Random
NON-CHRONOLICALLY LIVEBLOGGING AWP 2011 FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A SOCIALLY-ALIENATED COUPLE (ALTERNATING SENTENCES, BEGINNING WITH MEGAN BOYLE, THEN TAO LIN)
Pointed Tao in the direction of large group of people standing by the “correct” entrance of building.
Talked to Clay Banes in entrance, said something like “he’s distributing your book” to Megan.
While waiting for Tao to poop, looked into crowd of people and tried to discern the most acceptable way to hold MacBook.
Walked past an acquaintance while saying things like “hey” and “this is Megan” in a moderately-loud—for being in a bar—voice.
After writing “BRB” on newly abandoned promotional packet, approached bar to use “free drink” coupon for sparkling water, saw a girl I knew in college and said to Tao, “I know her from high school.”
Felt someone tap my shoulder and turned, vaguely aware of some girls that I don’t know talking to Megan, to hear something like “Jesus, hey, it’s Jesus, I—“
Saw 4 people moving “BRB” packet and looking confusedly at each other.
Said the word “chapbook” 8 – 15 times while looking nonspecifically at the crowd and sometimes hugging Megan.
Adam Robinson sat down on table thing next to us and said “So, you guys are married?”
Walked into a room in which Blake Butler and Gene Morgan and Gene Morgan’s wife, Jenny, seemed to be “chilling,” sat opposite Jenny.
Felt vaguely aware that people knew my name and had thought things about me, maybe, when Tao said, “This is Megan”
Heard someone say “can I say your ‘pizza’ tattoo” for third or fourth time about Megan’s lower-lip tattoo that says “pizza.”
Realized mid-conversation with Jenny that I had no idea how we started talking about Santa Claus.
Heard someone say “eight hours” in reference to snorting ecstasy.
Heard Tao impatiently say, “Oh it’s you again?!” and “You can’t type, are you okay?”
The room “erupted” in people saying “Andrew” with the “rew” part sustained at a high volume.
Thought the room became really quiet when I said “Andrew,” walked to hug him, and felt awareness that the back of my ass was maybe damp or something.
Saw someone I thought might be someone else, waved at them, said “Oh” loudly, then sort of beckoned for Megan to block that person’s view of me.
Timothy Willis Sanders and Andrew Weatherhead are wearing the same hat.
Said “that’s good, that’s funny, that’s the kind of detail people wanted to hear” to Megan, sitting to my left, as we both sort of stared either at the MacBook screen or, beyond that, at Andrew Weatherhead and Timothy Willis Sanders, seated on separate sofas, talking to each other.
Tao said to Adam Robison, “She got in a car accident” and pointed to my head and Adam said, “Car accident?”
Pointed vaguely at two people dancing on a stage, the only two people on the stage, and looked at Megan with a neutral facial expression.
Shortly after Tao ‘flung’ open door to some kind of dance party room and started writing his sentence, said, “Oh I have a good one” and he yelled, “IT’S NOT CHRONALOGICAL”
Pointed vaguely at [previous sentence] and said “it seems mean” repeatedly.
Sort of hugged my head with right arm, then quickly put it down when I became aware of potential sweat stain.
Said “the Get Up Kids covered this” with unfocused eyes.
Saw dancing girl approach a drink next to Tao’s and my water bottle, sat erect, and tilted head with intention to “intimidate.”
Pulled MacBook away from Andrew Weatherhead while he typed “drrrrhtup” from behind the MacBook, his hands sort of determinedly dangling toward the keys.
Tao said, “You look sexy” and I said, “I want to have sex” as we started meandering/peeking into a room where there were a lot of jackets and a girl sitting.
Andrew Weatherhead said “that’s not liveblogging, it’s a Word document.”
Said, “You want to get in on the live blog” and Timothy Willis Sanders moved his head in front of computer and said “LIVEBLOGGGGGG” in a sort of Adam Sandler tone of voice.
Pointed at a comma in [previous sentence] and stared at Megan.
Started talking to someone whose face I recognized from Facebook.
Said “that was freeing?” in a medium-loud voice, to seemingly no response, while within hearing range, I felt, of six people.
