The me I was born with
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- HIGHWAY EROTICA I
- THE END GAME
LET GO Let go let go let let let go Go-------Go------You’ve got to let le let Go-----Go-----You-----‘ve got to let got to let go You’ve got to let go go You’ve got to let go to let go to let go-----to let go-----to let go---- From this point I simply play rhythmically and dynamically with the text It’s a word-scale consisting of five words and I can go on with it for as long as it feels right. Remember this is not a poem to be read but a composition to be performed as an improvisation, aloud. If I am present with my spirit and skills then I can take a theme, such as this, and develop it for a short or long period of time; immerse myself in its message, become transfixed without the slightest awkwardness or hesitation.
Cream the delights of your fuzzy oven Tap the mysteries of your darkest chamber Sight the depths of your turgid wonder Mount the flanks of your noble marble Harvest the garden of your pubescent curl Manifest the yearning of your smoldering murmur Satiate the insatiables of your tender tremble Drain the tide of your rising shallow Tender the weeping of your fruitful hollow Expunge the innocence of your trembling organ Stroke the fury of your moaning mantle Fulfill the prophecy of your proud pudendum. In the first variation, which follows, fragment A of each line is shifted up to the next line while all other fragments of each line remain in place. And that fragment from the top line is shifted to the bottom line, thusly:
Tap the delights of your fuzzy oven Sight the mysteries of your darkest chamber Mount the depths of your turgid wonder Harvest the flanks of your noble marble Manifest the garden of your pubescent curl Satiate the yearnings of your smoldering murmur Drain the insatiables of your tender tremble Tender the tides of your rising shallow Expunge the weeping of your fruitful hollow Stroke the innocence of your trembling organ Fulfill the fury of your moaning mantle Plumb the prophecy of your proud pudendum
Cream the mysteries of your darkest oven Tap the depths of your turgid chamber (etc., and then as the inner parts move up) Plumb the mysteries of your darkest tunnel Cream the depths of your turgid oven Tap the flanks of your noble chamber
Cream the chamber of your darkest delights I was drawn to the magic of John Cage in 1950 when I came across a two-record LP album of his called Prepared Piano, on a label ,long extinct, which produced about two-dozen examples of high quality contemporary music. The Cage compositions were stunning examples of an original concept of composing which may have resulted from some of his experiments while at Black Mountain College during that amazing period of ferment in the late forties when some of the most creative and innovative minds of that time were collaborating. Cage was certainly a driving force and inspiration during that period: a powerful force not only for his own work but for what it inspired in others. Arnold Schoenberg with whom he studied earlier at U. C. L. A. said of Cage that he was a great engineer but not a very good composer. That aside, he certainly was a risk taker, exploring and creating new forms voraciously. Always searching, seeking, experimenting and performing. (To my benefit he was responsible for my work being archived at Northwestern University, having sent my Symphony #1 to the music department of Northwestern shortly after I had sent it to him. (I was there last week, May 19, 1993, performing some of my paintings and working with students in the music and art departments.). I got in touch with Don Roberts the head librarian who wished to archive all of my poetry which he agreed was as much music as poetry. He remained a strong supporter until his retirement in the mid 90s. His replacement proved not nearly as convinced of the value of my work and discontinued our association. In the late sixties I began playing and experimenting with chance compositions, after being inspired by Cage’s work and reading a pamphlet, Chance-Imagery, by George Brecht, published by Something Else press, Inc., and other of their publications, a seminal book of the Dadaist Movement, ‘Dada Art and Anti-Art by Hans Richter, the diary of Hugo Ball and other books on that extraordinary movement. I had been using Dada techniques without knowing a thing about that movement. Now I felt less alone and was soon to find some of my compositions published in the huge anthologies of Richard Kostelanetz, surrounded by hundreds of contemporary experimenters in the field of visual language , no doubt influenced by the concrete poetry of several thousand years past. I’ve discussed chance poetry and shown examples of my working with this form which often is closely connected with concrete poetry in my book Mirror- Images. A more straight-forward example of concrete poetry is shown in my book New Forms New Spaces. Three poems in particular illustrate this approach: Mammalian Complex , Cross-Reference and Avalanche.
