centers of gravity in non-programmatic poetry, cities

Writing without a predefined programmatic or narrative structure -- and I imagine this would apply to free musical improv, "action painting", and other similar pursuits -- is something like writing in "zero gravity". As soon as you put a few words or fragments of meaning (minimum two) together on the page, you establish a center of gravity -- to which the immediately subsequent fragments cling by virtue of the simple fact that the reader who encounters them will come at them from the perspective of just having read the first few words. Had the reader encountered different words at the opening of the poem, the reader would be, effectively, a different reader -- the reader has irrevocably lost a certain innocence, at least with regard to the present piece of writing.

The writer, too, has lost innocence and may in fact find that it takes a great of effort to establish a new center of gravity that is somehow still part of the same piece of writing (a feat generally necessary if the poem/writing is to be a being which unfolds in time rather than simply accumulates in the eternal present). That last qualifier, that the new center of gravity somehow exist within the same piece of writing, is the tricky part -- i.e., what's the difference between a new piece of writing and a new center of gravity within the same piece of writing?

Here I'd like to switch analogies and say that each center of gravity functions as a sort of local economy. We say that the centers exist within the same piece when the fragments of meaning that constitute one of the centers have an exchange value -- a currency -- within the other center(s). Somehow we're able to interpret the contents of one center in terms of the other, to conjugate the contents of one according the implicit logic of another. Whenever this possiblity exists, the careful reader becomes a conduit of trade/communication/exchange between the centers -- a cosmopolitan citizen of the word taking up residence in one city after the next . . .

excerpt from surreal bush interview

I kid you not, this is a verbatum transcript of one strange moment in a very strange interview. Apparently the interview was broadcast on Irish television, on the eve of Bush's recent visit. Listen to the whole thing here.

. . . i wish they could have seen the seven men that came to see me in the oval office -- they had their right hands cut off by saddam hussein because the currency had devalued when he was the leader, see? guess what happened? and americans saw the fact that they had been, had their hands cut off and crosses or x's carved in their forehead and he flew them to america and they came to my office with a new hand, grateful for the generosity of america and -- with saddam hussein's brutality in their mind -- now look, saddam hussein had weap - used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, against the neighborhood -- he was a brutal dictator who posed a threat -- such a threat that the united nations voted unanimously to say mr. saddam hussein . . .

rothko face

He wondered if his face warranted the kind of close reading you’d give to a Kandisky or a Klee, but he hoped to God no one thought of him as a Rothko. The thought of someone plopping down one of those meditation pillows at his feet, sitting on it, and proceededing to inhale slowly, exhale slowly, always counting the breaths, always breathing always from the belly or the base of the spine, only to begin weeping uncontrollably – this thought made him want to dissolve his form into something resembling one of De Kooning’s terrying women. How he’d rise from the canvas, a child’s doodle of a monster with jagged-razor teeth and lidless eyes . . .

creativity cycles, thought machines, whining

Exhausting week. Little time.

Thought as a system of machines. Or thoughts as machines. Or thoughts as interactions between machines. Thought as composed of machines. Little systems, fragments of language, building on, consuming, incorporating, becoming, pointing to one another. Bubbles. Bubbling up. The constantly changing pattern of bubbles breaking on the surface is thought itself, the flow of coherent thoughts expressible in words. Fragments of language assemble themselves into coherent wholes, or illusions thereof. Each coherent whole is a thought. The self-assembling of language is what we call thinking. The surface of the lake? Awareness, I suppose. That's what's mystical. Not the soul which speaks in words, but that blank field of awareness as such, totally passive, infinitely sensitive, it "registers" anything that passes through it, "knows" immediately when and where something touches it and what that something feel like. It is simply this "registering" and this ability to "register" in a perpetual present, no memory or sense of time whatsoever.

And so on.

All this to say, sometimes when creative energies flow freely, when there's never any question as to what to say, when one just says and the saying itself does all the work -- those language-machines under the surface of the water all kind of sync up somehow, start to work together as a single unit. Then the synchronization break down and it's back to a bunch of little warring and parasitic machines gobbling one another up, a bunch of little mirroring machines reproducing the behavior of the neighbors, a bunch of little giving-and-taking machines exchanging one another's parts. And so on.

But the desire to create is still there, but all you get are some random bubbles and thoughts that just seem to connect or say much of anything. You open your mouth, set pen to paper, and . . .

It must be possible to plot these cycles, to examine the roles of variables like diet, sleep, anxiety, work load, etc. A science of optimizing creativity, of creating the conditions which permit the machines to sync up, to speak, to write.

Whatever the case, that syncing up just hasn't happened lately, not in any big way. It's not at all unlike a case of bad insomnia. By the way, I posted a couple of recent electronic music/sound compositions here.

petroleum disjunctions, take 2

Petroleum deafness, glass
counsel beyond you – machine
apparent. A thousand lines. Kabul
rustled, faith on loan. National fear

can’t equip – invisible banter,
the Ganges, shoes, telephone center.
This mineral bellhop zoned, shaded,
pulsing. Private. Four hours. Our hero

in agony. Dreaming for – explaining grass,
family, another. Dry harbor. Inky tiger
endless. Even nonexistence applies.

Open the gangway russet, Old Boy.
Knots laid for future disjunctions,
ruins. Arms. Political scraps, snowflakes.
Simon streams some other pencil oops -- spoke.
Finch closed. Gentlemen. Membrane. My forehead.

petroleum disjunctions

After listening to a radio show on John Cage this afternoon, I found myself in the mood for chance operations.

