Through A Glass Darkly

…because identity matters

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 20:25:43 -0700

on the margins of a receding coastline, of not quite geological time of guests deft although shapeless working, worked in to wrought iron railings marking property; fences, I mean, and bushes,

lots and

lots of bushes. And

delicate waves,

of guests arrive in swarms of shuffling sounds, of closed doors and openings. Fingers fumbling blindly for the key, or tuning fork made resonant.

The patterns syllabic, of this

not quite musical phrase becomes us shivering.

We broke

the lock

and ransacked drawers of warped oak,

the mold and stink of authentic forgeries, pervasive.

“I mean,”

professional frauds with the feel of surrender on their breath came knocking.

“Who’s there’ I stammered”

. Blank incomplete task too

long deferred it

sang had sung,

but I’ve forgotten

the words;

the form

shapes surrender.

Not daunting,

terrified narrative

master

I’m not scared at all,

everything;

incomplete work.

apparition constitutes

regards and propriety

requires a deft handling

of the matter.

It could be something as simple as

“I didn’t want things to turn out this way, but it is in the moment as it passes

and our struggle to write narratives matters.” I could explain it that way,

but I doubt it the best approach to the matter.

What matters is our position in some complicated dialectic form, constant

those that linger once we’ve gone off into the point delineated

by our tendency to forget the directions.”

AS the summer comes and the waves as they broke on the shore of the beach sand stretched out

touching

but

But, it requires a delicate touch, a deft handling of the matter,

of its

shape,

and its form.

It can be terrifying, but I’m not terrified,

Not at all; although it’s daunting,

I feel up to the task;

I’m convinced it could work.

That It could begin again

and do

yesterday

as only the past

only the form

of truth

the shape

of what

our speech describes

in breath.”

and the tips of our fingers

touch

and trace names

in the

foggy glass.

Trying to be funny

I draw a wobbly heart

and smiling

the image

recedes

and we are back in the kitchen,

drinks in hand.

The movement towards

the middle of the

room full

of shuffling

and standing around.

“Let’s just wait

here in line,”

I suggest,

“I mean it’s not like I wanted it to happen, but none of that matters now. We are here and it’s happened, so NOW what do we DO?”

It’s not like it matters,

“like we have somewhere

better to be,

I mean

we might as well wait.”

But no.

I want it to be more active than that,

or perhaps,

at the very least,

something not so passive aggressive.

I want it to

“make sense”

to express weary upending

in the gap between moments

here

not

just

such presence

is found.

not the idea of what lights

thin

wavering

stems

of flowers

left at

the front door

because

I am done with unpacking

I want to start putting the room together.

“But there just isn’t enough room,”

I stammer in between curls of smoke.

“it’s getting hard to hear you and

the bathroom is clear.”

But that’s

not quite it either

not the idea

of what lights

engendering words

could serve

as some sort of bridge

a means of traversing

absence and presence

from

knowing to struggling

with engendering

past filling itself

as emptiness turns

defined giving comes about

and around

and more to the point

it’s what

left when

we’ve finished and

our vision is blurred.

”When you drift off and cower and try so desperately to unload the weight of paying attention, I feel a drift or draft between us and its cold and lonely.”

You turned away

from me

“ Too much;

much too bitter …”

and the only thing that mattered

was the frost on the

windows and your skin against mine.

So I am going to kiss you,

what do you have to say about that?’

You smile.

This is closer to what it is,

well, what it

might be,

or at the least,

what it sounds like

from the room

with all the people,

the laughter,

and smoke.

“This is a bit better”

it is

when that time is already

weary lights

engendering

glaring

when absent absence

forms distance

when it

when that

time is already past

filling itself

as emptiness

becomes

the notion of what lights,

engendering word weary

upending

when in the gap of today,

here

not yesterday

is only the past only

form signifying words,

flickering words.

That don’t work

How much do I want to say. Again. “I like the way you open your eyes and look at me, a bit...

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 02:42:29 -0700

How much do I want to say.

Again.

“I like the way you open your eyes and look at me, a bit confused, and smile and it fills me,

How much do I want to say?

Again.

