MiPOesias, edited by Tom Beckett
Reading and rereading the engaging work in this issue... I'm the least fan of the "best ofs" but you've got to check out Nico Vassilakis' "profile." Lots of writers, who were interviewed, jumped or wriggled through or over and around that hoop, but Nico [click here] leaped through it deftly and with enviable elan. And the poems!
**
What the hell, while you're at it check out these *Texts for Nothing, but Cut Up* on UBU web:
Nico Vassilakis [click here]
*********************************
In A Dark and Desperate World
it's a joy to focus on a few rays of sunlight. The MiPOesias issue, discussed above, Karl Rove under indictment and Harold Pinter winning the Nobel Prize:
Los Angeles Times online [click here].
Distribution Automatique
Friday, October 14
Wednesday, October 12
*Notes*
Decisions
If you are 40 and still ambivalent, consult more
deeply within yourself. If you are 50 and continue to suffer from mixed feelings, try to seek out the opinions of others. If you are 60, flip a coin.
***********************
The Debt
Much of what I am came out of books, so much of what I become goes back into them.
Decisions
If you are 40 and still ambivalent, consult more
deeply within yourself. If you are 50 and continue to suffer from mixed feelings, try to seek out the opinions of others. If you are 60, flip a coin.
***********************
The Debt
Much of what I am came out of books, so much of what I become goes back into them.
Sunday, October 9
Fishing The Street
A heavy, punishing rain beat down on the streets outside the Bowery Poetry Club yesterday where a respectable and respectful crowd came to hear and cheer Marianne Shaneen and Anselm Berrigan, introduced by Gary Sullivan and Nada Gordon. Each of these young poets read, with witty, charming and quiet force, a combination of new and earlier works to appreciative whistles and applause from the drenched audience. Marianne has a new chapbook from Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs [click here]; Anselm spoke about his father, Ted Berrigan's new Collected Poems [click here]. Reading over the blurbs, I noticed that two are by poets who recently died, Robert Creeley and Lorenzo Thomas. Anselm mentioned that the latter, who died this year on July 4th, passed away on the same date as Anselm's father, 22 years later. Anselm, who was 10 when his father died, read several great poems by Ted I never heard before. As I've mentioned previously on these pages, I attended my first poetry workshop with Ted Berrigan in 1967. I am not ashamed or embarrassed to state how fond I was of this man, who, like so many people, was what I call a 60's victim, in relation to his early death, anyway... As I write this I realize that there are many others, like myself, who survived the 60's, who were also its victims (and its beneficiaries). In my case maybe you can't see the wounds, maybe you can, but I can often feel them, especially when I think of Ted. For a taste of the real 60's see the Scorsese documentary about Dylan and read Ted. Especially read Ted. As I turned to leave, I spoke briefly with the maestro, Bob Holman, who, by the way, is performing on Wednesday night at 10 pm at his own club, the BPC with the Billy Bang Trio. Bob mentioned how you could hear, at times, that Ted Berrigan lilt in Anselm's voice. Yes, I heard and loved that, and also the way Anselm couldn't stop laughing at one of his father's poems as he read it- the one about a truck and fish all over the street.
********************************************
Ted Berrigan Reads
Listen to Ted, thanks to Al Filreis and Charles Bernstein at Penn Sound,
and Alice Notley.
Ted Berrigan at Penn Sound [click here]
A heavy, punishing rain beat down on the streets outside the Bowery Poetry Club yesterday where a respectable and respectful crowd came to hear and cheer Marianne Shaneen and Anselm Berrigan, introduced by Gary Sullivan and Nada Gordon. Each of these young poets read, with witty, charming and quiet force, a combination of new and earlier works to appreciative whistles and applause from the drenched audience. Marianne has a new chapbook from Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs [click here]; Anselm spoke about his father, Ted Berrigan's new Collected Poems [click here]. Reading over the blurbs, I noticed that two are by poets who recently died, Robert Creeley and Lorenzo Thomas. Anselm mentioned that the latter, who died this year on July 4th, passed away on the same date as Anselm's father, 22 years later. Anselm, who was 10 when his father died, read several great poems by Ted I never heard before. As I've mentioned previously on these pages, I attended my first poetry workshop with Ted Berrigan in 1967. I am not ashamed or embarrassed to state how fond I was of this man, who, like so many people, was what I call a 60's victim, in relation to his early death, anyway... As I write this I realize that there are many others, like myself, who survived the 60's, who were also its victims (and its beneficiaries). In my case maybe you can't see the wounds, maybe you can, but I can often feel them, especially when I think of Ted. For a taste of the real 60's see the Scorsese documentary about Dylan and read Ted. Especially read Ted. As I turned to leave, I spoke briefly with the maestro, Bob Holman, who, by the way, is performing on Wednesday night at 10 pm at his own club, the BPC with the Billy Bang Trio. Bob mentioned how you could hear, at times, that Ted Berrigan lilt in Anselm's voice. Yes, I heard and loved that, and also the way Anselm couldn't stop laughing at one of his father's poems as he read it- the one about a truck and fish all over the street.
********************************************
Ted Berrigan Reads
Listen to Ted, thanks to Al Filreis and Charles Bernstein at Penn Sound,
and Alice Notley.
Ted Berrigan at Penn Sound [click here]
Thursday, October 6
Notes
Watch for the moment in each day when you are given the choice to change.
***
Innocent until proven guilty is a fair and just formula, but intelligent until proven otherwise will waste a lot of your time.
************************
Spirit Photography
Don't miss the astounding Spirit Photography show [click here for Kimmelman's review in the NY Times] at the Metropolitan Museum, especially the photos by Ted Serios. By the way, there is an excellent hardbound catalogue for $60.
Watch for the moment in each day when you are given the choice to change.
***
Innocent until proven guilty is a fair and just formula, but intelligent until proven otherwise will waste a lot of your time.
************************
Spirit Photography
Don't miss the astounding Spirit Photography show [click here for Kimmelman's review in the NY Times] at the Metropolitan Museum, especially the photos by Ted Serios. By the way, there is an excellent hardbound catalogue for $60.
Wednesday, October 5
Think Again
"Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on."
Frederic Chopin
from *The Harper Book of Quotations*
edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry
...................................................................
When you use something, you no longer know it. To know it, you must leave it alone.
...................................................................
'"But I don't see it," she continued sadly. "So, it's useless, isn't it? -and so cruel..." He was about to speak, but she went on: "I shall never understand it- never!"
He looked at her. "You will some day :you were made to feel everything----"
"I should have thought this was a case of not feeling----"
"On my part, you mean?" He faced her resolutely."Yes, it was to my shame. ..What I meant was that when you've lived a little longer, you'll see what complex blunderers we all are: how we're struck blind sometimes, and mad sometimes- and then, when our sight and our senses come back, how we have to set to work, and build up, little by little, bit by bit, the precious things we'd smashed to atoms without knowing it. LIfe's a perpetual piecing together of broken bits.'"
from *The Reef* by Edith Wharton (1912)
"Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on."
Frederic Chopin
from *The Harper Book of Quotations*
edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry
...................................................................
