steinbeck's hometown to close its libraries

susan sontag

Just learned that Susan Sontag died. The assholes who wrote (or edited) this otherwise decent Reuters article just had to include a jab at her from the Boston Globe which paints her as a shrill, intellectually elite, angry liberal. At least they didn't paint her as a charlatan, like the popular press did with Derrida. I guess there's still time . . .

sick again

Sick again. Cold-flu thing. The holidays should take place in warm months, when people are more likely to socialize outdoors, rather than indoors, with closed windows and hot, dry air . . .

On the other hand, how can I complain in light of reports of the death toll from the earthquake/tsunami? It's like reading science fiction. Tens of thousands dead in what amounts to little more than an instant. A part of me simply can't digest it, as if I'd been asked to digest the claim that 1 + 1 = 3. The horrific images from Fallujah seem more tangible, somehow, perhaps because that devastation results from a relatively slow, man-made (and preventable) process. And as I type these words, I feel like something of a monster. What a perversely and unjustly privileged position I must be in order to be able to leisurely contemplate why one kind of mass death seems real and another doesn't . . .

pink noise melody

Here is a minute-length excerpt (mp3 format) of the result of a program I wrote using ChucK, that audio programming language intended to facilitate "on-the-fly" programming. As should be the case with an on-the-fly language, it's a relatively easy langauge to learn and use and though it's not a full software synthesis behemoth like Csound, it can do quite a lot with just a handful of possible commands.

This piece presents two melodies, each realized with a simple sine wave run through a reverb. The pitches are generated by an algorithm which produces 1/f or "pink" noise (specifically, n1 = (n + (n^2)) mod 1). White noise (which consists of an equal distribution of all possible frequencies) sounds kind of like TV static, whereas pink noise (in which frequencies are distributed more heavily toward the bottom and thin out as one goes higher) sounds something like ocean waves or wind through a forest. Pink noise also has some fractal-like properties -- patterns repeat again and again, but always in a slightly different way, whereas white noise is absolutely random.

At any rate, the numbers spewed out by the algorithm are mapped to the notes of a major scale. The algorithm also determines the duration of each note.

nick piombino on navigating the strange

Today Nick Piombino offered an excerpt from his book The Boundary of Blur that I found incredibly beautiful and moving. It's a huge, complex thought that I don't think could have been more succinctly stated. Here's part of it:

There were moments of strangeness too before
the smile of recognition. This happened so many times it
became like breathing. But the first few times seemed
infinitely long. Once your mind has segmented the leap
into human strides the abyss has measure if still as
daunting. Even chaos may get less forbidding as its
features (ever changing) start announcing themselves
as provoking a recognizable feeling or constellation of
reactions.

just responded

to Gary's response to my claim in the previous entry that works of art (literally) embody real actions or situations . . .

Also, for any computer music programming geeks (like me) out there, I just stumbled across this really neat programming language that's intended to be used to for "on-the-fly" (e.g., live, in front of an audience) audio programming. What a cool concept. There's also a broader-ranging online organization for this sort of thing called toplap: the (Temporary|Transnational|Terrestrial|Transdimensional) Organisation for the (Promotion|Proliferation|Permanence|Purity) of Live (Algorithm|Audio|Art|Artistic) Programming. I wonder how one could weave writing and/or visual poetry into this . . .

sick, thanks, art

From toothache to throat- & sinus- ache, been sick lately. Starting to feel better, though my brain still feels like it needs new batteries.

A few things . . .

Thanks Tim, Curt, and Jean for your insightful comments on the Angry Liberal posting. I think Jean is on to something -- the right finds "spin" so easy to produce not only because they've been learning how to do it for the past 20-30 years, but also because they have no qualms whatsoever about hypnotizing themselves into believing their own propoganda.

On A New Broom, Nicholas responded to my question about whether or not present generations are less creative than preceding generations. I think he's probably right in saying, along with Thomas, that every generation probably feels this way, but I especially like the way he says it: "We must be what we are as well as we can be, and trust our taste in bathroom faucets." Thanks, Nicholas!

A couple of recent thoughts that may have been a result of a low-grade fever:

1) Consider a representational painting, say, of a dog chasing a ball. The dog may not be a real dog, and the ball may not be a real ball, but what about the chasing? I want to say this: the chasing is real and, moreover, the sense of the painting, its capacity to cohere into something other than a jumble of unrelated patches of color, hinges upon the reality of the chasing which it embodies.

