Hrm, mmm, pfff...

ZZZ, ZZZ, 

ZZZ, ZZZ,

ZZZ, ZZZ,

Bzzt, bzzt, bzzzt.

Sh, shh, shhh, 

Zzz, zzz, zzz, 

Bzzt, bzzt, bzzzt.

Shh, Pff, grr, grrl, grrrl.

Brr, brrr, brrr,

Pff, grr, grrl, grrrl, nth.

Whrr, whrr, whrrr,

Hrm, hmm, hrm, hmm,

Hrm, hmm, hrm, hmm.

Pst, psst, pssst...

Sss, sss, ssss,

Mmm, mmm, mmm,

St.

Tsk, tsk.

Grr, grrl, grrrl, nth.

Pff.

PWN.

Coming full circle...

I had the feeling that I wanted to write something. 

I had no idea what. 

Not having any idea or any sentence which came to mind, 

I sat and waited and waited...

Eventually, I settled for one word:

FALLING

Well frankly it wasn't much to go with. So I waited. I felt "falling" and it brought up "gravity"..."my gravity". I had found my "baseline", I had written "baseline" with a full stop.  

"Why bother with "baseline?" I thought.

"Full stop will do." 

"It has finality, it has an ending, a succinct landing." I settled the internal debate.

How long did it take?

I have no idea.

By the time that I had got to reflecting on "gravity" and its appropriate punctuation I had lost all sense of time.

I was engrossed.

I like playing with punctuation.

"Aller à la ligne."

"Well for hell's sake why not?" I thought, "So what if it is French?"  "If people don't understand..."

Well frankly I didn't understand what I was writing about...as often.

I trust myself to trust whatever comes out...when I am engrossed.

That is rather the point of it.

Playing.

Nothing more or less.

So why not "franglais"?

Exactly. 

I mix French and English all the bloody time.

I decide to ignore linguistic boundaries which are fuzzy a lot of the time.

Whatever comes out wins the fight for exposure.

"Aller à la ligne".

I had dropped as far as I could. 

I get a clear sense of verticality, of "gravity."

I start traversing from my original ledge: "Falling".

One can only fall so far...

I build horizontally using "ing" and two syllables words beginning with f.

I don't judge what I am doing.

Whatever I am doing, I claim diminshed responsibility.

Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be.

AMOR FATI.

I stretch out: "falling, feeling..."

"flailing" I don't like the sound of that, it just doesn't sound or feel appropriate here.

I reject "flailing".

I accept "failing", but rather "failing" as in the sense of "failing light".

"People can read what they like.." I reason.

I end up with "falling, feeling, failing" and wait and wait...

Next, the word  "fleeting" insists inclusion,  mainly, I think, because I love the sound.

I love its dissonance, "fleeting" it shall be an unusual verb, so what? 

I shall treat it like a verb and let its desire to adjectivise itself fight it out with its lot.

A mortal combat: adjective vs verb.

"Ha ha, ha, ha."

It is "fleeting" therefore I am...

I is not it, but it entails me. 

Whatever that may mean....pretension, pretention, oh whatever.

Who cares?

So I have some sort of vertical and horizontal and sonorous and dynamic (are those words) structure.

As often, it is loosely hanging together, fighting to get off the page.

Even if a word is unknown to me, or "incorrect", if a sound comes to me then it gets roped into action.

What the hell! Take all prisoners!

Legerté.

"Legerté" acts as counterpoint to  "my gravity".

I am both light and heavy, in this writing exercise (if that is what it is).

I can feel lightness and weight, or wait pulling me downwards towards a conclusion of sorts...or a decision to erase all...

I play with French and English, what if "legerté" exists as "legerty" in English?  I wonder.

I go off and find a dictionary.

Legerity.

Lovely word, unknown to me until then.

I go off and investigate.

I come back.

Now things get really strange.

I had a series of lines starting with A: 

a falling, a flailing etc or other words I forget.

The series of A plus two syllables suddenly recalls, plucks from the depths of my memory:

A Tisket 

A Tasket.

No good reason why.

Hell that will be something to explore, I decide.

Ella Fitzgerald.

I must have heard this before.