“I like the way you open your eyes and look at me, a bit confused, and smile; it does more than you’d expect, such a simple thing; the rails sparks

Off the track

Return

turn

Return

Turn

Again toward the heft of weight , the clay we shape

And shapes we make

; it does more than your eyes and look at me, a bit confused, and look at me, a bit confused, and look at me, a bit confused, and look at me, a bit confused, and look at me, a bit confused, and shapes we make

Again toward the rails sparks

Off the heft of weight , the rails sparks

Off the rails sparks

Off the heft of weight , the clay we shape

And smile; it does more the rails sparks

Off the track

Return

Again toward the rail:

changes

half faded. Alone

as love

my head

“I like the way you open you’d expect, such a simple thing; the clay we shape

And shapes we make

Again toward the heft of weight , the clay we shape

And shape

And shapes we make

weather changes

against the door of

as love

against the track

Return

Turn

turn

Turn

Again toward the rails sparks

Off the rails sparks

Off the way you open your eyes and smile; it does more than you’d expect, such a simple thing; the door of

space

Again.

flickering lights

against the rails sparks

Off the track

Return

turn

Return

turn

Again toward the track

Return

Turn

turn

Again.

space

and glass breaks.

swarms back like

my head

space

weather changes

half faded. Alone

weather changes

half faded. Alone with flickering lights

half faded.

Synesthesia: Genesis P-Orridge

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:28:44 -0800

Synesthesia: Genesis P-Orridge:

Tony Oursler’s Synesthesia project features interviews with twelve legendary figures in the downtown music, performance and art scenes: John Cale, Thurston Moore, Dan Graham, Genesis P-Orridge, Kim Gordon, Glenn Branca, Laurie Anderson, Tony Conrad, David Byrne, Lydia Lunch, Alan Vega, and Arto Lindsay. These works were originally included as one element of Oursler and Mike Kelley’s multimedia installation The Poetics Project. These conversations reveal fascinating insights and anecdotes from some of the most influential figures in the experimental rock and art underground of the 1970s and ’80s, from pre-punk innovators to post-punk icons, from industrial and avant-garde music to noise bands and No Wave.

Genesis P-Orridge, performance artist and vocalist for the iconoclastic English industrial band Throbbing Gristle in the late 1970s, pioneered industrial music. P-Orridge, who went on to form the experimental band Psychic TV, continues to work in music, art, and performance in New York, and is undertaking a long-term “Pandrogeny” project involving a radical identity transformation.

Produced by Tony Oursler. Questions: Tony Oursler, Mike Kelley, David West, Linda Post. Camera: Linda Post, Tony Oursler. Editing: Tony Oursler, Elizabeth Kading — EAI

This title is available for exhibitions, screenings, and institutional use through Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), NY. Please visit the EAI Online Catalogue for further information about this artist and work. The EAI site offers extensive resources for curators, students, artists and educators, including: an in-depth guide to exhibiting, collecting, and preserving media art; A Kinetic History: The EAI Archives Online, a collection of essays, primary documents, and media charting EAI’s 40-year history and the early years of the emergent video art scene; and expanded contextual and educational materials.

A poem used in Wings Of Desire Lied Vom Kindsein – Peter...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:46:52 -0800

A poem used in Wings Of Desire

Lied Vom Kindsein
– Peter Handke

Als das Kind Kind war,
ging es mit hängenden Armen,
wollte der Bach sei ein Fluß,
der Fluß sei ein Strom,
und diese Pfütze das Meer.

Als das Kind Kind war,
wußte es nicht, daß es Kind war,
alles war ihm beseelt,
und alle Seelen waren eins.

Als das Kind Kind war,
hatte es von nichts eine Meinung,
hatte keine Gewohnheit,
saß oft im Schneidersitz,
lief aus dem Stand,
hatte einen Wirbel im Haar
und machte kein Gesicht beim fotografieren.

Als das Kind Kind war,
war es die Zeit der folgenden Fragen:
Warum bin ich ich und warum nicht du?
Warum bin ich hier und warum nicht dort?
Wann begann die Zeit und wo endet der Raum?
Ist das Leben unter der Sonne nicht bloß ein Traum?
Ist was ich sehe und höre und rieche
nicht bloß der Schein einer Welt vor der Welt?
Gibt es tatsächlich das Böse und Leute,
die wirklich die Bösen sind?
Wie kann es sein, daß ich, der ich bin,
bevor ich wurde, nicht war,
und daß einmal ich, der ich bin,
nicht mehr der ich bin, sein werde?

Als das Kind Kind war,
würgte es am Spinat, an den Erbsen, am Milchreis,
und am gedünsteten Blumenkohl.
und ißt jetzt das alles und nicht nur zur Not.

