23.2004
I added a link (left),for the Poetics Orchestra, including some mp3s from the Free Radicals concert.
Next gig: Bowery Poetry Club: Nov 5th
Next gig: Bowery Poetry Club: Nov 5th
10.20.2004
Butch Morris with the Free Zone / Sound Infusion Orchestra
Bowery Poetry Club, 10/17/04
Conduction No. 141: EMYOUESEYESE
Met Steve Dickison early at the BPC due to some conflicting time listings, so we got to see Morris warm his band up before the concert. His comments to the players were barely audible, but fascinating -- I think I overheard "why is there so much doubt…?" during a cue where he was trying to get fully extended duration from a full orchestra pedal chord. Certainly a valid question. I couldn't help wondering how much of an orchestration could be done by simply asking the orchestra questions?
Musicians kept filtering in up to the last second - there were at lest 16 on stage by the time they started. The piece began with Adam Lane on bass, rhythmically ping-ponging between the low and high end of the instrument while keeping a continuous melodic stream of variation going. The bass was an anchor and an engine for much of the piece. He was slowly joined by violin and cello -- an extended string texture over which Morris began to signal with flourishes and punctuations. Much of the piece used this method- some players creating static or repetitive structure over which dynamic layers would be superimposed.
The overlapping tonalities were dense, and hovered in a thick mid-low ball of dark gray energy that would transform into beautiful and somewhat nightmarish shapes, creating a constant counter-pointing feeling. It was beautiful and energetic, with a certain amount of anxiety shot through. Not unlike life in NYC.
When I followed the cues it was clear that Morris was tightly controlling the orchestra movement the entire time, though the overall feeling of structure also came across as pointedly dream-like in its logic, with a consistent sense of interacting elements of carefully interwoven particles and sheets: balanced volatility, mass and organization.
Bowery Poetry Club, 10/17/04
Conduction No. 141: EMYOUESEYESE
Met Steve Dickison early at the BPC due to some conflicting time listings, so we got to see Morris warm his band up before the concert. His comments to the players were barely audible, but fascinating -- I think I overheard "why is there so much doubt…?" during a cue where he was trying to get fully extended duration from a full orchestra pedal chord. Certainly a valid question. I couldn't help wondering how much of an orchestration could be done by simply asking the orchestra questions?
Musicians kept filtering in up to the last second - there were at lest 16 on stage by the time they started. The piece began with Adam Lane on bass, rhythmically ping-ponging between the low and high end of the instrument while keeping a continuous melodic stream of variation going. The bass was an anchor and an engine for much of the piece. He was slowly joined by violin and cello -- an extended string texture over which Morris began to signal with flourishes and punctuations. Much of the piece used this method- some players creating static or repetitive structure over which dynamic layers would be superimposed.
The overlapping tonalities were dense, and hovered in a thick mid-low ball of dark gray energy that would transform into beautiful and somewhat nightmarish shapes, creating a constant counter-pointing feeling. It was beautiful and energetic, with a certain amount of anxiety shot through. Not unlike life in NYC.
When I followed the cues it was clear that Morris was tightly controlling the orchestra movement the entire time, though the overall feeling of structure also came across as pointedly dream-like in its logic, with a consistent sense of interacting elements of carefully interwoven particles and sheets: balanced volatility, mass and organization.
10.05.2004
Kit Robinson, 9:45, The Post-Apollo Press, 2003
Honed, focused attention, cognitive torque, and dry humor.
Robinson plays off of numbers as particular instances and pivots of thought and memory. The numbers also function as nodal points of subject matter -- often records of money and time as poetic opening devices-- with the dimensions of life and thought opened by these particulars recombining.
The numbers measure mundane given conditions and stamp them with a particular signature, and the fact of their perception -- rent due in a particular apartment (first last and security) / at a certain time in life (age "29")/ the number of messages on an answering machine("30"). These things become inseparable from branched interconnections of poetic meaning and chains of thought through linked classes of subject matter.