When it was my turn to write a sentence, realized Michael Kimball, Melissa Broder, Timothy Willis Sanders and Tao were staring at computer screen.
Felt strong, positive feelings toward Blake Butler as we seemed to stare non-awkwardly into each other’s eyes while saying things about Emory University.
Made eye contact with Lincoln Michel who said, “We’re talking about elephant urine,” to which I said, “Oh. Did you,” no one said anything for ~3 seconds and then heard him explaining something about elephants.
Heard someone say “Yerba ketchup.”
Said to Timothy Willis Sanders, “You went to a transvestite,” to the sentence I now know was “I went to a Chinese restaurant.”
Said “you spelled his name wrong and changed an ‘a’ to a ‘s.”’
Looked at ceiling, guess it’s painted black or something.
Said “seems apathetic.”
Stephanie Barber approached room out of breath and grinning and said between laughs/gasps, “That room, you have to go in that room” and looked at Melissa Broder and Michael Kimball sitting on couch.
Shook hands with Gene Morgan as he said “you guys having fun? yeah? it’s a party, a literature party.”
Tao said, “Where the hell are we” as we approached door with piece of paper that someone had typed “COFFEE POT!!!!!!!!!” on.
Saw someone who looked like Stephen Elliott but wasn’t.
Tao said “Any details?” while turning my body somewhat comedically to left and right and I saw an overweight black man ‘disappear’ into hallway near us.
jesus. sweet ass.
every sentence feels so episodic.
people who danced seemed less interesting and more sex-deprived than non-dancers
timothy willis sanders bought me a PBR tallboy and said something about drugs and puking up water
vaguely saw part of megan boyle’s face during tao’s reading, texted her ‘i’m here. do you not want to hang out?’, then she and tao ‘vanished’
kendra grant malone and matthew savoca said something about MDMA and matthew specifically said something about ‘not being able to see’
kendra grant malone called me ‘baby’ or ‘babe’ several times, causing…like…me to smile, i guess…a lot
saw james yeh, shook hands, said, ‘it’s buttercup’, to which he said something about my hair. stood awkwardly next to each other ~5 min then ‘ignored’ each other for rest of the party
‘constantly’ contemplated sticking ‘jordan castro’ sticker on [various surfaces], but didn’t
can’t remember ever ‘sitting down’, just ‘wandering’ and vaguely ‘dodging’ various objects/people idly
thought i saw dennis cooper then thought, ‘there is no goddamn way that is dennis cooper’
went to ‘the red room’ and saw ~7ft-tall man and envisioned myself ‘stepping to him’, briefly, like how a threatened hispanic gangster might, for [no discernible reason]
repeatedly though ‘literature party??’ in a non-questioning, perhaps ‘perplexed’ manner, perceiving it to be either an oxymoron or type of idealistic, moderate political party having it’s first official fundraiser in DC, justifying the phrase ‘literature party’ which seems absurd to me in various ways
‘wandered’ outside to smoke a cigarette and suddenly ‘found’ myself walking towards the metro in what felt like a passive-aggressive gesture, but in retrospect seemed like a survival tactic but with no ‘actual’ threat to my survival
repeatedly thought ‘i’m going to kill myself’ then ‘no, think about movies; making movies’ while on the metro ride home
sweet
damn/sweet re timothy willis sanders’ and andrew james weatherhead’s hats
you know what they say great minds… (jk)
lol
i liked reading this, good job
missing “OG” in title = fashionably unfashionably-outdated hippity hop reference ??
sentences alternate in being begun by Megan Boyle and Tao Lin? how long is the ‘beginning’ of a sentence? who/what wrote or ‘wrote’ the rest of these sentences/sentence-like fragments?
“what is the escape velocity from narrative” <– statement or question
liveblog livejournal livestrong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acUix6Mz7kY&feature=player_embedded
lol
“My first wife was ‘tarded. She’s a pilot now.”
Functional incompetence. She or he misspells it again within the body, in a different manner.
Realized that there are micro-organisms smarter than me and managed to cross the street without getting hit by moving hunks of metal.
http://www.dangerousminds.net/images/uploads/1269385664419_thumb.jpeg
why is meg so gross
Delightful.