I have no memory whatsoever of it.

I enjoy these surprise appearances.

I particulary enjoy the play with nonsense words.

How often do we try desperately to make sense and end up making nonsense?

I will settle for playfulness.

I will settle for joy.

I will settle for discovery.

A tisket and A tasket are central to what this piece conveys.

It is less in the words than in the gestures, in the pauses, in the sudden jumps, the odd juxtapositions.

More sounds pop out, this time a rebuke, ironic here: "Tsk Tsk"(I should not be doing this, I should be doing something 'serious'.)

I immediately love the expression for its refusal to include any vowel.

Tsk and Pff and Zzzz marvellous subversions.

Please find me more!!!

So I go and investigate "A Tisket A Tasket".

I go away and come back and introduce Eminem's subversive rap "Without me."

The idea of this nonsense expression  "A tisket A tasket" journeying from children's play to Ella Fitzgerald to Eminem, is for me in itself glorious.

I love the connection, this weird connection.

By this time, I have lost all concern for appropriacy, I reuse "Tsk Tsk" for the hell of it, French for the hell of it, I introduce a voice of a reader, or my own voice, "Huh?",who can't make head or tale of what I or it means here.

"Huh?"

"Tsk Tsk, crétin! MDR!"

No doubt Eminem's Slim Shady has a lot to answer for.

His joyful stealing and remixing and goading of sacred American idols is infectious.

"Tâtonner" groping away in the dark.

I love the word for its feel in my mouth, its sonority.

I love the word even more for its circumflex...its little child-felt exoticism.

I could happily put circumflexs everywhere for the hell of it.

The ton, the ton, becomes an uncle, maybe Mitterand, "Ton Ton", for the hell of it.

The sound ton, goes from "tâtonner, to étonnement, to tonnement, to Ton Ton, to tonnère." for the hell of it.

Just the sound, that is the meaning, sound for itself, any other meaning is incidental.

"Tsk,tsk."

"Oh!"

And then down, down to a chute, to the plunge under water.

The image of plunging invites the Grand Bleu.

Why not?

Letting go, being at peace, being animal, being part of all.

Because.

Numbers pulse my hesitation, a silence , to celebrate the slowness of my breath.

Respiration, relaxation, letting go, mediation, meditation, emptyness, peace.

Play goddam it!

How long have I spent here? 

Who cares.

What does it mean?

I could feel an element of fear for the unknown.

I could feel a moment of fear for the ununderstandable.

It is enough to write fearing.

I let others deal with my expression of fear on arriving at a full stop.

Is it my fear, or their fear?

Who cares?

Is there gravity here?

Is there depth here?

Whatever?

Let others decide.

I have done enough.

Falling, failing, feeling, fleeting, fearing...

I go and find an image to transform with words.

I find that image of darkness.

I didn't bother to scrutinise it, or to inspect it carefully.

I liked the fact that it was indistinct.

I go and dig out an app that I had forgotten on Apple's server.

It comes back into use.

It becomes a starting point, and end point.

Falling, failing, feeling, fleeting, fearing...

Then I see what the image was.

In the darkness, a cave-writer has connected his lines with those of bears or lions.

He is both their prey and they his prey.

I go and post the "poem" the "play" the "piece" with a couple of hashtags and then expect nothing.

I am with the cave-writer extinct and at peace.

falling, failing, feeling, fleeting, fearing.

falling, failing, feeling, fleeting, fearing.

Falling,

I find my gravity.

Full stop.

Aller à la ligne.

Falling,

I find my legerté (fr), legerty (sic), 

Failing?

Tsk, tsk!

Mais non!

A Tisket.

A Tasket.

Rhyming Legerity.

Words, sounds, rhythms, rhymes, times, dimes,

A Tisket.

A Tasket.

Tsk, Tsk!

Huh?

Feeling, 

What?

I tâtonne in the dark.

Tâtonne donc.

Huh?

I tâtonne in the dark.

I collect sounds.

I collect words.

I collect songs.

Tâtonnement

I collect words par tâtonnement thus.

Huh?

Fleeting, 

I sense my pulse,

I sense étonnement.

Huh?

Suprise, astonishment.