Elements and details are broken down, but not as fragments-- not as reflections of a damaged whole -- they are dissolved parts brought to a point where they gain recombining associative potential -- Zen immediacy --"daily mind" -- set on puree.
Memories, meditations, and questions.
It's impressive how much context and thought Robinson can compress into so few words.
Honed, focused attention, cognitive torque, and dry humor.
Robinson plays off of numbers as particular instances and pivots of thought and memory. The numbers also function as nodal points of subject matter -- often records of money and time as poetic opening devices-- with the dimensions of life and thought opened by these particulars recombining.
The numbers measure mundane given conditions and stamp them with a particular signature, and the fact of their perception -- rent due in a particular apartment (first last and security) / at a certain time in life (age "29")/ the number of messages on an answering machine("30"). These things become inseparable from branched interconnections of poetic meaning and chains of thought through linked classes of subject matter.
Elements and details are broken down, but not as fragments-- not as reflections of a damaged whole -- they are dissolved parts brought to a point where they gain recombining associative potential -- Zen immediacy --"daily mind" -- set on puree.
Memories, meditations, and questions.
It's impressive how much context and thought Robinson can compress into so few words.
9.23.2004
Paid a visit to my dentist Wed afternoon. Light classical music combined with the sound of air sucking through the tube in my mouth-- good arrangement!
Then down to 18th St. to Academy Records, which has above average used jazz and _Post War_ classical sections. I had a few things to sell, tried to hold off buying, though tempted by a Tony Scott CD. Ran into Joel Lewis. Talked for about a half hour in the front of the store's cast of characters. Topics covered included: the Zukofsky conference, the relation of aging and poetry scenes, Hawkwind, Dennis Charles, do young people read Zukofsky?, Neil Young, Amiri Baraka, early Can 1968-1971, Hoboken, Objectivism, acceptable "poetry gig"-type day jobs, John Cage's botany tutorial where he went door to door telling people - "I'm teaching a class about botany, which I don't know anything about." (my comment- that's when the rents are very low...") The amazing Max Roach/Cecil Taylor concert outside at Columbia a few years ago, The Max Roach bio that Baraka is working on, Billy Higgins, A-22, A-23, Ed Blackwell, Patty Smith, Lorraine Niedecker, Steve Winwood, spending money on CDs vs. poetry books...
Down to 2nd Ave. for hot borscht and challa bread for dinner at B & H. Deep red tones. The clientele totally uncontaminated by new East Village yuppies. A restaurant with a spatial extent so narrow as to be effectively two-dimensional. It's like being a character in Flatland. You can see the sphere pass through, but it looks like a bowl of borscht disappearing into your body. The cook hands you the soup over the counter. Best challa bread in town. Total:$3.75
6:30pm: the Jordan Davis talk show at the Bowery Poetry Club. Jordan's opening monologue is the highlight. I was thinking he should stretch/wig out even more during this section. Late late late late show maybe? Where is video net streaming? Pleased to find Jim Behrle and Brandon Downing in the audience. After, Jordan and I discuss how unemployment has been good for Jim's comic art. Met Miss Meghan and shook her down for info about the message my shoes are sending: I am drawn to comfort.
Off to The Poetry Project to hear the Eileen Myles Opera "The Workshop from Hell." Packed house in the large room. Jim, Brandon and Bob Holman all came over from the BPC. Eleven piece chamber group. Great to hear harpsichord, vibraphone and bassoon. Professional, slightly campy neo-classical music. I had no idea what was going on plot-wise, though- couldn't make out most of the words- though I liked hearing the poetry sung. Some fragments came through, imagine them in camped-out operatic voicings:
"this is the first Goth PO-em"
"hold ON -- my browser's STUCK"
"we thought hell could be REPLACED by an inexpensive WAX MODEL"
"the trees won the earth FAIR and SQUARE"
(There were some (singing) trees holding golf clubs)
(and, my favorite,a dig on poetry bitching):
"the people of Iceland have been writing and telling STORIES for thousands of YEARS in an incredibly obscure LANGUAGE- you don't hear them COMPLAINING...."