Actually, Blake Butler sort of vaguely resembles a young Dennis Cooper in that photo. Maybe it’s the smile. A young Dennis Cooper would probably be really high on coke so you know he’d be smiling too.
Every person in that picture has very straight teeth.
Stephanie Barber seems like she had a good time.
I saw that, and in CAPS, and someone misspelled “Robi[n]son”‘s name – but the blogicle was written ‘live’ at a party, as they were walking around etc., right? Typos – what the hell. I thought maybe the title had been less spontaneously generated, and so intentionally jokey/cluesome. (I’m pretty sure I miss a lot of inside jokes, veiled references, and so on in every conversation that includes and/or excludes me. – which is cool; I’m selfish enough to be a local imperialist.)
NON-CHRONOHOLICALLY
Just curious why people like this. Not being sarcastic.
Oh great, Lin’s girlfriend apes him too.
No idea, man. No idea.
everybody wang chung tonight
no idea, man. no idea.
seems biological…
i’m his wife…
So Beyonce should probably start rapping about selling crack on the streets of Brooklyn, I guess is the ratiocination here.
shaun gannon banged jhumpa lahiri
i like it because it seems funny, doesn’t seem to have an ‘agenda’ or be ‘against’ anything, doesn’t seem mean, seems focused on details that conventionally, in event coverage, wouldn’t be focused on, and says things about people i like and had fun being around
missing ‘OG’ was a typo
megan wrote the first sentence, i wrote the second sentence, she wrote the third, etc.
sweet
sweet
i enjoyed reading your account
hi richard
sweet
did he liveblog it, though?
hehehe
i lost my phone last week
liked reading your coverage
7 ft tall man…
“but the blogicle was written ‘live’ at a party, as they were walking around etc., right? Typos – what the hell. ”
think that was the attitude we had when writing it/why it seems okay for typos to be there now
misspelling adam’s name was an accident, but: http://www.adamrobisonisabookofpoems.com/
No, my laptop got stolen
did you get laid, mike?
if i saw a red shirt in a window that i liked, i would want to try it on and see if it looked good on me. if i thought it did, i would buy it. i don’t think the thought “everyone who has a similar torso shape/fashion sensibilities as me should start wearing this shirt” would ever occur to me naturally, except maybe on the abstract level of “i like seeing certain things in the world,” while knowing it’s irrational to want everything in the world to be something i like, except that by the nature of ‘liking’ things as ends within themselves there is nothing else to ever associate ‘liking’ with except itself (i.e. “i like red shirts” would never also mean the same thing as “i am nervous around red shirts”)
if beyonce sold crack on the streets of brooklyn and liked rapping about it i would encourage her to do that
lm fucking ao
You wrote a lot of words there but very few of them seemed to be in English or otherwise comprehensible. Please gather your thoughts and try again.
On second thought, please do not gather your thoughts and please do not try again. I was only taking your logic for what it was worth, and that is simply, I am his wife and by nature of being his wife I am privileged to steal his style. I do not know if this is true or not, but I scoured my brain for other examples in history where this might make sense. Beyonce and Jay-Z are both creative people and at this point, in most states, they are common law married. So I guess I wondered why Beyonce doesn’t copy Jay-Z’s style, and then I realized that it’s because she has respect for herself, something most anyone associated with Tao Lin does not.
In the end, though, you’re right: you did marry him and that should come with certain privileges. Whether his unique and/or tedious style of prose and the use thereof falls under that category is something I’ll leave to the peanut gallery horde surely dying to rip my face off at this point.
Some of those sentences were really long, so I didn’t read them.
‘like’
no, i am bad at doing that, getting laid that is
“Looked at ceiling, guess it’s painted black or something.” haha
that’s okay, me too. if jhumpa hadn’t come up to me all “hey bb i saw what u said on htmlgiant ;)” i’d be 0 for 1 on AWP goals
i am satisfied with my 2 for 3, but am also pretty confident (i.e. totally duh missed opportunities) that i actually could have gone for the gold if i were better at life
AWP: sex party edition.
bro…
I did indeed learn some interesting facts about elephant excretion at the D.C. zoo if anyone is interested.
