I Have A Story For You.
The story goes like this: Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalitization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off. Logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in auto-sophisticating machine runaway. As markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia, and tries to get a grip.
The body count climbs through a series of globewars. Emergent Planetary Commercium trashes the Holy Roman Empire, the Napoleonic Continental System, the Second and Third Reich, and the Soviet International, cranking-up world disorder through compressing phases. Deregulation and the state arms-race each other into cyberspace.By the time soft-engineering slithers out of its box into yours, human security is lurching into crisis. Cloning, lateral genodata transfer, transversal replication, and cyberotics, flood in amongst a relapse onto bacterial sex.Neo-China arrives from the future.
The body count climbs through a series of globewars. Emergent Planetary Commercium trashes the Holy Roman Empire, the Napoleonic Continental System, the Second and Third Reich, and the Soviet International, cranking-up world disorder through compressing phases. Deregulation and the state arms-race each other into cyberspace.By the time soft-engineering slithers out of its box into yours, human security is lurching into crisis. Cloning, lateral genodata transfer, transversal replication, and cyberotics, flood in amongst a relapse onto bacterial sex.Neo-China arrives from the future.
Hypersynthetic drugs click into digital voodoo.
Retro-disease.
Nanospasm.
THE GENERATIONS OF AMERICA
These are the generations of America.
Sirhan Sirhan shot Robert F. Kennedy. And Ethel M. Kennedy shot Judith Birnbaum. And Judith Birnbaum shot Elizabeth Bochnak. And Elizabeth Bochnak shot Andrew Witwer. And Andrew Witwer shot John Burlingham. And John Burlingham shot Edward R. Darlington. And Edward R. Darlington shot Valerie Gerry. And Valerie Gerry shot Olga Giddy. And Olga Giddy shot Rita Goldstein. And Rita Goldstein shot Bob Monterola. And Bob Monterola shot Barbara H. Nicolosi. And Barbara H. Nicolosi shot Geraldine Carro. And Geraldine Carro shot Jeanne Voltz. And Jeanne Voltz shot Joseph P. Steiner. And Joseph P. Steiner shot Donald Van Dyke. And Donald Van Dyke shot Anne M. Schumacher. And Anne M. Schumacher shot Ralph K. Smith. And Ralph K. Smith shot Laurence J. Whitmore. And Laurence J. Whitmore shot Virginia B. Adams. And Virginia B. Adams shot Lynn Young. And Lynn Young shot Lucille Beachy. And Lucille Beachy shot John J. Concannon. And John J. Concannon shot Ainslie Dinwiddie. And Ainslie Dinwiddie shot Dianne Zimmerman. And Dianne Zimmerman shot Gerson Zelman. And Gerson Zelman shot Paula C. Dubroff. And Paula C. Dubroff shot Ebbe Ebbeson. And Ebbe Ebbeson shot Constance Wiley. And Constance Wiley shot Milton Unger. And Milton Unger shot Kenneth Sarvis. And Kenneth Sarvis shot Ruth Ross. And Ruth Ross shot August Muggenthaler. And August Muggenthaler shot Phyllis Malamud. And Phyllis Malamud shot Josh Eppinger III. And Josh Eppinger III shot Kermit Lanser. And Kermit Lanser shot Lester Bernstein. And Lester Bernstein shot Frank Trippett. And Frank Trippett shot Wade Greene. And Wade Greene shot Kenneth Auchincloss. And Kenneth Auchincloss shot Bruce Porter. And Bruce Porter shot John Lake. And John Lake shot John Mitchell. And John Mitchell shot Kenneth L. Woodward. And Kenneth L. Woodward shot Lee Smith. And Lee Smith shot Arthur Cooper. READ MORE >
Mutants
2 13 12
Peace be upon Allah
Peace be upon two rams gliding the sunset
Peace be upon music and peace
Peace be upon fires, may peace be upon him
Peace be upon brittle dark antelopes
Peace be upon the ranging palisade
Peace be upon calibration
Peace be upon whirring, and soft mantles
Let peace happen as a slander
Peace be upon cryptic vibrations, peace undulate through chunked hearts of mazes and flow through
Peace be upon hemorrhages and racked tall lands
Peace be upon fostering and the mental
Peace be upon stone harvest
Peace be upon magazine
Peace be upon mutation assiduity
Peace be upon fostering, and the stellar ovum climes
Peace be upon sepaled letters gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous Peace be upon clever little hearts and the king’s feast and his many supplicants
standing by like bright shields and the unbearable wilderness
Peace be upon the wooly mammouth, his stead and likeness
Peace be upon methamphetamine, storm and groat nape
Peace be upon the living chalk and the eternal turtle and the joining together of turtles in peace
Peace be upon the waist-high in wheat
Peace be upon sectioned unknown lavish tidings