2) Have you ever noticed how kids tend to draw the sky as a narrow blue strip at the top of the page? I recall doing this myself. Similarly, if you've ever taken an intro to drawing class, it probably took awhile to learn to draw what actually impresses itself upon the eye rather than what one knows or thinks must be there. It requires a peculiar -- and perhaps intimidating -- "leap of faith" to attend to, to be present for, what appears. I think that those of us who practice some form of art are used to making this leap whenever we, say, attend a performance, reading, or exhibition. If we want to appreciate it, we know how to become present for it, how to pay attention to the work itself and not to the daydreams swirling around in our heads. Anyway, my point is that I think it takes a lot of practice to do be able to do this, and the inability to do it (due to lack of opportunity and practice) is precisely what makes real art an irritating, indecipherable experience to many people. Unable to be present to the work itself, a lot of people react solely to the emotions and associations that the work immediately evokes -- hence they like music that sounds harmonious or rousing or is good to dance to, hallmark-card poetry, badly-executed pastoral landscapes, action-adventure with lots of stunts and special effects, and so on. No one teaches us how to be present to a work of art or, for that matter, to any sort of experience. Those of who have learned how to do it probably did so because we wanted to be artists, writers, musicians, etc, and were lucky enough to have the stamina and support we needed in order to keep trying until we figured it out.

thoreau on leisure

From The Blog of Henry David Thoreau:

We constantly anticipate repose. Yet it surely can only be the repose that is in entire and healthy activity. It must be a repose without rust. What is leisure but opportunity for more complete and entire action?

angry liberal

Has anyone else noticed this buzzphrase popping up more frequently in the past week or so? They're trying to brand us yet again. And with the media's complicity, they'll probably succeed. Classic case of Lakoff's notion of "framing the debate". It implies that we no real reason to be angry, that we're just obnoxious twits who want to hear ourselves bitchi and moan. In other words, it undercuts the notion that we speak from a place of moral conviction.

Please, please, please, let's not let them get away from it this time. For a response, how about "I'm passionate about what I believe in. It's too bad you don't think it's ok for people to be passionate unless they happen to agree with you." Or is that already too defensive? Any other suggestions . . . ?

audio egret party!

Just listened to Laura Carter reading The Coming of the Fifteenth Egret Party via audioblogger. A terrific way to experience a terrific poem. This method of posting makes the "web poetry experience" - which, for me, is frustratingly ephemeral and kind of cold - into something much richer. Somehow it seems to stand-in for the missing "objectness" of the non-existent page . . .

giants

This is probably a naive position to take, but considering the artistic & philosophical innovations of previous generations in the 20th century (I'm thinking early-mid century, maybe up through the sixties, a few tendrils of innovation seeping into the seventies and even very early eighties), it's hard to see the present generations as doing anything but filling in the details. Jackson Mac Low builds a house from the ground up and we spend our days arguing over what style of fixtures to put in the guest bathroom . . . or maybe I'm just speaking for myself. Still, I don't think I'm the only one who sometimes has the uneasy feeling of having been born into a less innovative age than the one immediately preceding. Is it because artists like Jackson Mac Low pushed something right up to the edge of an absolute horizon? Is it that social conditions and market dynamics no longer permit such sweeping, original gestures? Or are we somehow, as a whole, intrinsically less creative?

lump eye

lump burns my empty
eye kitchen

the o’s insomniac
proportions stretched

bodies together
on two radio syllables

flare pricks
g’s long arm

sweating reeds
against his ribcage

damp pill surface
of a crayon sketch

fingers codeine the shade
of trickle morning down

sheets swell my face swells
into the shadow gears growing
around my waist

he wants the first blue
mind so turns a tiled nose
to coarse sky texture

earth’s light inside
my hollow ruin

catch up

Seems like I've been struggling to keep up with everything lately. Here are some links I've been intending to post . . .

(By the way, it's the one of the coldest, wettest, and windiest nights here in the city in recent memory. It sounds like the whole world is sighing just outside the kitchen door. From the balcony in the back of our apartment we watched the wind push wave after wave of rain across the surface of the tennis courts and globs of orange light drip like lava from the streetlights. I could barely hold on to my umbrella.)

