My vocation [his sense, as a child, that he would be a writer] changed everything: the sword-strokes fly off, the writing remains; I discovered in belles-lettres that the Giver can be transformed into his own Gift, that is, into a pure object. Chance had made me a man, generosity would make me a book.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (quoted in Lewis Hyde’s The Gift)
Librarian, archivist, lecturer, a curator and art writer, and editor and publisher of Umbrella, a newsletter on artists’ books, mail art, and Fluxus. Rest in peace.
http://www.umbrellaeditions.com/issue.php?page=125&issue=12
My age, my beast, is there anyone
Who can peer into your eyes
And with his own blood fuse
Two centuries’ worth of vertebrae?
The creating blood gushes
From the throat of earthly things,
And the parasite just trembles
On the threshold of new days.
While the creature still has life,
The spine must be delivered,
While with the unseen backbone
A wave distracts itself.
Again they’ve brought the peak of life
Like a sacrificial lamb,
Like a child’s supple cartilage—
The age of infant earth.
To free the age from its confinement,
To instigate a brand new world,
The discordant, tangled days
Must be linked, as with a flute.
It’s the age that rocks the swells
With humanity’s despair,
And in the undergrowth a serpent breathes
The golden measure of the age.
Still the shoots will swell
And the green buds sprout
But your spinal cord is crushed,
My fantastic, wretched age!
And in lunatic beatitude
You look back, cruel and weak,
Like a beast that once was agile,
At the tracks left by your feet.
The creating blood gushes
From the throat of earthly things,
The lukewarm cartilage of oceans
Splashes like a seething fish ashore.
And from the bird net spread on high
From the humid azure stones,
Streams a flood of helpless apathy
On your single, fatal wound.
—Osip Mandelstam
The Age, translated by Marc Adler
courtesy wood s lot
http://web.ncf.ca/ek867/wood_s_lot.html
“Things are not all so comprehensible and expressible as one would mostly have us believe; most events are inexpressible, taking place in a realm which no word has ever entered, and more inexpressible than all else are works of art, mysterious existences, the life of which, while ours passes away, endures.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet
courtesy http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rainer_Maria_Rilke
I realize that I so often post works of one kind or another that captivate me but I seldom say why, as if it should be obvious, when of course it is not. And the whole purpose of this space is to articulate things in a way that one would in a notebook, whose archival function takes place on many levels — i.e., remember the work but also remember the thoughts you had about the work. And later: revisit the work and then revisit your own thoughts about it. They are two different systems.
The reason for posting Alison Knowles’ Newspaper Music is that it combines, in a single elegant gesture, so many incredible things. On first glance, there is the classic strategy of elevating what is at best ephemeral and at worst soon-to-be-garbage to the (“permanent,” revered, historicized) status of art. But I feel that has been done so often and that is not what it really interesting about this work.
First is the sound of the newspapers fluttering. Framing or incorporating that sound as part of what we understand to be the performance opens up the possibility that all newspapers fluttering may in a way be music. It’s a very Cagean idea but I also see it as related to Glenn Gould. Sounds and music are where you find them — and the act of listening plays a very important part in creating them. The real question is one of attention. If you dedicate yourself to listening and accepting this as” musical,” it can be. And with dedicated listening, you may even find structure there, where you might have otherwise perceived only randomness. (Leading one to the obvious question: Is randomness a kind of structure? If so, how does it differ from the absence of structure.)
Second is the vocalization of the news…a form of prose, if ever there was, that is surely not intended to be read aloud. An odd disjunction results. How clumsy the words sound, in any language, making us aware of the qualities of each individual voice, as much as the content of what is being read.
Third is the performance of what exists — is happening — in the so-called “real world.” What happens when newspapers are lifted from their informative function to become a de facto libretto. Where does that position the actions and events they communicate?
I could go on and on, and someday may. But for now I felt some explanation was in order. Of course, the wonderful ambiguity of this whole blogging enterprise is that I have no idea if anyone else will ever read this. (I like to think no-one will, but that’s me.) But I needed to put it in words for myself, as much as anything. I find it hard to hold on to those kinds of thoughts — I need to commit them to language so I can extend or deepen my thinking. I want to move on but not to forget.
Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they’ve always talked about
still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.
—Frank O’Hara
courtesy Frank O’Hara.org – Poems
Each one is a gift, no doubt,
mysteriously placed in your waking hand
or set upon your forehead
moments before you open your eyes.
Today begins cold and bright,
the ground heavy with snow
and the thick masonry of ice,
the sun glinting off the turrets of clouds.
Through the calm eye of the window
everything is in its place
but so precariously
this day might be resting somehow
on the one before it,
all the days of the past stacked high
like the impossible tower of dishes
entertainers used to build on stage.
No wonder you find yourself
perched on the top of a tall ladder
hoping to add one more.
Just another Wednesday
you whisper,
then holding your breath,
place this cup on yesterday’s saucer
without the slightest clink.
- Billy Collins
courtesy whiskey river
If…one has…the sort of patience specific to legitimate boredom, then one experiences a bliss that is almost unearthly. A landscape appears in which colorful peacocks strut about, and images of people suffused with soul come into view. And look—your own soul is likewise swelling, and in ecstasy you name what you have always lacked: the great passion. Were this passion—which shimmers like a comet—to descend, were it to envelope you, the others, and the world—oh, then boredom would come to an end and everything that exists would be…
It has always felt to me that reserving the mental space to think about art is a political act, but at no time have I felt that more than right now. If it seems that this blog is somewhat disconnected from the vicissitudes of everyday life, including pop culture, that is intentional. However, it is not meant to “transcend” everyday life, as if everyday life were somehow less worthy of contemplation, only to run along it like a gentle caress, exciting the hand that touches it.
This is what I’ve been spending all my “posting time” on lately. Will post more (often) soon.