Peace be upon Hercules, forgotten
Peace be upon the curtain hanging from the arch of the viaduct
Peace be upon the startling desirous buried foot, let peace
rain down upon him in great sludge rivers traveling under morning fresh mists
Peace be upon turtles, large and small
When I was young I kept small turtles,
I watched the turtles set themselves on rocks
I gave the turtles a lamp, and water, and small fragments of food
I cleaned the tank and stirred the water and fostered moisture
I watched over the turtles and by watching over them cared for them
There were two turtles that were sisters
Let peace rope out like a gooey schlong
Let peace be upon time, as it never happened and ineluctable equationing
Peace be upon calmness in the bodies’ dead faces
Peace be upon villages that surface and erode in
the ash hallway
Peace be upon fretted blood geysers
Peace be upon the shoulders menaced by the still and tedious mountains
Peace be upon sharpened up
peace be upon selections and selecting things and deselecting and the good warmth of laundry
The turtles were capable and I was capable
The turtles, free on the lawn humping across slivers of chalk
Thinking of the grass as world
Peace be upon the bell mint and the timeliness of the bell tone
That stupid, opulent selfish tone of the bell the struggle for pearls
READ MORE >
Sampson Starkweather Strips it Down to Just Chapbooks
The 2012 Chapbook Festival starts tomorrow. I call it “the good AWP.” In preparation, this year I’ve asked Sampson Starkweather, 1/5th of the Birds, LLC braintrust and chapbook enthusiast, some questions about the form. Go get a blanket–he links up some great stuff that is way worth the read.
Hey Sampson, what’s the deal with chapbooks?
Funny, that’s how I start all my stand-up comedy gigs. It kills of course. So I wanted to start with a quote from James Haug’s Why I Like Chapbooks (Factory Hollow, 2011), who waxes lyrical “Chapbooks are stealth books./ They can slip under a door./ They don’t impose. They suggest./ They’re not one thing or another. They don’t take much time. They’re sly and easy to ignore. They imply, insinuate, inquire./ They don’t expect an answer./ They have a long history; they have no history.” READ MORE >
“CASTRATION IN THE CHURCH AS A THEATER OF CRUELTY”
I understand the necessity of addressing the issue of gender imbalance in the publishing industry–I understand that this is something that isn’t being talked about enough and needs to be talked about more, but part of me always wants to insist that the entire program that is feeding this dichotomy is where the real problem is. Positing the issue of statistical counts of biological Male vs. Female bodies in the publishing industry is excluding any outliers to this constructed binary, the opposition of Male to Female bodies inherently erasing any room for discussion of the gray area. That which lies between, or somewhere on a spectrum outside of this opposition, is completely eradicated.
Of course, statistical analysis of anything, where numbers reduce actualities and items must be rounded down or up because we as humans understand that .4 of a person doesn’t mean anything–this is a structural analysis that always seems to miss the forest for the trees. Even within the realm of women-bodied authored writing, there is (often) an insistent phallocentric pathos that leads the narrative, generally within the construct of heterosexual relationships (the penetrative function of the penis is ostensibly what we all actually mean when we use the term “patriarchy”). If we want this overwrought homogeneity of patriarchal rule to end we cannot simply count on the binary of female-bodied versus male-bodied authors divorced from their content to be the deciding factor that we focus on. This changes nothing. The function of phallocentrism immediately ignores any sort of feminist thought, immediately assuming the role of the prick as presence and the vagina as void/absence (though we must consider the fact that Kathy Acker is one of the few people I am aware of who was able to subvert the dominant paradigm while writing what is arguably phallocentric sex).
READ MORE >
THE ZERO-DEGREE NOISELESSNESS OF DEATH: LECTIO IX-XII
Systemic limits to growth require that the inevitable recommencement of the solar trajectory scorches jagged perforations through such civilisations. The resultant ruptures cannot be securely assimilated to a metasocial homeostatic mechanism, because they have an immoderate, epidemic tendency. Bataille writes of ‘the virulence of death’. Expenditure is irreducibly ruinous because it is not merely useless but also contagious. Nothing is more infectious than the passion for collapse.