When you use something, you no longer know it. To know it, you must leave it alone.
...................................................................
'"But I don't see it," she continued sadly. "So, it's useless, isn't it? -and so cruel..." He was about to speak, but she went on: "I shall never understand it- never!"
He looked at her. "You will some day :you were made to feel everything----"
"I should have thought this was a case of not feeling----"
"On my part, you mean?" He faced her resolutely."Yes, it was to my shame. ..What I meant was that when you've lived a little longer, you'll see what complex blunderers we all are: how we're struck blind sometimes, and mad sometimes- and then, when our sight and our senses come back, how we have to set to work, and build up, little by little, bit by bit, the precious things we'd smashed to atoms without knowing it. LIfe's a perpetual piecing together of broken bits.'"
from *The Reef* by Edith Wharton (1912)
Saturday, October 1
The Consolations of Art
"Ah, those strange people who have the courage to be unhappy. *Are* they unhappy, by the way?"
Alice James, *Diary*, 1889
What might be the alchemy that transposes suffering, or mere contentment, into happiness? Most artists come to understand and hold to one ineradicable consolation: every type of experience, without exception, contains food for thought, material for contemplation, a lesson in life. Perhaps their acrobatic feats of regeneration and renewal are as much explained by this tenacity, linked to unbounded curiosity, as it is by those all too noticeable balancing acts around recognition, motivation and self-esteem.
"Ah, those strange people who have the courage to be unhappy. *Are* they unhappy, by the way?"
Alice James, *Diary*, 1889
What might be the alchemy that transposes suffering, or mere contentment, into happiness? Most artists come to understand and hold to one ineradicable consolation: every type of experience, without exception, contains food for thought, material for contemplation, a lesson in life. Perhaps their acrobatic feats of regeneration and renewal are as much explained by this tenacity, linked to unbounded curiosity, as it is by those all too noticeable balancing acts around recognition, motivation and self-esteem.
Friday, September 30
Reading
"There is hardly any grief that an hour's reading will not dissipate."
Montesquieu, *Mes Pensees*, c. 1722-55.
Woman reading [click here]
*****************************************
Jordan Stempleman's
poetry and images plus
Kari Edwards' new blog
featured now on
Chris Murray's Tex Files [click here]
"There is hardly any grief that an hour's reading will not dissipate."
Montesquieu, *Mes Pensees*, c. 1722-55.
![Woman reading [click here]](http://www.britishcouncil.hr/noveslike/knjiga4.jpg){kind=link}
Woman reading [click here]
*****************************************
Jordan Stempleman's
poetry and images plus
Kari Edwards' new blog
featured now on
Chris Murray's Tex Files [click here]
Friday, September 23
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Blogger
Certain sites of reading project a promise of intimacy- the reader knowing full well that some degree of suspension of disbelief will be expected; but so what, nearly any intriguing read asks for some of that. Such intimacy, intuited from the first moments- at first sight, so to speak- immediately invites thoughts about possible time and frequency factors- where and and how often to hang out, for example.
More words are there and you come back to read again. A factor of possible interaction now imposes itself or is suggested. This time, as it happens, no stickiness or embarrassment, it's comfortable in fact, you don't even think that much yet about the content, though it's intriguing, especially from the standpoint of some early ambience of fitting in. It's a room you can hang out in for a bit - while that other place comes across more like a workout space, for example, ithe way a gym is intimate but the object being so much on self-improvement or strengthening and alert presence- you go but you don't necessarily linger.
With intimacy, connection, warmth, familiarity almost invariably trump revelation- true, both are present, but the revelations themselves seem to some degree to want to provoke chat not mere "response", and ultimately, some sort of involvement- after all you yourself do these things as well, and with a similar sense of pleasure and satisfaction: you too go to openings, you eat, you identify passages in poems you return to, you recognize, greet, mention artists. A book like this recently made me feel so welcome it actually got me past a whole day, maybe even a longer period of doldrums and whining.
I picked up Michael Coffey's *cmyk* at St Mark's when I first got back from a longish vacation in Provincetown. Immediately I was more enmeshed in thinking about New York than I expected to be reading a book of poetry, in particular its references to the lives and deaths of literary figures, many known personally to me, opening the book as I did just now to the line:"Half-lamenting the passing of Pessoa and Armand Schwerner." Armand was a close friend, a deeply influential poet for me and many others, so I personally appreciated this, that is, Coffey's projection of the simultaneous (literary) reference/ greeting and (personal/literary) grieving. By now I realized i'd been immersed in an intimate space and though I put the book down for some reason and wandered a bit around the bookstore, I soon picked it up and came back. This time I read it through completely, hungrily looking for references (Coffey once remarked to me he had noticed he himself had appeared as a sort of cameo in a book of mine, titled -Theoretical Objects- where he shows up as "the guy with the moustache" (the face hair is gone now) that I recognized at events and kept noticing and got curious about. Coffey mentions poets in the book including Ted Berrigan, Jackson Mac Low and Bruce Andrews, focusing on his affection for sonnets. Artists too, like Tim Hawkinson and Vito Acconci- so the book space intimately enters the art space, and eventually gets around to the restaurant space- a diary of menus and meals and social moments. But these intimacies, redolant as they are in some way with a nostalgia for the old New York School fondness for immediacy of experience, are not presented here exactly as such. In -cmyk-, casualness is less offhand, though still not all that earnest, or "cloying", but perhaps neighborly (maybe slightly like the way John Godfrey can be neighborly in some of his books- evoking the street and chararacter of the Lower East Side) - factually, meticulously detailed, while remaining emotionally substantial. Somewhat similar to a social visit, the way bloggers at first thought of people coming over to their blog as being like a social visit. He quotes Warhol:
"There is hardlly a better way of describing the situation of the late twentieth century artist who has everything at his disposal but for whom nothing is really present as he can no longer grasp the depth, all that has survived of The Last Supper's spiritual wealth, its spiritual substance are carbohydrates and that which, apart from pizza qualifies worldwide as Italian fastfood cuisine."
-Carla Schlulz-Hoffman, p 11 Warhols Last Supper
"Where do Italian art and culture intersect in your mind?
Andy: "Spaghetti?"
For its voyage through the abundant and various humidities, admixtures and intertwinings of writing the reading experience as an exploration of various doors-including doors, archways and entranceways constructed of intricate and intriguing typographical designs crafted by a master of such entwinings- Guy Bennett. -cmyk- proposes the seeming possiblity of a book as a temporary domicile: an enticing place to hang out and wander about within, with clues and/as memories popping up around to make you wonder if it might yet offer itself to you as a frequent stay. Early on, though, Coffey does drop a suggestion given such an open invitation, a certain requirement: you'd at least have to know how to hang out with a group of friends and have a relaxed beer.
O Books 2005
typesetting by Guy Bennet
cover by Rebecca Smith
Certain sites of reading project a promise of intimacy- the reader knowing full well that some degree of suspension of disbelief will be expected; but so what, nearly any intriguing read asks for some of that. Such intimacy, intuited from the first moments- at first sight, so to speak- immediately invites thoughts about possible time and frequency factors- where and and how often to hang out, for example.
