One of my favorite singers comes to a bad end.
Gothic Lolita. (And let's not forget Gothic Lolita
Bible.) (via Memepool)
I found this here while searching for "J A Lindon":
"Here's a limerick I picked up off the net a few years back - looks better
on paper.
3_
\/3
/
| 2 3 X pi 3_
| z dz X cos(--------) = ln (\/e )
| 9
/
1
Which, of course, translates to:
Integral z-squared dz
from 1 to the cube root of 3
times the cosine
of three pi over 9
equals log of the cube root of 'e'.
And it's correct, too."
Ten technologies that deserve to die. (via bOING bOING)
A new art medium. (via Dave Barry)
The Free State Project. (via Samizdata)
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
"I believe it is by persons believing themselves
in the right that nine-tenths of the tyranny of the
world has been perpetrated... 'The times certainly
require,' says he [George III], 'the concurrence of
all who wish to prevent anarchy. I have no wish
but the prosperity of my own dominions, therefore
I must look upon all who would not heartily assist
me as bad men, as well as nbad subjects.' That is
the way he reasoned." --William Makepeace Thack-
eray, "George the Third"
"...Remember that he believed himself anointed by
a Divine commission; remember that he was a man
of slow parts and imperfect education; that the same
awful will of Heaven which placed a crown upon his
head, which made him tender to his family, pure in his
life, courageous and honest, made him dull of compre-
hension, obstinate of will, and at many times deprived
him of his reason." --ibid
"King George's household was a model of an English
gentleman's household. It was early; it was kindly; it
was charitable; it was frugal; it was orderly; it must
have been stupid to a degree which I shudder now to
contemplate." --ibid
"Ulf slit open his belly, led him round and round an
oak tree, and in this way unwound all his intestines
out of his body, and Brodir did not die before they
were all pulled out of him." --Njal's Saga, ch. 157
"Last night I dreamt I was in the labyrinth
And woke far on. I did not know the place." --Edwin
Muir
"...Time is a fluid medium for the culture of metaphors."
--Ada
"Vita brevis, ars longa, tempus acutum, experimentum
vero fallax, iudicium difficile." ("Life is short, the Art
long, opportunity elusive, experiment dangerous,
judgment difficult.') --Hippocrates
"The only flower known to have wings is the butterfly;
all others stand helpless before the destroyer." --Kakuzo,
The Book of Tea
A poetry magazine: LOGISTICS.
Red-assed Baboon inner monologue. (via Rebecca Blood)
in the right that nine-tenths of the tyranny of the
world has been perpetrated... 'The times certainly
require,' says he [George III], 'the concurrence of
all who wish to prevent anarchy. I have no wish
but the prosperity of my own dominions, therefore
I must look upon all who would not heartily assist
me as bad men, as well as nbad subjects.' That is
the way he reasoned." --William Makepeace Thack-
eray, "George the Third"
"...Remember that he believed himself anointed by
a Divine commission; remember that he was a man
of slow parts and imperfect education; that the same
awful will of Heaven which placed a crown upon his
head, which made him tender to his family, pure in his
life, courageous and honest, made him dull of compre-
hension, obstinate of will, and at many times deprived
him of his reason." --ibid
"King George's household was a model of an English
gentleman's household. It was early; it was kindly; it
was charitable; it was frugal; it was orderly; it must
have been stupid to a degree which I shudder now to
contemplate." --ibid
"Ulf slit open his belly, led him round and round an
oak tree, and in this way unwound all his intestines
out of his body, and Brodir did not die before they
were all pulled out of him." --Njal's Saga, ch. 157
"Last night I dreamt I was in the labyrinth
And woke far on. I did not know the place." --Edwin
Muir
"...Time is a fluid medium for the culture of metaphors."
--Ada
"Vita brevis, ars longa, tempus acutum, experimentum
vero fallax, iudicium difficile." ("Life is short, the Art
long, opportunity elusive, experiment dangerous,
judgment difficult.') --Hippocrates
"The only flower known to have wings is the butterfly;
all others stand helpless before the destroyer." --Kakuzo,
The Book of Tea
A poetry magazine: LOGISTICS.
Red-assed Baboon inner monologue. (via Rebecca Blood)
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
Why is there something rather than nothing? (via Metafilter)
Answer: there isn't.
Listening to: Wishbone Ash- Nouveau Calls.
Answer: there isn't.
Listening to: Wishbone Ash- Nouveau Calls.
#3 Sign of the Apocalypse: Pynchon on the Simpsons.
(via Silliman's Blog)
"I had been told by Elinor Wylie, after one of her trips to
London, of a meeting with Virginia Woolf which--though
Elinor may have distorted a little--had sounded rather dis-
agreeable. Mrs Woolf, she declared, had asked her why she
tried to write literary English; she had told Elinor that it
would be much more interesting if she let herself go in her
native American and tried something in the line of Ring
Lardner." --Edmund Wilson
The mass production of "facts": an abstract artform. (Its
aesthetics is called "plausibility".)
"I told him there were thirty-five women to every man
in madhouses and thirty-five men to every woman in
jails." --Rhoda Lerman, The Girl that He Marries (1976)
One who is broken-hearted cannot write criticism. It all
seems equally pitiful.
An artist wages transcendence against his alienation; a
pseudoartist cherishes alienation as a badge of honor.
Poetry in a book is like a record in an album cover.
Songs about being rock stars; poems about being English
professors.
Perhaps in all times & places the spirit of emulation
is responsible for the bulk of poems produced. (How
odd that none of our criticism will cop to this.)
The survival of the art of poetry should only be measured
by the amount actually memorized in people's minds today.
"To divine is human." --Michael Edwards, The Dark
Side of History (1977)
"And of all the infirmities we have, the most savage, is
to despise our being." --Montaigne, On Experience
(Florio's tr)
Translations as divination. What draws you to an
author, to a text, as the next direction of your own
writing.
"...Expiring in the frore and foggy air." --Shelley,
The Revolt of Islam, Canto IX. xxv.
(via Silliman's Blog)
"I had been told by Elinor Wylie, after one of her trips to
London, of a meeting with Virginia Woolf which--though
Elinor may have distorted a little--had sounded rather dis-
agreeable. Mrs Woolf, she declared, had asked her why she
tried to write literary English; she had told Elinor that it
would be much more interesting if she let herself go in her
native American and tried something in the line of Ring
Lardner." --Edmund Wilson
The mass production of "facts": an abstract artform. (Its
aesthetics is called "plausibility".)
"I told him there were thirty-five women to every man
in madhouses and thirty-five men to every woman in
jails." --Rhoda Lerman, The Girl that He Marries (1976)
One who is broken-hearted cannot write criticism. It all
seems equally pitiful.
An artist wages transcendence against his alienation; a
pseudoartist cherishes alienation as a badge of honor.
Poetry in a book is like a record in an album cover.
Songs about being rock stars; poems about being English
professors.
Perhaps in all times & places the spirit of emulation
is responsible for the bulk of poems produced. (How
odd that none of our criticism will cop to this.)
The survival of the art of poetry should only be measured
by the amount actually memorized in people's minds today.
"To divine is human." --Michael Edwards, The Dark
Side of History (1977)
"And of all the infirmities we have, the most savage, is
to despise our being." --Montaigne, On Experience
(Florio's tr)
Translations as divination. What draws you to an
author, to a text, as the next direction of your own
writing.
"...Expiring in the frore and foggy air." --Shelley,
The Revolt of Islam, Canto IX. xxv.
Monday, September 29, 2003
The Miskatonic Acid Test.
"...But this our native or adopted land
has no past, no story. No poet speaks to us. Do we need a poet
to interpret Nature's teachings, we must look into our own hearts,
if perchance we may find a poet there.
What is the dominant note of Australian scenery? That which is
the dominant note of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry -- Weird Melancholy.
A poem like "L'Allegro" could never be written by an Australian. It is
too airy, too sweet, too freshly happy. The Australian mountain forests
are funereal, secret, stern. Their solitude is desolation.
They seem to stifle, in their black gorges, a story of sullen despair.
No tender sentiment is nourished in their shade. In other lands
the dying year is mourned, the falling leaves drop lightly on his bier.
In the Australian forests no leaves fall. The savage winds shout
among the rock clefts. From the melancholy gums strips of white bark
hang and rustle. The very animal life of these frowning hills
is either grotesque or ghostly. Great grey kangaroos hop noiselessly
over the coarse grass. Flights of white cockatoos stream out,
shrieking like evil souls. The sun suddenly sinks,
and the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter.
The natives aver that, when night comes, from out the bottomless depth
of some lagoon the Bunyip rises, and, in form like monstrous sea-calf,
drags his loathsome length from out the ooze. From a corner
of the silent forest rises a dismal chant, and around a fire dance natives
painted like skeletons. All is fear-inspiring and gloomy.
No bright fancies are linked with the memories of the mountains.
Hopeless explorers have named them out of their sufferings --
Mount Misery, Mount Dreadful, Mount Despair. As when among sylvan scenes
in places
"Made green with the running of rivers,
And gracious with temperate air,"
the soul is soothed and satisfied, so, placed before the frightful grandeur
of these barren hills, it drinks in their sentiment of defiant ferocity,
and is steeped in bitterness." --Marcus Clarke, preface to Poems by
Adam Lindsay Gordon
Update on Welsh poetics, in Welsh & (a little
bit) in English. (pdf, via Wood_s Hole)
"...But this our native or adopted land
has no past, no story. No poet speaks to us. Do we need a poet
to interpret Nature's teachings, we must look into our own hearts,
if perchance we may find a poet there.
What is the dominant note of Australian scenery? That which is
the dominant note of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry -- Weird Melancholy.
A poem like "L'Allegro" could never be written by an Australian. It is
too airy, too sweet, too freshly happy. The Australian mountain forests
are funereal, secret, stern. Their solitude is desolation.
They seem to stifle, in their black gorges, a story of sullen despair.
No tender sentiment is nourished in their shade. In other lands
the dying year is mourned, the falling leaves drop lightly on his bier.
In the Australian forests no leaves fall. The savage winds shout
among the rock clefts. From the melancholy gums strips of white bark
hang and rustle. The very animal life of these frowning hills
is either grotesque or ghostly. Great grey kangaroos hop noiselessly
over the coarse grass. Flights of white cockatoos stream out,
shrieking like evil souls. The sun suddenly sinks,
and the mopokes burst out into horrible peals of semi-human laughter.
The natives aver that, when night comes, from out the bottomless depth
of some lagoon the Bunyip rises, and, in form like monstrous sea-calf,
drags his loathsome length from out the ooze. From a corner
of the silent forest rises a dismal chant, and around a fire dance natives
painted like skeletons. All is fear-inspiring and gloomy.
No bright fancies are linked with the memories of the mountains.
Hopeless explorers have named them out of their sufferings --
Mount Misery, Mount Dreadful, Mount Despair. As when among sylvan scenes
in places
"Made green with the running of rivers,
And gracious with temperate air,"
the soul is soothed and satisfied, so, placed before the frightful grandeur
of these barren hills, it drinks in their sentiment of defiant ferocity,
and is steeped in bitterness." --Marcus Clarke, preface to Poems by
Adam Lindsay Gordon
Update on Welsh poetics, in Welsh & (a little
bit) in English. (pdf, via Wood_s Hole)
Lying being both socially necessary & morally
unjustifiable..., every viewpoint which depends upon
forgoing it (as a token of earnestness) will be rendered
ineffectual or else succumb to unwitting hypocrisy.
--This is a myth about the Death of God, i
think--
--but a true myth.
We are all targets in the same murky battlefield--whose sense
of each other, naturally, derives from the competition for
shelter. So i cultivate humanist attitudes i don't often feel
& actively refute in my thinking, in order not to lose touch
with that future time in which people will be born with a
reason to have them.
The re-marginalization of artists won't be the end of the
art-making impulse, merely its spurious authority &
glamour... It will be salubrious for Art, certainly. Those who
were in it for reasons of the ego will then move on to
other things.
When time making pots didn't have to be stolen from time
making spears, it was easier to be an artist. But they didn't try
to be priests, either.
There is a mystery named by the color greenish-orange.
Know this, & you know a secret about all mysteries.
Computers are a greater snare than even drugs. They appear
to confer intelligence without effort, as drugs appear to confer
an inconsequential joy.
"To say, of course, that an art form which cannot pay its own
way is also generically defunct is a respectable American
argument; happily it is no longer applied to any other art form,
from Grand Opera to aerial bombardment." --Charles Newman,
The Post-Modern Aura (1985)
"Our frailties are never more on display than when we give names
to Time." --ibid
The Big Lie. Nothing is so contagiously inspiring as
total commitment to a blatant fraud. It's as awesome as levitation.
We Americans are so childishly delighted with the bare act
of choosing, like Midas in the first hour of his "golden touch",
it hardly matters what; but very often i am as weary with the
plethora of indistinguishables, as Midas after years of the curse,
till i cry out: only give me one necessary task & the barest
sustenance, & i will ask no more! --But my art refuses me.
Listening to: Sons of the Pioneers.
unjustifiable..., every viewpoint which depends upon
forgoing it (as a token of earnestness) will be rendered
ineffectual or else succumb to unwitting hypocrisy.
--This is a myth about the Death of God, i
think--
--but a true myth.
We are all targets in the same murky battlefield--whose sense
of each other, naturally, derives from the competition for
shelter. So i cultivate humanist attitudes i don't often feel
& actively refute in my thinking, in order not to lose touch
with that future time in which people will be born with a
reason to have them.
The re-marginalization of artists won't be the end of the
art-making impulse, merely its spurious authority &
glamour... It will be salubrious for Art, certainly. Those who
were in it for reasons of the ego will then move on to
other things.
When time making pots didn't have to be stolen from time
making spears, it was easier to be an artist. But they didn't try
to be priests, either.
There is a mystery named by the color greenish-orange.
Know this, & you know a secret about all mysteries.
Computers are a greater snare than even drugs. They appear
to confer intelligence without effort, as drugs appear to confer
an inconsequential joy.
"To say, of course, that an art form which cannot pay its own
way is also generically defunct is a respectable American
argument; happily it is no longer applied to any other art form,
from Grand Opera to aerial bombardment." --Charles Newman,
The Post-Modern Aura (1985)
"Our frailties are never more on display than when we give names
to Time." --ibid
The Big Lie. Nothing is so contagiously inspiring as
total commitment to a blatant fraud. It's as awesome as levitation.
We Americans are so childishly delighted with the bare act
of choosing, like Midas in the first hour of his "golden touch",
it hardly matters what; but very often i am as weary with the
plethora of indistinguishables, as Midas after years of the curse,
till i cry out: only give me one necessary task & the barest
sustenance, & i will ask no more! --But my art refuses me.
Listening to: Sons of the Pioneers.
Sunday, September 28, 2003
An incomplete list of my favorite novels. Against the
Grain. Geek Love. Smilla's Sense of Snow. Crime and Punish-
ment. A Thousand Acres. Bleak House. Moderan. Sugar Rain.
Diana of the Crossways. Black Easter. Doktor Faustus. Under
the Volcano. Nightwood. Little, Big. Nova. The Golden Note-
book. V. Tlooth. Valmouth. Norstrilia. Dune. Jack of Shadows.
Moby Dick. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Riddley
Walker. The Ticket that Exploded. Maldoror. Beautiful Losers.
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. The Glass Bead
Game. Flowers For Algernon. The Worm Ouroboros. Wolf
Solent. Underworld (Delillo). The Cannibal (Hawkes). Lithium
for Medea. We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Invisible Cities.
Dictionary of the Khazars. Stand on Zanzibar. Voss. Another
Country. Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. Golden Witchbreed.
City (Simak). The Demolished Man. Vathek. Pale Fire. Interview
with the Vampire. Watership Down. the Cipher (Koja). Lilith
(Salamanca). The Crystal World. The Intuitionist. Philadelphia
Fire. Holy Fire.
The smell of woodsmoke
On a bright autumn morning
Many memories
Swirl like the dark particles
Of what was once green & tall
09 28 03
For a bumper sticker: DIEBOLD RULES?
Every image without humans is a name for solitude.
As cats are the opposite of painting, rabbits are the
opposite of magic.
"...in any reading of the Tarot it is the Fool who asks
and the Fool who answers every question." --Bill Butler,
Dictionary of the Tarot (1975)
Integrity is all the more essential in isolation, though it
seems that lies there harm no one & to oneself are trans-
parent. But it is only in truthful relation to yourself that
you exist--the other kind is merely the maintenance of a
convincing façade.
Our system has more safeguards against good leadership
than the goddamn Roman Empire.
