Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

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.












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Monday, June 11, 2018

Found, framed. Involuntary sculpture.



"Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them as poetry by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning."

 Wikipedia.

 I have walked Jazz the dog the same route countless times.  

Yesterday, it seemed that every few feet I had to stop to contemplate an art installation. 

 How is it that I hadn't noticed these gallery pieces before?

 Was it the storm which made me more sensitive to the environment?

 Was I less caught up in my own thoughts?

 Was I more open to venturing off the path, to bending down, to wandering off into the undergrowth, to varying my point of view?

 What of the people who assembled the installations?

To what extent was there any aesthetic intention to the arrangement of these objects in their allotments?

Lot 1. Giraffe and bean poles.

What on earth was this elongated giraffe doing, standing jauntily amongst the bean poles?

Was there symbolic meaning to its angled emplacement?

Did it have a role of watch-giraffe, or scare crow?

Had it been bought especially for the garden or had it been unceremoniously dumped?

What had determined the plan of the planks laid out as walkway?

Had there been any thought as to the relationship between verticality of the bean poles and the neck of the giraffe?

There was no sign, no name of an artist, no leaflet to accompany my visit.

Lot 2. Pallet, panels and branches.
I suppose the pallet, panels and branches had a practical function.

They had been arranged to form some sort of obstacle.

It was an obstacle to what?




There had been some thought which had gone into the propping of the branches.

Whatever the method behind the assemblage, it had apparently been pretty haphazard.

No tools had been used to attach the pieces.

No rope had been used to bind the branches together.

No attempt had been made to minimise the space taken up by the objects.

Whatever the story behind the grouping of the objects, they stood there waiting for somebody to pay attention.

Lot 3. Sheet metal erosion.
It has obviously been standing there for some time.

The corrosion on its surface had begun to eat away at its structure.

Holes were appearing, light was boring through its solidity.

Why had noone thought to throw it away?

Why had anyone thought to leave it standing there?

What possible purpose did it have?

What might have been its origin?

Had it been part of a vehicle?

Had it been ripped off a piece of furniture?

How long had it been there?

No answers were available.

Only questions.

Had anyone else ever thought to stop to pay attention to its rotting beauty?

Lot 4. Oil drum totems, oil drum cemetery.
What is the line between tipping, pollution, and art?

I can imagine people complaining about the eyesore.




I can imagine people complaining about the abuse of nature.

I can imagine people complaining about the thoughtlessness of others.

All I could see was the cylindrical metallic form and the fading colours of the barrels framed, overgrown, accepted perhaps by nature.

I found a funereal peace, a strange spirituality associated with the place.

Was it some sort of cemetery?

Whose heads are these drumstones memorials to?

Were they totems for a rite?

Was this a shrine to unknown gods?

Had there been any decision as to whether the green drum was on the red drum rather than the other way round?

Had there been negligence or care here?

I stop and carefully frame them.

Jazz is impatient to explore.

I pull him back.

He sits down panting...waiting.

Lot 5. Wild-framing, digital filtering.
"It's not entirely representative of reality." I might hear you say.

Yes, I played with an app - Prisma, to search for an intensifying of the colour. (I had written insensifying and I hesistated before "correcting it.)

Once the colour heightened, a wildness of the fence framing is what hits me.

How many fences have you seen with such a design?

How much would you have to pay for such sculpture if displaced in a gallery?

"Oh! What Junk!" I hear you say.

"Rickety rubbish!" I hear you say.

Not to me.

Lot 6. Ramshackle dump.

There is a joy in writing, in hearing the word "ramshackle".

 I go and find a quote to celebrate it.

“The windows of the houses - even if the house is ramshackle - are always beautiful because windows represent light!” 
― Mehmet Murat ildan

OK, I agree I may be reading into things more than exists.

There may be serendipity in the geometry of the sculpture figured left.

It may be a complete and to some an unpardonnable accident.

But to me, there is beauty, there is wonder.

I wonder if others have stopped to celebrate this ramshackle dump?


“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” 

― Edgar Degas

Footnotes.

Involuntary Sculpture.

 "A selection of photos taken by Brassai and captioned by Dali in surrealist periodical "Minotaure" in 1933 bearing the title "Involuntary Sculpture."

 "Scraps of everyday débris,  - including rolled up bus tickets, a piece of bread roll, a curl of soap from a sink, and a blob of toothpaste - featured in photographic close-up as 'automatic' sculptural configurations. These banal and non-artistic objects (one of the bus-tickets was allegedly found screwed-up in the pocket of a bank-employee) were intended at least in part as a riposte to the prevailing perception of sculpture at the time."