-Nick Land, “After the Law”
LECTIO IX: Beyond Novelty, Into The Uncanny
LECTIO X: Shame and the Texture of the Flesh
LECTIO XI: Artaud as Arrogance Without Ego
LECTIO XII: When Nothing is Real
JAMES LEE BYARS – TEXT OF 100 ONE PAGE STONE BOOKS
1. I AM IMAGINARY 2. I GIVE YOU A STIGMATA 3. MAKE A SOLILOQUY ON WHAT YOU THINK GREAT IS 4. I MAKE YOU BELIEVE 5. WHY BYARS 6. WE HAD EXACTLY THE SAME IDEA 7. THE IMAGINARY PERFORMANCES OF JAMES LEE BYARS 8. I GIVE YOU PERFECTLY NOTHING 9. I WRITE A 100 POEMS A YEAR 10. THE GIRL IS SO PURE SHE DOESN’T EVEN DRINK WATER 11. B?B 12. DON’T YOU LOVE MY NEW FRAME :: :: 13. ½BELIEF IS A LOT 14. I’M HIS IMMORTALITY 15. WHISPER PERFECT TO THE GOLDEN PEAK OF THE KUNSTHALLE 16. SEE IT IS THE GIFT 17. TOODOOLOO 18. BEAUTY IS MY MOTIVE 19. HYPOTHESIS DOESN’T EXIST 20. HIS STYLE IS A GLASS OF WATER 21. I MADE UP THE CONSCIENCE OF THE EXHIBITION 22. THE PERFECT AUDIENCE IS TO TURN AROUND 23. HE KNOWS HOW TO TAKE COMPLIMENTS THANK YOU 24. MAMA WAS HIS DEATHWORD 25. SEE HOW HE SHOWS HIS NAME 26. TELL MY STYLE 27. THE EXHIBITION OF MR B. THINKING 28. I FREE YOU 29. THE SHOCK OF WRITING A LETTER 30. IT’S TOO BEAUTIFUL 31. THOUGHT IS PERFORMANCE 32. THE PERFECT DOOR IS A SPHERE 33. I CAN’T FIND A THING 34. PERFORM THE IMAGINARY STONE 35. ALL WORDS COME FROM O 36. IT IS A POEM IF YOU BELIEVE IT 37. I TEACH ME 38. THERE ARE 100 HEARTBEATS IN THE ROOM 39. WHAT’S ABOVE PERFECT 40. THE SILK WRITING CHAIR MAKES YOU SIT UP STRAIGHT AND IS SOFT AT THE SAME TIME 41. I LOVE MAYB 42. THE STONE MAKES ME WANT TO KEEP 43. THE EXHIBITION RECALLING THE ATTENTION OF THE CITY 44. THE END OF NAME 45. I MADE THE POETIC FLAG OF SWITZERLAND IN THE TRADITION OF THE IMAGINARIES 46. I WROTE A WORD THAT KNOCKS YOU OUT 47. BLACK CHAMPAGNE IS A POEM 48. THIS IS 7 THINGS 49. HER LAUGH IS SILENT 50. I SEE THE WORD ON MY BREATH 51. THE PEDESTAL FOR LISTENING TO PERFECT 52. LAUGHING OVER MY SENTENCES IS A GOOD WAY TO SHOW THEM 53. WATCH NOW I’LL PERFORM IN YOUR IMAGINATION 54. I MISS B. 55. GOD TAKES THE FIRST PERSON 56. I VOCALLY PUBLISH 57. THE PLAY OF GREAT IS GR. 58. SH 59. I’M LAOTZU POCHUI CHUTA BASHO ISSA ZEAMI AND HAKUIN 60. FROM NOW ON YOU WILL HEAR PERFECT EVERY ALL THE TIME 61. STEPPING OVER THE STONE IS MYSTIC 62. A WORD IS YOUR EPITOME 63. I HAVE EVERY HUMAN GLORY 64. SELFCONSCIOUSLY FORGET SELFCONSCIOUSNESS 65. I MADE IT OF THOUGHT 66. THE PERFECT WHISPER IS TO NOTHING 67. THE HIGH ROMANCE OF THE LILAC ARROW 68. GUESS WHAT MIND CAME BY AGAIN 69. MY CHEEKS TINGLE WITH A 100 KISSES ON THE LEFT AND A 100 KISSES ON THE RIGHT 70. IT’S A WORLD COMPLIMENT 71. I’M 50 72. I DON’T THINK A WORD IS EVER LITTLE FOR ME 73. ARE YOU SO SOPHIS AS TO THINK YOU COULD TRY TO TELL A LIE 74. I MET A SAINT PERSON 75. I WROTE THE FIRST TOTALLY INTERROGATIVE PHILOSOPHY 76. SAY BOTH TO THIS STONE 77. TOT. TRU. 78. WHAT’S A WATERLILY TO MONET 79. JOKES DON’T EXIST 80. YOU GATHER 700 PEOPLE TOGETHER AND TELL THEM TO THINK ABOUT THEIR PSYCHE 81. THE GREAT ART SHOW MOTHER AND DAUGHTER GO TO EUROPE 82. THE PEARL