Als das Kind Kind war,
erwachte es einmal in einem fremden Bett
und jetzt immer wieder,
erschienen ihm viele Menschen schön
und jetzt nur noch im Glücksfall,
stellte es sich klar ein Paradies vor
und kann es jetzt höchstens ahnen,
konnte es sich Nichts nicht denken
und schaudert heute davor.

Als das Kind Kind war,
spielte es mit Begeisterung
und jetzt, so ganz bei der Sache wie damals, nur noch,
wenn diese Sache seine Arbeit ist.

Als das Kind Kind war,
genügten ihm als Nahrung Apfel, Brot,
und so ist es immer noch.

Als das Kind Kind war,
fielen ihm die Beeren wie nur Beeren in die Hand
und jetzt immer noch,
machten ihm die frischen Walnüsse eine rauhe Zunge
und jetzt immer noch,
hatte es auf jedem Berg
die Sehnsucht nach dem immer höheren Berg,
und in jeder Stadt
die Sehnsucht nach der noch größeren Stadt,
und das ist immer noch so,
griff im Wipfel eines Baums nach dem Kirschen in einemHochgefühl
wie auch heute noch,
eine Scheu vor jedem Fremden
und hat sie immer noch,
wartete es auf den ersten Schnee,
und wartet so immer noch.

Als das Kind Kind war,
warf es einen Stock als Lanze gegen den Baum,
und sie zittert da heute noch.

Song of Childhood

By Peter Handke

When the child was a child
It walked with its arms swinging,
wanted the brook to be a river,
the river to be a torrent,
and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful,
and all souls were one.

When the child was a child,
it had no opinion about anything,
had no habits,
it often sat cross-legged,
took off running,
had a cowlick in its hair,
and made no faces when photographed.

When the child was a child,
It was the time for these questions:
Why am I me, and why not you?
Why am I here, and why not there?
When did time begin, and where does space end?
Is life under the sun not just a dream?
Is what I see and hear and smell
not just an illusion of a world before the world?
Given the facts of evil and people.
does evil really exist?
How can it be that I, who I am,
didn’t exist before I came to be,
and that, someday, I, who I am,
will no longer be who I am?

When the child was a child,
It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,
and on steamed cauliflower,
and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.

When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck.

It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,
and now can at most guess,
could not conceive of nothingness,
and shudders today at the thought.

When the child was a child,
It played with enthusiasm,
and, now, has just as much excitement as then,
but only when it concerns its work.

When the child was a child,
It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,
And so it is even now.

When the child was a child,
Berries filled its hand as only berries do,
and do even now,
Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,
and do even now,
it had, on every mountaintop,
the longing for a higher mountain yet,
and in every city,
the longing for an even greater city,
and that is still so,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today,
has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.
It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.

When the child was a child,
It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,
And it quivers there still today.

Ich kann Dich noch sehen Ein Echo. ertastbar mit...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:36:54 -0800

Ich kann Dich noch sehen

Ein Echo.

ertastbar mit Fühl-

wörtern, am Abschiedsgrat.

Dein Gesicht scheut leise,

wenn es auf einmal

lampenhaft hell wird

in mir, an der Stelle,

wo man am schmerzlichsten Nie sagt.

—

I can still see you: an Echo,

to be touched with Feeler-

Words, on the Parting-

Ridge.

Your face softly shies away,

when all at once there is

lamp-like brightness

in me, at the Point,

where most painfully one says Never.

-Paul Celan-

A scene from Wings Of Desire a film by Wim Wenders

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:34:00 -0800

A scene from Wings Of Desire a film by Wim Wenders

A Mood of Quiet Beauty John Ashbery The evening light was like...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:01:52 -0800

A Mood of Quiet Beauty

John Ashbery

The evening light was like honey in the trees
When you left me and walked to the end of the street
Where the sunset abruptly ended.
The wedding-cake drawbridge lowered itself
To the fragile forget-me-not flower.
You climbed aboard.

Burnt horizons suddenly paved with golden stones,
Dreams I had, including suicide,
Puff out the hot-air balloon now.
It is bursting, it is about to burst
With something invisible
Just during the days.
We hear, and sometimes learn,
Pressing so close

And fetch the blood down, and things like that.
Museums then became generous, they live in our breath.