And at last i begin to wonder: was it maybe a mistake to
have associated Art with meaning in the first place? When,
most of it has more in common with birdsong, than the
delicate encoding of an insight...?
Grain. Geek Love. Smilla's Sense of Snow. Crime and Punish-
ment. A Thousand Acres. Bleak House. Moderan. Sugar Rain.
Diana of the Crossways. Black Easter. Doktor Faustus. Under
the Volcano. Nightwood. Little, Big. Nova. The Golden Note-
book. V. Tlooth. Valmouth. Norstrilia. Dune. Jack of Shadows.
Moby Dick. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. Riddley
Walker. The Ticket that Exploded. Maldoror. Beautiful Losers.
Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. The Glass Bead
Game. Flowers For Algernon. The Worm Ouroboros. Wolf
Solent. Underworld (Delillo). The Cannibal (Hawkes). Lithium
for Medea. We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Invisible Cities.
Dictionary of the Khazars. Stand on Zanzibar. Voss. Another
Country. Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. Golden Witchbreed.
City (Simak). The Demolished Man. Vathek. Pale Fire. Interview
with the Vampire. Watership Down. the Cipher (Koja). Lilith
(Salamanca). The Crystal World. The Intuitionist. Philadelphia
Fire. Holy Fire.
The smell of woodsmoke
On a bright autumn morning
Many memories
Swirl like the dark particles
Of what was once green & tall
09 28 03
For a bumper sticker: DIEBOLD RULES?
Every image without humans is a name for solitude.
As cats are the opposite of painting, rabbits are the
opposite of magic.
"...in any reading of the Tarot it is the Fool who asks
and the Fool who answers every question." --Bill Butler,
Dictionary of the Tarot (1975)
Integrity is all the more essential in isolation, though it
seems that lies there harm no one & to oneself are trans-
parent. But it is only in truthful relation to yourself that
you exist--the other kind is merely the maintenance of a
convincing façade.
Our system has more safeguards against good leadership
than the goddamn Roman Empire.
And at last i begin to wonder: was it maybe a mistake to
have associated Art with meaning in the first place? When,
most of it has more in common with birdsong, than the
delicate encoding of an insight...?
A strange dream last night. Most of it
i've lost with my morning coffee, but
i remember i was inventorying books for
an estate sale...old books, some of great
value, most not... At last i found the
most important one of all--it was about
three feet tall, one or less wide, &
bound in black ermine fur, with tooled
leather pages of various dark colors.
All the type was gold inlay. The book
was a collection of aphorisms about death.
I opened it (the cover wasn't stiff, but
flexible, less like a book than a satchel,
say) & read a few on one page. Right before
the alarm went off & i woke, i remember
the last one, by someone with a Russian
name i didn't try to pronounce:
"The Hour of Death arrives, now goes
confessor to the Confessor, assassin to the Assassin."
i've lost with my morning coffee, but
i remember i was inventorying books for
an estate sale...old books, some of great
value, most not... At last i found the
most important one of all--it was about
three feet tall, one or less wide, &
bound in black ermine fur, with tooled
leather pages of various dark colors.
All the type was gold inlay. The book
was a collection of aphorisms about death.
I opened it (the cover wasn't stiff, but
flexible, less like a book than a satchel,
say) & read a few on one page. Right before
the alarm went off & i woke, i remember
the last one, by someone with a Russian
name i didn't try to pronounce:
"The Hour of Death arrives, now goes
confessor to the Confessor, assassin to the Assassin."
Saturday, September 27, 2003
'And not even the blasphemers of the demiurge
have dared to deny that the universe is most
beautiful, but rather, they maintain that
because of this beauty, souls are harmed.'
--Proclus
"The Dark Side of Blogging"
edge. Burning leaves good squirm, harl
In the stable of Receive.
Harmony the swarms build slag
Doughnut sprockets, evil swarf
Exultant pain froglegs pain
Chrome kissing daylight gazelle
Can't tenuous praetor blood flag calx
Crystal sequoias. Qibla
Where, dilithium rhost can't gecko
Wheedle prismatic edge verse;
Fractal nozzle crystal ghost.
09 27 03
"The source of all disorder was the
loneliness of the jackal, God's first-
born." --Marcel Griaule, Conversations
with Ogotemmêli (1965)
Geomantic Poles (centripetal & centri-
fugal spaces): the Cave & the Savannah.
A house is a pseudo-cave. A yard is a
pseudo-savannah. Perhaps this is the deep
origin of esoteric/exoteric, sacred &
secular; even, private & public... Dance
on a savannah makes Waves, whilst a dancer
in a cavelike area is a Particle.
have dared to deny that the universe is most
beautiful, but rather, they maintain that
because of this beauty, souls are harmed.'
--Proclus
"The Dark Side of Blogging"
edge. Burning leaves good squirm, harl
In the stable of Receive.
Harmony the swarms build slag
Doughnut sprockets, evil swarf
Exultant pain froglegs pain
Chrome kissing daylight gazelle
Can't tenuous praetor blood flag calx
Crystal sequoias. Qibla
Where, dilithium rhost can't gecko
Wheedle prismatic edge verse;
Fractal nozzle crystal ghost.
09 27 03
"The source of all disorder was the
loneliness of the jackal, God's first-
born." --Marcel Griaule, Conversations
with Ogotemmêli (1965)
Geomantic Poles (centripetal & centri-
fugal spaces): the Cave & the Savannah.
A house is a pseudo-cave. A yard is a
pseudo-savannah. Perhaps this is the deep
origin of esoteric/exoteric, sacred &
secular; even, private & public... Dance
on a savannah makes Waves, whilst a dancer
in a cavelike area is a Particle.
Listening to: Golden Rain, "Ketjak: The Ramayana
Monkey Chant" (it took some searching, but i
remembered i had this record).
"Porno Megastore" (for Verbophobia)
When that dire November hurls its sway
And all Undead-Americans are exultant
To have seen the last sequoia's day:
Let the chameleon man begin, resultant
Of fraud befrauding those whose suavity
Is greasepaint rhost. Instead of kissing daylight
Turquoise, we shall join up too. The tea
Party has room for losers' panache, & froglegs...
The pro-Saddam wing. Charge of the fiery lilac
Harl, no records but our oval eclogues;
A good squirm will be had. Not fray-peripheral,
To hairlip the Pope whose 15kg dildo
A genealogy of orcs reaps feral.
In the stable of harmony, the swarms build.
09 26 03
Review of 2 guitar lines. "Seven Nation Army" by
The White Stripes. The lyrics are downbeat, but
the guitar has the swagger of a successful scam.
"Like a Stone" by Audio Slave. Says everything
there is to say about the year of 2003 A.D. in
one snarling run of distortion. I lay down my pen
in respect. (Till i read some more news again...)
Monkey Chant" (it took some searching, but i
remembered i had this record).
"Porno Megastore" (for Verbophobia)
When that dire November hurls its sway
And all Undead-Americans are exultant
To have seen the last sequoia's day:
Let the chameleon man begin, resultant
Of fraud befrauding those whose suavity
Is greasepaint rhost. Instead of kissing daylight
Turquoise, we shall join up too. The tea
Party has room for losers' panache, & froglegs...
The pro-Saddam wing. Charge of the fiery lilac
Harl, no records but our oval eclogues;
A good squirm will be had. Not fray-peripheral,
To hairlip the Pope whose 15kg dildo
A genealogy of orcs reaps feral.
In the stable of harmony, the swarms build.
09 26 03
Review of 2 guitar lines. "Seven Nation Army" by
The White Stripes. The lyrics are downbeat, but
the guitar has the swagger of a successful scam.
"Like a Stone" by Audio Slave. Says everything
there is to say about the year of 2003 A.D. in
one snarling run of distortion. I lay down my pen
in respect. (Till i read some more news again...)
Friday, September 26, 2003
Helsem's Rising Star.
Paradoxism.
Finally, a publication i was waiting for.
Don't read this. (via dr menlo) [I guess if this
election thing doesn't work out, we could just
all join the Republican Party, eh?]
Overview of Xenakis.
A brief email exchange on the exo/esoteric divide:
"Michael,
Very useful info. Thanks. I'm shocked that this
essay is still up! Or maybe you saw it cached
through Google? I haven't had that AOL account for
years. The essay was part of a class I taught at
the Garret about three years ago, I think. It was
intended as a kind of blog before there was blogging,
but not many people responded to it. I'll see if I
can still access it and add your comments as a note.
Very interesting that you mention "folk poetry,"
which is a phrase I've been using in my recent
thinking as a way to distinguish poetry whose author
is not deeply invested in whether or not s/he has
an audience from poetry that is written as an entree
into the po-biz marketplace and thus is written
with the express goal of cultivating an audience,
whether that audience is other poets, critics, readers,
or search committe chairs. It's probably not
"folk" in the way that the folk art (painters,
sculptors) is "folk," though, where the term seems to
connote lack of academic training and thus no
adherence to the conventions of "High" art, though not
necessarily a withdrawal from the trade marketplace
(Finster, for example, must make quite a good
living). I think I use the term in reference to poets
who choose to stay outside the game of "courting"
approval. I think entangled in my thinking about
this is also what seems to be a trend in the last
five years or so (maybe it's post-post?) to go "Low"
in diction, tone, subject matter (I think of
Brenda Coultas's new book A Handmade Museum). In
fact, I probably got off on this track while thinking
about the current popularity of the prose poem,
which seemed to rise creepily out of many people
realizing simultaneously that the prose poem is a
flexible way to achieve the ends of poetry while
simultaneously working in a way that was at the
moment considered to be out of vogue...
notwithstanding the underground tradition of the
prose poem itself.
bc" (Brian Clements)
>From: michael helsem <*************.com>
>To: ************.com
>Subject: evolution of difficulty
>Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 12:07:23 -0700 (PDT)
>
>i think the proper framing of this issue
>is in the distinguishing of "folk poetry"
>from "court poetry", which is visible in
>many, if not all, of the world's considerable
>literatures. in our Western European lineage,
>the Alexandrians seem to have been the first
>poets to write for other poets; & the name
>of Lycophron became synonymous with "pretentious
>obscurity". among the Troubadours, there was
>such a thing as "trobar clus"--& the same poet
>could write both hermetic & accessible poems
>without incongruity. in Old Norse Court Poetry
>(perhaps the most difficult--in every sense--
>that has ever been written) it is hard to imagine
>these involuted figures as anything except brain-
>teasers for people with WAY too much spare time.
>finally, in Late Tang poetry, such writers as Li
>Shangyin wrote poems that were so equivocal the
>very subject of them has been an object of debate
>ever since. i think we can conclude that wherever
>coteries form, their natural inclination is toward
>privatizing their discourse.
>
Paradoxism.
Finally, a publication i was waiting for.
Don't read this. (via dr menlo) [I guess if this
election thing doesn't work out, we could just
all join the Republican Party, eh?]
Overview of Xenakis.
A brief email exchange on the exo/esoteric divide:
"Michael,
Very useful info. Thanks. I'm shocked that this
essay is still up! Or maybe you saw it cached
through Google? I haven't had that AOL account for
years. The essay was part of a class I taught at
the Garret about three years ago, I think. It was
intended as a kind of blog before there was blogging,
but not many people responded to it. I'll see if I
can still access it and add your comments as a note.
Very interesting that you mention "folk poetry,"
which is a phrase I've been using in my recent
thinking as a way to distinguish poetry whose author
is not deeply invested in whether or not s/he has
an audience from poetry that is written as an entree
into the po-biz marketplace and thus is written
with the express goal of cultivating an audience,
whether that audience is other poets, critics, readers,
or search committe chairs. It's probably not
"folk" in the way that the folk art (painters,
sculptors) is "folk," though, where the term seems to
connote lack of academic training and thus no
adherence to the conventions of "High" art, though not
necessarily a withdrawal from the trade marketplace
(Finster, for example, must make quite a good
living). I think I use the term in reference to poets
who choose to stay outside the game of "courting"
approval. I think entangled in my thinking about
this is also what seems to be a trend in the last
five years or so (maybe it's post-post?) to go "Low"
in diction, tone, subject matter (I think of
Brenda Coultas's new book A Handmade Museum). In
fact, I probably got off on this track while thinking
about the current popularity of the prose poem,
which seemed to rise creepily out of many people
realizing simultaneously that the prose poem is a
flexible way to achieve the ends of poetry while
simultaneously working in a way that was at the
moment considered to be out of vogue...
notwithstanding the underground tradition of the
prose poem itself.
bc" (Brian Clements)
>From: michael helsem <*************.com>
>To: ************.com
>Subject: evolution of difficulty
>Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 12:07:23 -0700 (PDT)
>
>i think the proper framing of this issue
>is in the distinguishing of "folk poetry"
>from "court poetry", which is visible in
>many, if not all, of the world's considerable
>literatures. in our Western European lineage,
>the Alexandrians seem to have been the first
>poets to write for other poets; & the name
>of Lycophron became synonymous with "pretentious
>obscurity". among the Troubadours, there was
>such a thing as "trobar clus"--& the same poet
>could write both hermetic & accessible poems
>without incongruity. in Old Norse Court Poetry
>(perhaps the most difficult--in every sense--
>that has ever been written) it is hard to imagine
>these involuted figures as anything except brain-
>teasers for people with WAY too much spare time.
>finally, in Late Tang poetry, such writers as Li
>Shangyin wrote poems that were so equivocal the
>very subject of them has been an object of debate
>ever since. i think we can conclude that wherever
>coteries form, their natural inclination is toward
>privatizing their discourse.
>
If you believe Global Warming is a myth, this
didn't happen either. Or this. Bruce Sterling:
"I hope you can get a 'wakeup call' during a blackout."
Another smoking gun. (pdf via bOING bOING)
A thoughtful Islamic critique of Islamist funda-
mentalism. (via Shia Pundit)
Austin sidewalk grattifi (particularly the
third one). (via Prentiss)
I wonder how my CD turned up in this catalog?
didn't happen either. Or this. Bruce Sterling:
"I hope you can get a 'wakeup call' during a blackout."
Another smoking gun. (pdf via bOING bOING)
A thoughtful Islamic critique of Islamist funda-
mentalism. (via Shia Pundit)
Austin sidewalk grattifi (particularly the
third one). (via Prentiss)
I wonder how my CD turned up in this catalog?
My favorite sonnet is either this one or this
one, both by Millay (who not only wrote the
best sonnets of the 20c.--she wrote most
of the good ones). But on the whole i regard
this form, as i once remarked elsewhere, as
"the cynosure of poetasters". It has driven out
a whole ecosystem of delightful short-poem
forms which are now extinct, much like the
effect the introduction of rabbits had on Aust-
ralia... It's not the form per se that's so bad,
but "sonnetthink": that crown of olive-leaves
invariably assumed by the Sonnet Bard. (Or,
one sets out to write an "anti-sonnet"--what
good is that for a starting point?) Only a little
better is the haiku in English: but reading these
is an experience that mercifully ends in short
order.
Favela chic.
I just this instant made up a new poetry
movement: you use a combination of
spook words & Buffy slang. (It hasn't got a name yet,
but i am open to suggestions. --A possibility:
"Fissionable Quiche." [via the Metafilter discussion])
("Ptecois"?)
Then there's what i like to think of as "Real World
Poetics"... (via Viridian Design)
To cuss in 121 languages.
Alexander Cockburn on the life of Edward Said.
one, both by Millay (who not only wrote the
best sonnets of the 20c.--she wrote most
of the good ones). But on the whole i regard
this form, as i once remarked elsewhere, as
"the cynosure of poetasters". It has driven out
a whole ecosystem of delightful short-poem
forms which are now extinct, much like the
effect the introduction of rabbits had on Aust-
ralia... It's not the form per se that's so bad,
but "sonnetthink": that crown of olive-leaves
invariably assumed by the Sonnet Bard. (Or,
one sets out to write an "anti-sonnet"--what
good is that for a starting point?) Only a little
better is the haiku in English: but reading these
is an experience that mercifully ends in short
order.
Favela chic.
I just this instant made up a new poetry
movement: you use a combination of
spook words & Buffy slang. (It hasn't got a name yet,
but i am open to suggestions. --A possibility:
"Fissionable Quiche." [via the Metafilter discussion])
("Ptecois"?)
Then there's what i like to think of as "Real World
Poetics"... (via Viridian Design)
To cuss in 121 languages.
Alexander Cockburn on the life of Edward Said.
You might say that the force of increasing
individualism has caused the separate (Jungian)
types to become more distinguishable, & to
form their own emanations [preferred surr-
oundings] more distinctly than ever before.