I sense fatigue,

I sense peace.

I sense my soul.

Etonnement.

Tonnement?

Non, non, Ton Ton...

Tsk, tsk!

Tonnère fera ici.

S'il tonne au mois de juin, année de paille année de foin.

Huh?

Fearing,

Hold your breath,

Respiration.

One, two, three, four, five, six...

En apnée.

Huh?

Seven, eight, nine...

Minutes, hours...days, years.

Seconds?

No, no time, no time at all.

Tsk, Tsk!

Plunge deeper...

John Lennon once said, "we've learned over the years that if we wanted we could write anything that sounded that just felt good or sounded good and it didn't necessarily have to have any particular meaning to us." #clmooc pic.twitter.com/wWeLuxixLi

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) June 13, 2018

Footnotes.

Legerity

: alert facile quickness of mind or body

When "legerity" first appeared in English in 1561, it drew significantly upon the concept of being "light on one's feet," and appropriately so. It is derived from words in Middle and Old French and ultimately Latin that all mean "light in weight." These days, "legerity" can describe a nimbleness of mind as well as of the feet. A cousin of "legerity" in English is legerdemain,meaning "sleight of hand" or "a display of skill or adroitness." "Legerdemain" comes from the French phrase leger de main, meaning "light of hand."

A Tisket A Tasket

The rhyme was first noted in the United States in 1938^[3] as a children's rhyming game. It was sung while children danced in a circle. One of the number ran on the outside of the circle and dropped a handkerchief. The nearest child would then pick it up and chase the dropper. If caught the dropper either was kissed, joined the circle, or had to tell the name of their sweetheart.^[2] An early noted version had the lyrics:

A-tisket a-tasket

A green and yellow basket

I wrote a letter to my mom

And on the way I dropped it,

I dropped it, I dropped it,

And on the way I dropped it.

A little boy he picked it up

And put it in his pocket.^[2]

In some variants, the second line is "I lost my yellow basket". In other variants, the last line is "A little girl picked it up and put it in her pocket".

In nineteenth-century England, the rhyme used in the same game had somewhat different but evidently related words:

I lost my supper, last night,

And the night before,

And if I do this night,

I never will no more.

I sent a letter to my love,

I carried water in my glove,

And by the way I dropped it, I did so, I did so:

I had a little dog that said bow-wow!

I had a little cat that said meow-meow!

Shan't bite you, shan't bite you,

Shall bite you.

I dropt it, I dropt it,

And by the way I lost it.^[4]

Wikipedia.

Oh what the hell...

Well, before the call.

A change of rhythm.

"Is that how you write it?"

"Ahem. Are you listening?"

A sound.

We shall never know.

Oh what the hell.

"I may as well..."

"We may as well..."

A sound.

"What was that?"

The sound.

"Are you listening?"

Oh what the hell.

"I may as well..."

"You may as well..."

He never lived to tell.

It stopped.

Oh. What the hell.

Work jerk lurk er...

MYSTERY STARTING POINT.

Holiday.

Holy day.

open door to feldgang.

Clerks in holy orders don't rap.

But they do.

Oh?

Dear God.

No!

Yes!

Sorry!

Clerks in holy orders don't rhyme.

Nor reason.

in England.

with Kirk.

Anyway.

I won't go to Kirk.

In Scotland...

Fancy a pint?

IPA.

I am going to the bar.

Beam me up there.

SPOCK!

Quicker than the high road.

Or the low road.

TO LOCH.LOMOND.

Afore ye.

Beam me down there then.

Kirk. Captain. Jim?

Scotty?

Scotty?

Twerkin'?

Buerk!

CHIEF ENGINEER YOU'RE DRUNK!

Give me that.

Hands off my Firkin.

Don't you remember Jim?

PINKY AND PERKY

SWEET JESUS.

PIGS. 

PIGS FLY.

PINK FLOYD.

Animals.

Look up there!

What?

That building up there?

Which one?

The Foster Gherkin.

Gorgeous Tower.

I was thinking of Venice.

What?

I just had a thought.

Wipe that smirk off your face.

Dirk.

Dirk?

English with  a Flemish name.

The actor.

Dirk Bogarde.