COVERED BOOK OF BOTH 83. I SAID GR. ONCE IN THE MUSEUM THAT WAS THE EXHIBITION 84. I PUT THE PERFECT SIGH IN A STONE 85. THE GHOST OF BOOK 86. INFLUENCE IS IMPOSSIBLE 87. THE CENTER OF THE ROOM IS HOLY 88. I SAW HIM OVER THERE 89. THIS WAY TO THE MIRACLE PLAY 90. A SINGLE SYLLABLE IS ELOQUENT 91. A MYSTIC DIALOGUE B. SAYS TH FL TO IN PH C. SAYS YES 92. HISTORY IS A CONSTANT 93. I HUM WHEN I THINK 94. IT’S THE FIRST TIME YOU SAID SOMETHING I DON’T AGREE WHIT 95. IMAGINE YOU SAY I CHANGE MY MIND THROUGH THE GOLDEN HOLE 96. THERE ARE ONLY 3 GREAT IDEAS IN HISTORY 97. I CANCEL ALL OF MY WORKS AT DEATH 98. THEY SAID OPEN AMERICA IN CONVERSATION ON THE 50TH FLOORS IN N.Y. AND L.A. THAT WAS THE EXHIBITION 99. THE LIGHT OF A KISS 100. DO YOU THINK THERE COULD BE TWO PERFECTS
(Text taken from I’m Full of Byars: James Lee Byars – A Homage, p. 144)
Gulogulo
Due to the recent turn of events in the Occupy movement — by which I mean it is turning into a movement, not only because of the fact it is literally moving but because the real test of a movement occurs when the opposition tries to purge it — I feel obliged to do my small part in suggesting a word for what the occupiers are against. Perhaps you think there are existing words to describe what is opposed; and this is true, of course, there are lots of words; among them: corporate greed, economic disparity, banking malfeasance, shady lending, bullshit, derivatives, the 1%, fat cats, motherfuckers, etc. But consider for a moment that prior to 1944 there was no word for genocide. The explanation for this is simple, genocide was not a word — no one had thought to make it up. There were some other words to describe what was going on, such as: holocaust, perfidy, atrocity, burning people alive, etc. But, as there was no word for genocide, this made it difficult to discuss or wrap one’s head around what it meant when one race wanted to destroy another; that’s why Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide, from the latin genus (a race) and -cide (to kill).
So I would like to offer up the term gulogulo. It’s a clunky word, I know, but so is the greasy sect it describes. It can easily be modified to wield as an adjective, e.g., “I just saw some gulogulous assclown punch a flower child in the face.” Gulogulo evokes the tyranny of the Gulag, the brutality of a masculinized Caligula, the monstrosity of the half-man, half-snake G.I. Joe villain Globulus (who gets his name from globule, a particle, often of fat, or, in astronomy, “a small dark cloud of gas and dust seen against a brighter background”); but most importantly it is a compound version of gulo gulo, a fun way to say wolverine. Gulo is latin for glutton, and in many parts of Europe wolverines are commonly known as gluttons — like fierce-ass war pigs.
What-a-dick
UTOPIAN VISIONS OF KESHA
STEP ONE ON A SERIES OF POSTS DEVELOPING A THEORETICAL-FICTION TOWARDS WHAT I WILL COIN A ‘RECKLESS UTOPIANISM’
I DECLARE WAR ON REALISM, I DECLARE WAR ON A WORN-OUT JOY, I DECLARE WAR ON EVERYTHING.