 "Brassai and Dali's photo essay provides a tantalising evocation of sculptural possibility, where forms are both shaped by human hands, sometimes with little conscious thought (the rolled bus ticket) and subject to organic growth (the piece of bread rising and changing shape in the oven). It also freezes its array of objects at a particular moment, before they are discarded, swept or wiped away, dissolved or eaten. Nevertheless, their photographic capturing does give them a certain solid presence, particulary through Brassai's use of dramatic chiaroscuro."

 Chiaroscuro (English: /kiˌɑːrəˈskjʊəroʊ/; Italian: [ˌkjaroˈskuːro]; Italian for light-dark), in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition.

 Wikipedia.

"Sculpture, especially in the case of antique copies and casts in white plaster, stone and marble, had exceptional photogenic qualities, setting up striking contrasts between light and shade as well as nuances of texture. In this sense both media (sculpture and photography) share a manipulation of the effects of light, as well as a concern, potentially for framing and apprehending an object from a specific point of view. Through photographic representation, sculptures can take on another life, eternalised as images in their own right in what André Malraux would call a 'museum without walls'." 

 "In a late essay, Brassai would argue that the photograph developed in the dark-room acted as a metaphor for Marcel Proust's well-known accounts of 'involuntary memory', a latent remembrance suddenly triggered by an everyday object or experience, such as the taste of a madeleine dipped in tea. In that kind of moment, past and present locations are telescoped, and according to Proust, 'our whole person...totters between them...in the vertigo of an uncertainty like the kind we sometimes experience before an ineffable vision, at the moment of falling asleep, - a state of demi-sommeil."

 Anna Dezeuze and Julia Kelly in "Found Sculpture and Photography from Surrealism to Contemporary Art. 
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Saturday, June 2, 2018

Peer Review.

"No you really should look to do a PHD." they say.

 So, after much humming and hawing...

I write it and it.... ho hum....

Well it sounds odd.

So much the better!

"Oh sod it!."

"Odd sod!"

 "OH! Haw haw haw!"

 So, I print out page after page of forms.

I struggle to write myself into their forms.

Is that really me?

"Oh who fucking cares?"

 I am missing the point.

I hadn't read the small print.

I am to be rendered procedurally immaterial.

"We don't accept paper, all applications must be in digital form."

I am an object in an inbox to be processed...................................................................(fucking slowly.)

Enough time to be able to think and to annotate my thoughts and find companions.

I wait.



I wait.



I wait.



I hope.........................................................................................................................................................

"Oh think of the wastage!"

 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

I, or the executors of my will are to be left with page after page of forms and no ink in the printer cartridge.

"With regards to your application, we have the pleasure to inform you, you have been accepted on our doctoral program. It will cost you/your estate an arm and a leg."

Not hearing anything for the next eight months, I decide I better take things into my own hands.

I write an email.

"Er, what's going on with my application?"

 "Er, yes, we have processed your application, the commission has accepted to validate your experience. You can start applying to get on the doctoral program."

 So, good.

I wait.



I wait.

I wait.


I phone the appropriate number.

I listen to three of Vivaldi's four seasons...

Winter is coming.



"Er, hello, what's going on with my application?"

"Oh, yes, er sorry, there are a few issues with your application."

...................................................................................................................................................................
(more time passes)

More Vivaldi.

Winter is here.



 "Er yes, you have been incorrectly advised, you shouldn't have done a VAP, you should have done a VAE"

 "***********"
(exasperation, passive aggressive non-voiced swearing and insults)

 "So we will send you the forms in triplicate, and you will have to do an interview in front of a jury, who, if we are fortunate, will find you guilty to be charged: a few pounds of flesh, an arm, a leg, your other arm, and other leg, a fair amount of your adomen, oh and your buttocks (you sad fucker).

 Should you die on completion of the program your executors will receive the doctoral diploma with post-mortem as its annex"

 ...................................................................................................................................................................(more time passes)

Peer Review

So, I had just come back from an academic conference where I felt, for the first time, perhaps, accepted by my peers...on my terms.

I feel that I have a role...which I feel comfortable with...in the margins....no, for ever in their margins.

I spoke with my friend Teresa and we laughed about the absurdity of this system.

I spoke with my friend Terry and we laughed about the absurdity of this system.



I go and look back at what I have written.





I shall trust myself to find my way.




I decide that I shall feel my way through the woulds, to find the will that is mine.



I shall not tread the wood that is beaten out for me.

I can not.

That is not, has never been my path.

"Oh we have never had a case like yours."

I don't fit in their fucking forms.



Of course I don't.

I never fucking did.

Neither do you.

That's my point.

That's my role.

That's it.

PEER REVIEW

I peer around in the darkness, take a few deep breaths, a few steps and review.

I am still alive.

And fucking kicking.

Recognition


Just be assured that I am at peace.