Scottish.

Who? What?

Dirk.

Dagger.

Scottish.

Jerk.

SHOPWORK.

Can I help you?

No just looking.

NETWORK.

Lurkin are you?

"a lurker is someone that stays in a hidden place or waits in a secret or hidden place especially in order to do something wrong or harmful."

They call me the wanderer.

A knot work Jerk rather.

Macrame Lurker.

Get thee gone.

I am the wanderer.

A wonderer.

It's a perk.

A bloody privilege.

Mechanical Turk perhaps?

My God you are an irksome man.

ATTATURK

Work, work, work, 

Work, work, work.

All work no play makes a dull boy.

ATTABOY

Y'er Shirkin' rather.

Work, work, work,

Work, work, work

Legwork?

No.

Handiwork.

I'm a Patchwork Junky.

Nice Needlework!

Quirky innit?

Let me pay.

Oh. My. God. Let us pray.

Are you believer?

No.

Not.

I have just had a thought.

What?

What if God is a lurker?

Footnote and apology.

All of this started when Aras and Sarah invited me to complete a form.

About lurking.

DONE.

Quickly.

I hate that word.

For reasons unknown.

I looked for rhymes.

Lurk, jerk, shirk etc.

And then they caused me to waste hours of my life.

I am useless with forms.

CLMOOC RANDOM MAKE N° 446 LURK 

Click here

Take rhymes from lurk(er) 

Do something.

OR.

Do nothing.

God might be your judge.

Say 'how' and die.

“I hate reality but it's still the best place to get a good steak.” 

Woody Allen

Not being John Wayne.

Nobody ever asked me to play John Wayne.

I got to be Indians quite a lot.

Indians said 'How' and died.

Not a Western.

The missionaries were those ones clothed in black and white photos looking a lighter shade of grey.

The Indians were those ones clothed in black and white photos and a loin cloth looking a darker shade of grey.

The missionaries were vaguely heroic, this much I had learnt from stories of David Livingstone in Africa.

I was never quite sure what to make of the Amazonian Indians.

They were aphone and alien.

They looked sort of scared.

I was never quite sure how I would play being an Amazonian Indian.

Did they say 'how'?

I suppose they probably died.

I never really thought about it.

I had never seen Amazonian Westerns.

Being John Wayne.

I was between jobs, an actor.

That always made doing crap jobs a liveable fantasy.

I suppose it would not have been liveable if they had not been short enough to be the between.

It was always a miracle to me that the person on the end of the line would actually sign a contract as a result of me burbling away at him for three minutes about how advertising could work for him.

The contract, signed, was a proof of existence, a sort of message from the other side.

Perhaps, I hadn't been in contact with the spirit world after all.

Telesales is real...really.

Not being John Wayne.

I sort of knew that my parents had not actually ceased to exist when I was at boarding school.

Their weekly letters, I suppose, were supposed to be proof of a deep attachment.

I was deeply attached.

I was not actually sure whether to be happy or to cry.

I became aphone.

They became aphone.

I have proof that they have ceased to exist now...of sorts.

They still talk to me.

Maybe I am in touch with the spirit world.

I am still deeply attached.

Maybe Amazonian Indians are in touch with my parents too?

Not being John Wayne.

I used to change my name.

Nobody used to challenge my alias.

I was another.

......


I am another now.

I am insaisissasable. (oh dear I can't spell that b. word)

I can't think of another word for NOW.

French will have to do.

I am not what you imagine.

I am not what I imagine.

I am not John Wayne.

I am not a missionary.

I am not an Indian.

I have no proof of my continuing existence.

I live in a spirit world.

I will be your Indian.

No!

Really!

Indians say 'How' and then they die.

Footnotes.

This piece was inspired by many close distant friends and two  great blog posts linked here:

Autumm Caines.

A Sort of “In Love”: What is it About Play?

Maha Bali

Because Virtual is also Real. What's authenticity anway?

I wanted to copy a quote via Catherine Cronin here for future reference. (can't remember why).

“The internet does not produce a new kind of identity, but has instead been instrumental in raising awareness that identities were more multiple, culturally contingent and contextual than had previously been fully appreciated.”