More words are there and you come back to read again. A factor of possible interaction now imposes itself or is suggested. This time, as it happens, no stickiness or embarrassment, it's comfortable in fact, you don't even think that much yet about the content, though it's intriguing, especially from the standpoint of some early ambience of fitting in. It's a room you can hang out in for a bit - while that other place comes across more like a workout space, for example, ithe way a gym is intimate but the object being so much on self-improvement or strengthening and alert presence- you go but you don't necessarily linger.
With intimacy, connection, warmth, familiarity almost invariably trump revelation- true, both are present, but the revelations themselves seem to some degree to want to provoke chat not mere "response", and ultimately, some sort of involvement- after all you yourself do these things as well, and with a similar sense of pleasure and satisfaction: you too go to openings, you eat, you identify passages in poems you return to, you recognize, greet, mention artists. A book like this recently made me feel so welcome it actually got me past a whole day, maybe even a longer period of doldrums and whining.
I picked up Michael Coffey's *cmyk* at St Mark's when I first got back from a longish vacation in Provincetown. Immediately I was more enmeshed in thinking about New York than I expected to be reading a book of poetry, in particular its references to the lives and deaths of literary figures, many known personally to me, opening the book as I did just now to the line:"Half-lamenting the passing of Pessoa and Armand Schwerner." Armand was a close friend, a deeply influential poet for me and many others, so I personally appreciated this, that is, Coffey's projection of the simultaneous (literary) reference/ greeting and (personal/literary) grieving. By now I realized i'd been immersed in an intimate space and though I put the book down for some reason and wandered a bit around the bookstore, I soon picked it up and came back. This time I read it through completely, hungrily looking for references (Coffey once remarked to me he had noticed he himself had appeared as a sort of cameo in a book of mine, titled -Theoretical Objects- where he shows up as "the guy with the moustache" (the face hair is gone now) that I recognized at events and kept noticing and got curious about. Coffey mentions poets in the book including Ted Berrigan, Jackson Mac Low and Bruce Andrews, focusing on his affection for sonnets. Artists too, like Tim Hawkinson and Vito Acconci- so the book space intimately enters the art space, and eventually gets around to the restaurant space- a diary of menus and meals and social moments. But these intimacies, redolant as they are in some way with a nostalgia for the old New York School fondness for immediacy of experience, are not presented here exactly as such. In -cmyk-, casualness is less offhand, though still not all that earnest, or "cloying", but perhaps neighborly (maybe slightly like the way John Godfrey can be neighborly in some of his books- evoking the street and chararacter of the Lower East Side) - factually, meticulously detailed, while remaining emotionally substantial. Somewhat similar to a social visit, the way bloggers at first thought of people coming over to their blog as being like a social visit. He quotes Warhol:
"There is hardlly a better way of describing the situation of the late twentieth century artist who has everything at his disposal but for whom nothing is really present as he can no longer grasp the depth, all that has survived of The Last Supper's spiritual wealth, its spiritual substance are carbohydrates and that which, apart from pizza qualifies worldwide as Italian fastfood cuisine."
-Carla Schlulz-Hoffman, p 11 Warhols Last Supper
"Where do Italian art and culture intersect in your mind?
Andy: "Spaghetti?"
For its voyage through the abundant and various humidities, admixtures and intertwinings of writing the reading experience as an exploration of various doors-including doors, archways and entranceways constructed of intricate and intriguing typographical designs crafted by a master of such entwinings- Guy Bennett. -cmyk- proposes the seeming possiblity of a book as a temporary domicile: an enticing place to hang out and wander about within, with clues and/as memories popping up around to make you wonder if it might yet offer itself to you as a frequent stay. Early on, though, Coffey does drop a suggestion given such an open invitation, a certain requirement: you'd at least have to know how to hang out with a group of friends and have a relaxed beer.
O Books 2005
typesetting by Guy Bennet
cover by Rebecca Smith
Wednesday, September 21
Dreams and Nightmares
The important work of Ligorano/Reese, now on view at Cooper Union and elsewhere (see below), is critical, probing, sharply satiric of American politics today. We checked out a show based on a book by Joel Sternfeld, -Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America-, on view September 16- October 22
at Luhring Augustine, 531 West 24th Street, NYC 10011 (212) 206-9100. Thankfully, for those of
you who can't get to the show, you can purchase or look at the book, which is well worth seeing and having. The show concerns experimental utopian communities across the United States, focusing both on their use of space and housing and on the essence of their communal ideals, structures and activities. This show comes at a crucial moment in US history, when it can be best described, perhaps, as a dystopia. There are at least 40 huge photographs on view, each accompanied by an excellently written, lengthy description of the history of the community. Some are well known, others obscure. The link to the New York Times review of 9/18 is: Mostly Lost [click here]
Another hightly recommended show now at Caren Golden Fine Art, 539 West 23rd Street, NY, NY 10011, tel: (212)727-8304 is Tom Burkhardt's *Full Stop* Here Tom Burhardt has wittly reconstructed an entire 50's style artist's studio, replete with pot-bellied stove, book and record shelves, numerous details all nearly full scale and constructed out of cardboard! It is dedicated to his father, Rudy Burkhardt, among others. See it on Tuesdays- Saturdays 11-6 pm. Some of Tom Burkhardt's excellent small paintings are on view in the show also.
If you're in Chelsea, make sure to check out this excellent gallery devoted completely to collage: Jeremy Lawson, 525 West 24th Street (212) 627-6000. On view until October15 are the fascinating collages of Rita Ackerman.
The important work of Ligorano/Reese, now on view at Cooper Union and elsewhere (see below), is critical, probing, sharply satiric of American politics today. We checked out a show based on a book by Joel Sternfeld, -Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America-, on view September 16- October 22
at Luhring Augustine, 531 West 24th Street, NYC 10011 (212) 206-9100. Thankfully, for those of
you who can't get to the show, you can purchase or look at the book, which is well worth seeing and having. The show concerns experimental utopian communities across the United States, focusing both on their use of space and housing and on the essence of their communal ideals, structures and activities. This show comes at a crucial moment in US history, when it can be best described, perhaps, as a dystopia. There are at least 40 huge photographs on view, each accompanied by an excellently written, lengthy description of the history of the community. Some are well known, others obscure. The link to the New York Times review of 9/18 is: Mostly Lost [click here]
Another hightly recommended show now at Caren Golden Fine Art, 539 West 23rd Street, NY, NY 10011, tel: (212)727-8304 is Tom Burkhardt's *Full Stop* Here Tom Burhardt has wittly reconstructed an entire 50's style artist's studio, replete with pot-bellied stove, book and record shelves, numerous details all nearly full scale and constructed out of cardboard! It is dedicated to his father, Rudy Burkhardt, among others. See it on Tuesdays- Saturdays 11-6 pm. Some of Tom Burkhardt's excellent small paintings are on view in the show also.
If you're in Chelsea, make sure to check out this excellent gallery devoted completely to collage: Jeremy Lawson, 525 West 24th Street (212) 627-6000. On view until October15 are the fascinating collages of Rita Ackerman.