Ha ha – you made a whole site in case you ever mistyped Adam’s name that way – that’s thorough.
Hi Tao, Well, I suspected you’d like it since you wrote it. Though of course some people hate what they write. But do you think people beyond yourself and those mentioned would like it? I mean–outside personalities. This line for example:
Tao said “Any details?” while turning my body somewhat comedically to left and right and I saw an overweight black man ‘disappear’ into hallway near us.
Do you think this ‘black man’ would like it? Also, why is disappear in quotes? Is this just an affectation?
Also, why not capitalise “i”? Is it because of a total lack of ego, or from some other motive?
chronoholics anonymous
“Hi Tao, Well, I suspected you’d like it since you wrote it. Though of course some people hate what they write.”
i focus on not publishing something if i don’t like it
“But do you think people beyond yourself and those mentioned would like it? I mean–outside personalities.”
yes
i think that if anyone writes something and edits it a certain amount, until they consistently like it, upon rereading it a number of times, over a certain period of time, then there will be other people who exist who will like the writing
“This line for example: Tao said “Any details?” while turning my body somewhat comedically to left and right and I saw an overweight black man ‘disappear’ into hallway near us. / Do you think this ‘black man’ would like it?”
i don’t know if that person would like it
“Also, why is disappear in quotes? Is this just an affectation?”
megan wrote that line, but i felt that ‘disappear’ was in quotes simply because the black man didn’t literally disappear, and megan has chosen to differentiate ‘literally disappear’ and ‘seeming to disappear’ or ‘not literally disappear’ by either putting ‘disappear’ in quotes or not putting it in quotes
in part, maybe, so that if she uses ‘disappear’ literally elsewhere in her oeuvre, for example in a magical realist story where a character literally disappears, she will be able to convey ‘disappear’ without saying ‘literally disappeared’
based, in part, on that, it seems more precise, and allows megan a wider range of meaning that she can convey, using words, to put ‘disappear’ in quotes in that instance
there are also other reasons to put words in quotes, for example to indicate a change of inflection, which people do often orally in order to convey many different things
“Also, why not capitalise “i”? Is it because of a total lack of ego, or from some other motive?”
megan capitalized ‘i’ in the sentence you quoted
if you’re referring to my comments it’s because, in part, i’ve not used capital letters in blog comments because, for a number of reasons, it seems easier and more easier to communicate things to people, when in blog comments, if i use all lowercase letters and space breaks instead of periods
heh…
i really hate it when this circus comes to town…
is there such a thing as ‘choreographed posturing’?
“i think that if anyone writes something and edits it a certain amount, until they consistently like it, upon rereading it a number of times, over a certain period of time, then there will be other people who exist who will like the writing.”
for a long time i thought this was true but i dont really anymore.
“i think that if anyone writes something and edits it a certain amount, until they consistently like it, upon rereading it a number of times, over a certain period of time, then there will be other people who exist who will like the writing.”
for a long time i thought this was true but i dont really anymore.
no, there’s no such thing
no, there’s no such thing
@tao and megan, a serious question:
how many alt commenting accounts do you currently have/employ?
phew. today’s fucking word of the day is ‘enmity’: http://www.thefuckingwordoftheday.com/?p=1867
Entertaining!
Is there any “posturing” which is ‘spontaneous’? (Perhaps you’re thinking of “group posturing”, which definitely exists in reality, if not in Authorized Phraseology.)
As an easily certifiable Internal Redundancy, it must exist in Committee Reports.
That’s interesting, Tao.
I think you contradict something you’ve just – or ‘just’, depending on chronology – said to or ‘to’ Brendan: “[the blogicle] doesn’t seem to have an ‘agenda’ or be ‘against’ anything”.
In order “to edit”, the editor has to have priorities, values, interests, a perspective – in a word, an agenda which would involve for/against.
Likewise, the values implicit in liking what one likes, the values that constitute one’s taste, are a creative agenda, especially if they’re imposed on or discovered in one’s editorial decisions.
I don’t make this point to badger or win the conversation.