• A wonderful theological quote and discussion on faith in poetry from Laura Carter
  
  
• Nick Piombino on the wearying effects of hierarchical attitudes in poetry (thanks to Pantaloons for the link)
  
  
• That grand old poem called Winter from Henry David Thoreau
  
  
• A poem that Thomas Basbøll hasn't tested. See also his great discussion (it's in 5 parts - that was a link to the first part, here's a link to the last) of flarf and Tony Tost's I Am Not the Pilot
  
  
• A beautiful new prose poem from A New Broom
  
  
• Stuart Greenhouse on difficulty in poetry
  
  
• An arresting diagonal borderland between two fields of fractal letters at self-similar writing
  
  
• The horrors of christmas shopping, spiderman, and exchange-value vs. use-value at The Young Hegelian
  
  
• 131 new parts to Alexander Cumberbatch's long poem
  

florida republican representative asked company to create e-vote fraud software

in case you haven't read the story on buzzflash already . . .

support

Here's something I just posted to the group board of my embodied writer class. We've been focusing on the issue of support - what kind of support do we need from others in order to pursue our writing more seriously and deeply? Out of context, it probably comes across as pretty whiny. Oh well, at least it's honest. And I think the question of support is good one inasmuch as it breaks down that myth that writers are supposed to be autonomous units that don't need anything from anybody for anything - especially writing.

A big knot inside of me when I start to think about the question of support. But let me back up a little bit . . .

This class has made me much more aware of the "writer inside me" as a person who has hopes, fears, needs, and so forth. I don't want to draw an artificial distinction between me-as-me and me-as-writer, but talking about my "writer self" as opposed to my "everyday self" seems not only to help bring my needs as a writer into sharper focus but also helps me feel less guilty about asking for support around those needs. I don't feel so selfish when I think "well, there's this writer guy inside of me and he needs me to care for him, to advocate for him, to negotiate the everyday world on his behalf; indeed, it would be unjust not to do so. Besides, I didn't ask for him to be there; he was given to me and now it's my job to honor that gift."

Of course it's easier to have that epiphany than it is to put it into action. Right now, my writer-self seems to want nothing more than solitude and time -- time to read, to absorb, to think, to write. One image that keeps coming back to me is that of the short clip we watched several weeks ago of the woman grieving -- the way her arms instinctually pushed everyone away in an attempt to clear a space for her grieving to unfold as itself, as her own unique, unencumbered act of grieving. My writer-self similarly wants to push aside work and friends and family and even all the good, pleasant, enriching distractions that the city offers in order to clear a space to simply be that writer.

What I'm struggling with right now is figuring how to get an adequate sense of psychic space in a way that isn't self-destructive (e.g., quitting my job, which I depend on to pay the bills) or alienating to those around me (e.g., "Go away, I don't have time for you! I've got to write!"). It occurs to me that perhaps scheduling a couple of nights per week to treat like a class might help. Say, every Tuesday and Thursday, I could spend from 6-9pm doing nothing but reading and/or writing. I would perhaps have to do it away from home (a library?), turn off my phone – maybe even lie and tell people that I really am taking a class -- in order to get both myself and others in my life to take this effort seriously. (And it occurs to me now that I could perhaps find someone else to do this with, in order to help me stick to both the schedule and intent).

Anyway, all of this to say that I'm still trying to figuring out what kind of support I need. I know it has something to do with clearing time, but I haven't yet been able to give it much more definition than that.

us ok's use of evidence obtained under torture

3 AM

After reading that all people, including gays,
could knock on the door at 3 AM, the networks
gradually melted.

Still, a piece of news from a moment prior ran
like a lukewarm current beneath the election.

Jennifer brought the air into sharper focus
and God removed the ugly spot between a man
and a woman.

But the fact that the Executive Branch
was just getting over the flu
seemed so "sci-fi".

Frankly, any Sunday night can be considered
an expression of hysteria - given the shards
of ice in the adjacent room.

MI Governor: Back in the closet, you disgusting faggots! The voters have spoken!

The slope is getting slipperier.

From the article:

LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Gov. Jennifer Granholm will remove same-sex partner benefits from contracts negotiated with state workers, said an aide, citing a voter-approved amendment to the Michigan Constitution that bans gay marriage "and similar unions."

CBS, NBC Join Bush Gay Bashing Campaign

If this sort of thing continues, we'll be back in the closet or dead within 10 years.

Since I posted that sentence earlier this evening, I've wondered whether to consider it an expression of hysteria. Reading that both NBC and CBS refused to air an ad from the United Church of Christ because the ad states that the UCC welcomes all people -- including gays -- brought my physical surroundings in sharper focus. The air felt colder than it had a moment prior, as if someone had left a door or window open in an adjacent room.

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."

Am I being hysterical? God, I hope so.

For what it's worth, CBS can be contacted at:

CBS Television Network
51 West 52nd Street
New York, NY 10019

Main Number:
(212) 975-4321

CBS News
555 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019

Main Number:
(212) 975-4114

Sorry to be so morose. Maybe I'll feel better after sending a letter or making a phone call.