applicable credits. Alas, my grade-point was far below the minimum requirements for admission, so I requested a hearing. I arrived at the hearing with a reasonable assortment of published books of my poetry with emphasis on music and evidence of a few courses I had taught at the University where I was now seeking admission. My case was made and I was accepted as a student in the Music department with a major in composition and theory. Most of my work that year was focused on a research study I had proposed for independent studies. Composers have always worked with texts of poets and I was curious about reversing that process. I planned to take existing compositions, retain their form, rhythm and dynamics, remove all actual pitches and substitute, in their place, my poetry. So the quartets of Bartok and Stravinski, the piano pieces of Bach and a few piano pieces from Bartok’s Mikrokosmos became the molds into which I poured my language. It was a fascinating project and it enabled me to get my degree in music which afforded me little pleasure or benefit. In the late 80s, (jumping again in time) I was working on a painting that seemed doomed. It was on a 4x6 foot canvas which I didn’t want to waste so I kept lathering and laminating it with language and color. Finally I took a good long look and decided it was hopeless. I rarely give up on paintings. Most artists don’t wish to be remembered for their failures, but with my paintings, as with my poetry, I’ve never found it easy to get rid of them. I feel that what we create at any particular time is an accurate reflection of who we are in the at moment. So my flawed work reflects a flawed me; if not a flawed me, at least a careless or clumsy me. This painting seemed awkward and dull. Its message was cloudy, vague and uncertain, so I finally decided to paint it out and try again. I selected a large brush so I could get the job done quickly. As I painted it out with an outlandish purple I noticed that I was missing areas of canvas here and there so the original failure, of mostly orange was shining through. When I finished, about 85% of the canvas was purple and the balance, the old painting was showing through like tattered windows or pennants looking out and revealing the old, from the fresh new field of purple. I then went to work on the new field while allowing the fragments of the old to blend with the new, bringing to completion a visual composition I called, ‘Windows and Fragments’. For a long time I’d been reducing language to its almost irreducible form and with the creation of this painting I had reduced the original painting (first to arrive on the canvas) to its simplest and leanest form. Three years later (I’m getting ahead of myself) in July of 1992 I began painting a series called “windows”. Most of these consist of pages from books of my poetry which were blown-up on 100% rag paper, then pasted on canvas or wood. I then brushed and sponged transparent colors over most of the text and painted out a majority of the text, reducing it to its leanest form. What the eye then saw became the windows or pennants which carried a diminished score. I found this a satisfying way of thinning down my poems by painting out the excess. This procedure recognizes a precursor in my earlier paintings, even in my huge Oakland paintings when I tore up smaller paintings on paper and glued them to the canvas and painted out segments of the attached fragments. I’ve also been going into my poetry books, painting out lines and sections leaving a sparse text to be wondered about. My poetry, painting and music became and remain so integral a part of my approach to those various disciplines that it’s impossible for me to separate them. They seem so indelibly connected. (If ever again I embark on a project such as this I will be more attentive to what I have learned from this process. I will prepare myself so that I might present a more orderly chronology. Working from two discontinued efforts and a very scattered first draft, (recently completed), creates all kinds of problems as I bounce from one to the other, forward and backward in time. Dear readers, if you are still with me, and I’m probably referring to the most devoted of immediate family, I apologize for my carelessness, neglect, self- centerdness and laziness. I should have better prepared myself for this task, But this is my nature and I must go on and will go on because I need to finish what I’m at and move away from it so that I can get on with my life. 8/25/08)
I’m comforted by the substance of a letter which James Joyce sent to his agent reminding him what he had gone through attempting to get The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man published. He was at it for years, submitting to over one-hundred publishers and suffering the extreme pangs of rejection, indifference and ridicule. He made it clear to his agent he would never, never submit anything again to anyone unless he had an absolute guarantee that it would be returned to him within two weeks with an answer one way or another. We’ve been watching the 2008 Olympics, from China for the past few weeks and it occurs to me, wouldn’t it be less complicated and frustrating if art, in all it forms, could be judged in the same manner as athletic competition. The idea, of course, is mad for a multitude of reasons. There would be absolutely no way of judging the value of one work over an other. I see such garbage hanging from the walls of some of the most prestigious galleries and museums. I read such glowing and idiotic reviews on much of this art. And I often discuss this reaction of mine with gallery owners who often respond with the comment that collectors are buying signatures rather than art. And I think of Henry Miller’s comment that some of his greatest heroes are those artists who will never be known, recognized or acknowledged. But apart from that our rewards are multitudinous. We are blessed with the choice of doing what we wish and need to do with our lives, and we are following our passion My word-scales should not be confused with my serial poems. While most of my serial-poems are word scales, my word-scales are not necessarily serial-poems. Sounds like a play on the model of logic involving salmon as fish which does not imply all fish are salmon. There is a freedom