Ah yes, now I do...

First rites...

Remark the glow in the forest.

Do you walk towards it?
Do you run for fear?
Do you halt to listen?
Do you stop to wonder?

Let your mind wander.

What do you imagine?

Step forwards.

Masked figures illuminated by fire,

are they carnival?
are they cartoon?
are they sinister?

How will you know?

Advance masked.

Be safe in cognito.

Be sane in dance.

"WILL YOU PLAY GODDAM YOU?"

"THAT WE MAY DANCE!"

"THAT WE MAY BE SILENT."

"THAT WE MAY BE ONE."

Bodies moved to rhythm.

These are first rites...

Be sure.

Scrabble.

Things were getting serious.

Bob was eyeing up the last triple word score.

Jemima was about to place her blank letter to extend the word 'Quit' to 'Quite'.

That was that. She was going to win again.

Bob sighed, resigned to another pride-sapping defeat.

Jemima counted up the score.

"I think that makes 36 points, if I'm not wrong Bob?'

Jemima beamed proudly.

Bob humphed and added Jemima's score to the tally.

Was he ever going to beat that self-satisfied little Miss Annoying?

He placed four letters on the board.

"No that's no good Bob," said Jemima. "That word doesn't mean anything."

Bob was fed up.

Jemima always beat Bob.

Bob looked forlornly at the list of tallies in the Scrabble box.

Bob: 78
Sally: 256

Bob: 83
Sally: 246

Bob: 56
Sally: 238

It made for sorry reading.

He didn't bother turning over the paper.

Bob felt humiliated and stupid.

Jemima was clearly brilliantly clever.

Stop making sense.

Looked at together, the words placed on the board would have made no sense whatsoever.

There was not a single intelligible sentence to be found.

Nobody would bother reading it all anyway.

That was not the point.

These were just scores.

There was never any question of it making any sense; winning by the rules was everything.

That was something some of the family never seemed to understand.

They seemed to equate being good at Scrabble with understanding, with intelligence.

They were only partly wrong.

Being good at Scrabble was mainly about understanding a game, and having a very specific sort of intelligence.

To hell with making meaning, it was primarily about pattern recognition.

Any words would do as long as they fitted in on the board.

Bob was just about to add three letters (T,W,O) to the board when....

When Sally came to play.

Sally was bored.

"Can I play?", she asked.

"No, Sally, you are too young, and you are ruining my concentration," replied Bob grumpily.

"Buzz off."

Sally, aged four, took no notice of her brother and sister and grabbed a handful of letters off the Scrabble board.

"Hey, Sally stop you are messing up our game!"

"I want to play, I am going to make a house."

Sally was already piling up the seized letters into a leaning tower of meaning.

"Sally, put the letters back right now or I'll call Mum."

"No, I'm playing too."

"I'm making a house."

"Sally..."

With all the petulance she could muster, Sally flung the board on the floor.

"You're stupid. It's not fair, I wanted to play TOO!"


Ivory towers.

I sometimes have the impression that Academia is a very sophisticated form of Scrabble.

The expert players take it very, very seriously indeed.

They have developed their skills considerably over the years.

They practice daily, looking up ever more obscure words in Scrabble dictionaries.

They develop strategy.

They look to measure themselves up against the best.

They play in clubs and go to conventions with their peers.

Looked at together their words don't always make much sense.

They are very unhappy if little kids grab the tiles laid on the board to build towers of their own.

Fear of flying.

"When I say you have control, you say 'I have control.'"

OK. Roger.

"You have control."

"I have control."

I was a little heavy-handed on the joy-stick. 



The Chipmunk Trainer took a dramatic dipping turn to the left...

"Errrr, I have control."

OK.  Roger.

The instructor, audibly shaken, resumed a normal flight angle.


Fear of flying 

There is something unnatural about sitting in an aeroplane and knowing that you are about to fly over high mountain ranges, zoom across wide oceans to most probably arrive in some distant destination.

I am always brought back to footage of early attempts to take to the air.  

Man will never fly.

I can only imagine the hours of imagining, designing and building what now appear naive death-traps.

Of course, the machines invariably either stay land-locked or drop like bricks.  