Sunday, September 18
A Knock on The Door
The collaborative art team Marshall Reese and Nora Ligorano have a recent work
Ligorano/Reese
Pure Products USA [click here]
up at a literally dynamite
art show called *A Knock at The Door* at
Cooper Union
A Knock on The Door [click here]
The show-and the Ligorano/Reese mug shots
were featured both on a recent
cover of the New York Post (reviling
it, of course, as dishonoring the losses
of 9/11) and a surprisingly respectful
review in a recent issue of the Art section
of the New York Times. The Ligorano/Reese
work was the lead-off photo in the Times
review!
This is a must-see show!
The collaborative art team Marshall Reese and Nora Ligorano have a recent work
Ligorano/Reese
Pure Products USA [click here]
up at a literally dynamite
art show called *A Knock at The Door* at
Cooper Union
A Knock on The Door [click here]
The show-and the Ligorano/Reese mug shots
were featured both on a recent
cover of the New York Post (reviling
it, of course, as dishonoring the losses
of 9/11) and a surprisingly respectful
review in a recent issue of the Art section
of the New York Times. The Ligorano/Reese
work was the lead-off photo in the Times
review!
This is a must-see show!
Sunday, August 7
Blankness
'Bear with me. I know that I sometimes stray from the point, but unless I write down things as they occur to me, I feel I wil lose them for good. My mind is not quite what it used to be. It is slower now, sluggish and less nimble, and to follow even the simplest thought very far exhausts me. This is how it begins, then, in spite of my efforts. The words come only when I think I won't be able to find them out again. Each day brings the same struggle, the same blankness, the same desire to forget of ever bringing them out again....Memory is the great trap, you see, and I did my best to hold myself back, to make sure my thoughts did not sneak off to the old days. But lately I have been slipping, a little more each day it seems, and now there are times when I will not let go..."
Paul Auster
*In The Country of Last Things*
Viking, 1987
***************************************************
Oblivion
"No Oblivion
Someone, I tell you,
will remember us."
Sappho
translated by Willis Barnstone
Green Integer 26
1999
***************************************************
Pain
"Our hearts were filled with so much pain but this past week or so, the pain
seems to be capitulating to the point where she can pronounce..."
Nada Gordon
*V. Imp.*
Faux Press,
Cambridge, Mass 2003
*****************************************************
Ecstacy
"Now experiencing mounting feeling of ecstacy and anticipation; this is all
*leading somewhere*"
Gary Sullivan
*How To Proceed in the Arts*
Faux Press,, 2001
*****************************************************
Astonishment
There are things about reality
that continue to astonish almost everyone.
Notebook
2/24/85
'Bear with me. I know that I sometimes stray from the point, but unless I write down things as they occur to me, I feel I wil lose them for good. My mind is not quite what it used to be. It is slower now, sluggish and less nimble, and to follow even the simplest thought very far exhausts me. This is how it begins, then, in spite of my efforts. The words come only when I think I won't be able to find them out again. Each day brings the same struggle, the same blankness, the same desire to forget of ever bringing them out again....Memory is the great trap, you see, and I did my best to hold myself back, to make sure my thoughts did not sneak off to the old days. But lately I have been slipping, a little more each day it seems, and now there are times when I will not let go..."
Paul Auster
*In The Country of Last Things*
Viking, 1987
***************************************************
Oblivion
"No Oblivion
Someone, I tell you,
will remember us."
Sappho
translated by Willis Barnstone
Green Integer 26
1999
***************************************************
Pain
"Our hearts were filled with so much pain but this past week or so, the pain
seems to be capitulating to the point where she can pronounce..."
Nada Gordon
*V. Imp.*
Faux Press,
Cambridge, Mass 2003
*****************************************************
Ecstacy
"Now experiencing mounting feeling of ecstacy and anticipation; this is all
*leading somewhere*"
Gary Sullivan
*How To Proceed in the Arts*
Faux Press,, 2001
*****************************************************
Astonishment
There are things about reality
that continue to astonish almost everyone.
Notebook
2/24/85
Friday, August 5
War and Treachery
"This war has produced perhaps the richest crop of treacheries that has every been known; which indicates a revolutionary climate- a climate, that is, where the initial state of things is gradually changing and the general standard of discernment is beginning to differ from the views of this or that group."
10th July, 1940
Destiny and Peace
"Life is not a search for experience, but for ourselves. Having discovered our own fundamental level we realize that it conforms to our destiny and we find peace."
8th August, 1940
Completion and Transcendence
"A man completes a work only when his qualities transcend that work."
14th August, 1940
Cesare Pavese
*The Burning Brand:
Diaries 1935-1950*
Walker and Company
New York, 1961
"This war has produced perhaps the richest crop of treacheries that has every been known; which indicates a revolutionary climate- a climate, that is, where the initial state of things is gradually changing and the general standard of discernment is beginning to differ from the views of this or that group."
10th July, 1940
Destiny and Peace
"Life is not a search for experience, but for ourselves. Having discovered our own fundamental level we realize that it conforms to our destiny and we find peace."
8th August, 1940
Completion and Transcendence
"A man completes a work only when his qualities transcend that work."
14th August, 1940
Cesare Pavese
*The Burning Brand:
Diaries 1935-1950*
Walker and Company
New York, 1961
Tuesday, August 2
Henry Hills' Experimental Films {click here}
This rich site has a lot to offer, not only links to and discussions about the fascinating and richly conceived films of this important avant-garde filmaker, but it also features tons of links to information about many other filmakers and terrifically detailed essays concerning contemporary filmaking.
Also included are links to ::fait accompli's:: and Nada Gordon's blogged commentaries on Henry Hills' latest offering, the ongoing series *Emma's Dilemma* featuring Emma Bernstein's interviews with artists and writers including Carolee Schneeman, Ken Jacobs, Fiona Templeton, Richard Foreman, Susan Bee, Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Kenneth Goldsmith, Jackson Mac Low and Tony Oursler.
This rich site has a lot to offer, not only links to and discussions about the fascinating and richly conceived films of this important avant-garde filmaker, but it also features tons of links to information about many other filmakers and terrifically detailed essays concerning contemporary filmaking.
Also included are links to ::fait accompli's:: and Nada Gordon's blogged commentaries on Henry Hills' latest offering, the ongoing series *Emma's Dilemma* featuring Emma Bernstein's interviews with artists and writers including Carolee Schneeman, Ken Jacobs, Fiona Templeton, Richard Foreman, Susan Bee, Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Kenneth Goldsmith, Jackson Mac Low and Tony Oursler.
Saturday, July 30
Thursday, July 28
Beautiful New Books
Vernon Frazer, *Improvisations*
Beneath The Underground, 2005
"Surface denial breeds lost ampersands.
Who understands the colon's fitful wedge?
Pursuant to undreamed rhetorics the flay.
Sidestep rhythm commands. Cease and."