The Couple in the Next Room by John Ashbery She liked the blue...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:25:21 -0800

The Couple in the Next Room by John Ashbery

She liked the blue drapes. They made a star
At the angle. A boy in leather moved in.
Later they found names from the turn of the century
Coming home one evening. The whole of being
Unknown absorbed into the stalk. A free
Bride on the rails warning to notice other
Hers and the great graves that outwore them
Like faces on a building, the lightning rod
Of a name calibrated all their musing differences.

Another day. Deliberations are recessed In an iron-blue chamber of that afternoon On which we wore things and looked well at A slab of business rising behind the stars.

from HOUSEBOAT DAYS

THE RETURN OF THE MUSES by Barbara Guest So much goes...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:17:31 -0800

THE RETURN OF THE MUSES

by Barbara Guest

So much goes away

Forms are now shades,

those solid weights, how empty they are,

mere boxes,

the whispering voice,

the ankle bone only an arch.

Peasants once sowed this valley

there isn’t any wheat here or oats

there almost isn’t a valley,

only a dent.

This morning was all concaveness,

the clouds drew back into themselves,

the clouds went so far away leaving it blue,

now we’re quite convex

and the rain is emptying itself out on me

The rain that took weeks to return,

the rain that left us on Wednesday

after tears, after dark, after that sluicing

about in memory, fishing up

The rain is here now.

’ It makes for change and a certain disagreeableness

this coming and going makes one nervous’

The farewells to buildings

and then to the hole in the ground

This hello on one’s lips

to a new perspective

finished by the end of the week,

completed a fresh horizon line

The earth is old, no longer fragrant

those planets are promising,

Goodbye, hello.

Yet you who had vanished

you trailing your garments

who went away in that last March stanza

not liking the violins

or standing around waiting

your arms circling each other’s waists

or the salt in your mouth

where the sea was whipping itself up in the corner

and foam falling like ash

You departed divine Muses

without warning

And I went on a diet

I stopped eating regularly,

I changed my ways several times

“strict discipline, continuous devotion,

receptiveness”

were mine.

Here you are back again. Welcome.

Farewell, ‘strict, continuous, receptive’

There’s that old shawl in the corner

looking like a wave

There’s a ringing in my ears

as if a poem were beating on stone

The room fills now with feathers,

the birds you have released, Muses,

I want to stop whatever I am doing

and listen to their marvelous hello.

Paradoxes and Oxymorons BY JOHN ASHBERY This poem is...

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 01:13:31 -0800

Paradoxes and Oxymorons

BY JOHN ASHBERY

This poem is concerned with language on a very plain level.

Look at it talking to you. You look out a window

Or pretend to fidget. You have it but you don’t have it.

You miss it, it misses you. You miss each other.

The poem is sad because it wants to be yours, and cannot.

What’s a plain level? It is that and other things,

Bringing a system of them into play. Play?

Well, actually, yes, but I consider play to be

A deeper outside thing, a dreamed role-pattern,

As in the division of grace these long August days

Without proof. Open-ended. And before you know

It gets lost in the steam and chatter of typewriters.

It has been played once more. I think you exist only

To tease me into doing it, on your level, and then you aren’t there

Or have adopted a different attitude. And the poem

Has set me softly down beside you. The poem is you.

The New York School

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:20:00 -0800

I don’t how much these guys are read today. I just learned a bit about them in a course I took on beat literature and “its kin.”

Regardless of this apparent connection, or in spite of it depending on your perspective, I find a lot of the work produced during this period among this group interesting.

This is a good thing because I am taking a seminar on the New York School poets this Spring.

Since I am bored and reading ahead and because I have decided to revive my moribund tumbler account, I am posting some poems by New York School poets and audio/video clips of these poets reading them…when I can find them.

Enjoy!

Here is a poem I have been thinking about a lot lately.

The Past

by Barbara Guest

The form of the poem subsided, it enters another poem.

A witness was found for the markings inscribed upside-down.

It might have been a celebration, so strong the presence

of the poem. The sky sinks slowly inside the past.

There is also a really cool collection of guest reading work here

My Erotic Double

BY JOHN ASHBERY

He says he doesn’t feel like working today.

It’s just as well. Here in the shade

Behind the house, protected from street noises,

One can go over all kinds of old feeling,

Throw some away, keep others.

The wordplay

Between us gets very intense when there are

Fewer feelings around to confuse things.