Then down to 18th St. to Academy Records, which has above average used jazz and _Post War_ classical sections. I had a few things to sell, tried to hold off buying, though tempted by a Tony Scott CD. Ran into Joel Lewis. Talked for about a half hour in the front of the store's cast of characters. Topics covered included: the Zukofsky conference, the relation of aging and poetry scenes, Hawkwind, Dennis Charles, do young people read Zukofsky?, Neil Young, Amiri Baraka, early Can 1968-1971, Hoboken, Objectivism, acceptable "poetry gig"-type day jobs, John Cage's botany tutorial where he went door to door telling people - "I'm teaching a class about botany, which I don't know anything about." (my comment- that's when the rents are very low...") The amazing Max Roach/Cecil Taylor concert outside at Columbia a few years ago, The Max Roach bio that Baraka is working on, Billy Higgins, A-22, A-23, Ed Blackwell, Patty Smith, Lorraine Niedecker, Steve Winwood, spending money on CDs vs. poetry books...
Down to 2nd Ave. for hot borscht and challa bread for dinner at B & H. Deep red tones. The clientele totally uncontaminated by new East Village yuppies. A restaurant with a spatial extent so narrow as to be effectively two-dimensional. It's like being a character in Flatland. You can see the sphere pass through, but it looks like a bowl of borscht disappearing into your body. The cook hands you the soup over the counter. Best challa bread in town. Total:$3.75
6:30pm: the Jordan Davis talk show at the Bowery Poetry Club. Jordan's opening monologue is the highlight. I was thinking he should stretch/wig out even more during this section. Late late late late show maybe? Where is video net streaming? Pleased to find Jim Behrle and Brandon Downing in the audience. After, Jordan and I discuss how unemployment has been good for Jim's comic art. Met Miss Meghan and shook her down for info about the message my shoes are sending: I am drawn to comfort.
Off to The Poetry Project to hear the Eileen Myles Opera "The Workshop from Hell." Packed house in the large room. Jim, Brandon and Bob Holman all came over from the BPC. Eleven piece chamber group. Great to hear harpsichord, vibraphone and bassoon. Professional, slightly campy neo-classical music. I had no idea what was going on plot-wise, though- couldn't make out most of the words- though I liked hearing the poetry sung. Some fragments came through, imagine them in camped-out operatic voicings:
"this is the first Goth PO-em"
"hold ON -- my browser's STUCK"
"we thought hell could be REPLACED by an inexpensive WAX MODEL"
"the trees won the earth FAIR and SQUARE"
(There were some (singing) trees holding golf clubs)
(and, my favorite,a dig on poetry bitching):
"the people of Iceland have been writing and telling STORIES for thousands of YEARS in an incredibly obscure LANGUAGE- you don't hear them COMPLAINING...."
9.13.2004
This is first time I've seen Ezra Pound compared to Resident Evil 3.
I have to admit that the Hell Cantos do play a lot like RE3- awkward.
Other parts of the Cantos play more like Silent Hill, though, discontinuous, compelling, and full of odd detail, and with a flow and rhythm that increases one's curiosity about what's going on in this odd world.
One's position as an agent in The Cantos is also more like Silent Hill in general- one stumbles through it, not getting the references, absorbing the atmosphere, and moving through an altered spacialization of time and history where an investigation is part of the reader/player's participation in the story.
I have to admit that the Hell Cantos do play a lot like RE3- awkward.
Other parts of the Cantos play more like Silent Hill, though, discontinuous, compelling, and full of odd detail, and with a flow and rhythm that increases one's curiosity about what's going on in this odd world.
One's position as an agent in The Cantos is also more like Silent Hill in general- one stumbles through it, not getting the references, absorbing the atmosphere, and moving through an altered spacialization of time and history where an investigation is part of the reader/player's participation in the story.
9.12.2004
The Kerry team doesn't seem to understand that they are fighting two Mecha-Godzilla-scale forces of human repression: religious faith and fear, things that by themselves have the capacity to shut off the powers of critical thinking, and can combine to do untold damage, esp. when harnessed by dangerous millionaires. These forces make people feel protected by their exploiters.