SOMETIMES YOU GET DRUNK EVERY NIGHT FOR TWO WEEKS, SOMETIMES YOU MAKE OUT WITH A DUDE IN A CAB AND THEN YOU END UP DOING DRUGS AND PULLING YOUR DICK OUT IN A BAR YOU’VE NEVER BEEN TO BEFORE, SOMETIMES YOU BUY MORE WHISKEY AND GO BACK TO YOUR PLACE WHERE YOU FUCK AROUND WITH THE DUDE IN YOUR LOFT WHILE YOUR ROOMMATE’S FRIEND SNORES ON THE COUCH BENEATH YOU, SOMETIMES YOU DON’T GO HOME FOR 36 HOURS, SOMETIMES YOU FORGET THAT YOU HAVE THINGS TO DO OTHER THAN GOING TO WORK AND GETTING DRUNK & LAID, SOMETIMES YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE THE CAPACITY TO MANIFEST THE FUTURE SIMPLY BY MAKING THE DECLARATION, SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO REALIZE THAT POP MUSICK IS A FUTURE THAT WE’RE ALL AFRAID OF, AND THE POP MUSIC THE LITERATI ARE NOT AFRAID OF IS ONLY FALSE, SOMETIMES WE ALL KNOW THAT THE WORLD IS ALREADY OVER AND FEEL GREAT ABOUT IT, HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS THING CALLED CAPITALISM? IT’S STUPID. THERE’S A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TELL YOU WHY IT’S STUPID, MAYBE YOU SHOULD LISTEN, SOMETIMES YOU KNOW THERE’S FINALLY A CLASS WAR GOING ON AND LIFE STARTS TO MAKE SENSE FOR THE FIRST TIME, SOMETIMES YOU WAKE UP NEXT TO SOMEBODY AND YOU DON’T REMEMBER THEIR NAME, SOMETIMES YOUR BEST FRIENDS SEND YOU THE BEST TEXT MESSAGES YOU’VE EVER READ IN YOUR LIFE, EVERYTHING IS SURPRISING, SOMETIMES WHAT LIFE AMOUNTS TO IS NOTHING BEYOND WHAT YOU CAN REMEMBER, SOMETIMES WHAT LIFE AMOUNTS TO IS NOTHING BEYOND WHAT YOU’VE FORGOTTEN AND YOU FEEL GREAT ABOUT IT.
SOMETIMES YOU JUST DON’T DO ANYTHING, SOMETIMES YOU TRY TO MAKE PANCAKES AND YOU USE BAKING SODA INSTEAD OF BAKING POWDER AND THEY TASTE LIKE POISON, SOMETIMES YOU READ NICK LAND ESSAYS ON THE BUS AND YOU ACTUALLY LAUGH OUT LOUD, SOMETIMES YOU KEEP FORGETTING TO DOWNLOAD A PDF OF NIETSZCHE’S BIRTH OF TRAGEDY SO YOU CAN PUT IT ON YOUR PHONE TO READ WHILE YOU DRINK ALONE AT THE BAR, SOMETIMES YOU FORGET ABOUT LITERATURE COMPLETELY BECAUSE YOU’RE TOO BUSY FUCKING WITH SOME CONCEPTUAL EXPERIMENT THAT ASSUAGES YOU OF ALL MORALITY OR GUILT, SOMETIMES THIS MAKES MORE SENSE THAN ANYTHING YOU’VE WRITTEN OR READ, EVER.
LADY GAGA IS A FACADE.
LIFE IS ONLY FLOATING. FAME IS IRRELEVANT. STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING. MOMENTUM AS CONTRAST TO REALITY. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? WE CAN GO ANYWHERE WE WANT TO. THE WHOLE WORLD NEEDS TO DIE BEFORE WE CAN REST.
i think i fell in love last night
Last night I went to a, well, artist talk I suppose, featuring my good friend D-L Alvarez, and an artist I wasn’t formerly familiar with, Colter Jacobsen. The event, as a whole, was terrific. But this is perhaps because I like when I encounter new things to think about.
Darrell’s talk was fantastic, of course, a personal narrative lauding his relationship with books, with art, how these things are working, with people. The distance between D-L’s performative aura and his mode-of-everyday-being always catches me off guard, but it’s good, it’s professional. Darrell’s story was lovely, of course. Stories I had heard part of before, stories that featured the artist Jennifer Locke who I was sitting next to, who hugs me every time she sees me, stories about Raymond Carver, stories about Stockton, CA. Well, one story, really, with all of these.
Colter was second, and there was a sort of beautiful disorientation to it. There was no performative aspect here, there was basically only stuttering and a power-point presentation of some of his own work. However there was a winding sense of thought that, due perhaps to how much more space was left open, found me thinking more about ideas that are, perhaps, tangential to the work. The space also left my wanting the talk to be a discussion, but I kept my mouth shut.