Social unravelling leads to the accumulating
of a yarn-ball for each color...
The Ego is a magic circle maintained by
mostly invisible taboos, avoidances,
distinctions & practices. Making this fact
explicit is a step toward acknowledging &
utilizing non-Ego powers. As soon as you
draw a line, you posit Doors. Why are they
conceived as separate entities then? Because
you won't try to open a door you believe is
merely painted on the wall.
Muse-Silence. Begins for a poet with those
things he cannot change & has ceased to have
new feelings about... Properly considered,
it is a call to arms. But the only way through
--is surrender.
In order to become human, a measure was
lost; humanity itself is a leaping of bounds.
But that gesture completes itself in the
finding of new measure...
'Cosmic images are sometimes so majestic that
philosophers take them for thoughts.' --Bachelard,
The Poetics of Reverie (1960)
individualism has caused the separate (Jungian)
types to become more distinguishable, & to
form their own emanations [preferred surr-
oundings] more distinctly than ever before.
Social unravelling leads to the accumulating
of a yarn-ball for each color...
The Ego is a magic circle maintained by
mostly invisible taboos, avoidances,
distinctions & practices. Making this fact
explicit is a step toward acknowledging &
utilizing non-Ego powers. As soon as you
draw a line, you posit Doors. Why are they
conceived as separate entities then? Because
you won't try to open a door you believe is
merely painted on the wall.
Muse-Silence. Begins for a poet with those
things he cannot change & has ceased to have
new feelings about... Properly considered,
it is a call to arms. But the only way through
--is surrender.
In order to become human, a measure was
lost; humanity itself is a leaping of bounds.
But that gesture completes itself in the
finding of new measure...
'Cosmic images are sometimes so majestic that
philosophers take them for thoughts.' --Bachelard,
The Poetics of Reverie (1960)
As long as minimum wage jobs exist, the
Blues will not lack for a rationale.
Grunge is Blues for teenagers who work
at starbucks & feel exploited, but do
ten hours at a warehouse job & tell me
"Black Hole Sun" answers to your condition.
"Aubade: Tan Sierra"
Megachurch the free gift,
Tutelary minimum wage.
Speed-trap cops with radar guns
Stop my breath in the cool gray
Morning drive.
Sky of but haggard revelations,
Brakes on the fritz, even to scribe
A momentary plaint takes
Way too much of my Wolf Age watch.
Bollywood song, a jewel flung
Out into the cratered streets
Salves the day of Niagara bailing,
Lets me (for a moment) not lose.
09 26 03
My ideal of a healthy audience-artist
relationship in the present epoch would
have to be that of Bob Marley & the
Rastas. Though it may be my fate, i
really don't want to be a "poet's poet".
Survival Research Laboratory's monster
machines: a Mystery Play for our times.
Blues will not lack for a rationale.
Grunge is Blues for teenagers who work
at starbucks & feel exploited, but do
ten hours at a warehouse job & tell me
"Black Hole Sun" answers to your condition.
"Aubade: Tan Sierra"
Megachurch the free gift,
Tutelary minimum wage.
Speed-trap cops with radar guns
Stop my breath in the cool gray
Morning drive.
Sky of but haggard revelations,
Brakes on the fritz, even to scribe
A momentary plaint takes
Way too much of my Wolf Age watch.
Bollywood song, a jewel flung
Out into the cratered streets
Salves the day of Niagara bailing,
Lets me (for a moment) not lose.
09 26 03
My ideal of a healthy audience-artist
relationship in the present epoch would
have to be that of Bob Marley & the
Rastas. Though it may be my fate, i
really don't want to be a "poet's poet".
Survival Research Laboratory's monster
machines: a Mystery Play for our times.
Thursday, September 25, 2003
If not a great age of literature, it is anyway
a great age of dust jacket illustrations.
A useful Spanglish/Spanish/English dictionary.
[I figure in 50 years, "Spanglish" will be the
de facto language of Texas...]
An article on "they" as a singular neuter pronoun
--& its surprisingly long history. (via AL Daily)
Osama bin Laden's "Best of Manhattan".
Hats for cats. (via Rebecca Blood)
a great age of dust jacket illustrations.
A useful Spanglish/Spanish/English dictionary.
[I figure in 50 years, "Spanglish" will be the
de facto language of Texas...]
An article on "they" as a singular neuter pronoun
--& its surprisingly long history. (via AL Daily)
Osama bin Laden's "Best of Manhattan".
Hats for cats. (via Rebecca Blood)
To make CD's with that old 78 crackle.
"Oneiric Flashbangs"
Time-starved, desultory
Poking at not-quite beginnings
That will never be anything more--
And this is in the idle
Half-hour found;
09 25 03
"Poem
One of the old guys said
a good test of poetry was
that if you thought of a true
poem while shaving you'd cut yourself
well
lots of times I'll be reading a poem
and stop right in the middle
cause I just remembered
the great shaves I get
from my Wilkinson Sword-Edge blades"
--Bill Knott
Neo-Victorian Frump Boots.
Real heroes.
"Oneiric Flashbangs"
Time-starved, desultory
Poking at not-quite beginnings
That will never be anything more--
And this is in the idle
Half-hour found;
09 25 03
"Poem
One of the old guys said
a good test of poetry was
that if you thought of a true
poem while shaving you'd cut yourself
well
lots of times I'll be reading a poem
and stop right in the middle
cause I just remembered
the great shaves I get
from my Wilkinson Sword-Edge blades"
--Bill Knott
Neo-Victorian Frump Boots.
Real heroes.
Melanie reviews:
" When is a Woody Allen movie not a Woody Allen movie? When it¹s Anything Else. No, no, see that¹s the name of the movie...Anything Else. Coincidentally, that¹s what it¹s also being marketed as...as in, anything else but a Woody Allen movie. It¹s quite a horror, really, that DreamWorks SKG has opted to treat writer-director-actor Allen as an afterthought in his own film, and has instead decided to reach out to a whole new, younger [for Allen] audience by building the ad campaign around twentysomething actors Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci. Allen, the winner of three Academy Awards (for writing and directing Annie Hall [1977] as well as scripting Hannah and Her Sisters [1986]), besides being the most nominated writer in Academy history (thirteen Best Original Screenplay nods) should be accorded a little more respect, especially since Anything Else is the best movie he¹s helmed in years, maybe since the deceptively silly musical Everyone Says I Love You in 1996, or 1994¹s backstage/gangster romp Bullets Over Broadway before that.
As reported in an internet posting, Anything Else is like that scene toward the end of Annie Hall, in which Allen, as Alvy Singer, watches two gorgeous actors, male and female, rehearse a scene in a play he has written based on his on-again, off-again relationship with Annie. That¹s exactly how much of Anything Else plays: a younger version of Annie Hall, only this time the characters seem even more screwed up; at the very least, their neuroses are not made out to be all cute and cuddly. The main character is a nebbish comedy writer named Jerry Falk, played by up and coming actor Jason Biggs (age 25, previously known for the American Pie movies, as well as a stint on Broadway as The Graduate¹s Benjamin Braddock--the Dustin Hoffman role, get the picture). Falk is at a cross roads, both personally and professionally, when he meets, in the form of Allen, a sixty year old teacher trying to break into the wonderful world of comedy. Allen¹s David Dobel encourages Falk to get rid of the dead weight in his life, like his creepy agent (Danny DeVito), and most especially, Falk¹s live-in girlfriend, a ridiculously needy headcase played by Christina Ricci...but more on her in a bit.
The central relationship in the film is the one between Falk and Dobel, and Woody Allen has created something special in the doing. Dobel genuinely likes Falk and wants to form a writing team with him and move to California (for a sure thing tv gig), but Dobel sees that Falk is hopelessly stuck in a cycle of self-defeat, so he must first prod the young man to take a good look at the world he¹s chosen for himself. The trick is that--and don¹t think Allen isn¹t aware of this--as good as Dobel is for Falk, he¹s also a liability. Instinctively, Dobel knows this, but he¹s starting to feel the wear and tear of age, not to mention his own emotional shortcomings, and he needs Falk with his promise of youth and vitality if he (Dobel) ever hopes to break free of his own rut. At the same time, however, Dobel is still capable of putting Falk¹s needs ahead of his own and really wants to see his new friend prosper.
Woody Allen has often used other performers as the mouthpiece for his particular brand of high strung, self deprecating schtick. Mia Farrow did it--splendidly--in The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and John Cusack had his turn in Bullets Over Broadway. Not bad. Kenneth Branagh, however, struck out in Celebrity (1998). Now it¹s Biggs¹ turn and he¹s quite a smart choice for the role. Allen has drawn a nice performance from the perfectly cast Biggs, and one can imagine the young star developing even more as an actor under Allen¹s future direction. These two belong together. Allen, for the most part, plays the straight man here, which is not to say he doesn¹t earn a few laughs. After all, his character is a bit of a survivalist nut, and Allen knows how to milk the gag; just the idea of this by now overly familiar scrawny shrub of a man toting an arsenal is worth a chuckle or two...sometimes, on the other hand, it¹s just scary, which also seems to be Allen¹s point. Anyway, the scenes of Biggs and Allen bonding, especially while trekking through the park, are touching and even a little sad in a slice of life kind of way. Give Allen credit for deft underplaying, as well as some of the most breathtaking shots of Central Park, in all its lush glory, ever committed to film (courtesy, as well, of cinematographer Darius Khondji).
Now, about Christina Ricci and the terminally helpless Amanda. Ricci, with her ever so dry delivery, was a marvellous child actress, especially in her role as Wednesday in the two Addams Family movies. As an adult, in things like The Opposite of Sex, she tries way too hard to impress as a cynical, dangerous, tough chick and generally annoys, but in this film Allen taps into something great about this actress, and the two of them create a memorable, albeit disturbed, character. Christina Ricci has an unusual presence. She¹s short and physically awkward besides having a head that seems almost too large and too round for her petite frame; moreover, she has big brown saucer-eyes and a cute little mouth. Even at age 22 (now 23) she is not unlike a Munchkin from The Wizard of Oz. The beauty part is that emotionally unstable Amanda has men falling all over her--at least for awhile--because of her waifish, little girl lost aura, especially those wide brown eyes that penetrate the soul. The full thrust of her propensity for terror doesn¹t surface until much later, and by then her partners are in too deep to make a clean break. Ricci is certainly effective casting, (she¹s also impeccably lit, like a real old time movie star) but the performance itself borders on brilliance. Even so, it¹s unlikely this actress will ever get the acclaim she deserves for bringing this unpleasant character to life. She¹s too believably self absorbed to inspire much goodwill. But what fun Ricci has playing her! Just look at how this woman¹s loose and limber body language is at odds with her repeated pangs of emotional discomfort. Notice, too, the ease with which Allen¹s words, with their irregular cadence, tumble out of Ricci¹s mouth. (The drawback of Allen¹s otherwise wining battle of the sexes/office comedy The Curse of the Jade Scorpion [2001]--think His Girl Friday, or The Desk Set--was that previous Oscar winning actress Helen Hunt seemed to have a hard time getting her mouth around Allen¹s words, and the carefully scripted putdowns often fell flat; one longs to see what a truly gifted comic like Lisa Kudrow, with her not of this planet timing, could do with the Hunt role, but I digress).
Ricci¹s Amanda can¹t seem to help herself, she just goes along from one blunder to the next, blithely unaware of her own power to annihilate those who love her. It¹s just her nature, and once her flighty, immature mother, grandly played by the great Stockard Channing, shows up needing a place to stay (she also brings along a piano), all the pieces begin to fall in place. Of course, Woody Allen has often been accused of being a misogynist, but in this movie he seems more genuinely confused by, rather than contemptuous of, women. It¹s this confusion, the process of sorting it all out that prompts Allen to write such interesting parts for actresses. That the women aren¹t always likable, I now see, is beside the point. Allen is very much fascinated by women (their contradictions, their allure and hold over men), and particularly in this case, he¹s making a concerted effort to unravel what he sees as a great mystery, even though it¹s not always pretty. That¹s just a guess, an observation. Most male writers and directors aren¹t as interested in fully exploring their obsessions. Likewise, many male writers and directors are content to create female roles that aren¹t nearly as challenging (for actresses, that is) or multi-dimensional, especially, god forbid, not in romantic comedies (in which more and more, all thought goes into a laborious set-up, and character development only exists to serve the plot).
It¹s a shame that DreamWorks has elected to market Anything Else as a generic romantic comedy, when what it really is, is a sometimes painful character study (or studies), a meditation on relationships, and not just the male-female kind, but also male bonding and mother-daughter stuff. Still, for all its observational flair, Anything Else is happily full of Woody Allen¹s stock-in-trade one liners (but no spoilers here); it¹s only upon repeat viewings that Allen¹s genius for structure and compassion for human beings in general truly comes to light. I very much enjoyed this movie. I took something with me from the experience, and it¹s hard to explain, what, exactly without giving away all the movie¹s surprises. Suffice to say, there¹s something truly special at work here, but it takes patience...and any longtime Allen fan knows as much. Early word on Anything Else was very encouraging though many of the subsequent reviews have been polite, if unenthusiastic...too bad. Those critics who continually compare Allen¹s recent output to his 1970¹s-1980¹s heyday are missing the point. Allen is our most disciplined filmmaker. He writes and directs at least one picture a year and generally does so without a lot of fuss, and because he typically works within a modest budget, his movies (with name-brand actors often taking reduced salaries) aren¹t much of a financial risk. It doesn¹t matter to Allen, nor should it, that he has yet to top, say, Hannah and Her Sisters. He¹s an artist, and once he¹s done with one project, he¹s ready to move on to the next. He doesn¹t need to fret and keep looking over his shoulder. A finished film just is what it is; if one doesn¹t hit, maybe the next one will. It¹s unrealistic to expect anything more. Allen is trapped by neither failure nor success. His desire is to keep moving, to keep working, and Hollywood could use more of that sort of professionalism, a throwback, if you will, to the old studio system of yesteryear. Yes, there really is something to be said for workman-like precision.
The early grosses are in, and it appears DreamWorks¹ marketing gamble has backfired. The opening weekend figures for Anything Else are less than any of the three previous movies Allen has done for the same studio, starting with 2000¹s Small Time Crooks, Allen¹s biggest moneymaker in a decade (worth watching for Elaine May¹s priceless performance). Woody Allen has a loyal, though steadily shrinking, following--and that¹s who the movie should have been aimed at all along. For those who are interested, both 2001¹s The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and 2002¹s Hollywood Ending offer nifty plot construction. Scorpion is a wild yarn about a female efficiency expert and a male insurance investigator who are unwittingly roped into a burglary scheme; Hollywood Ending features Allen as a down on his luck movie director trying to keep a case of hysterical blindness under wraps. Going back to the 1990¹s, Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Bullets Over Broadway, and Everyone Says I Love You are worth a look, but skip 1997¹s too mean-for-it¹s-own good Deconstructing Harry (Allen¹s last nominated screenplay).
In the past decade, Allen has made movies for Tri-Star, Miramax, Fine Line, and DreamWorks. His deal with the latter runs out with the release of Anything Else. His next picture is for Fox Searchlight. Hopefully they won¹t drop the ball. The project is off to an interesting start. Allen usually has specific actors in mind when he writes a script, and in the case of the upcoming venture, he was set to cast Robert Downey, Jr. and Winona Ryder (who appeared in Celebrity). Unfortunately, the insurance premiums for those two often troubled performers were too high for Allen¹s budget so he appears to have settled on Will Ferrell, a former Saturday Night Live cast member, and Chloe Sevigny, a one time supporting actress nominee (Boys Don¹t Cry, 1999) and oft photographed fashion show junkie, I mean...groupie. "
Listening to: Jennifer Batten's Tribal Rage (not a
good name; actually it's progressive rock instrumental
music, with some excellent guitar chops--).
" When is a Woody Allen movie not a Woody Allen movie? When it¹s Anything Else. No, no, see that¹s the name of the movie...Anything Else. Coincidentally, that¹s what it¹s also being marketed as...as in, anything else but a Woody Allen movie. It¹s quite a horror, really, that DreamWorks SKG has opted to treat writer-director-actor Allen as an afterthought in his own film, and has instead decided to reach out to a whole new, younger [for Allen] audience by building the ad campaign around twentysomething actors Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci. Allen, the winner of three Academy Awards (for writing and directing Annie Hall [1977] as well as scripting Hannah and Her Sisters [1986]), besides being the most nominated writer in Academy history (thirteen Best Original Screenplay nods) should be accorded a little more respect, especially since Anything Else is the best movie he¹s helmed in years, maybe since the deceptively silly musical Everyone Says I Love You in 1996, or 1994¹s backstage/gangster romp Bullets Over Broadway before that.