Ernesto Priego *The Body Aches*
ExPress Doble, 2005
"One day our names
will be read at the entrance of buildings
unrecognizable shadows
of a somewhat somewhere"
Burt Kimmelman *Somehow*
Marsh Hawk Press, 2005
"I suppose letters to the dead are common.
We need to speak, even when there's no one there.
I think of the crazy juxtapositions, the people
and things you loved. Life's a mute grieving."
Kyle Schlesinger Thom Donovan *Mantle*
Atticus, 2005
"Last-back in time
Lash-of the "future past"
Held things rung-this ring
(Too familiar) of the present's/
Seminal knell"
Thom Donovan *Tears are These Veils*
images by Abby Walton
Wild Horses of Fire Press
"I mean bark, thick meaning of bark
The actual act of cutting bark
Shot and printed"
Stan Apps *Soft Hands*
Ugly Duckling Press, 2005
"Because they want a future/
Where there's room for everyone, to enjoy themselves
Among the graves. It's a rich white racism thing."
Recent and Stunning
Charles Bernstein *Shadowtime*
Green Integer, 2005
"You can do nothing worthwhile
until you discover your own imperatives
the commands that will make
the supreme demands on your life"
Jerome Sala *Look Slimmer Instantly!*
Soft Skull, 2005
"problem is:
since we rule the world
the only culture we have
is the air we breathe
you human fuckers"
Standard Schaefer *'Water and Power*
Agincourt, 2005
"who blames the excessive heat on this damn thirst
the word property evaporates from the dossier
the word slavery not even noted"
All Warren *Hounds*
Spring 2005
"Louise is alright, but so delicious
and mechanical are my offspring
I need not worry even a poet
could name it by name"
Paul Celan *Lightduress*
Green Integer, 2005
translated by Pierre Joris
"Webbing beween the words,/
their time-halo-"
Clayton Couch *Artificial Lure*
effing press, 2005
"poems cast and collapsed into one life's misgivings/
does anyone live long enough to forget the whole song?"
Brother Tom Murphy, *finish . your phrase.
first line index. 03*
cat press, 2005
"some neil young in the morning...
versions of life's worth"
Mike Kelleher, *To Be Sung*
Blaze Vox, 2005
"I'll fuck anything
that moves.
But everything
is still"
edited by Vincent Katz
*Vanitas 1: The State*
"Comes to an end. Disestablished path. *maybe baby*/
token analytic muse in the glove compartment"- Ann Lauterbach
edited by Douglas Messerli
*the PiP Anthology of World Poetry
Volume 5: Intersections: Innovative Poetry
of Southern California*
Green Integer, 2005
"fried brains and all, dumbfounded
in Los Angeles, where mosquitoes drowse
in noonday heat, bloodlust drained from
tropical eyes"- Wanda Coleman
Gary Sullivan *Japanese Notebook*
Elsewhere #1, 2005
"There are so many people, so many dreams"
edited by Jordan Davis
The Hat #6, 2005
"Not something you have. Not something you are. Not even a/
medium in which you swim. Then what"- Jonathan Mayhew
edited by Kyle Schlesinger, Sasha Steenson, Gordon Hatfield
Kiosk #4, 2005
"I must be anachronistic to be so silent
in the face of these empty signs"- Michael Davidson
Ann Lauterbach *Hum*
Penguin, 2005
"*Ladies and gentlemen, rock 'n roll.*"
Kimberly Lyons, *Saline*
Instance, 2005
"At night, with a fever, the smell is of my own tongue,
swollen and of a washrag."
[for Steve Evans]
*************************************************************
Thought for The Day: The Good News
ecritures bleues (Laura Carter) {click here}
Vernon Frazer, *Improvisations*
Beneath The Underground, 2005
"Surface denial breeds lost ampersands.
Who understands the colon's fitful wedge?
Pursuant to undreamed rhetorics the flay.
Sidestep rhythm commands. Cease and."
Ernesto Priego *The Body Aches*
ExPress Doble, 2005
"One day our names
will be read at the entrance of buildings
unrecognizable shadows
of a somewhat somewhere"
Burt Kimmelman *Somehow*
Marsh Hawk Press, 2005
"I suppose letters to the dead are common.
We need to speak, even when there's no one there.
I think of the crazy juxtapositions, the people
and things you loved. Life's a mute grieving."
Kyle Schlesinger Thom Donovan *Mantle*
Atticus, 2005
"Last-back in time
Lash-of the "future past"
Held things rung-this ring
(Too familiar) of the present's/
Seminal knell"
Thom Donovan *Tears are These Veils*
images by Abby Walton
Wild Horses of Fire Press
"I mean bark, thick meaning of bark
The actual act of cutting bark
Shot and printed"
Stan Apps *Soft Hands*
Ugly Duckling Press, 2005
"Because they want a future/
Where there's room for everyone, to enjoy themselves
Among the graves. It's a rich white racism thing."
Recent and Stunning
Charles Bernstein *Shadowtime*
Green Integer, 2005
"You can do nothing worthwhile
until you discover your own imperatives
the commands that will make
the supreme demands on your life"
Jerome Sala *Look Slimmer Instantly!*
Soft Skull, 2005
"problem is:
since we rule the world
the only culture we have
is the air we breathe
you human fuckers"
Standard Schaefer *'Water and Power*
Agincourt, 2005
"who blames the excessive heat on this damn thirst
the word property evaporates from the dossier
the word slavery not even noted"
All Warren *Hounds*
Spring 2005
"Louise is alright, but so delicious
and mechanical are my offspring
I need not worry even a poet
could name it by name"
Paul Celan *Lightduress*
Green Integer, 2005
translated by Pierre Joris
"Webbing beween the words,/
their time-halo-"
Clayton Couch *Artificial Lure*
effing press, 2005
"poems cast and collapsed into one life's misgivings/
does anyone live long enough to forget the whole song?"
Brother Tom Murphy, *finish . your phrase.
first line index. 03*
cat press, 2005
"some neil young in the morning...
versions of life's worth"
Mike Kelleher, *To Be Sung*
Blaze Vox, 2005
"I'll fuck anything
that moves.
But everything
is still"
edited by Vincent Katz
*Vanitas 1: The State*
"Comes to an end. Disestablished path. *maybe baby*/
token analytic muse in the glove compartment"- Ann Lauterbach
edited by Douglas Messerli
*the PiP Anthology of World Poetry
Volume 5: Intersections: Innovative Poetry
of Southern California*
Green Integer, 2005
"fried brains and all, dumbfounded
in Los Angeles, where mosquitoes drowse
in noonday heat, bloodlust drained from
tropical eyes"- Wanda Coleman
Gary Sullivan *Japanese Notebook*
Elsewhere #1, 2005
"There are so many people, so many dreams"
edited by Jordan Davis
The Hat #6, 2005
"Not something you have. Not something you are. Not even a/
medium in which you swim. Then what"- Jonathan Mayhew
edited by Kyle Schlesinger, Sasha Steenson, Gordon Hatfield
Kiosk #4, 2005
"I must be anachronistic to be so silent
in the face of these empty signs"- Michael Davidson
Ann Lauterbach *Hum*
Penguin, 2005
"*Ladies and gentlemen, rock 'n roll.*"
Kimberly Lyons, *Saline*
Instance, 2005
"At night, with a fever, the smell is of my own tongue,
swollen and of a washrag."