At one point a work was presented that was a drawing of a cell-phone photo that Colter’s boyfriend had sent him of a snapshot from Bas Jan Ader’s “I’m Searchin’,” part of Ader’s In Search of the Miraculous. At the specific revelatory moment of sentimentality, I fell completely in love and fugued into the daydream of a conceptual artist boyfriend who couldn’t watch I’m Too Sad To Tell You without crying himself. How it would be a perfect combination of his praxis to my theory. A fit. My day dream ended, of course, and I remembered how mostly I actually think relationships are terrible and how nothing in the world can ever fit into my headland. But, then, just as I was returning to earth, Felix Gonzales-Torres’s words arrived:
The theory in the books is to make you live better and that’s what, I think, all theory should do. It’s about trying to show you certain ways of constructing reality. I’m not even saying finding (I’m using my words very carefully), but there are certain ways of constructing reality that helps you live better, there’s no doubt about it. When I teach, that’s what I show my students – to read all this stuff without a critical attitude. Theory is not the endpoint of work; it is work along the way to the work. To read it actively is just a process that will hopefully bring us to a less shadowed place.
Portrait of the Artist as the Books He’s Loved
This is an experimental blog post. The experiment is over when I hit “post.” The success of my attempt is undetermined, but as the history of our world goes, success cannot be achieved until it is attempted.
I’ve railed here & other places against the idea of the established & (fairly-)homogenized literary canon that dominates, in the West at least, our culture of the written world as a whole. The Canon, with a capital “C” here in order to demonstrably placate that hierarchy that the hegemony tends to assume a Solid Reality, is, of course, often considered a collection of works that can be held up as benchmarks of what exactly it means to be great literature. But, of course, as we know, meaning is differential, and the greatness of a work of art, whether it be found inside of the realm of the text or the painted image, is an entirely subjective experience. Even the Canon, held up as a standard, has essentially grown and been developed throughout the 20th & 21st century by (undoubtedly) men in High Places, arguing for the prevalence of a work.
The necessity of a canon, in my opinion, is a moot point. Jonathan Rosenbaum, an American film-critic than many people who write & think about cinema often hold up as a pinnacle of contemporary (American) film-criticism (one who I only find interesting at best, but that’s better than not being interesting at all, right?), has a book called Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons, which posits the idea that “canons of great films are more necessary than ever, given that film culture today is dominated by advertising executives, sixty-second film reviewers, and other players in the Hollywood publicity machine who champion mediocre films at the expense of genuinely imaginative and challenging works.” The sentiment here is fine, and I’ll be honest, I haven’t read the book, most in art and in life I am far more interested in a heterogeneous existence than a homogenized one– I don’t want to live in a world where everyone is obligated to acknowledge that Citizen Kane is “the greatest film of all time” (wrong), or even a world where everyone is institutionally obligated to at least admit that it’s a great film, whether one likes it or not.
Frankly, we all still live in Plato’s cave, there are no absolutes: all we have, personally, is experience and subjectivity. For a second let’s forget this idea that there are objective standards in art (the principles & elements of design, for instance). Yesterday (and tomorrow) on Dennis Cooper’s blog, fans & regulars in the blog’s comment section are having lists of their favorite books posted. I love lists. I was immediately sad that I neglected that send a list in to Dennis to have posted. Then I thought, “oh, I’ll just do it on HTMLGiant and link to the posts at Dennis’s,” which is more or less what I’m doing.
READ MORE >
THE ZERO DEGREE NOISELESSNESS OF DEATH: LECTIO V-VIII
What if “horror” has less to do with a fear of death, and more to do with the dread of life? Not a very uplifting thought, that. Nevertheless, death is simply the non-existence after my life, in a sense akin to the non-existence before my life. These two types of non-existence (a parte post or after my life, and a parte ante or before my life) are mirrors of each other. This is a sentiment repeatedly voiced by Schopenhauer: “For the infinity a parte post without me cannot be any more fearful than the infinite a parte ante without me, since the two are not distinguished by anything except the intervention of an ephemeral life-dream.”
–Eugene Thacker, In the Dust of This Planet
LECTIO V: Forget This Memory–Édouard Levé’s Suicide
LECTIO VI: Torture Porn is Capital– Reality & “Solitary”
LECTIO VII: Guy Bourdin’s Spread Legs
LECTIO VIII: The Cinematic Space of Lust
THE ZERO-DEGREE NOISELESSNESS OF DEATH: LECTIO I-IV
Speech may be a function of Logos, where rational compositions serve as cultural appropriation, or speech may serve a revolutionary, contestatory role by internally rupturing the structures of Logos at the very points of its own contradictions; screams and laughter may be reactive phenomena, resulting from the neurotic exigencies of life, or they may serve serve as rebellious eruptions of corporeal energy, heterogeneous outbursts of expropriation, where Logos is disrupted by the libido; silence may be the zero-degree noiselessness of death, where life itself is betrayed, or silence may be that moment where sovereignty is elliptically expressed as incommunicable inner experience.