I think Kerry still has a chance of winning, but he has to somehow use the media to send the message to the population that the Bush crew is 1) robbing us 2) killing our children for no reason 3) poisoning our air and land 4) raiding our retirement funds 5) systematically bankrupting and weakening our country. Can this be done in the current media landscape without threatening people's realities to the point where there's a backlash within the population, causing them to retreat into a violently self-disempowering fantasy space where they have not elected a maniac, putting their poetic imaginations to use in the face of an unpleasant and unflattering reality?
For most Republicans, the fact is that their father-figure/buddy leader and protector is stepping on their necks, and they respond to this by asking for more -- and by licking the offending boot. Will the swing voters adopt the same mental strategy? Is Kerry too blandly patrician to understand what it would take to win against people like Carl Rove? You have to credit the Republicans with a knowledge of mass psychology that completely leaves the Democrats in the dust. The RNC was brilliant performance art. The Republican poetic is masterful. These tactics, the swift boat stuff and the RNC pitch, the bald opposite-of-the-truth dissociations, the fear mongering, the character assassination, these are thousands of years old, and the Kerry crew responds by taking a nap.
If the Bush people win again the ante on the worst-case scenario is up considerably: American religious fundamentalist-led creeping global neo-capitalist corporate Stalinism working in a symbiotic relationship with an equally fundamentalist and militarized fragmented Islamic radical terrorist _opposition._ It's a perfect mutually-empowering partnership against the populations of the world, who are the real opposition to both groups. If this happens you'll have the Christians of middle-America to thank: people so uncomfortable with their own identities they agree to tolerate having their children killed in profiteering wars of foreign occupation as long as they don't have to hear anything on the news about the president getting a blowjob.
As long as W keeps intoning _I'm protecting you people from A-rabs_ and there's no proper answer to it from anyone, then he'll win. Then again, the American death count in a war justified by and universally accepted as unrelated to 9/11 is already at 1/3 of the number of people killed on 9/11 and rising.
I think Kerry still has a chance of winning, but he has to somehow use the media to send the message to the population that the Bush crew is 1) robbing us 2) killing our children for no reason 3) poisoning our air and land 4) raiding our retirement funds 5) systematically bankrupting and weakening our country. Can this be done in the current media landscape without threatening people's realities to the point where there's a backlash within the population, causing them to retreat into a violently self-disempowering fantasy space where they have not elected a maniac, putting their poetic imaginations to use in the face of an unpleasant and unflattering reality?
For most Republicans, the fact is that their father-figure/buddy leader and protector is stepping on their necks, and they respond to this by asking for more -- and by licking the offending boot. Will the swing voters adopt the same mental strategy? Is Kerry too blandly patrician to understand what it would take to win against people like Carl Rove? You have to credit the Republicans with a knowledge of mass psychology that completely leaves the Democrats in the dust. The RNC was brilliant performance art. The Republican poetic is masterful. These tactics, the swift boat stuff and the RNC pitch, the bald opposite-of-the-truth dissociations, the fear mongering, the character assassination, these are thousands of years old, and the Kerry crew responds by taking a nap.
If the Bush people win again the ante on the worst-case scenario is up considerably: American religious fundamentalist-led creeping global neo-capitalist corporate Stalinism working in a symbiotic relationship with an equally fundamentalist and militarized fragmented Islamic radical terrorist _opposition._ It's a perfect mutually-empowering partnership against the populations of the world, who are the real opposition to both groups. If this happens you'll have the Christians of middle-America to thank: people so uncomfortable with their own identities they agree to tolerate having their children killed in profiteering wars of foreign occupation as long as they don't have to hear anything on the news about the president getting a blowjob.
As long as W keeps intoning _I'm protecting you people from A-rabs_ and there's no proper answer to it from anyone, then he'll win. Then again, the American death count in a war justified by and universally accepted as unrelated to 9/11 is already at 1/3 of the number of people killed on 9/11 and rising.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