"I don't ask for your pity, but just for your understanding - not even that - no.  Just for some recognition of me in you, and the enemy time, in us all."

Tennessee Williams Sweet Bird of Youth

Recognition.

Recognition for me, is a quest for harmony.

I have tried on so many costumes, played so many roles, that I find myself not so much naked but worn. 

If I be worn, I am not for the instant worn out.

If the truth be known, now my friend I am inhabited.

I remember the seduction of theatrical applause.

I don't know about you, but the applause only ever had meaning for me when it came as confirmation; confirmation of a journey, of an emotion, of a struggle shared.

There has to be...there has to be presence.

Recognition is perhaps in communion.


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Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Knot for nothing.


What started as a comment from Wendy Taleo to "Speaking their Language"* took on a life of its own and then Kevin tied us in knots...

As they say in Yorkshire "there's nowt as queer as folk." 


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Saturday, December 10, 2016

Mapping ground up.




Here I am again...imagining a play-space.  

The photo above is representative of open space in which I want to play. 

The photo above is representative of the call of open space in which I want to walk.

Past experiences have confirmed that I need to follow my intuition but at the same time to be realistic about the scope of the play.

Thinking about the remarks of Dave Snowden concerning heroic disasters brings me to Terry Elliott's media stream in Twitter. 



I stop an instant and pick and choose some pertinent landmarks.


I remember previous experiences of spinning off into the ether.

Icarus comes to mind.








I am comfortable with poetry. I am suspicious of "master-plans".



I keep telling myself, that curiosity has its dangers...




I shall attempt to remain grounded...this time.

In the meantime I have rediscovered my Popplet cloud space.

I map out a play space which I shall embed here.

It gives me possible directions - no certain outcomes.

I remember the importance of conversation and time.

We can get lost in the webs or our own making...

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.”

― Walter Scott, Marmion

I am wary of webs...of lies.


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Sunday, February 28, 2016

Remember stormier days.


Remember stormier days.
We dare.

You dare too much.


Run along now,
Weather foul or fair,
While strong wind blows.

Waves crash.

Salt stings eyes.

Skin tightens, face reddens.


Remember stormier days.
We dare...

You dare too much.

Tread over pools.
Lost thoughts,head towards the sea.

Waves break afar.

Backgrounded, 
Doodling, 
You disappear.

Remember stormier days.
We dare...

You dare too much.



Footnotes.


Hacking 'On the shore', I discover hidden waves, hidden rhythms.

I am swept out far to sea.

I love the sea.
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Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Before our maker space...


"Subjectivity is objective." 
Woody Allen.

I am stepping perilously close to the edge of reason.

What have I gone and done now?


"I have only gone and made an object of myself."

As soon as I give a sign of existence.

Nay, before I give a sign, I am already objectified.

  • the one so hoped for.
  • the vermin.
  • the Prince 
  • the heir.
  • the mistake.
  • the loved one.

Darn! It's too late.

I am here now.

 "I have gone and made an object of myself!"

You'll forgive me but it ain't all my own doing.

You are responsible for my disappearance.

You are killing me while giving this IT life.

As soon as I get this down on the page, I go and disappear.

You can't know me.

I hastily reread all that I have written.

I no longer recognise myself.

Who is this writer and why won't the bastard leave me alone?

 "He's only gone and made an object of me."

So while I may object, I am now a subject of my own study.


I go back and read what I have written.

I don't recognise myself.

I never used to write like this.

No this is a lie.

I never used to write so much like this.

I blame tragedy.

I blame sadness.

I blame the others.

I retraced my step this morning.

It was Jesse Stommel's fault.

Though I admit that he was not at fault.

He left an object lying around.

How careless of him!



OK.

It is my fault.

How was he to know that I would read the bloody tweet.

It is not my fault.

How was I to know that it would somehow make me bloody think.

So I thought, stupidly aloud.

"I went and made an object of myself...again...twice..."Nay! Three times!"







That really set the cat amongst the pigeons.

Jesse Stommel replied...more than once.

Darn him!







 Then Sarah Honeychurch ploughed in...twice!



 


So.

I wake up this morning with matter to make my head ache.


I retrace steps and tweet what seems relevant back to Jesse and the others.

All of this is Beyond Me.




All of this is Beyond the MeMe.


All of this is Beyond Us.


I note with surprise the books that I am reading at the moment:

Thomas Picketty. Capital in the 21st Century.

Bell Hooks. All about Love

How did that come about?

Surely those are not the sort of books I read!

I don't recognise myself.

I note an article to return to:

Carl Ratner. Subjectivity and Objectivity in Qualitative Methodology

All this, I suspect, is about love (to write on), and the poetry of our futile science.

A final note perhaps?




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