[for Steve Evans]
*************************************************************
Thought for The Day: The Good News
ecritures bleues (Laura Carter) {click here}
Wednesday, July 27
Ideas
"70. Ideas too are a life and a world."
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
translated by R.J. Hollingdale
Penguin, 1990
"Intense but imprecise memory? Try a poem"
"Dreams as aesthetic achievement: why couldn't one
take pride in a dream as a work of art?"
"Literature: disover localities that have not yet been
claimed by meaning."
"Disgruntled-because I was unable to think."
"Linguistic euphoria is needed for a poem
(even a desolate one)."
"I will not write another poem until I have a new view
of life."
"Writing- safe again."
October/November 1976
*The Weight of the World*
Peter Handke
translated by Ralph Manheim
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
1984
Pantomimes
" 69.The pantomimes of the ancients no longer
exist. But in compensation all modern poetry
resembles pantomimes."
Friedrich Schlegel
translated by Peter Firchow
Univ of Minnesota, 1991
"I speak of the Messiah whom the poet
Senses without naming, the painter
Feels without seeing, the composer
Hears without noting, the philosopher
Supposes without knowing."
Charles Bernstein- *Shadowtime*
1. Level 5.
p.51
published by Green Integer Press, 2005
To Paul Valery, May 5, 1891
"In order to give life and meaning to literature, we must reach that "great symphony." Perhaps no one ever will. Nevertheless, the ideal has obsessed even the most unconscious writers, and its main lines- however gross or fine- are to be found in every written work. The perfect poem we dream of can be suggested by Music itself; and if our own written melody seems imperfect when it has ceased, we must lay siege to the other and plagiarize."
Stephane Mallarme
translated by Bradford Cook
Johns Hopkins, 1956
"How far civilization is from assuring us the pleasures that are supposed to be its attributes! For instance, one might well be amazed that there is no league of dreamers in every great city, existing to support some newspaper that would record events in the light of dream. *Reality* is a contrivance, serving to situate the average mind among the mirages of an event....All ears, one had to be all eyes. From the mimic's stance, one hand straining upwards with fingers wide, I saw that, clever fellow! he had captured the audience's feelings with the movement of catching something on the wing, emblem (and no more) of the ease with which anyone seizes an idea; and that, stirrred by the breeze of this movement, the bear swayingly and gently erect, was querying the exploit, with one paw on the ribboned human shoulder....A lucid pantomime, vaster than the boards and with the gift proper to art of durability...."
Stephane Mallarme
*A Break in the Act*
translated by David Paul
*Poison and Vision*
Vintage Books, 1974
"70. Ideas too are a life and a world."
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
translated by R.J. Hollingdale
Penguin, 1990
"Intense but imprecise memory? Try a poem"
"Dreams as aesthetic achievement: why couldn't one
take pride in a dream as a work of art?"
"Literature: disover localities that have not yet been
claimed by meaning."
"Disgruntled-because I was unable to think."
"Linguistic euphoria is needed for a poem
(even a desolate one)."
"I will not write another poem until I have a new view
of life."
"Writing- safe again."
October/November 1976
*The Weight of the World*
Peter Handke
translated by Ralph Manheim
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
1984
Pantomimes
" 69.The pantomimes of the ancients no longer
exist. But in compensation all modern poetry
resembles pantomimes."
Friedrich Schlegel
translated by Peter Firchow
Univ of Minnesota, 1991
"I speak of the Messiah whom the poet
Senses without naming, the painter
Feels without seeing, the composer
Hears without noting, the philosopher
Supposes without knowing."
Charles Bernstein- *Shadowtime*
1. Level 5.
p.51
published by Green Integer Press, 2005
To Paul Valery, May 5, 1891
"In order to give life and meaning to literature, we must reach that "great symphony." Perhaps no one ever will. Nevertheless, the ideal has obsessed even the most unconscious writers, and its main lines- however gross or fine- are to be found in every written work. The perfect poem we dream of can be suggested by Music itself; and if our own written melody seems imperfect when it has ceased, we must lay siege to the other and plagiarize."
Stephane Mallarme
translated by Bradford Cook
Johns Hopkins, 1956
"How far civilization is from assuring us the pleasures that are supposed to be its attributes! For instance, one might well be amazed that there is no league of dreamers in every great city, existing to support some newspaper that would record events in the light of dream. *Reality* is a contrivance, serving to situate the average mind among the mirages of an event....All ears, one had to be all eyes. From the mimic's stance, one hand straining upwards with fingers wide, I saw that, clever fellow! he had captured the audience's feelings with the movement of catching something on the wing, emblem (and no more) of the ease with which anyone seizes an idea; and that, stirrred by the breeze of this movement, the bear swayingly and gently erect, was querying the exploit, with one paw on the ribboned human shoulder....A lucid pantomime, vaster than the boards and with the gift proper to art of durability...."
Stephane Mallarme
*A Break in the Act*
translated by David Paul
*Poison and Vision*
Vintage Books, 1974
Saturday, July 23
Containing Multitudes, One Shadow at a Time:
on Ferneyhough and Bernstein's *Shadowtime*
“The past and present wilt- I have filled them and emptied them,/
and proceed to fill my next fold of the future/
Listener up there! What have you to confide in me?
/Talk honestly, or no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.
/Do I contradict myself?/Very well then, I contradict myself
/I am large/I contain multitudes”
*Song of Myself*
Whitman
Imagine if, when Debussy was looking for a libretto for his opera *Pelleas et Melisande* he had chosen Mallarme instead of Maurice Maeterlink. Well, maybe if he had written the work at age 61, as is Ferneyhough, he would have, but he happened to have been in his 40’s. Anyway, Debussy didn’t and wound up having to fire Maeterlink’s wife who had been offered the leading role, but far from Debussy’s ideal for the part. I spoke briefly to Brian Ferneyhough after tonight’s performance (which elicited quite a few curtain calls, allowing composer and librettest an opportunity both to take separate bows and to embrace.) He emphasized how pleased he was for his music to connect more with contemporary literary life.
Let’s put it this way. The Mallarme/Debussy comparison is apt because if there is one point that no one will disagree with: this writer and composer have produced a work that is anything, if not nuanced. Nuance is incorporated literally into the title of this complex, many faceted work, Shadowtime. In a typical slapstick
moment after the performance Bernstein pointed out his tie, subtly painted in shades of gray: “My Shadowtime tie” he told me, with a smile.
I liked the sonic shivers in all the instrumentation in this music, and the way this composer uses sound reminds me of both Debussy and Webern. Not that he overindulges in it, but there is not a small amount of very sophisticated humor in this music, that dances nicely with Charles B’s not infrequent joshing around. This is real amiability but it is a very intelligent amiability, and, sorry, that Debussy connection pops up again; Charles’ poetic horseplay, sometimes of a mildly self-deprecating Woody Allen type, which always includes joking about joking, corresponds nicely to Ferneyhough’s music which is freely at ease and comfortably conversant with all his influences, to a point where he can echo his idols to the edge of flattery- Charles, I think, has to compensate for an awful lot of affections for very many voices with a considerable dose of irony and not a small amount of lightly laced Manhattanite sarcasm.