As reported in an internet posting, Anything Else is like that scene toward the end of Annie Hall, in which Allen, as Alvy Singer, watches two gorgeous actors, male and female, rehearse a scene in a play he has written based on his on-again, off-again relationship with Annie. That¹s exactly how much of Anything Else plays: a younger version of Annie Hall, only this time the characters seem even more screwed up; at the very least, their neuroses are not made out to be all cute and cuddly. The main character is a nebbish comedy writer named Jerry Falk, played by up and coming actor Jason Biggs (age 25, previously known for the American Pie movies, as well as a stint on Broadway as The Graduate¹s Benjamin Braddock--the Dustin Hoffman role, get the picture). Falk is at a cross roads, both personally and professionally, when he meets, in the form of Allen, a sixty year old teacher trying to break into the wonderful world of comedy. Allen¹s David Dobel encourages Falk to get rid of the dead weight in his life, like his creepy agent (Danny DeVito), and most especially, Falk¹s live-in girlfriend, a ridiculously needy headcase played by Christina Ricci...but more on her in a bit.
The central relationship in the film is the one between Falk and Dobel, and Woody Allen has created something special in the doing. Dobel genuinely likes Falk and wants to form a writing team with him and move to California (for a sure thing tv gig), but Dobel sees that Falk is hopelessly stuck in a cycle of self-defeat, so he must first prod the young man to take a good look at the world he¹s chosen for himself. The trick is that--and don¹t think Allen isn¹t aware of this--as good as Dobel is for Falk, he¹s also a liability. Instinctively, Dobel knows this, but he¹s starting to feel the wear and tear of age, not to mention his own emotional shortcomings, and he needs Falk with his promise of youth and vitality if he (Dobel) ever hopes to break free of his own rut. At the same time, however, Dobel is still capable of putting Falk¹s needs ahead of his own and really wants to see his new friend prosper.
Woody Allen has often used other performers as the mouthpiece for his particular brand of high strung, self deprecating schtick. Mia Farrow did it--splendidly--in The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and John Cusack had his turn in Bullets Over Broadway. Not bad. Kenneth Branagh, however, struck out in Celebrity (1998). Now it¹s Biggs¹ turn and he¹s quite a smart choice for the role. Allen has drawn a nice performance from the perfectly cast Biggs, and one can imagine the young star developing even more as an actor under Allen¹s future direction. These two belong together. Allen, for the most part, plays the straight man here, which is not to say he doesn¹t earn a few laughs. After all, his character is a bit of a survivalist nut, and Allen knows how to milk the gag; just the idea of this by now overly familiar scrawny shrub of a man toting an arsenal is worth a chuckle or two...sometimes, on the other hand, it¹s just scary, which also seems to be Allen¹s point. Anyway, the scenes of Biggs and Allen bonding, especially while trekking through the park, are touching and even a little sad in a slice of life kind of way. Give Allen credit for deft underplaying, as well as some of the most breathtaking shots of Central Park, in all its lush glory, ever committed to film (courtesy, as well, of cinematographer Darius Khondji).
Now, about Christina Ricci and the terminally helpless Amanda. Ricci, with her ever so dry delivery, was a marvellous child actress, especially in her role as Wednesday in the two Addams Family movies. As an adult, in things like The Opposite of Sex, she tries way too hard to impress as a cynical, dangerous, tough chick and generally annoys, but in this film Allen taps into something great about this actress, and the two of them create a memorable, albeit disturbed, character. Christina Ricci has an unusual presence. She¹s short and physically awkward besides having a head that seems almost too large and too round for her petite frame; moreover, she has big brown saucer-eyes and a cute little mouth. Even at age 22 (now 23) she is not unlike a Munchkin from The Wizard of Oz. The beauty part is that emotionally unstable Amanda has men falling all over her--at least for awhile--because of her waifish, little girl lost aura, especially those wide brown eyes that penetrate the soul. The full thrust of her propensity for terror doesn¹t surface until much later, and by then her partners are in too deep to make a clean break. Ricci is certainly effective casting, (she¹s also impeccably lit, like a real old time movie star) but the performance itself borders on brilliance. Even so, it¹s unlikely this actress will ever get the acclaim she deserves for bringing this unpleasant character to life. She¹s too believably self absorbed to inspire much goodwill. But what fun Ricci has playing her! Just look at how this woman¹s loose and limber body language is at odds with her repeated pangs of emotional discomfort. Notice, too, the ease with which Allen¹s words, with their irregular cadence, tumble out of Ricci¹s mouth. (The drawback of Allen¹s otherwise wining battle of the sexes/office comedy The Curse of the Jade Scorpion [2001]--think His Girl Friday, or The Desk Set--was that previous Oscar winning actress Helen Hunt seemed to have a hard time getting her mouth around Allen¹s words, and the carefully scripted putdowns often fell flat; one longs to see what a truly gifted comic like Lisa Kudrow, with her not of this planet timing, could do with the Hunt role, but I digress).
Ricci¹s Amanda can¹t seem to help herself, she just goes along from one blunder to the next, blithely unaware of her own power to annihilate those who love her. It¹s just her nature, and once her flighty, immature mother, grandly played by the great Stockard Channing, shows up needing a place to stay (she also brings along a piano), all the pieces begin to fall in place. Of course, Woody Allen has often been accused of being a misogynist, but in this movie he seems more genuinely confused by, rather than contemptuous of, women. It¹s this confusion, the process of sorting it all out that prompts Allen to write such interesting parts for actresses. That the women aren¹t always likable, I now see, is beside the point. Allen is very much fascinated by women (their contradictions, their allure and hold over men), and particularly in this case, he¹s making a concerted effort to unravel what he sees as a great mystery, even though it¹s not always pretty. That¹s just a guess, an observation. Most male writers and directors aren¹t as interested in fully exploring their obsessions. Likewise, many male writers and directors are content to create female roles that aren¹t nearly as challenging (for actresses, that is) or multi-dimensional, especially, god forbid, not in romantic comedies (in which more and more, all thought goes into a laborious set-up, and character development only exists to serve the plot).
It¹s a shame that DreamWorks has elected to market Anything Else as a generic romantic comedy, when what it really is, is a sometimes painful character study (or studies), a meditation on relationships, and not just the male-female kind, but also male bonding and mother-daughter stuff. Still, for all its observational flair, Anything Else is happily full of Woody Allen¹s stock-in-trade one liners (but no spoilers here); it¹s only upon repeat viewings that Allen¹s genius for structure and compassion for human beings in general truly comes to light. I very much enjoyed this movie. I took something with me from the experience, and it¹s hard to explain, what, exactly without giving away all the movie¹s surprises. Suffice to say, there¹s something truly special at work here, but it takes patience...and any longtime Allen fan knows as much. Early word on Anything Else was very encouraging though many of the subsequent reviews have been polite, if unenthusiastic...too bad. Those critics who continually compare Allen¹s recent output to his 1970¹s-1980¹s heyday are missing the point. Allen is our most disciplined filmmaker. He writes and directs at least one picture a year and generally does so without a lot of fuss, and because he typically works within a modest budget, his movies (with name-brand actors often taking reduced salaries) aren¹t much of a financial risk. It doesn¹t matter to Allen, nor should it, that he has yet to top, say, Hannah and Her Sisters. He¹s an artist, and once he¹s done with one project, he¹s ready to move on to the next. He doesn¹t need to fret and keep looking over his shoulder. A finished film just is what it is; if one doesn¹t hit, maybe the next one will. It¹s unrealistic to expect anything more. Allen is trapped by neither failure nor success. His desire is to keep moving, to keep working, and Hollywood could use more of that sort of professionalism, a throwback, if you will, to the old studio system of yesteryear. Yes, there really is something to be said for workman-like precision.
The early grosses are in, and it appears DreamWorks¹ marketing gamble has backfired. The opening weekend figures for Anything Else are less than any of the three previous movies Allen has done for the same studio, starting with 2000¹s Small Time Crooks, Allen¹s biggest moneymaker in a decade (worth watching for Elaine May¹s priceless performance). Woody Allen has a loyal, though steadily shrinking, following--and that¹s who the movie should have been aimed at all along. For those who are interested, both 2001¹s The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and 2002¹s Hollywood Ending offer nifty plot construction. Scorpion is a wild yarn about a female efficiency expert and a male insurance investigator who are unwittingly roped into a burglary scheme; Hollywood Ending features Allen as a down on his luck movie director trying to keep a case of hysterical blindness under wraps. Going back to the 1990¹s, Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Bullets Over Broadway, and Everyone Says I Love You are worth a look, but skip 1997¹s too mean-for-it¹s-own good Deconstructing Harry (Allen¹s last nominated screenplay).
In the past decade, Allen has made movies for Tri-Star, Miramax, Fine Line, and DreamWorks. His deal with the latter runs out with the release of Anything Else. His next picture is for Fox Searchlight. Hopefully they won¹t drop the ball. The project is off to an interesting start. Allen usually has specific actors in mind when he writes a script, and in the case of the upcoming venture, he was set to cast Robert Downey, Jr. and Winona Ryder (who appeared in Celebrity). Unfortunately, the insurance premiums for those two often troubled performers were too high for Allen¹s budget so he appears to have settled on Will Ferrell, a former Saturday Night Live cast member, and Chloe Sevigny, a one time supporting actress nominee (Boys Don¹t Cry, 1999) and oft photographed fashion show junkie, I mean...groupie. "
Listening to: Jennifer Batten's Tribal Rage (not a
good name; actually it's progressive rock instrumental
music, with some excellent guitar chops--).
Wednesday, September 24, 2003
They have tried to tell us that causality
is meaning--that the skeleton is the body.
"Myth is the twilight-speech of an old man
to a boy. ...Myth is the facts of the mind
made manifest in a fiction of matter. The
speech of an elder in the twilight of his
life is not his history but his legacy; he
speaks not to describe matter but to demon-
strate meaning. He talks of his past for
purposes of his future. This purpose is the
prejudice of his memory. He remembers that
which has been according to what could and
should be, and by this measure sifts the accu-
mulation of his memory: he rejects the irrelevant
event, elaborates the significant detail,
combines separate incidents of similar principle.
Out of physical processes he creates a metaphys-
ical processional. He transposes the chronology
of his knowledge into a hierarchy of meanings.
From the material of his experience he plots,
in retrospect, the adventure for the mind which
is the myth." --Maya Deren, The Divine
Horsemen (1951)
The Bulldozer is our sacred cow.
"Deaf is the heart to which the Lares call from
the desolate floors in vain." --Zanoni
How can community exist without a sense
of place?
"In the past two years, 500 export assembly factories have shut down in Mexico, throwing 218,000 workers on to the street. Their crime was the $1.26-an-hour base wage they were paid by companies such as Alcoa Fujikura to produce auto parts for export to the US. Those wages are now "too high" in the global economy. Never mind that the Alcoa workers in Acuna live in makeshift cardboard huts that lack potable water. Never mind that many of the workers in nearby Piedras Negras were selling their blood plasma twice a week to Baxter International for $30 in order to survive. Those same auto parts are now being made in Honduras by workers earning 59 cents an hour, in Nicaragua for 40 cents an hour and in China for 27 cents an hour." (via Wood_s Hole)
"Kabul is a glimpse of Dresden post-1945,
with contours of rubble rather than streets,
where people live in collapsed buildings,
like earthquake victims waiting for rescue.
They have no light and heat; their apocalyptic
fires burn through the night. Hardly a wall
stands that does not bear the pock-marks of
almost every calibre of weapon. Cars lie
upended at roundabouts. Power poles built for
a modern fleet of trolley buses are twisted
like paperclips. The buses are stacked on top
of each other, reminiscent of the pyramids of
machines erected by the Khmer Rouge to mark
Year Zero. " --the Guardian (via Robotwisdom)
is meaning--that the skeleton is the body.
"Myth is the twilight-speech of an old man
to a boy. ...Myth is the facts of the mind
made manifest in a fiction of matter. The
speech of an elder in the twilight of his
life is not his history but his legacy; he
speaks not to describe matter but to demon-
strate meaning. He talks of his past for
purposes of his future. This purpose is the
prejudice of his memory. He remembers that
which has been according to what could and
should be, and by this measure sifts the accu-
mulation of his memory: he rejects the irrelevant
event, elaborates the significant detail,
combines separate incidents of similar principle.
Out of physical processes he creates a metaphys-
ical processional. He transposes the chronology
of his knowledge into a hierarchy of meanings.
From the material of his experience he plots,
in retrospect, the adventure for the mind which
is the myth." --Maya Deren, The Divine
Horsemen (1951)
The Bulldozer is our sacred cow.
"Deaf is the heart to which the Lares call from
the desolate floors in vain." --Zanoni
How can community exist without a sense
of place?
"In the past two years, 500 export assembly factories have shut down in Mexico, throwing 218,000 workers on to the street. Their crime was the $1.26-an-hour base wage they were paid by companies such as Alcoa Fujikura to produce auto parts for export to the US. Those wages are now "too high" in the global economy. Never mind that the Alcoa workers in Acuna live in makeshift cardboard huts that lack potable water. Never mind that many of the workers in nearby Piedras Negras were selling their blood plasma twice a week to Baxter International for $30 in order to survive. Those same auto parts are now being made in Honduras by workers earning 59 cents an hour, in Nicaragua for 40 cents an hour and in China for 27 cents an hour." (via Wood_s Hole)
"Kabul is a glimpse of Dresden post-1945,
with contours of rubble rather than streets,
where people live in collapsed buildings,
like earthquake victims waiting for rescue.
They have no light and heat; their apocalyptic
fires burn through the night. Hardly a wall
stands that does not bear the pock-marks of
almost every calibre of weapon. Cars lie
upended at roundabouts. Power poles built for
a modern fleet of trolley buses are twisted
like paperclips. The buses are stacked on top
of each other, reminiscent of the pyramids of
machines erected by the Khmer Rouge to mark
Year Zero. " --the Guardian (via Robotwisdom)
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Melanie asked me a very good question,
viz.: Were there any precursors to
"Rashomon"? My first thought was the
play within a play from "Hamlet", which
reflects the main action in parabolic
fashion, but they do not occupy positions
of equivalence. Likewise in Don Quixote,
what Quixote & Sancho Panza experience of
the same events is dramatically different
--but the author unequivocally takes the
side of the realistic interpretation.
Durrell, of course, with his "Alexandrian
Quartet"--but that was after. I think you
must look to Browning's verse novel The
Ring and the Book for a story that is
told in different ways by different char-
acters.
Those who insist on fitting every
experience into a coherent worldview, end
up learning only what can be paraphrased.
Which is like being unable to read poetry
(even in your own language) except in
translation--.
Description, though, itself is
a genre of poetry. --Bad poetry.
It is the magician's privilege to disbelieve
in magic.
Science, wishing to disesteem marvels, says
they are worthless if untrue & then proceeds
to prove their impossibility. But science
holds sway among the people solely by virtue
of its marvels & its promises.
viz.: Were there any precursors to
"Rashomon"? My first thought was the
play within a play from "Hamlet", which
reflects the main action in parabolic
fashion, but they do not occupy positions
of equivalence. Likewise in Don Quixote,
what Quixote & Sancho Panza experience of
the same events is dramatically different
--but the author unequivocally takes the
side of the realistic interpretation.
Durrell, of course, with his "Alexandrian
Quartet"--but that was after. I think you
must look to Browning's verse novel The
Ring and the Book for a story that is
told in different ways by different char-
acters.
Those who insist on fitting every
experience into a coherent worldview, end
up learning only what can be paraphrased.
Which is like being unable to read poetry
(even in your own language) except in
translation--.
Description, though, itself is
a genre of poetry. --Bad poetry.
It is the magician's privilege to disbelieve
in magic.
Science, wishing to disesteem marvels, says
they are worthless if untrue & then proceeds
to prove their impossibility. But science
holds sway among the people solely by virtue
of its marvels & its promises.
Monday, September 22, 2003
"poetry should be at least as well written as Pirates of the Caribbean" --Oh Wait
"those mountains are a military secret." --Rubber Hose
My Lunatick heart...
"those mountains are a military secret." --Rubber Hose
My Lunatick heart...
"THIS IS WAR
There is no one
to show these poems to
Do not call a friend to witness
what you must do alone
These are my ashes
I do not intend to save you any work
by keeping silent
You are not yet as strong as I am
You believe me
but I do not believe you
This is war
You are here to be destroyed"
--Leonard Cohen The Energy of Slaves
Customer brings a huge tub of books; also
seven roaches, of which i successfully kill
five.