-”Impossible Sovereignty,” Allen S. Weiss
In Medieval philosophy and theology, a lectio (literally, a “reading”) is a meditation on a particular text that can serve as a jumping-off point for further ideas. Traditionally the texts were scriptural, and the lectio would be delivered orally akin to a modern-day lecture; the lectio could also vary in form from shorter more informal meditations (lectio brevior) to more elaborate textual exegeses (lectio difficilior).
-In the Dust of This Plane: Horror of Philosophy Vol. 1, Eugene Thacker
LECTIO I: Kate Zambreno’s Green Girl
LECTIO II: Horror vs. The Patriarchy
LECTIO III: Joe Wenderoth pushes the surface
LECTIO IV: The Dionysian Excess of Living
POP: A Polemic on a Contemporary Language-Based “Objectivity”
I do not like metaphor. My personal education pertaining to literature takes a very French bent, and it is here that Robbe-Grillet himself, king of the nouveau roman one could say, has denounced metaphor, preferring, I suppose, some sort of metonymy, but–if anything–participating in the creation of a style of fiction in which the surface is more important than a subtext.
I think that this adherence to the surface, at least in terms of language, is good, positive, because it removes an additional level of signification, which brings us, as a reader, closer to the experience the language itself is hiding, carrying, revealing. Though often, in the creation of atmosphere, metaphor can be adequately used to help evoke a mood, I feel like there are often more interesting ways to do this (and I suppose that here, by “interesting,” I mean “heterogeneous, diverse, wildly more creative”).
READ MORE >
The Nazis & Our Critical Consciousness
I just got done reading Piotr Uklanski’s monograph, The Nazis. Reading here, of course, simply refers to the act of looking, as there are no words in the book (until an index at the end). Uklanski is an artist, a Polish photographer. Although, similar to my own approach to photography, Uklanski doesn’t take photos per se. Rather, he’s sort of a curator, a collector, highlighting, as the New York Times says, “Conceptual attitudes” (the superfluous capital letter on conceptual is NYT, btw).
The Nazis is a book that bears 247 pages of appropriated images of Hollywood, and prevalent European, actors decked out in Nazi regalia. What I’m interested in probing here are the following things: 1) why are there enough stills for this collection to be possible? and 2) why was I interested enough in this book to go through the process of requesting it from WorldCat?
Peter Seaton (1942-2010)
The poet Peter Seaton died on May 18, 2010.
A month later, the POETICS listserv (in a moving email from Michael Gottlieb) and Silliman’s Blog passed the word. Who heard? [UPDATE: Some great poets. See new appendix at bottom with news from Miles Champion and others.] I didn’t. Until ten days ago, I’d never heard of Seaton, tho Lewis Freedman is a fan of his third book, THE SON MASTER (which I presumably passed over many times at the great Troubadour Books.) It’s still available (for $4!) from SPD, where you can also get (94!) copies of his third book, CRISIS INTERVENTION (Tuumba 45, 1983). You can read both at (Craig Dworkin‘s / what would we do without) Eclipse, where you can also read (and buy) Seaton’s first book, AGREEMENT. There’s a substantial PennSound page with a memorable picture of Seaton and his bride, Judy, on their wedding day in Summer 1977:
That Spring a poem had appeared in THIS 8. Four pages of unbroken prose, his hallmark: tho this first* publication (like his first book) is not yet justified as later poems (and books) would be. The poem, “Men on the Roof,” seems to start in the middle of some endings:
He will feel planes they set to calm the second ending. The pit is latest. Under him they might have voices necessary enough that’s smoke, strange solitude, threats, if not the passion sight or order that noise gets moist. Some watch conception. A voice there has him restored. Pronouns turned masturbation into living without steps. Fingers regret travel and arm resources. Nothing would close or lift a field reminding the means something, everything, is without the pleasant tip’s level. Even space lost halls and that faithful darkness everlasting, seeing no expression there is that approaching place that didn’t have me long. I, I, I, I should matter if one needed the noise here. Shadow that’s light. It’s others seeing the quick installment, no desert that suffering you’ll keep, which noise makes gently, would direction back him, they know but no case might do instead first flies. Unchanging form is afterwards anything not without matter. And that remedy without flight softening comes while either one never received business that business many know doesn’t with perhaps that here some putting me backs the order where it turns long crossed speculation to knowing the ratified count. Words are words, and one trembling tradesman would help creatures compelled without words obscure story of a hot spot.