For the first poem, I sketched an outline of where I wanted the words to go on the page, then flipped through a poetry book choosing one word from the first page of each poet's section to fill in the blanks.

For the second and third I determined the placement of words by closing my eyes and making random marks on the page. I filled in the nth blank with the nth word from succeeding pages in the second poem, and I filled in the nth blank with the first word from randomly-chosen pages in the third poem.

I did make a couple of minor edits in the first poem, and, in the second two, I generally skipped over conjunctive words, definite/indefinite articles, prepositions, etc.

  

 



Glass counsel beyond you

 

	machine apparent a thousand:

 

lines.

 

 

Faith on loan.		Invisible banter.

 

		The Ganges,		shoes,

 

 

a real telephone.	(Center		pulsing,

 

private.          	 Hours --

  					hero.

 

 		This mineral



 

bellhop

 

in agony.

 



		Dry: harbor.

 

		Inky tiger

 

	endless).

 

 

Gangway russet, Old Boy.  Political scraps,

 

 

snowflakes.			Oops.  Spoke -

 

 

Gentlemen.  Membrane.  My forehead.

 

 

 

 

 



 

  

 

 petroleum deafness

 

 

 			Kabul

 

 

 					rustled

 

 

 			national

 

 			fear

 

 				can't

 

equip

 

 

 

 

 	    zoned

 

 

                shaded     counsel

 

                                             one

 

dreaming for

 

 

             explaining grass

 

family

 

 

                               another

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

          even

 

 

                              nonexistence

 

                           applies

 

       open

 

 

                     knots                    future

                     laid

 

 

disjunctions

  

                                              ruins

 

                      fear   arm's

 

 

 

                                  

                                     simon

 

                           stream

                              

                               other pencil

 

 

 

finch close

 

 

 

 

 

stolen illustration

A man turns the pages of a stolen book.

Sun steals the illustration. Sun on the window. Sun on the sea. Sea having lost. Turns a page. But the string lets go. Of the string. Got caught on the window. String on the desk. Now the window turns the sea.

Sunlight illuminates an illustration of a child floating over the sea.

He blows. Turns a page. He opens the window. Balloon blows another. Blows up. His puffy cheeks. Another balloon steals the illustration. Sea to the sun. Lost. Got the string now. Turn the sea. And telephone to eat. His window after the blow.

The child has tied himself to the string of a large balloon.

The dogs to eat. His window after the wild. Lost. String on the telehpone. Dogs on the desk. Sun steals the dogs. His puffy sea blows up. Turns the page. Lost the dogs on the string now.

Outside his window, the same child, standing on the beach, loses his grip on the string and the balloon blows away.

Sun steals the telephone. Turns the page. Caught in his puffy cheeks. The window opens. After the blow. Dogs got lost. Wild. His window steals the string. The telephone dogs.

The telephone rings, waking the dogs sleeping at his feet.

Sun lets go. Blows another balloon. Telephones the dogs. The dogs eat sea. Telephone turns the page. Lost. Wild. Sun on the string. Got caught open. Balloon steals the sea. He opens the illustration. His window to eat.

The man recalls that the dogs haven’t eaten.

After the wild. Lost. String lost the dogs. Lost the page. Turns his puffy cheeks. The dogs open. On the desk. The sun steals the blow. Dogs got string. The telephone rings.

one-minute vacations

Many thanks to Aaron Xim of quietamerican.org for identifying the Yes album I'd mentioned in yesterday's entry.

Please stop over for a listen to quietamerican's collection of one-minute vacations. In Aaron's words: "One-minute vacations are unedited recordings of somewhere, somewhen. Sixty seconds of something else. Sixty seconds to be someone else." Aaron's unique project constitutes a point of disarming stillness and modesty amidst the web's clash of voices competing for attention.

For those in the San Francisco Bay Area, quietamerican also hosts a sound art concert series, field effects which recently featured (a full-length performance of) Lief Inge's 24-hour expansion of Beethoven's Ninth, 9 Beet Stretch.

deeply affecting note sequences

A very select few chords and sequences of notes have an immediate and profound emotional effect upon me, seemingly regardless of context. Whenever I hear them I'm suddenly very far off, almost-but-not-quite remembering something -- beautiful yet lonely -- that vanishes as soon as I try to focus on it.

One such chord: take the tonic note, the fourth, and the fifth step of any major scale -- nothing else -- no third, no seventh (e.g., in C Major, the notes C, F, and G only). Bam! As soon as I notice it I'm lost. Gently slide from the fourth down to the third (F to E) and I'm yours. How disappointed I was in music theory to discover that it's not even considered a real chord.

A sequence which does something similar to me -- though the feeling is more melancholic and somehow less "mystical": Start with any note, go down a half step. From there, go down a minor third. Now go up a major second and do it again (e.g., B-flat, A, F#, G#, G, E). Anyone -- I mean, anyone -- could seduce me just by humming it. Yes (the band) used it one song that I heard a long time ago but that I can't seem to find again. And I recently discovered this sequence (less the final note) in the (instrumental) chorus of a song by the French electronic duo M83. This sort of music isn't my cup of tea -- too poppy and I'm too snobby -- but I listened to this song at least 30 times in a row the first day I discovered it and I'm still in love. You can play it on their brilliant faux low-fi website. When prompted, type NEW ALBUM. You should see a list of songs. It's number 10 (type 10 to play it): 0078H.

Does anyone else have similar musical keyholes buried in her or his psyche? I've never gotten anything but a blank look on this one . . .