Wesley Clark's blog. Hm...maybe someday, the
candidate-blogger who gets the most hits,
will win.
An urban legend about Klingon.
First new Kraftwerk album in 17 years. (via plastic)
[Not a sign of the Apocalypse--i think.]
[[What about a new film by Jodorowsky?? Grr--
wonder if they still make LSD sugar cubes?]]
There is no one
to show these poems to
Do not call a friend to witness
what you must do alone
These are my ashes
I do not intend to save you any work
by keeping silent
You are not yet as strong as I am
You believe me
but I do not believe you
This is war
You are here to be destroyed"
--Leonard Cohen The Energy of Slaves
Customer brings a huge tub of books; also
seven roaches, of which i successfully kill
five.
Wesley Clark's blog. Hm...maybe someday, the
candidate-blogger who gets the most hits,
will win.
An urban legend about Klingon.
First new Kraftwerk album in 17 years. (via plastic)
[Not a sign of the Apocalypse--i think.]
[[What about a new film by Jodorowsky?? Grr--
wonder if they still make LSD sugar cubes?]]
"As I Was Passing
As I was passing near the jail
I met a man, but hurried by.
His face was ghastly, grimly pale.
He had a gun. I wondered why
He had. A gun? I wondered...why,
His face was ghastly! Grimly pale,
I met a man, but hurried by,
As I was passing near the jail."
--J A Lindon in: Howard W Bergerson,
Palindromes and Anagrams (1973)
"Doppelganger
I.
Entering the lonely house with my wife
I saw him for the first time
Peering furtively from behind a bush--
Blackness that moved,
A shape amid the shadows,
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
Revealed in the ragged moon.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Put him to flight forever--
I dared not
(For reasons that I failed to understand),
Though I knew I should act at once.
II.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
He came, and I saw him crouching
Night after night.
Night after night
He came, and I saw him crouching,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
III.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone--
Though I knew I should act at once,
For reasons that I failed to understand
I dared not
Put him to flight forever.
IV.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Revealed in the ragged moon
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes,
A shape amid the shadows,
Blackness that moved.
V.
Peering furtively from behind a bush,
I saw him, for the first time,
Entering the lonely house with my wife."
--ibid
As I was passing near the jail
I met a man, but hurried by.
His face was ghastly, grimly pale.
He had a gun. I wondered why
He had. A gun? I wondered...why,
His face was ghastly! Grimly pale,
I met a man, but hurried by,
As I was passing near the jail."
--J A Lindon in: Howard W Bergerson,
Palindromes and Anagrams (1973)
"Doppelganger
I.
Entering the lonely house with my wife
I saw him for the first time
Peering furtively from behind a bush--
Blackness that moved,
A shape amid the shadows,
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
Revealed in the ragged moon.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Put him to flight forever--
I dared not
(For reasons that I failed to understand),
Though I knew I should act at once.
II.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
He came, and I saw him crouching
Night after night.
Night after night
He came, and I saw him crouching,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
III.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone--
Though I knew I should act at once,
For reasons that I failed to understand
I dared not
Put him to flight forever.
IV.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Revealed in the ragged moon
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes,
A shape amid the shadows,
Blackness that moved.
V.
Peering furtively from behind a bush,
I saw him, for the first time,
Entering the lonely house with my wife."
--ibid
Saturday, September 20, 2003
Sign #2 of the Apocalypse: a Porsche SUV.
"Like scraps of memory, sheets of newsprint
used to bowl through the magicians' colony
in the silent midnight wind." --Salman Rushdie,
Midnight's Children
"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother
took me to see him in a department store and he
asked me for my autograph." --Shirley Temple
"...the divine mystery is the only arch-principle..."
--The Sworn Book of Honourius (ca. 14c), ed.
Daniel Driscoll, 1977
I keep struggling against the false belief that to be
something not yet defined is to be useless.
Modern poets are in love with intellectualized
sensuality because it seems to give them a method
that cannot err...
"If there is veneration, even a dog's tooth emits
light." --Tibetan saying, quoted in A. David-Neel's
Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1929)
The great romance of my life has been with the
idea of freedom.
"All men desire the good"--is a statement about
the structure of belief, not about desire.
Statement to read at the next Discussion Group
meeting: "The way to get the most out of discourse
is not to challenge each other's assertions
reflexively & indiscriminately, but to take time
to imagine what the world would be like if they
were true."
"Like scraps of memory, sheets of newsprint
used to bowl through the magicians' colony
in the silent midnight wind." --Salman Rushdie,
Midnight's Children
"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother
took me to see him in a department store and he
asked me for my autograph." --Shirley Temple
"...the divine mystery is the only arch-principle..."
--The Sworn Book of Honourius (ca. 14c), ed.
Daniel Driscoll, 1977
I keep struggling against the false belief that to be
something not yet defined is to be useless.
Modern poets are in love with intellectualized
sensuality because it seems to give them a method
that cannot err...
"If there is veneration, even a dog's tooth emits
light." --Tibetan saying, quoted in A. David-Neel's
Magic and Mystery in Tibet (1929)
The great romance of my life has been with the
idea of freedom.
"All men desire the good"--is a statement about
the structure of belief, not about desire.
Statement to read at the next Discussion Group
meeting: "The way to get the most out of discourse
is not to challenge each other's assertions
reflexively & indiscriminately, but to take time
to imagine what the world would be like if they
were true."
Friday, September 19, 2003
Pirate-gangsta glossary. (via Boing Boing)
"...I am learning Lojban. I think the language has
great mind-expanding potential. It takes me to a
psychescape somewhere betwixt the Greek Isles and
Guangdong...Esperanto takes me to a psychescape
somewhere betwixt Transylvania and Cuba."
--Viktoro 9
An obsolete syllabic alphabet for Tagalog. (via
Viktoro 9)
I thought i'd lost them, but here they are: Herman
Miller's pages--where conlangs, microtonal music,
&, er...small furred animals...meet.
"...I am learning Lojban. I think the language has
great mind-expanding potential. It takes me to a
psychescape somewhere betwixt the Greek Isles and
Guangdong...Esperanto takes me to a psychescape
somewhere betwixt Transylvania and Cuba."
--Viktoro 9
An obsolete syllabic alphabet for Tagalog. (via
Viktoro 9)
I thought i'd lost them, but here they are: Herman
Miller's pages--where conlangs, microtonal music,
&, er...small furred animals...meet.
What happened to irony was simple. Kitsch
became the signifier of authenticity. --A
position which has no opposite, because it
is itself nonsensical.
Summer's finally over. I was starting to
think of Pollution Level Orange as good--.
Misreading. I saw a title "How to Sleep At
Will" as: "How to Sleep At WWIII".
"Pulling Down the Statue of Dubya"
No one anymore
Will admit they once clamored
For the bombs to fall
For our rights to be rolled back
For the poisons anew
To seep into our water
And air they all now
Are saying they were afraid
Of their fierce neighbors
Slavering to turn them in
And the radio
Talk show hosts they were afraid
Of the name traitor
Which today they hasten to
Claim as their fairest secret.
09 19 03
became the signifier of authenticity. --A
position which has no opposite, because it
is itself nonsensical.
Summer's finally over. I was starting to
think of Pollution Level Orange as good--.
Misreading. I saw a title "How to Sleep At
Will" as: "How to Sleep At WWIII".
"Pulling Down the Statue of Dubya"
No one anymore
Will admit they once clamored
For the bombs to fall
For our rights to be rolled back
For the poisons anew
To seep into our water
And air they all now
Are saying they were afraid
Of their fierce neighbors
Slavering to turn them in
And the radio
Talk show hosts they were afraid
Of the name traitor
Which today they hasten to
Claim as their fairest secret.
09 19 03
In almost every age, it is best to hide a new truth in
some form which the professionals will ignore.
Luciferian pride. Poetry is a canyon through which once
flowed all the news, knowledge, dreams & prophecies
of humanity; now there's only a lyric trickle at the
bottom--& nothing you write is going to change it
back.
I image a brawl in which ten million poets fight to the
death for access to the last reader of poetry. (Who then
peruses the tattered page & asks: "But what does it
mean?")
The equivocal relation between poets & musicians--
as if apples were worth a million dollars, & oranges
considered not even worth picking up off the ground.
Intuition is direct perception of context. Theory
& Practice, Intuition & Experience: dialectical opposites.
Theory & Intuition are Contraries.
Cats may not laugh, but i think they possess a sense
of irony. The cat who, from the doorway of an open
garage, watches the rain come down--is surely savoring
the contrast with her own dry state.
from Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructive-
ness (footnote):
"The term 'necrophilous', to denote a character trait rather than
a perverse act in the traditional sense, was used by the Spanish
philosopher Miguel de Unamuno in 1936 on the occasion of a
speech by the nationalist general Millan Astray at the University
of Salamanca, where Unamuno was rector at the beginning of
the Spanish Civil War. The general's favorite motto was 'Viva
la muerte!' (Long live Death) and one of his followers shouted
it from the back of the hall. When the general had finished his
speech, Unamuno rose and said: 'Just now I heard a necrophilous
and senseless cry: "Long live Death!" And I, who have spent my
life shaping paradoxes which have aroused the uncomprehending
anger of others, I must tell you, as an expert authority, that this
outlandish paradox is repellant to me. General Millan Astray is
a cripple. Let it be said without any slighting undertone. He is a
war invalid. So was Cervantes. Unfortunately there are many
cripples in Spain just now. And soon there will be even more of
them if God does not come to our aid. It pains me to think that
General Millan Astray should dictate the pattern of mass psychology.
A cripple who lacks the spiritual greatness of Cervantes is wont
to seek ominous relief in causing mutilation around him.' At this
Millan Astray was unable to restrain himself any longer. 'Abajo la
inteligencia!' (Down with intelligence) he shouted. 'Long live Death!"
There was a clamor of support for this remark from the Falangists.
But Unamuno went on: 'This is the temple of the intellect. And I
am its high priest. It is you who profane its sacred precincts. You
will win, because you have more than enough brute force. But
you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade.
And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason
and Right in the struggle. I consider it futile to exhort you to
think of Spain. I have done.' (Unamuno remained under house
arrest until his death a few months later.)"
[Nowadays, of course, such embarassments are no longer
possible--those who disagree are not even allowed within
sight of the Potus.]
some form which the professionals will ignore.
Luciferian pride. Poetry is a canyon through which once
flowed all the news, knowledge, dreams & prophecies
of humanity; now there's only a lyric trickle at the
bottom--& nothing you write is going to change it
back.
I image a brawl in which ten million poets fight to the
death for access to the last reader of poetry. (Who then
peruses the tattered page & asks: "But what does it
mean?")
The equivocal relation between poets & musicians--
as if apples were worth a million dollars, & oranges
considered not even worth picking up off the ground.
Intuition is direct perception of context. Theory
& Practice, Intuition & Experience: dialectical opposites.
Theory & Intuition are Contraries.
Cats may not laugh, but i think they possess a sense
of irony. The cat who, from the doorway of an open
garage, watches the rain come down--is surely savoring
the contrast with her own dry state.
from Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructive-
ness (footnote):
"The term 'necrophilous', to denote a character trait rather than
a perverse act in the traditional sense, was used by the Spanish
philosopher Miguel de Unamuno in 1936 on the occasion of a
speech by the nationalist general Millan Astray at the University
of Salamanca, where Unamuno was rector at the beginning of
the Spanish Civil War. The general's favorite motto was 'Viva
la muerte!' (Long live Death) and one of his followers shouted
it from the back of the hall. When the general had finished his
speech, Unamuno rose and said: 'Just now I heard a necrophilous
and senseless cry: "Long live Death!" And I, who have spent my
life shaping paradoxes which have aroused the uncomprehending
anger of others, I must tell you, as an expert authority, that this
outlandish paradox is repellant to me. General Millan Astray is
a cripple. Let it be said without any slighting undertone. He is a
war invalid. So was Cervantes. Unfortunately there are many
cripples in Spain just now. And soon there will be even more of
them if God does not come to our aid. It pains me to think that
General Millan Astray should dictate the pattern of mass psychology.
A cripple who lacks the spiritual greatness of Cervantes is wont
to seek ominous relief in causing mutilation around him.' At this
Millan Astray was unable to restrain himself any longer. 'Abajo la
inteligencia!' (Down with intelligence) he shouted. 'Long live Death!"
There was a clamor of support for this remark from the Falangists.
But Unamuno went on: 'This is the temple of the intellect. And I
am its high priest. It is you who profane its sacred precincts. You
will win, because you have more than enough brute force. But
you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade.
And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason
and Right in the struggle. I consider it futile to exhort you to
think of Spain. I have done.' (Unamuno remained under house
arrest until his death a few months later.)"
[Nowadays, of course, such embarassments are no longer
possible--those who disagree are not even allowed within
sight of the Potus.]
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Listening to: Hossein Omoumi- Persian Classical Music
Lest one of my previous comments be misconstrued,
i am not at all in favor of Forced Sterilization. But i
think it would be a dandy idea to have gumball
machines full of RU-486 on every street corner
in the world.
"In the world few people act from principle; present
feelings, and early habits, are the grand springs: but
how would the former be deadened, and the latter
rendered iron corroding fetters, if the world were shown
to young people just as it is; when no knowledge of
mankind or their own hearts, slowly obtained by experience,
rendered them forbearing?" --Mary Wollstonecraft, A
Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
...my first ever Esperanto palindrome: Oj! ululu lune,
sori el amo. Dido, male, iros en ulululujo. Which
means: 'Oh! howl moonly, to soar out of love. Dodo, on
the contrary, will go into howlpersonreceptacle.'
The reason our criticism is generally more interesting
& better written than our poetry (admit it, in any
journal you read the reviews first!), is simple. Criticism
has to be about real books & personalities, & their
puzzling or clashing contexts. But the poetry is mostly
about other poems: usually one's own, that the hapless
reader has never seen!
"We are black within and sealed from light." -Michael
McClure, "For Artaud"
Watching TV for story-hunger is like getting a tapeworm
for companionship.
'...a time comes when you stop reading the articles...just the
ads...they tell the whole story...' --Céline, North (1960)
"Political science" will not exist until it is understood that
Government is something that just doesn't work above a
certain size. I am reminded of an article once written by
Asimov, on the subject of those giant versions of familiar
animals, so beloved of hack science fiction. He starts with
a mouse & makes it weigh a ton, then analyzes each of the
systems of that mouse's body & shows how in order not
to die at once it must be modified; & before he's done the
result is not a one-ton mouse, but something much like an
elephant... Yeah, & we go on using mouse scale
words for elephant scale realities. A tiny example:
the personalization of the war, as if it were against one
super-villain, a Saddam the size of a mountain, instead of
against millions of human beings just like ourselves...
Ah, but listening is on the way out. In the future there
will only be "sending a message" (i.e. pulling the trigger)
& "receiving a message" (catching the bullet).
A corporation is not so much a machine for making money,
as a device for diffusing responsibility.
Lest one of my previous comments be misconstrued,
i am not at all in favor of Forced Sterilization. But i
think it would be a dandy idea to have gumball
machines full of RU-486 on every street corner
in the world.
"In the world few people act from principle; present
feelings, and early habits, are the grand springs: but
how would the former be deadened, and the latter
rendered iron corroding fetters, if the world were shown
to young people just as it is; when no knowledge of
mankind or their own hearts, slowly obtained by experience,
rendered them forbearing?" --Mary Wollstonecraft, A
Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
...my first ever Esperanto palindrome: Oj! ululu lune,
sori el amo. Dido, male, iros en ulululujo. Which
means: 'Oh! howl moonly, to soar out of love. Dodo, on
the contrary, will go into howlpersonreceptacle.'
The reason our criticism is generally more interesting
& better written than our poetry (admit it, in any
journal you read the reviews first!), is simple. Criticism
has to be about real books & personalities, & their
puzzling or clashing contexts. But the poetry is mostly
about other poems: usually one's own, that the hapless
reader has never seen!
"We are black within and sealed from light." -Michael
McClure, "For Artaud"
Watching TV for story-hunger is like getting a tapeworm
for companionship.
'...a time comes when you stop reading the articles...just the
ads...they tell the whole story...' --Céline, North (1960)
"Political science" will not exist until it is understood that
Government is something that just doesn't work above a
certain size. I am reminded of an article once written by
Asimov, on the subject of those giant versions of familiar
animals, so beloved of hack science fiction. He starts with
a mouse & makes it weigh a ton, then analyzes each of the
systems of that mouse's body & shows how in order not
to die at once it must be modified; & before he's done the
result is not a one-ton mouse, but something much like an
elephant... Yeah, & we go on using mouse scale
words for elephant scale realities. A tiny example:
the personalization of the war, as if it were against one
super-villain, a Saddam the size of a mountain, instead of
against millions of human beings just like ourselves...