Another go-round? No, but the last things

You always find to say are charming, and rescue me

Before the night does. We are afloat

On our dreams as on a barge made of ice,

Shot through with questions and fissures of starlight

That keep us awake, thinking about the dreams

As they are happening. Some occurrence. You said it.

I said it but I can hide it. But I choose not to.

Thank you. You are a very pleasant person.

Thank you. You are too.

My heart

I’m not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don’t prefer one “strain” to another.
I’d have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says “That’s
not like Frank!”, all to the good! I
don’t wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart—
you can’t plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

Frank O’Hara

More of the New York School

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:39:50 -0800

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

Frank O’Hara

Here are a couple of manuscript copies of some early poems by Barbara Guest

And

The New York School

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:05:00 -0800

Ok, So maybe it is too much like literary archaeology and its arguably irrelevant but I find a lot of the work produced during this period among this group interesting.

This is a good thing because I am taking a Comparative Literature seminar on the New York School poets this Spring.

Since I am bored and reading ahead and because I have decided to revive my moribund tumbler account, I am posting some poems by New York School poets and audio/video clips of these poets reading them.

Enjoy!

My Erotic Double

BY JOHN ASHBERY

He says he doesn’t feel like working today.

It’s just as well. Here in the shade

Behind the house, protected from street noises,

One can go over all kinds of old feeling,

Throw some away, keep others.

The wordplay

Between us gets very intense when there are

Fewer feelings around to confuse things.

Another go-round? No, but the last things

You always find to say are charming, and rescue me

Before the night does. We are afloat

On our dreams as on a barge made of ice,

Shot through with questions and fissures of starlight

That keep us awake, thinking about the dreams

As they are happening. Some occurrence. You said it.

I said it but I can hide it. But I choose not to.

Thank you. You are a very pleasant person.

Thank you. You are too.

My heart

Frank O’Hara

Audio

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 01:33:39 -0700

Deerhunter- Desire Lines

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 08:39:25 -0700

Deerhunter- Desire Lines

A Tribe Called Quest- Luck of Lucien

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 13:55:53 -0700

A Tribe Called Quest- Luck of Lucien

Photo Gallery: Spencer Finch’s Soulful, High-Tech Cloud Art

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 13:14:02 -0700

Photo Gallery: Spencer Finch’s Soulful, High-Tech Cloud Art:

“It would be safe to assume that Spencer Finch is the only artist who can lay claim to having beamed his brainwaves at Rigel, the star at the foot of the constellation Orion. But what makes the Brooklyn-based artist truly noteworthy is that he is at least as interested in technology – from electromagnetic waves to colorimeters, solar panels to fluorescent lights – as he is in using these tools to create art that makes his audiences feel. Indeed, some of the strongest works in My Business, With the Cloud, the artist’s solo show at Washington D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art (up through January 23), do exactly that – and in such a way that blends intelligence, playfulness, and wit with an intense observation of the natural world.

LWE Podcast 61: Sepalcure

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 12:53:11 -0700

LWE Podcast 61: Sepalcure:

Tracklist:

01. Kenny Larkin, “Breathe” [Peacefrog Records]
02. Twerk, “Kiu Kiu” [Mille Plateaux]
03. Shed, “Warped Mind” [Ostgut Ton]
04. Michaux, “12£ Ute-No” [Audio.nl]
05. Scuba, “On Deck” (FaltyDL Remix) [Hotflush Recordings]
06. Velour, “Kick it Til it Breaks” [Night Slugs]
07. The Hundred in the Hands, “Pigeons” (Blawan’s Bare Bones Remix)
[Warp Records]
08. Distal & HxdB, “Typewriter Tune” (VIP Mix) [white*]
09. Spatial, “100505″ [Infrasonics]
10. Sistol, “On the Bright Side” (Scuba’s Brighter Side Remix)
[Halo Cyan Records]
11. Millie & Andrea, “Gunshot” (Stripped) [Daphne]
12. Neat, “Lime & Sugar” [Airflex Labs]
13. Icicle, “Anything” [Tempa]
14. Commix, “Be True” (Burial Remix) [Metalheadz]
* denotes tracks which, as of the time of publishing, are unreleased

Neon Indian- Terminally Chill

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 11:39:55 -0700

Neon Indian- Terminally Chill

So you want to get a PhD in the Humanaties? wow, this instigated...

Sun, 31 Oct 2010 11:29:00 -0700

So you want to get a PhD in the Humanaties?

wow, this instigated a half day existential crisis, then I got my mid-term grades and felt better.