The piece stretches out for a leisurely 2 and one half-hours, but not a second is wasted. Like Bernstein, Ferneyhough has quite a lot to say about his literary, philosophical and musical references and he is not going to leave out a single utterance or voice. I like to see artists take their time; set the slate, allow the music to double back on itself and rediscover its shadows.
Bernstein’s focus on time is Benjamin’s focus. Bernstein is showing clearly how Benjamin’s idea about time had to do with layering, with, as Benjamin states in the passage I quoted yesterday, the way things pile up at our feet in contemporary life. They confront us, these shattering contemporary events, Benjamin said; so there is no choice but to search for their harmonic and dissonant corresponding patterns in the past. Listening to this music I never felt impatient for it to end, I continually felt the moments were constantly varied and reconfigured.Sometimes the orchestral layer was foregrounded, sometimes the words, from time to time projected on the small screen above the curtain, rang out clearly in the mind and inner ear. As Charles has occasion to elucidate in the subtitle: this is a “thought opera.” Whatever the physical objects put in front of us, sound, image, voice, instrument, human body, we are constantly drawn to their counterparts in thought and time. For once, relationships are not the main story, the human ones anyway. Each presence, from memory, to association, to light (there were several lovely LED light bars added onto the stage and curtain towards the end, for example) sound, object, thought, word, phrase, interpretation, in the past, present, or future all have equivalent significance ("And the new angels pass away/ like sparks on coals/ Just as we/ no sooner than/ we had seen each other for the first time/ journeyed back together/ from where we came.").
This libretto substantially demonstrates one of Bernstein’s, and now Bernstein and Ferneyhough’s common political values; the democratic tenet of acknowledging, and trying to identify and comprehend as many connections conceivable between each and every character and moment in the world’s imagination, as they present, and have presented themselves: photographs of books, a man getting undressed and getting dressed again; the same scene projected or animated on the screen; or a figure leaning back over a chair as in a trance or a dance; cutouts of Einstein, Hitler, the Marx Brothers, Karl Marx;all appear as actors for cameos. There are references to philosophy, but there are also references to Benjamin’s essay on Hashish in Marseilles.
We are made out of everything we have experienced, that is sure: we hunt out words for the components of the experiences and the resulting present is a weave that is complete in every subsection but these are not necessarily, anyway, as yet named. This is true in Ferneyhough’s music as well. Not pastiche as the critics
will no doubt say, but collage, collage in the best sense meaning complexly multifaceted but not necessarily intentionally so, just as in life and democratic in being open to the next episodic insistence patiently. This is all we have, as Creeley might have put it. I’m thinking of some quote from the libretto now,but more on these soon. It’s past 3: 30 am!
note added 7/24
Although I had not read it (promise) before this morning, Brian Ferneyhough adds this note about his music in Shadowtime in the playbill:
"The second aspect of this music, that makes it perhaps a little bit dynamic, is that I do a quick run through of the entire history of Western music, from about the year 1000 up to about 1825, which is where, I think, the history of the genre comes to a stop and then the individual style takes over. Each one of these little scenes runs through some emblematic classical form with nonclassical means, no stylistic imitation at all."
on Ferneyhough and Bernstein's *Shadowtime*
“The past and present wilt- I have filled them and emptied them,/
and proceed to fill my next fold of the future/
Listener up there! What have you to confide in me?
/Talk honestly, or no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.
/Do I contradict myself?/Very well then, I contradict myself
/I am large/I contain multitudes”
*Song of Myself*
Whitman
Imagine if, when Debussy was looking for a libretto for his opera *Pelleas et Melisande* he had chosen Mallarme instead of Maurice Maeterlink. Well, maybe if he had written the work at age 61, as is Ferneyhough, he would have, but he happened to have been in his 40’s. Anyway, Debussy didn’t and wound up having to fire Maeterlink’s wife who had been offered the leading role, but far from Debussy’s ideal for the part. I spoke briefly to Brian Ferneyhough after tonight’s performance (which elicited quite a few curtain calls, allowing composer and librettest an opportunity both to take separate bows and to embrace.) He emphasized how pleased he was for his music to connect more with contemporary literary life.
Let’s put it this way. The Mallarme/Debussy comparison is apt because if there is one point that no one will disagree with: this writer and composer have produced a work that is anything, if not nuanced. Nuance is incorporated literally into the title of this complex, many faceted work, Shadowtime. In a typical slapstick
moment after the performance Bernstein pointed out his tie, subtly painted in shades of gray: “My Shadowtime tie” he told me, with a smile.
I liked the sonic shivers in all the instrumentation in this music, and the way this composer uses sound reminds me of both Debussy and Webern. Not that he overindulges in it, but there is not a small amount of very sophisticated humor in this music, that dances nicely with Charles B’s not infrequent joshing around. This is real amiability but it is a very intelligent amiability, and, sorry, that Debussy connection pops up again; Charles’ poetic horseplay, sometimes of a mildly self-deprecating Woody Allen type, which always includes joking about joking, corresponds nicely to Ferneyhough’s music which is freely at ease and comfortably conversant with all his influences, to a point where he can echo his idols to the edge of flattery- Charles, I think, has to compensate for an awful lot of affections for very many voices with a considerable dose of irony and not a small amount of lightly laced Manhattanite sarcasm.
The piece stretches out for a leisurely 2 and one half-hours, but not a second is wasted. Like Bernstein, Ferneyhough has quite a lot to say about his literary, philosophical and musical references and he is not going to leave out a single utterance or voice. I like to see artists take their time; set the slate, allow the music to double back on itself and rediscover its shadows.
Bernstein’s focus on time is Benjamin’s focus. Bernstein is showing clearly how Benjamin’s idea about time had to do with layering, with, as Benjamin states in the passage I quoted yesterday, the way things pile up at our feet in contemporary life. They confront us, these shattering contemporary events, Benjamin said; so there is no choice but to search for their harmonic and dissonant corresponding patterns in the past. Listening to this music I never felt impatient for it to end, I continually felt the moments were constantly varied and reconfigured.Sometimes the orchestral layer was foregrounded, sometimes the words, from time to time projected on the small screen above the curtain, rang out clearly in the mind and inner ear. As Charles has occasion to elucidate in the subtitle: this is a “thought opera.” Whatever the physical objects put in front of us, sound, image, voice, instrument, human body, we are constantly drawn to their counterparts in thought and time. For once, relationships are not the main story, the human ones anyway. Each presence, from memory, to association, to light (there were several lovely LED light bars added onto the stage and curtain towards the end, for example) sound, object, thought, word, phrase, interpretation, in the past, present, or future all have equivalent significance ("And the new angels pass away/ like sparks on coals/ Just as we/ no sooner than/ we had seen each other for the first time/ journeyed back together/ from where we came.").