Ah, but listening is on the way out. In the future there
will only be "sending a message" (i.e. pulling the trigger)
& "receiving a message" (catching the bullet).
A corporation is not so much a machine for making money,
as a device for diffusing responsibility.
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
'Schubert heard Beethoven's Fifth Symphony perhaps
four times in his entire life. Which of us today has not heard
it at least twenty?' Jerome Deschusses, The Eighth Night
of Creation (1978) [Well, in France, anyway--.]
Worms eat the page before they eat the page's poet.
'...the future, which--even more than the oceans--serves
us as a universal garbage dump.' --ibid
Edison, Tesla. Like it's any use to be more than 5 years
"ahead of your time"...!
Some rights which could be usefully abridged: the Right to Pollute,
the Right to Have Children You Can't Take Care Of, the Right to
Make Things Nobody Needs. And of course--the Right to Take
More Than Your Share.
--It'll never happen. We'd push the button first.
When one is joyless, justice becomes much harder to perceive,
even as a direction.
Scurrying through my library of poets, like a rat in a
warehouse full of small appliances.
The moral solitude of believing that compulsory schooling
is as great an evil as slavery--a hundred years before anyone
else does...
M P Shiel (in "The Bride") gives his definition of Love:
"It was a lunacy, its name was Legion, it was possession
by the furies; it was a spasm in the throat, and a sickness of
the limbs, and a yearning of the eye-whites, and a fire in the
marrow; it was catalepsy, trance, apocalypse; it was high as
the galaxy, it was addicted to the gutter; it was Vesuvius, borealis,
the sunset; it was the rainbow in the cesspool, St John plus
Heliogabalus, Beatrice plus Messalina; it was a transfiguration,
and a leprosy, and a metempsychosis, and a neurosis; it was
the dance of the maenads, and the bite of the tarantula, and
baptism in a sun..."
four times in his entire life. Which of us today has not heard
it at least twenty?' Jerome Deschusses, The Eighth Night
of Creation (1978) [Well, in France, anyway--.]
Worms eat the page before they eat the page's poet.
'...the future, which--even more than the oceans--serves
us as a universal garbage dump.' --ibid
Edison, Tesla. Like it's any use to be more than 5 years
"ahead of your time"...!
Some rights which could be usefully abridged: the Right to Pollute,
the Right to Have Children You Can't Take Care Of, the Right to
Make Things Nobody Needs. And of course--the Right to Take
More Than Your Share.
--It'll never happen. We'd push the button first.
When one is joyless, justice becomes much harder to perceive,
even as a direction.
Scurrying through my library of poets, like a rat in a
warehouse full of small appliances.
The moral solitude of believing that compulsory schooling
is as great an evil as slavery--a hundred years before anyone
else does...
M P Shiel (in "The Bride") gives his definition of Love:
"It was a lunacy, its name was Legion, it was possession
by the furies; it was a spasm in the throat, and a sickness of
the limbs, and a yearning of the eye-whites, and a fire in the
marrow; it was catalepsy, trance, apocalypse; it was high as
the galaxy, it was addicted to the gutter; it was Vesuvius, borealis,
the sunset; it was the rainbow in the cesspool, St John plus
Heliogabalus, Beatrice plus Messalina; it was a transfiguration,
and a leprosy, and a metempsychosis, and a neurosis; it was
the dance of the maenads, and the bite of the tarantula, and
baptism in a sun..."
from In Place of Chairs:
"VERBOPHOBIA
Got Game?
Make a poem with the following Word List, brought to you by The Lost Lunar Baedeker, by Mina Loy. Then send the poem to Christopher. He will post it. All will happiness be linear. Line ear be merrily, primates. Into the terrific Nirvana, Mina. Ze list:
Declivity, nucleus, extensity, malefic, gesticulated, kohl, scholiums, delectable, crickly, enervating, scuttle, wheedle, aphrodisiac, prismatic, jostling, jibber, cryptonyms, pantomime, sanctity, ferocious, furrowed."
"The Spectral Jihadi"
(to the tune of: Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner)
Osama was the scion
Of a rich Saudi clan
When the jets & tanks of Brezhnev
Furrowed Afghanistan
His enervating leisure
His crickly scholiums
He hastened then to scuttle
For aphrodisiac guns
The volunteers came jostling
Their sanctity to suss
From ev'ry Muslim country
A fighting nucleus
Bin Laden shone among them
Ferocious & well-heeled
When Reagan's trainers got there
They quickly swept the field
Osa-ma the plush jihadi
Delectable their triumph
Over the Soviet line
Declivity & hillock
Saw abandoned soldiers dying
But their loyalty prismatic
Soon cut the wheedle cold
Osama gesticulated
And American targets told
Osa-ma the rogue jihadi
His own agenda's dark
As kohl, & countless cryptonyms
Convey his malefic spark
He's our misbegotten Frankenstein
Of vast extensity
For our acts increase Osama's terror band
Our acts increase Osama's terror band
Bin Laden sent a message
To jibber at us all
In pantomime over & over
We still must watch them fall
The Towers of our innocence
And it didn't help one bit
To drop upon Afghanistan
Lots & lots of shit
Osa-ma the missing jihadi
That ghostly terror mogul
Still flits from place to place
Even two years later
We haven't found a trace
In Syria, in Pakistan, North Korea too
Ubiquitous
He smiles at us
And then his smile dissolves
In
Static
09 15 03
"VERBOPHOBIA
Got Game?
Make a poem with the following Word List, brought to you by The Lost Lunar Baedeker, by Mina Loy. Then send the poem to Christopher. He will post it. All will happiness be linear. Line ear be merrily, primates. Into the terrific Nirvana, Mina. Ze list:
Declivity, nucleus, extensity, malefic, gesticulated, kohl, scholiums, delectable, crickly, enervating, scuttle, wheedle, aphrodisiac, prismatic, jostling, jibber, cryptonyms, pantomime, sanctity, ferocious, furrowed."
"The Spectral Jihadi"
(to the tune of: Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner)
Osama was the scion
Of a rich Saudi clan
When the jets & tanks of Brezhnev
Furrowed Afghanistan
His enervating leisure
His crickly scholiums
He hastened then to scuttle
For aphrodisiac guns
The volunteers came jostling
Their sanctity to suss
From ev'ry Muslim country
A fighting nucleus
Bin Laden shone among them
Ferocious & well-heeled
When Reagan's trainers got there
They quickly swept the field
Osa-ma the plush jihadi
Delectable their triumph
Over the Soviet line
Declivity & hillock
Saw abandoned soldiers dying
But their loyalty prismatic
Soon cut the wheedle cold
Osama gesticulated
And American targets told
Osa-ma the rogue jihadi
His own agenda's dark
As kohl, & countless cryptonyms
Convey his malefic spark
He's our misbegotten Frankenstein
Of vast extensity
For our acts increase Osama's terror band
Our acts increase Osama's terror band
Bin Laden sent a message
To jibber at us all
In pantomime over & over
We still must watch them fall
The Towers of our innocence
And it didn't help one bit
To drop upon Afghanistan
Lots & lots of shit
Osa-ma the missing jihadi
That ghostly terror mogul
Still flits from place to place
Even two years later
We haven't found a trace
In Syria, in Pakistan, North Korea too
Ubiquitous
He smiles at us
And then his smile dissolves
In
Static
09 15 03
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Violence from yang-excess in humans, & the destruction
that occurs in Nature, are disadvantageously lumped
together in every theory of Cosmic Evil. Perhaps that
is why it remains a philosophical "problem" to this
day. But by dividing it into two problems, one for
physics & one for psychology, i think a provisional
answer can be reached. ...It is necessary, however, to
distinguish yang-excess, "egotism", from being used
as a label for every manifestation of the social identity,
or "ego". The latter has different forms according to
one's type. The former is a pattern that results from
being cut-off from access to the unconscious...
'Think about those who haven't long to live, who know
that everything is over and done with, except the time
in which the thought of their end unrolls. Write for
gladiators...' --E M Cioran, The Trouble
With Being Born (1973)
Rabbits are voiceless & odorless. Such is the provenance
of the Meek. Cats are noisy & smelly. Such are carnivores.
As the super-carnivore, Mankind's only concept of
civilization seems to be to make the ultimatte racket & an
inescapable reek.
'The soul is the effect and instrument of a political
anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.' --The
Foucault Reader
The Sunday New York Times uses up 75,000 trees each time.
'There is no more steely barb than that of the infinite.'
--Baudelaire, Little Poems in Prose
Japan had a patriarchal, yin, culture.
'For questioning is the piety of thought.' --Heidegger,
"The Question Concerning Technology"
A vanishing privilege: to build for oneself.
'There are two gods, who are Ignorance and Forget-
fulness.' --Ruben Dario
Ego is a vessel on the gray sea of Time.
that occurs in Nature, are disadvantageously lumped
together in every theory of Cosmic Evil. Perhaps that
is why it remains a philosophical "problem" to this
day. But by dividing it into two problems, one for
physics & one for psychology, i think a provisional
answer can be reached. ...It is necessary, however, to
distinguish yang-excess, "egotism", from being used
as a label for every manifestation of the social identity,
or "ego". The latter has different forms according to
one's type. The former is a pattern that results from
being cut-off from access to the unconscious...
'Think about those who haven't long to live, who know
that everything is over and done with, except the time
in which the thought of their end unrolls. Write for
gladiators...' --E M Cioran, The Trouble
With Being Born (1973)
Rabbits are voiceless & odorless. Such is the provenance
of the Meek. Cats are noisy & smelly. Such are carnivores.
As the super-carnivore, Mankind's only concept of
civilization seems to be to make the ultimatte racket & an
inescapable reek.
'The soul is the effect and instrument of a political
anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.' --The
Foucault Reader
The Sunday New York Times uses up 75,000 trees each time.
'There is no more steely barb than that of the infinite.'
--Baudelaire, Little Poems in Prose
Japan had a patriarchal, yin, culture.
'For questioning is the piety of thought.' --Heidegger,
"The Question Concerning Technology"
A vanishing privilege: to build for oneself.
'There are two gods, who are Ignorance and Forget-
fulness.' --Ruben Dario
Ego is a vessel on the gray sea of Time.
Monday, September 15, 2003
Blogger ate my thought.
It was a good one, here
Bearing significance,
From far pavilions come--
Then Blogger scarfed it up.
Something clogged the nozzle
And pop! went the dying bulb:
Blogger stole the zephyr
And left me sheer delusion;
Yes, Blogger ate that great thought.
09 14 03
'Hear me softly:
And learn from me harshly.' --"Thunder, Perfect Intellect"
in: Bently Layton's The Gnostic Scriptures (1987)
Heidegger doesn't answer his questions so much as he
squeezes them till they pop.
"What the music said was that there is a right way for things
to be ordered so that life might not always be just tangle and
drift but have a shape, an aim. It was a powerful argument
against the notion that things just happen." --Charles Frazier,
Cold Mountain (1997)
The first step to Clarity is inner silence (Clarity of Perception).
The second step to Clarity is calling things by their right names
(Clarity of Thought).
The third step is striving for reciprocity, or interpersonal
justice (Clarity of Feeling).
The fourth step is doing what must be done (Clarity of Purpose).
"The science of the music of words has fallen away since men
invoked Mithra by a sequence of pure vowel sounds." --Ezra
Pound
"The Dangerous Gift
Were I to cut my hand
On that sharp knife you gave me
(That dangerous knife, your beauty),
I should know what to do:
Bandage the wound myself
And hide the blood from you.
A murderous knife it is,
As often you have warned me:
For if I looked for pity
Or tried a wheedling note
Either I must restore it
Or turn it on my throat."
--Robert Graves
Prophets. The first prequisite of a prophet is love of
repetition.
"A recent U.S.Dept of Defense report estimated that most
food in the US travels 1300 miles before it is eaten." --Utne
Reader, c. 1989
Not only do i realize i'm just a minor character in a
Dostoevsky novel, i even know what sort. I'm the one who
goes mad so he can spend 2 chapters arguing theology
with the hero.
Happy days are here again. (via Wood_s Lot)
It was a good one, here
Bearing significance,
From far pavilions come--
Then Blogger scarfed it up.
Something clogged the nozzle
And pop! went the dying bulb:
Blogger stole the zephyr
And left me sheer delusion;
Yes, Blogger ate that great thought.
09 14 03
'Hear me softly:
And learn from me harshly.' --"Thunder, Perfect Intellect"
in: Bently Layton's The Gnostic Scriptures (1987)
Heidegger doesn't answer his questions so much as he
squeezes them till they pop.
"What the music said was that there is a right way for things
to be ordered so that life might not always be just tangle and
drift but have a shape, an aim. It was a powerful argument
against the notion that things just happen." --Charles Frazier,
Cold Mountain (1997)
The first step to Clarity is inner silence (Clarity of Perception).
The second step to Clarity is calling things by their right names
(Clarity of Thought).
The third step is striving for reciprocity, or interpersonal
justice (Clarity of Feeling).
The fourth step is doing what must be done (Clarity of Purpose).
"The science of the music of words has fallen away since men
invoked Mithra by a sequence of pure vowel sounds." --Ezra
Pound
"The Dangerous Gift
Were I to cut my hand
On that sharp knife you gave me
(That dangerous knife, your beauty),
I should know what to do:
Bandage the wound myself
And hide the blood from you.
A murderous knife it is,
As often you have warned me:
For if I looked for pity
Or tried a wheedling note
Either I must restore it
Or turn it on my throat."
--Robert Graves
Prophets. The first prequisite of a prophet is love of
repetition.
"A recent U.S.Dept of Defense report estimated that most
food in the US travels 1300 miles before it is eaten." --Utne
Reader, c. 1989
Not only do i realize i'm just a minor character in a
Dostoevsky novel, i even know what sort. I'm the one who
goes mad so he can spend 2 chapters arguing theology
with the hero.
Happy days are here again. (via Wood_s Lot)
Sunday, September 14, 2003
"Not, Father, further do prolong
Our necessary defeat;
Spare us the numbing zero-hour,
The desert-long retreat.
Against your direct light, displayed,
Regardant, absolute,
In person stubborn and oblique
Our maddened set we foot.
These nissen huts if hiding could
Your eye inseeing from
Firm fenders were, but look! to us
Your loosened angers come.
Against your accusations
Though ready wit devise,
Nor magic countersigns prevail
Nor airy sacrifice.
Weaker we are, and strict within
Your organized blockade,
And from our desperate shore the last
Few pallid youngsters fade.
Be not another than our hope;
Expect we routed shall
Upon your peace; with ray disarm,
Illumine, and not kill."
--Auden
--Awhile back i proposed a book written with mismatched halves.
It appears that such has already been written! "Michael Korda...
was working as an editor at Simon & Schuster, and a few years
ago he wrote a memoir of those days, entitled Another Life.
...Harold Robbins...started writing one book to get the advance,
wrote half of it, and put it aside. When he needed the money,
he finished it, but he'd forgotten much of the first part, and so
the second part had an inconsistent plot with mostly different
characters. Asked what to do about it, he said, 'Leave it.' (Korda
is too professional to say which, but I believe it was The Pirate.)"
--Arthur Hlavaty in Derogatory Reference (now Nice Distinctions 3)
Jargons seem to give you a handle on the world--but it's a
handle that's not connected to anything.
"No matter how cynical I get, it's never enough to keep up." --Lily
Tomlin [something i have quoted many times]
Our necessary defeat;
Spare us the numbing zero-hour,
The desert-long retreat.
Against your direct light, displayed,
Regardant, absolute,
In person stubborn and oblique
Our maddened set we foot.
These nissen huts if hiding could
Your eye inseeing from
Firm fenders were, but look! to us
Your loosened angers come.
Against your accusations
Though ready wit devise,
Nor magic countersigns prevail
Nor airy sacrifice.
Weaker we are, and strict within
Your organized blockade,
And from our desperate shore the last
Few pallid youngsters fade.
Be not another than our hope;
Expect we routed shall
Upon your peace; with ray disarm,
Illumine, and not kill."
--Auden
--Awhile back i proposed a book written with mismatched halves.
It appears that such has already been written! "Michael Korda...
was working as an editor at Simon & Schuster, and a few years
ago he wrote a memoir of those days, entitled Another Life.