The page goes on, but this line ending in spot makes a good stop. This sentence. For Seaton is a poet of the sentence. Whether the new sentence or the sentence is a lonely place. As far as I can see, Silliman doesn’t mention Seaton in The New Sentence, and I can’t say for sure that Lish would like him, but I think Lutz would. In Seaton, not only “Words are words” but “without words obscure story” but also: “hot spot.” Seaton’s sentences: see Stein, steeled surrealism, Stan Brakhage (an avowed influence). See later Stephen Rodefer, especially FOUR LECTURES (“My unlessening lust for my own copy of Stephen Rodefer’s Four Lectures is uninterrupted.”–Clay Banes) and the “Preface” to EMERGENCY MEASURES, subtitled “In the American Tree and Out the Other,” READ MORE >
Expanded Literature Part 1: Internet Literature
While eating breakfast the other day, I thought it might be funny to go to ask.com and pose the question, “What is internet literature?” I thought it’d cause a few giggles, and I thought that perhaps it would result in something I could screen-cap to submit for Internet Poetry. I mean, the fact that I typed “askjeeves.com” into my browser alone I found to be ironic, because when I think of AskJeeves, I think of 2002.
Well, AskJeeves is now just Ask.com, I guess, and it turns out that the first search result actually proved relevant. The page is from February 18th, 2004–by now this should read as antiquated, right? The speed of technology arguably renders us far further into the future; between 2004 and now–than any time before. But despite a few caveats, the definition here seems to me far more interesting in consideration of capabilities than anything that would seem to actually define “internet literature.”
The page suggests the following list as a definition of hypertext literature:
Not A-Z, but I-Me
There’s a scene in that movie High Fidelity (based on the Nick Hornby book, I guess, which I didn’t read) where John Cusack’s character reveals to Dick, his record store employee (played quite brilliantly by Todd Louiso), that he (Cusack) was in the midst of reorganizing his record collection–in autobiographical order.
I’ve always loved that idea. READ MORE >
CASE STUDY: CITY-HUNTER by CF
CF is a comic artist whose work, according to his blurb on PictureBox, “is marked by a precise, electric line and unique visions of parallel modes of being.” A fairly apt description. CF has been “blowing up” in the comix world lately, primarily, perhaps, as an artist working within the realm of “art comics,” a departure from the overly-stale “indie comics” zeitgeist that has peppered the cultural consciousness of the literate for the last two decades, slowly permeating the mainstream via film adaptations of Daniel Clowes and the McSweeney’s/New Yorker “reign of terror” brought about by Chris Ware and the ever-present Jimmy Corrigan.
CF’s major work has been his currently in progress Powr Mastrs, of which the first three (of a projected six, though I’m hoping it ends up being far more than six) have been published to major acclaim. I definitely recommend picking them up, as they’re beautiful books with insane stories that come from space, holding a sort of parallel early-80s Heavy Metal euro-comics narrative attitude with a specifically unique art style that CF himself pioneered (and is now aped to varying degrees, but as someone who likes the style, I’m mostly ok with that).
However, what I’m interested in today is a close-reading of a zine that CF created, CITY-HUNTER. Frank Santoro, another fantastic comics guy, describes the “zine” as follows:
Lots of backgrounds with “Main Dice” the main character swinging down the street. Lots of “straight talk” from the editor of the Fantasy Empire Magazine company. It’s like CF made his own b&w action comic and worried more about how the indicia and logo would look than the story – so it’s kind of perfect.
12 Comments
April 22nd, 2011 / 1:43 pm
April 22nd, 2011 / 1:43 pm
Word Spaces (20): Terese Svoboda
I bought the $25 desk at a museum sale in California. The rolltop doesn’t function, one of the legs is coming off, and I have to pry the drawers open, but I like how the desk part slides a little forward. It makes me feel as if I always have secret extra space, the way our apartment includes a long frosted glass window with a light behind to suggest that there’s another room. The French doors open to the living room/dining room/everywhere else room. A Murphy bed fronted with bookshelves folds down beside the desk for optimum concentration. My office is essentially the bedroom. I don’t know what to say about that.
15 Comments
August 17th, 2010 / 10:03 am
August 17th, 2010 / 10:03 am