I am somewhat reassured that repeated testing of materials, engines, pilots, makes an Air France journey less of an adventure - give or take one or two strikes. 

"Oh what's the point? I shall never be an artist." 

I was always pretty fed up with my mother's defeatist attitude to her art-work. I loved her 'naive' drawings, her delicate touch.  Of course an art-critic might not have seen genius but wasn't that missing the point?

"Je suis nul. Je ne vais jamais parler anglais."

I am always pretty fed up with my students' negative attitudes to their English abilities.  

They have been told that they are useless for so many years that I spend much time explaining to them why it is that they are not incapable of learning a language. 

We speak about the difficulty for an adult of accepting a loss of communicational competence, the need to learn to play with the language. 

We try to find ways that they can assess their progress rather than concentrate on their 'mistakes'. 

Little by little, they discover their voices, they gain confidence, they make large leaps. 

Of course an examiner for a certification may not take into account their transformation but isn't that missing the point?

"I am useless, I shall never find a job."

I typed and retyped the CV, over and over and over. 

Having convinced myself that I was useless, I tossed version 12 into the waste-paper basket.  

Months later, I plucked up courage to send one perfect CV, waited for three weeks for an answer. 

My hands were trembling as I opened the envelope. 

It was what is termed a 'rejection', I was devastated. 

Mulling it over.

As I dealt with the idea that my career had finished before it had started, I spent some time reading about the early 'careers' of brilliantly successful advertising executives.  

Far from demonstrating immediate genius, they often had spent years being apparent failures. A penny started to drop. Not knowing what direction to take was perhaps OK. 

Looking back, I am sort of amazed at how naive I was. 

Looking back, I am sort of amazed at how useless the experienced, sensible 'adults' appeared to be in encouraging discovery, how reluctant they appeared to be to admit their own vulnerability, their own doubts.

Mulling it over

I was reading a few comments on a #ccourses Twitter stream this evening.  

Here is one which caught my eye:

Gardner Campbell ‏@GardnerCampbell  2h2 hours ago

“If you’re not falling off it, you’re not really exploring the edge.” @hrheingold #ccourses

I like taking risks - that is why I love acting, adventure, rock-climbing.  

I love learning.

I am not sure that I would be a great 'climbing instructor'.

I am brought back to a near death experience at school. 

The teacher didn't check the descender was attached to the rope.

I saw the problem. 

If I had been too trusting, I would have had a nasty fall...

I would prefer rock-climbing instructors to be properly qualified.

Here is another one that caught my eye:

Terry Elliott @telliowkuwp · 2h 2 hours ago

I don't want my doctor exploring the edge.

0 replies

Yes, I would prefer the doctors who are called to operate on me, to have practised their delicate gestures repeatedly, to have sensitive hands.  

I would also like them to be able to recognise that my body parts are connected together to constitute a person, namely me.  

We can speak together. 

I would like them to be able to speak with me with sensitivity.

Fears of success and fears of failure

I am brought back to the ideas of success and failure.

I remember the hours and hours that we spent at school making paper aeroplanes, testing their flight, whooping with delight as the various designs nose-dived, glided, loop the looped.  

How are we to judge the success or failure of these childish test-flights? 

I would suggest that the real success lay in the community of play.

I remember the hours and hours that we spent at school doing exercises on paper, testing our grammar, irregular verbs and what have you.  

I remember little of the successful answers or the failed answers.

I would suggest that real success of education does not lie in getting the largest numbers of correct crosses on an answer sheet.

There are good reasons for enabling students to become qualified pilots, rock-climbing instructors, surgeons, aviation engineers.  

I don't believe that we can learn without making mistakes.  

I don't believe that it is a good idea to compare oneself with inaccessible models. 

I do believe that we can only progress through repeated and reflective work.

I do believe that we can waste hours arguing about completely different contexts as if they were comparable.

I don't believe that we can progress as communities, as societies, without play, without taking risks.

I don't belive that we can work with people as if they were disconnected parts to be machined.

I believe that we are in the dark ages of human social development. 

I believe we all must take  leaps of faith to reach out to distant destinations.

I am not convinced that our current instructors know how to avoid a nasty crash.