...Harold Robbins...started writing one book to get the advance,
wrote half of it, and put it aside. When he needed the money,
he finished it, but he'd forgotten much of the first part, and so
the second part had an inconsistent plot with mostly different
characters. Asked what to do about it, he said, 'Leave it.' (Korda
is too professional to say which, but I believe it was The Pirate.)"
--Arthur Hlavaty in Derogatory Reference (now Nice Distinctions 3)
Jargons seem to give you a handle on the world--but it's a
handle that's not connected to anything.
"No matter how cynical I get, it's never enough to keep up." --Lily
Tomlin [something i have quoted many times]
"Poem
I first loved you
second to
your gentleness
like the blind who
divide their lives into
dark and dark I
have you and your gentleness
as a detail in a painting frames that painting
in the often
memory, your face
is surrounded by your eyes
unafraid
of the grays of gentleness
but better than your gentleness
I love your harshness
the harshness
when you talk about that prison capitalism
when you vow never to stop fighting
never
until each woman and man is free
until each woman and man is in the custody
of their gentleness"
--Bill Knott
I first loved you
second to
your gentleness
like the blind who
divide their lives into
dark and dark I
have you and your gentleness
as a detail in a painting frames that painting
in the often
memory, your face
is surrounded by your eyes
unafraid
of the grays of gentleness
but better than your gentleness
I love your harshness
the harshness
when you talk about that prison capitalism
when you vow never to stop fighting
never
until each woman and man is free
until each woman and man is in the custody
of their gentleness"
--Bill Knott
Saturday, September 13, 2003
'If, of all desires, duration were not the hardest
to achieve, it would be difficult to understand
what constitutes the attraction of the crowd of
the blessed.' --Elias Canetti, Crowds and
Power (1960)
" 'Ah, mulligrubs! Golgotha!...' " --Dr Awkward
& Olson in Oslo, Lawrence Levine (1986)
"Terror of Darkness, O thou King of Flames,
That with thy music-footed horse dost strike
The clear light out of crystal, on dark earth;
And hurl'st instructive fire about the world;
Wake, wake the drowsy and enchanted night,
That sleeps with dead eyes in this heavy riddle."
--George Chapman, Bussy d'Ambois
The Three Unholy Muses: Insomnia, Suicide &
Rejection.
"To recognize the mood-evocative power of
perfume in the relations of man and woman,
while ignoring its possibilities in the romance
of man and God, is surely a mistake."
--Herbert Weiner, 9 1/2 Mystics (1969)
The most interesting thing about the pseudo-
sciences is that they are able to exist at
all. This world we suppose so empirically-
bright, is it not rather darkened by
the presence of minds...?
'...At times on the blood's
last spit of land
the foghorn resounds
and the drowned sailor sings...' --Nelly Sachs
Ego + ignorance = folly. So egolessness in the
pursuit of knowledge brings wisdom?
'...a distinction must be made again betwixt
the death of Metals, and their rest or quietness.'
--Basil Valentine
"...let a vague pity blur the formal roses."
--Judith Wright
to achieve, it would be difficult to understand
what constitutes the attraction of the crowd of
the blessed.' --Elias Canetti, Crowds and
Power (1960)
" 'Ah, mulligrubs! Golgotha!...' " --Dr Awkward
& Olson in Oslo, Lawrence Levine (1986)
"Terror of Darkness, O thou King of Flames,
That with thy music-footed horse dost strike
The clear light out of crystal, on dark earth;
And hurl'st instructive fire about the world;
Wake, wake the drowsy and enchanted night,
That sleeps with dead eyes in this heavy riddle."
--George Chapman, Bussy d'Ambois
The Three Unholy Muses: Insomnia, Suicide &
Rejection.
"To recognize the mood-evocative power of
perfume in the relations of man and woman,
while ignoring its possibilities in the romance
of man and God, is surely a mistake."
--Herbert Weiner, 9 1/2 Mystics (1969)
The most interesting thing about the pseudo-
sciences is that they are able to exist at
all. This world we suppose so empirically-
bright, is it not rather darkened by
the presence of minds...?
'...At times on the blood's
last spit of land
the foghorn resounds
and the drowned sailor sings...' --Nelly Sachs
Ego + ignorance = folly. So egolessness in the
pursuit of knowledge brings wisdom?
'...a distinction must be made again betwixt
the death of Metals, and their rest or quietness.'
--Basil Valentine
"...let a vague pity blur the formal roses."
--Judith Wright
Friday, September 12, 2003
"Britney Spears, a pop star, declared
her faith in President Bush: "Honestly,"
she said, "I think we should just trust
our president in every decision that he
makes and we should just support that."
A large silo filled with human excrement
exploded in the Bronx."
--Roger D. Hodge
"Some of the Chief's readers have come through with how to contact those in charge.
First:
Donald H. Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000
Paul Wolfowitz
Deputy Secretary of Defense
1010 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1010
(Big thanks to Alan E. Brain)
Next, a way to send comments via the web:
http://www.defenselink.mil/faq/comment.html#Form
(Big thanks to Virgil)"
via Chief Wiggles
"i was listening to an ex-marine turned
army staff sergeant...and an ex-abrahms
tanker turned signal puke...they described
the scene as a long stretch of road
running through the middle of a small
foreign town...fox holes and machine gun
nests littering the road way...snipers
plugged up in windows...the enemy dug in
deep...an assault by ground forces would
prove catastrophic...there were very few
options that would lead to victory over
these circumstances...
the good guys brought in the tanks...lined
them up side by side facing down the
fortified roadway...simultaneously the
tanks fired two rounds down range...the
rounds created enough of a vacuum that the
enemy soldiers were sucked from their
fortifications and into the middle of the
street...where they were gunned down from
a top the turret...or rolled over by tank
tread...
they laughed at this story...they made sound
effects...squashing and womping...and they
thought it was great...i found no humor in
this tale..."
(via Turning Tables)
her faith in President Bush: "Honestly,"
she said, "I think we should just trust
our president in every decision that he
makes and we should just support that."
A large silo filled with human excrement
exploded in the Bronx."
--Roger D. Hodge
"Some of the Chief's readers have come through with how to contact those in charge.
First:
Donald H. Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000
Paul Wolfowitz
Deputy Secretary of Defense
1010 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1010
(Big thanks to Alan E. Brain)
Next, a way to send comments via the web:
http://www.defenselink.mil/faq/comment.html#Form
(Big thanks to Virgil)"
via Chief Wiggles
"i was listening to an ex-marine turned
army staff sergeant...and an ex-abrahms
tanker turned signal puke...they described
the scene as a long stretch of road
running through the middle of a small
foreign town...fox holes and machine gun
nests littering the road way...snipers
plugged up in windows...the enemy dug in
deep...an assault by ground forces would
prove catastrophic...there were very few
options that would lead to victory over
these circumstances...
the good guys brought in the tanks...lined
them up side by side facing down the
fortified roadway...simultaneously the
tanks fired two rounds down range...the
rounds created enough of a vacuum that the
enemy soldiers were sucked from their
fortifications and into the middle of the
street...where they were gunned down from
a top the turret...or rolled over by tank
tread...
they laughed at this story...they made sound
effects...squashing and womping...and they
thought it was great...i found no humor in
this tale..."
(via Turning Tables)
One of my favorite Johnny Cash songs:
"ONE PIECE AT A TIME
(Written by W. Kemp)
Well, I left Kentucky back in '49
An' went to Detroit workin' on a 'sembly line
The first year they had me puttin' wheels on cadil- lacs
Every day I'd watch them beauties roll by
And sometimes I'd hang my head and cry
'Cause I always wanted me one that was long and black.
One day I devised myself a plan
That should be the envy of most any man
I'd sneak it out of there in a lunchbox in my hand
Now gettin' caught meant gettin' fired
But I figured I'd have it all by the time I retired
I'd have me a car worth at least a hundred grand.
CHORUS
I'd get it one piece at a time
And it wouldn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive ever'body wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is a-round.
So the very next day when I punched in
With my big lunchbox and with help from my friends
I left that day with a lunch box full of gears
Now I never considered myself a thief
But GM wouldn't miss just one little piece
Especially if I strung it out over several years.
The first day I got me a fuel pump
And the next day I got me an engine and a trunk
Then I got me a transmission and all of the chrome
The little things I could get in my big lunchbox
Like nuts, an' bolts, and all four shocks
But the big stuff we snuck out in my buddy's mobile home.
Now up to now my plan went allright
'Til we tried to put it all together one night
And that's when we noticed that something was definitely wrong.
The transmission was a '53
And the motor turned out to be a '73
And when we tried to put in the bolts all the holes were gone.
So we drilled it out so that it would fit
And with a little bit of help with an A-daptor kit
We had that engine runnin' just like a song
Now the headlight' was another sight
We had two on the left and one on the right
But when we pulled out the switch all three of 'em come on.
The back end looked kinda funny too
But we put it together and when we got thru
Well, that's when we noticed that we only had one tail-fin
About that time my wife walked out
And I could see in her eyes that she had her doubts
But she opened the door and said "Honey, take me for a spin."
So we drove up town just to get the tags
And I headed her right on down main drag
I could hear ever'body laughin' for blocks around
But up there at the court house they didn't laugh
'Cause to type it up it took the whole staff
And when they got through the title weighed sixty pounds.
CHORUS
I got it one piece at a time
And it didn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive ever'body wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is around.
(Spoken) Ugh! Yow, RED RYDER This is the COTTON MOUTH
In the PYSCHO-BILLY CADILLAC Come on
Huh, This is the COTTON MOUTH
And negatory on the cost of this mow-chine there RED RYDER
You might say I went right up to the factory
And picked it up, it's cheaper that way
Ugh!, what model is it
Well, It's a '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '56
'57, '58' 59' Automo-bile
(Fade) It's a '60, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '67
'68, '69, '70 Automo-bile."
[A traditional American value is Anarchy.]
Molly Ivins is mad. (Sept 9)
"ONE PIECE AT A TIME
(Written by W. Kemp)
Well, I left Kentucky back in '49
An' went to Detroit workin' on a 'sembly line
The first year they had me puttin' wheels on cadil- lacs
Every day I'd watch them beauties roll by
And sometimes I'd hang my head and cry
'Cause I always wanted me one that was long and black.
One day I devised myself a plan
That should be the envy of most any man
I'd sneak it out of there in a lunchbox in my hand
Now gettin' caught meant gettin' fired
But I figured I'd have it all by the time I retired
I'd have me a car worth at least a hundred grand.
CHORUS
I'd get it one piece at a time
And it wouldn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive ever'body wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is a-round.
So the very next day when I punched in
With my big lunchbox and with help from my friends
I left that day with a lunch box full of gears
Now I never considered myself a thief
But GM wouldn't miss just one little piece
Especially if I strung it out over several years.
The first day I got me a fuel pump
And the next day I got me an engine and a trunk
Then I got me a transmission and all of the chrome
The little things I could get in my big lunchbox
Like nuts, an' bolts, and all four shocks
But the big stuff we snuck out in my buddy's mobile home.
Now up to now my plan went allright
'Til we tried to put it all together one night
And that's when we noticed that something was definitely wrong.
The transmission was a '53
And the motor turned out to be a '73
And when we tried to put in the bolts all the holes were gone.
So we drilled it out so that it would fit
And with a little bit of help with an A-daptor kit
We had that engine runnin' just like a song
Now the headlight' was another sight
We had two on the left and one on the right
But when we pulled out the switch all three of 'em come on.
The back end looked kinda funny too
But we put it together and when we got thru
Well, that's when we noticed that we only had one tail-fin
About that time my wife walked out
And I could see in her eyes that she had her doubts
But she opened the door and said "Honey, take me for a spin."
So we drove up town just to get the tags
And I headed her right on down main drag
I could hear ever'body laughin' for blocks around
But up there at the court house they didn't laugh
'Cause to type it up it took the whole staff
And when they got through the title weighed sixty pounds.
CHORUS
I got it one piece at a time
And it didn't cost me a dime
You'll know it's me when I come through your town
I'm gonna ride around in style
I'm gonna drive ever'body wild
'Cause I'll have the only one there is around.
(Spoken) Ugh! Yow, RED RYDER This is the COTTON MOUTH
In the PYSCHO-BILLY CADILLAC Come on
Huh, This is the COTTON MOUTH
And negatory on the cost of this mow-chine there RED RYDER
You might say I went right up to the factory
And picked it up, it's cheaper that way
Ugh!, what model is it
Well, It's a '49, '50, '51, '52, '53, '54, '55, '56
'57, '58' 59' Automo-bile
(Fade) It's a '60, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '67
'68, '69, '70 Automo-bile."
[A traditional American value is Anarchy.]
Molly Ivins is mad. (Sept 9)
Oh well, i can dream, can't i?
"Though ticks must have some language
that they communicate amongst themselves,
they surely have no word for fate." --Jack
Stephens, Triangulation
Imagine if artists never finished their
own works; if everything had to be done
by collaboration...
"Rilke, when he realized what his work was
telling him, interrupted his writing of
poetry, and spent months watching animals
in the zoo, and blind men on the streets,
and years alone. He began to ask less of
life, not more." --Robert Bly, A Little
Book on the Human Shadow (1988)
My sense of play & of the sacred, largely
coincide. This is due to the nature of my
shadow (ESFP). Perhaps fo that reason i
cannot enter into someone else's sense of
the sacred; & my external view falsifies
theirs as much as they would, mine.
"At the turn of the century there may have
been only two dozen men who deserved the
Grandmaster title, so we remember them as
titans. Today there are about 300 GMs, so
all but the very best tend to be obscured
by the pack." --Andy Soltis in Chess
Life 5/90
Where Wittgenstein failed to destroy
Metaphysics, Shirley MacLaine succeeded.
"Women are half of the world's adult
population; they comprise one-third of the
paid labor force, and they actually perform
two-thirds of the world's working hours. For
this, they earn one-tenth of the world's
income, but they own only 1 percent of the
world's property." --from Leavenworth
Jackson's rubberstamp catalog
When Noriega was photographed holding his
jail booking placard, over 12,000 Miamians
bet that number in the next state lottery.
"Though ticks must have some language
that they communicate amongst themselves,
they surely have no word for fate." --Jack
Stephens, Triangulation
Imagine if artists never finished their
own works; if everything had to be done
by collaboration...
"Rilke, when he realized what his work was
telling him, interrupted his writing of
poetry, and spent months watching animals
in the zoo, and blind men on the streets,
and years alone. He began to ask less of
life, not more." --Robert Bly, A Little
Book on the Human Shadow (1988)
My sense of play & of the sacred, largely
coincide. This is due to the nature of my
shadow (ESFP). Perhaps fo that reason i
cannot enter into someone else's sense of
the sacred; & my external view falsifies
theirs as much as they would, mine.
"At the turn of the century there may have
been only two dozen men who deserved the
Grandmaster title, so we remember them as
titans. Today there are about 300 GMs, so
all but the very best tend to be obscured
by the pack." --Andy Soltis in Chess
Life 5/90
Where Wittgenstein failed to destroy
Metaphysics, Shirley MacLaine succeeded.
"Women are half of the world's adult
population; they comprise one-third of the
paid labor force, and they actually perform
two-thirds of the world's working hours. For
this, they earn one-tenth of the world's
income, but they own only 1 percent of the
world's property." --from Leavenworth
Jackson's rubberstamp catalog
When Noriega was photographed holding his
jail booking placard, over 12,000 Miamians
bet that number in the next state lottery.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
Listening to: "Gem Tones" by Kadri Gopalnath.
--South Indian saxophone!
"The smouldering sweetness of a dead red rose" --Riley
Another library booksale. Nothing excites me like
the prospect of getting good books for next to nothing
--yet i still feel as if i've been, also, assisting at the
sack of Rome.
'We avenge death with the sacrifice of ourselves' --Adonis
If Art only has meaning in relation to a tribe, what
do deracinated artists create for? Tribe-simulations:
such as, all the artists that came before--or their imaginary
audience to be.
"I am not worried that poems reach relatively few
people. As it is, they go surprisingly far--among strangers,
around the world, even. Farther than the words of a
classroom teacher or the prescriptions of a doctor; if they
are very lucky, farther than a lifetime." --Sylvia Plath
Somebody's written a book to rehabilitate Caligula.
[Later note: Vlad the Impaler, also!]
"They pay no attention at all but wander
freely in and out of danger like sanderlings
feeding on the edge of the ocean as the tide
changes, chasing after each wave as it recedes,
racing before as the wave rushes back." --Marge Piercy
Ideas have no power; indeed, people's receptivity
to ideas depends much on their power-relations. But
ideas are used as the coin of prestige (--not
the only one), & thus a whole mythology has grown
around ideas associated with prestigious names.