This libretto substantially demonstrates one of Bernstein’s, and now Bernstein and Ferneyhough’s common political values; the democratic tenet of acknowledging, and trying to identify and comprehend as many connections conceivable between each and every character and moment in the world’s imagination, as they present, and have presented themselves: photographs of books, a man getting undressed and getting dressed again; the same scene projected or animated on the screen; or a figure leaning back over a chair as in a trance or a dance; cutouts of Einstein, Hitler, the Marx Brothers, Karl Marx;all appear as actors for cameos. There are references to philosophy, but there are also references to Benjamin’s essay on Hashish in Marseilles.
We are made out of everything we have experienced, that is sure: we hunt out words for the components of the experiences and the resulting present is a weave that is complete in every subsection but these are not necessarily, anyway, as yet named. This is true in Ferneyhough’s music as well. Not pastiche as the critics
will no doubt say, but collage, collage in the best sense meaning complexly multifaceted but not necessarily intentionally so, just as in life and democratic in being open to the next episodic insistence patiently. This is all we have, as Creeley might have put it. I’m thinking of some quote from the libretto now,but more on these soon. It’s past 3: 30 am!
note added 7/24
Although I had not read it (promise) before this morning, Brian Ferneyhough adds this note about his music in Shadowtime in the playbill:
"The second aspect of this music, that makes it perhaps a little bit dynamic, is that I do a quick run through of the entire history of Western music, from about the year 1000 up to about 1825, which is where, I think, the history of the genre comes to a stop and then the individual style takes over. Each one of these little scenes runs through some emblematic classical form with nonclassical means, no stylistic imitation at all."
Thursday, July 21
Shadows of *Shadowtime*: Bernstein's Benjamin
Charles Bernstein had occasion to remind me recently of the interest we share in the concept of art as object. Now, I see why he might have been thinking so much about this topic of late. In his libretto for Brian Ferneyhough's opera which premiered in Munich in May 24, 2004, and will be peformed at Lincoln Center on July 21st and 22cd, Bernstein mentions Walter Benjamin's famous discussion of the Paul Klee
painting Benjamin owned -Angelus Novus- which serves as an insignia for Benjamin's voyage into time,
also functioning as a kind of abacus for decoding -Shadowtime-:
"There is a picture by Klee called *Angelus Novus*. It shows an angel who seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before *us*, *he* seems one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong the angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly towardsthe future, to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows towards the sky. What we call progress is *this* storm ("from *On The Concept of History*)
Another essay Bernstein points to in the libretto is Benjamin’s *On the Doctrine of The Similar*.This essay is about the human proclivity for mimesis, a significant topic in itself, but Benjamin rides this horse a bit further than might be expected, discovering in the outreaches of this territory a basis for a theory concerning the underlying equivalence of languages. No surprise that Bernstein would find this intriguing, given his fascination with homolinguistic translation, I happen to have participated in such a writing experiment at the invitation of David Nemeth. It is an uncanny experience working this way; there is an excitement in having the experience of creating a new language with a group of writers- each one translating the poem before, into an new arrangement of words by mimicking the sounds of the previous poem, which in turn had evolved from the one previous, etc.
Benjamin states:
“If, at the dawn of humanity, this reading from stars, entrails, and coincidences was reading per se, and if it provided mediating links to a newer kind of reading, as represented by runes, then one might well assume that this mimetic gift, which was earlier the basis for clairvoyance, very gradually found its way into writing in the course of a development over thousand of years, thus creating for itself in language and writing the most perfect archive of nonsensuous similarity….So tempo, that swiftness in reading or writing which can scarcely be separated from the process, would then become, as it were, the effort, or gift, or mind to participate in that measure of time in which similarities flash up fleetingly out of the stream of things only in order to sink down once more.” *Doctrine of the Similar.*
It is of interest to note, speaking of similarities, that following this essay in the new Selected Writings is a piece called *Short Shadows III*.
Bernstein’s Benjamin in *Shadowtime* is riddled with similarities and clues to further connections and solutions to the rhymes, rhythms and runes underlying both their works- and the innumerable tie-ins between them. Like Benjamin’s, Bernstein’s concept of literary time focuses on harmonics and dissonancesacross languages, cultures and periods. To get *Shadowtime*, you have to work the same way Benjamin worked, like an archeologist searching in the arcades and in the annals of literary history: trying to unlock puzzles, uncover clues, you listen to the similarities, you dig it.
Charles Bernstein had occasion to remind me recently of the interest we share in the concept of art as object. Now, I see why he might have been thinking so much about this topic of late. In his libretto for Brian Ferneyhough's opera which premiered in Munich in May 24, 2004, and will be peformed at Lincoln Center on July 21st and 22cd, Bernstein mentions Walter Benjamin's famous discussion of the Paul Klee
painting Benjamin owned -Angelus Novus- which serves as an insignia for Benjamin's voyage into time,
also functioning as a kind of abacus for decoding -Shadowtime-:
"There is a picture by Klee called *Angelus Novus*. It shows an angel who seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before *us*, *he* seems one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong the angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly towardsthe future, to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows towards the sky. What we call progress is *this* storm ("from *On The Concept of History*)
Another essay Bernstein points to in the libretto is Benjamin’s *On the Doctrine of The Similar*.This essay is about the human proclivity for mimesis, a significant topic in itself, but Benjamin rides this horse a bit further than might be expected, discovering in the outreaches of this territory a basis for a theory concerning the underlying equivalence of languages. No surprise that Bernstein would find this intriguing, given his fascination with homolinguistic translation, I happen to have participated in such a writing experiment at the invitation of David Nemeth. It is an uncanny experience working this way; there is an excitement in having the experience of creating a new language with a group of writers- each one translating the poem before, into an new arrangement of words by mimicking the sounds of the previous poem, which in turn had evolved from the one previous, etc.
Benjamin states:
“If, at the dawn of humanity, this reading from stars, entrails, and coincidences was reading per se, and if it provided mediating links to a newer kind of reading, as represented by runes, then one might well assume that this mimetic gift, which was earlier the basis for clairvoyance, very gradually found its way into writing in the course of a development over thousand of years, thus creating for itself in language and writing the most perfect archive of nonsensuous similarity….So tempo, that swiftness in reading or writing which can scarcely be separated from the process, would then become, as it were, the effort, or gift, or mind to participate in that measure of time in which similarities flash up fleetingly out of the stream of things only in order to sink down once more.” *Doctrine of the Similar.*
It is of interest to note, speaking of similarities, that following this essay in the new Selected Writings is a piece called *Short Shadows III*.
Bernstein’s Benjamin in *Shadowtime* is riddled with similarities and clues to further connections and solutions to the rhymes, rhythms and runes underlying both their works- and the innumerable tie-ins between them. Like Benjamin’s, Bernstein’s concept of literary time focuses on harmonics and dissonancesacross languages, cultures and periods. To get *Shadowtime*, you have to work the same way Benjamin worked, like an archeologist searching in the arcades and in the annals of literary history: trying to unlock puzzles, uncover clues, you listen to the similarities, you dig it.
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