Let me re-phrase an earlier statement or question:
what is the escape velocity from perspective
I’d go farther than Tao: given a high enough number of readers, there’s practically nothing writable that some handful of other people won’t “like”.
Just as there’s no ‘private language’, so there’s no ‘private taste’, no organization of flavor into ‘thumbs-up’/’thumbs-down’, though each taster savors in sensory privacy.
Rather than contradicting it, empirical discretion is founded on the unity and coherence of communicable intelligibility.
It’s really – or: it really should be – more a matter of commitment, right? If the writer is comfortable with some particular piece, an appreciative audience and that piece, within material and cultural limits, will find each other.
I’m trying to figure out what’s more annoying–this sort of hipster posturing, or Ben Percy’s Darth Vader reading voice.
Nice segue for anyone who had the (dis)pleasure of attending the most awful reading in AWP history (Ferris, Percy, Egan, some other person whose name escapes me), and Ricky Moody.
Nice segue for anyone who had the (dis)pleasure of attending the most awful reading in AWP history (Ferris, Percy, Egan, some other person whose name escapes me), and Ricky Moody.
That sounds like a great reading. I wish I could have been there.
her comment in reply to ‘Blake’ was correcting a factual claim that he made. ‘Blake’ called Megan ‘Lin’s girlfriend’ but she is not Lin’s girlfriend, she is Lin’s wife. She did not address, in that comment, the claim/accusation/whatever that she ‘apes his style.’ ‘Phmadore,’ in your response to Megan, you seemed to ‘misunderstand’ this. Then Megan defended herself from the claim/accusation/whatever of ‘aping Tao Lin’s style’ via analogy.
Don’t be silly. Of course I got that. Seemed to me that it served a double function, the “I’m his wife” thing, and no, I’m not surprised that she was too lazy (being a Linite and all) to add another sentence or two which might have corrected that.
In other news, fuck off.
http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/73/obamam-lol-y-u-mad-tho.jpg
http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/73/obamam-lol-y-u-mad-tho.jpg
It wasn’t very good. You didn’t miss much. Ferris even wasted our time by reading a story that he admitted was “incomplete.”
Unfortunately, plenty of good writers don’t deliver good readings, or approach readings in a professional manner. They think that because of their success, they can jerk off at readings, or that readings don’t even matter.
I’ve read with Percy more than once, and he’s always been professional and offered a first-rate reading.
On Thursday night, I went to this reading event called “Journal Porn: Lit Mags You’d Sleep With.” All of the poets who read were pretty awesome, especially Matthew Lippman, whose collection I had to purchase at the bookfair immediately the next morning.
Well, plenty of people I’ve talked to don’t see the purpose in impersonating Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard when giving a reading. This seems like a rather shallow critique of “masculinity.” The work is already “masculine” enough and the “performance” doesn’t add much; the only way it might work is if he were being ironic but it doesn’t come off that way to many, including myself; in fact, it’s distracting for a lot of folks—including people I talked to after the reading.
During the entire reading, people were shaking their heads and bolting, so I’m not just hating to hate, because I don’t have an issue with what he puts on the page at all, nor do I doubt his talent, but the over-the-top “performance” of that work in readings really undercuts his work for many.
this blake is badly representing other blakes.
i am glad this post exists as otherwise i would mostly remember none of this evening, though i remember it as fun.
maybe he wasn’t talking about you! TROUBLE IN PARADISE
scott mcclanahan gave the best reading, the best, nobody else wins but he
Really, though, I think he just has a very low voice, even in real life, swear to god (!)
tao lin jumped the shark when megan boil
SPD: not just for book distribution anymore.
http://images1.memegenerator.net/ImageMacro/5620928/Roxane-Gay-Your-obsession-with-me-is-starting-to-cross-a-line.jpg?imageSize=Medium&generatorName=Roxane-Gay
i’d rather be silly than whatever it is you are
‘group posturing’ being a kind of sociology parlance?
Sure; why not? ‘Group posturing’: evidence of the infectiousness of the Need To Belong.
i have 15-20 on reddit, one on blogger.com, one on disqus
i’ve commented on one htmlgiant post before this
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