--Which is an unintellectual attitude toward the things
of the mind.
Short stories are to novels what watercolor is to oil
painting--by far the more difficult medium.
'I would say that the State consists in the codification
of a whole number of power relations which render
its functioning possible, and that Revolution is a
different type of codification of the same relations.
This implies that there are many different kinds of
revolution...' --Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge
(interviews)
Surely it was a lover that invented Ghosts.
--South Indian saxophone!
"The smouldering sweetness of a dead red rose" --Riley
Another library booksale. Nothing excites me like
the prospect of getting good books for next to nothing
--yet i still feel as if i've been, also, assisting at the
sack of Rome.
'We avenge death with the sacrifice of ourselves' --Adonis
If Art only has meaning in relation to a tribe, what
do deracinated artists create for? Tribe-simulations:
such as, all the artists that came before--or their imaginary
audience to be.
"I am not worried that poems reach relatively few
people. As it is, they go surprisingly far--among strangers,
around the world, even. Farther than the words of a
classroom teacher or the prescriptions of a doctor; if they
are very lucky, farther than a lifetime." --Sylvia Plath
Somebody's written a book to rehabilitate Caligula.
[Later note: Vlad the Impaler, also!]
"They pay no attention at all but wander
freely in and out of danger like sanderlings
feeding on the edge of the ocean as the tide
changes, chasing after each wave as it recedes,
racing before as the wave rushes back." --Marge Piercy
Ideas have no power; indeed, people's receptivity
to ideas depends much on their power-relations. But
ideas are used as the coin of prestige (--not
the only one), & thus a whole mythology has grown
around ideas associated with prestigious names.
--Which is an unintellectual attitude toward the things
of the mind.
Short stories are to novels what watercolor is to oil
painting--by far the more difficult medium.
'I would say that the State consists in the codification
of a whole number of power relations which render
its functioning possible, and that Revolution is a
different type of codification of the same relations.
This implies that there are many different kinds of
revolution...' --Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge
(interviews)
Surely it was a lover that invented Ghosts.
"Poem"
A bone fragment yields
In the lab, the ghost of a name.
The days temper their heat.
I continue to meet detours.
A soldier a day dies;
Victorious, all.
The skies darken predictably.
Someone defaces my bumper sticker.
Halliburton cashes in.
The days temper their heat.
I continue to meet detours,
And the new road still is not done.
09 08/11 03
A bone fragment yields
In the lab, the ghost of a name.
The days temper their heat.
I continue to meet detours.
A soldier a day dies;
Victorious, all.
The skies darken predictably.
Someone defaces my bumper sticker.
Halliburton cashes in.
The days temper their heat.
I continue to meet detours,
And the new road still is not done.
09 08/11 03
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
Sketch for a story. The vertical Wall that is the artificial
world everyone lives on, is gradually falling over. Only
a few can actually feel it move; these are said to suffer
from a mental illness called World-Vertigo. When some-
thing slides off, seemingly of its own accord, because
the infinitesimal shifting of the Wall has nudged it into
instability, that catastrophe is attributed to Demons,
& no connection is ever made with the purely subjective
malady of vertigo... [Note: K W Jeter wrote of a
"vertical world" in Farewell Horizontal.]
"Berryman had no further dealings with Time
until 1968, when he was commissioned to write a poem
about the Apollo spacecraft. At that time, Berryman
sat in front of his television and wrote an 18-line poem,
'Apollo 8', in Dream Song style. Although Time
paid him several hundred dollars, the poem was not
printed." --The Life of John Berryman (by Harrenden)
Movies in which the necessity of work does not exist.
Movies in which poverty does not exist. Movies without
the consequences of inertia. Movies without books.
Movies without people who are familiar with what tends
to happen in movies.
If movies were poetry every movie
would have a screenwriter as protagonist & the whole
action would take place in one room.
A song by Mark Chesnutt: "My heart's too broke to pay
attention".
"Sed uos littoribus primis ne insistite: dudum
Vltra fata uocant." ("But don't stop at the first shores you
reach; for some time destiny has been calling you further
on.') --Girolamo Fracastoro, Syphilis (1530)
world everyone lives on, is gradually falling over. Only
a few can actually feel it move; these are said to suffer
from a mental illness called World-Vertigo. When some-
thing slides off, seemingly of its own accord, because
the infinitesimal shifting of the Wall has nudged it into
instability, that catastrophe is attributed to Demons,
& no connection is ever made with the purely subjective
malady of vertigo... [Note: K W Jeter wrote of a
"vertical world" in Farewell Horizontal.]
"Berryman had no further dealings with Time
until 1968, when he was commissioned to write a poem
about the Apollo spacecraft. At that time, Berryman
sat in front of his television and wrote an 18-line poem,
'Apollo 8', in Dream Song style. Although Time
paid him several hundred dollars, the poem was not
printed." --The Life of John Berryman (by Harrenden)
Movies in which the necessity of work does not exist.
Movies in which poverty does not exist. Movies without
the consequences of inertia. Movies without books.
Movies without people who are familiar with what tends
to happen in movies.
If movies were poetry every movie
would have a screenwriter as protagonist & the whole
action would take place in one room.
A song by Mark Chesnutt: "My heart's too broke to pay
attention".
"Sed uos littoribus primis ne insistite: dudum
Vltra fata uocant." ("But don't stop at the first shores you
reach; for some time destiny has been calling you further
on.') --Girolamo Fracastoro, Syphilis (1530)
Tuesday, September 09, 2003
"Triumph of the Will" is a hypnotic, ultimately
wearying montage of parades & flags, flags
& parades, made about as abstractly
beautiful as any such spectacle could be.
Even though nothing is vouchsafed of the
purpose of this vast antlike machine,
it is impossible for anyone schooled in
artistic individualism not to feel the crushing
weight of its threat; the best that can be
said for the movie's maker, is that records
of rare natural cataclysms of a similar
order, would come to be seen as invaluable
information. As a cautionary tale it is
incomplete: no hint of the final Götter-
dämmerung, either, could be inferred from
these purely triumphal images. I count it
an artistic lapse that Riefenstahl could not
or would not show us the rest of the
picture--though there are snapshots
aplenty of piles of corpses, all too
familiar today, to supply the deficit
--if you look for them.
Unfortunately, there are
still a lot of people who seem not to
need to look for them. And
worse than presenting a half-truth
as the whole truth, they do not
scruple to make it as difficult as
possible for some braver camera
person to finish the job. I count
that a graver portion of guilt, than
what is due to Leni Riefenstahl.
wearying montage of parades & flags, flags
& parades, made about as abstractly
beautiful as any such spectacle could be.
Even though nothing is vouchsafed of the
purpose of this vast antlike machine,
it is impossible for anyone schooled in
artistic individualism not to feel the crushing
weight of its threat; the best that can be
said for the movie's maker, is that records
of rare natural cataclysms of a similar
order, would come to be seen as invaluable
information. As a cautionary tale it is
incomplete: no hint of the final Götter-
dämmerung, either, could be inferred from
these purely triumphal images. I count it
an artistic lapse that Riefenstahl could not
or would not show us the rest of the
picture--though there are snapshots
aplenty of piles of corpses, all too
familiar today, to supply the deficit
--if you look for them.
Unfortunately, there are
still a lot of people who seem not to
need to look for them. And
worse than presenting a half-truth
as the whole truth, they do not
scruple to make it as difficult as
possible for some braver camera
person to finish the job. I count
that a graver portion of guilt, than
what is due to Leni Riefenstahl.
At A--- S---'s opening we got to talking about her
former nextdoor neighbor, a young man who'd
"snorted $20,000 worth of coke in one summer",
went mad & had to be locked up (after an indecent
delay). The house is now torn down, but she said
they sneaked in after he was gone & found one whole
room full of dead squirrels laid out in neat rows...
"My hunger is given to me to understand with, not
to understand." --Robert Kelly, Transparent Tree
I was thrilled to discover a simple progression of
fractions converging on the square root of 2, & can now
add to the sum of my knowledge the curious & rare
intelligence that (114243 divided by 80782) squared
on my calculator (9 decimal places) comes out to just
2. Ah, numbers... "a world where there doesn't have
to be justice."
To make my hobby try to be also, my therapy, my
justification, & my livelihood--is asking too much--how
much more generous would artists be toward each
other, if they could just let go of that mocked garland.
Art is the cultural sanction we seek for what we'd be
doing anyway.
Source. Our nonverbal awareness is essentially
animal-like. Therefore it is worth considering that our
"Unconscious" is unique to us as "Language"; somehow
they're the same process; the connecting link is Ego.
As-if Me. As-if Not-Me. But it is nonverbal awareness,
not the unconscious, that is our true source. Religions
based on Trance, religions based on "Stance" (attitude,
dogma, form)...we need a religion based on Dance.
Salam Pax has a book out!
Promo page.
former nextdoor neighbor, a young man who'd
"snorted $20,000 worth of coke in one summer",
went mad & had to be locked up (after an indecent
delay). The house is now torn down, but she said
they sneaked in after he was gone & found one whole
room full of dead squirrels laid out in neat rows...
"My hunger is given to me to understand with, not
to understand." --Robert Kelly, Transparent Tree
I was thrilled to discover a simple progression of
fractions converging on the square root of 2, & can now
add to the sum of my knowledge the curious & rare
intelligence that (114243 divided by 80782) squared
on my calculator (9 decimal places) comes out to just
2. Ah, numbers... "a world where there doesn't have
to be justice."
To make my hobby try to be also, my therapy, my
justification, & my livelihood--is asking too much--how
much more generous would artists be toward each
other, if they could just let go of that mocked garland.
Art is the cultural sanction we seek for what we'd be
doing anyway.
Source. Our nonverbal awareness is essentially
animal-like. Therefore it is worth considering that our
"Unconscious" is unique to us as "Language"; somehow
they're the same process; the connecting link is Ego.
As-if Me. As-if Not-Me. But it is nonverbal awareness,
not the unconscious, that is our true source. Religions
based on Trance, religions based on "Stance" (attitude,
dogma, form)...we need a religion based on Dance.
Salam Pax has a book out!
Promo page.
Monday, September 08, 2003
'I guide without a scripture; I point the way by unseen
means unto my friends and such as observe the precepts
of my teaching, which is not grievous, and is adapted
to the time and conditions.' --from Kitab el-Jilwa
(The Book of Divine Effulgence of the Yezidis) tr Anis
Frayha
A tattoo is a talisman.
"The monster is the root-stock of specification." --Ketjak
To answer my dream, i danced.
Each poetics, like the rules of chess: beyond justification or
argument. And the chaos after playing a game, when for
a moment the rules suspend, & you change sides & set
the pieces up reversed, this is something a poem should
contain as well!
When i say Love, i mean--a perception which changes your
life...feelings are tidal, they come & go; but Love is a Rubicon,
a typhoon which erases every trace of the former shoreline,
so you couldn't figure out where to replace everything if
you wanted to.
"But it is always something we look on as evil in ourselves
that forces us toward wholeness." --Robert A Johnson, We
(1983)
Strange diverted channels of pride...Refusing to use handholds
while standing on the bus. All through high school i never
used a bookmark; i simply fixed in my mind the number of the
page where i'd left off reading.
means unto my friends and such as observe the precepts
of my teaching, which is not grievous, and is adapted
to the time and conditions.' --from Kitab el-Jilwa
(The Book of Divine Effulgence of the Yezidis) tr Anis
Frayha
A tattoo is a talisman.
"The monster is the root-stock of specification." --Ketjak
To answer my dream, i danced.
Each poetics, like the rules of chess: beyond justification or
argument. And the chaos after playing a game, when for
a moment the rules suspend, & you change sides & set
the pieces up reversed, this is something a poem should
contain as well!
When i say Love, i mean--a perception which changes your
life...feelings are tidal, they come & go; but Love is a Rubicon,
a typhoon which erases every trace of the former shoreline,
so you couldn't figure out where to replace everything if
you wanted to.
"But it is always something we look on as evil in ourselves
that forces us toward wholeness." --Robert A Johnson, We
(1983)
Strange diverted channels of pride...Refusing to use handholds
while standing on the bus. All through high school i never
used a bookmark; i simply fixed in my mind the number of the
page where i'd left off reading.
I'm beginning to think Brian Stefans's "Coda: The
Nineties Tried Your Game, There's Nothing In It"
must be the first great poem of the 21c. (or
second, if you count Eminem's duet with Dido).
It's not of the first water, but something i can
return to again & again with pleasure.
A small article on The Anathemata, with
a link to an Auden essay. (via Language Hat)
Nineties Tried Your Game, There's Nothing In It"
must be the first great poem of the 21c. (or
second, if you count Eminem's duet with Dido).
It's not of the first water, but something i can
return to again & again with pleasure.
A small article on The Anathemata, with
a link to an Auden essay. (via Language Hat)
"Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner
Roland was a warrior
from the Land of the Midnight Sun
With a Thompson gun for hire,
fighting to be done
The deal was made in Denmark
on a dark and stormy day
So he set out for Biafra
to join the bloody fray
Through sixty-six and seven
they fought the Congo war
Fingers on their triggers,
knee-deep in gore
For days and nights they battled
the Bantu to their knees
They killed to earn their living
and to help out the Congolese
Roland the Thompson gunner...
His comrades fought beside him -
Van Owen and the rest
But of all the Thompson gunners
Roland was the best
So the CIA decided
they wanted Roland dead
That son-of-a-bitch Van Owen
blew off Roland's head
Roland the headless Thompson gunner (Time, time, time
For another peaceful war
Norway's bravest son
But time stands still for Roland
'Til he evens up the score)
They can still see his headless body
stalking through the night
In the muzzle flash of Roland's Thompson gun
In the muzzle flash of Roland's Thompson gun
Roland searched the continent
for the man who'd done him in
He found him in Mombassa
in a barroom drinking gin
Roland aimed his Thompson gun -
he didn't say a word
But he blew Van Owen's body
from there to Johannesburg
Roland the headless Thompson gunner...
The eternal Thompson gunner,
still wandering through the night
Now it's ten years later
but he still keeps up the fight
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley
Patty Hearst
heard the burst
of Roland's Thompson gun
And bought it"
--Warren Zevon
Listening to: Ancient Voices of Children
Roland was a warrior
from the Land of the Midnight Sun
With a Thompson gun for hire,
fighting to be done
The deal was made in Denmark
on a dark and stormy day
So he set out for Biafra
to join the bloody fray
Through sixty-six and seven
they fought the Congo war
Fingers on their triggers,
knee-deep in gore
For days and nights they battled
the Bantu to their knees
They killed to earn their living
and to help out the Congolese
Roland the Thompson gunner...
His comrades fought beside him -
Van Owen and the rest
But of all the Thompson gunners
Roland was the best
So the CIA decided
they wanted Roland dead
That son-of-a-bitch Van Owen
blew off Roland's head
Roland the headless Thompson gunner (Time, time, time
For another peaceful war
Norway's bravest son
But time stands still for Roland
'Til he evens up the score)
They can still see his headless body
stalking through the night
In the muzzle flash of Roland's Thompson gun
In the muzzle flash of Roland's Thompson gun
Roland searched the continent
for the man who'd done him in
He found him in Mombassa
in a barroom drinking gin
Roland aimed his Thompson gun -
he didn't say a word
But he blew Van Owen's body
from there to Johannesburg
Roland the headless Thompson gunner...
The eternal Thompson gunner,
still wandering through the night
Now it's ten years later
but he still keeps up the fight
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley
Patty Hearst
heard the burst
of Roland's Thompson gun
And bought it"
--Warren Zevon
Listening to: Ancient Voices of Children
Sunday, September 07, 2003
"Hills of Home
Name me no name for my disease,
With uninforming breath;
I tell you I am none of these,
But homesick unto death--
Homesick for hills that I had known,
For brooks that I had crossed,
Before I met this flesh and bone
And followed and was lost...
And though they break my heart at last,
Yet name no name of ills.
Say only, 'Here is where he passed,
Seeking again those hills.' "
--Witter Bynner, Oxford Book of American
Verse (1927)
Name me no name for my disease,
With uninforming breath;
I tell you I am none of these,
But homesick unto death--
Homesick for hills that I had known,
For brooks that I had crossed,
Before I met this flesh and bone
And followed and was lost...
And though they break my heart at last,
Yet name no name of ills.
Say only, 'Here is where he passed,
Seeking again those hills.' "
--Witter Bynner, Oxford Book of American
Verse (1927)