with word-scales which allows the words to enter and depart and return in any order which makes sense or no sense at all, while my serial-poems built on the Schoenberg model establish an order which repeats itself without altering the original sequence. Still as Schoenberg’s concept became more widely accepted, composers took liberties in terms of the number of pitches involved and the rigidness of repeating the row as originally stated. Boundaries in any of the creative disciplines are a challenge and new territory is the risk and the reward. As I explained earlier, I’m losing language. I know it. Slowly irretrievably my language resource is shrinking, but in the process I’m gaining form, a trade-off whose benefits far exceed my losses. And nowhere in my work is form more clearly expressed than in my word-scales. In my written compositions, the use of my word-scales is a clear guide or map to the structure of each work. In my improvisations these scales support and give intentionality to my performances. To be spontaneous within the limitations of a form or scale is a clear contradiction of the term, limitation. When the elements of language and structure are established, then I am free to journey wherever I please. When I let go of the necessity to make sense I can move freely within the inner landscape of words and immerse myself in rhythms, colors, dynamics and sounds. And new meanings may arise from the ashes of lost and discarded meanings. It’s exciting stuff, not only for its potential of discovery but as a cleansing from past traditional limitations. When improvising with my word-scales I often begin with the first word of the scale, exploring its dynamics and rhythms. Then I move on the othe next, playing it against the first, taking them both apart and mixing the pieces.. And on to the next and the next and with each addition the possibilities for discovering new, fresh meanings and relationships increases exponentially. The color, rhythm and sound palettes likewise expand. I’m amazed they way jazz musicians improvise melodic lines with such blinding speed and assurance. No doubt there is a thought process involved, but not in terms of each increment of sound. The mind simply can’t race that fast. One might call it automatic or unconscious thinking and the process has to do with form, tonal zones, knowledge, experience and that indefinable quality, inspiration. This is very much the way I improvise with language; a form of word-jazz; spoken music. An early unpublished book of mine, Twenty-Four Plus One was later incorporated into a book of mine called Conversations and Constructions. The construction section was based on the earlier book for which I selected a bundle of words, my resource, and limited my writing to those words only. After a while I began eliminating those words which seemed less involved, reducing my resource to twenty-four words, thus the title of the book. This method seemed a logical growth from my still earlier writing which was concerned with keeping my texts as simple and sparse as possible. In my explanation of this section of the book I said: “Imagine a world of but twenty-four words. These words have lost their limited function as ‘parts of speech’ for they must play many roles. Each is now alive with colors, rhythms and energies and each floats about in space, passing, touching and relating to the others in a special way. Imagine you are a painter and builder of poems and these twenty-four words are your word-color-resource for creating endless varieties of forms. The poems which follow are based on the conditions stated above and I have learned to my delight that this small resource of words does not limit, but expands my ability to construct poems. I am forced to discover new ways of playing with language, and in the process, my words are freed from their usual rigid structure.” I’ve tried this technique with teachers and students at hundreds of elementary, secondary and high schools and discovered that younger students are most comfortable with this process. At higher levels they become more intimidated by the idea that words could relate in ways that refuted long standing rules of order. Teachers had the most difficulty, but those who were able to let go of past experience and simply play with language enjoyed immediate success. It’s a playful process. One which requires a willingness to abandon old values and thinking. To look at language in terms of architecture, to visualize new forms, to risk nonsense in order to achieve sense. The younger kids had the least difficulty because they were less structured, more spontaneous and willing to risk because they hadn’t yet been terrified by the burden of what risking was. “The Greatest Risk Is Not Risking” Following are a few short poems from this book. In demonstrating to the kids how easy it was to create new forms I would often stop in the middle of a poem I was reading and ask them to reply with the next line. They got the idea quickly, and went on, in workshops, to create with these twenty-four words, poems and new forms of their own. And I did make it clear that the idea of twenty-four words was arbitrary and they could explore this approach with any number of words of their own choosing. My twenty-four words are: soft, change, word, because, moment, yellow, you, I, mist, if, sad, is, sky, between, forest, and, the, are, when, am, drifting, be, wonder, why. OPEN Open the sky the sky is open Open the forest the forest is open Open the moment the moment is open Open the wonder the wonder is open Open the word the word is open If you are open I am open
Feeling wonder Feeling soft wonder Feeling sad Feeling you Feeling sad you Feeling between Feeling mist The form should be clear by now and most kids from third grade up will know from the previous lines what the next one will be. Likewise from the first poem, after a few lines they know what comes next. I would then ask the students to create their own form with the resource of words I’ve given them. I also invite them to substitute any word they wish for any word they would like to get rid of. I consider this a marvelous exercise for getting students to think about the architecture of poetry.
For illustration I include, here, a conversation with A. A. Milne. This poem will work from kindergarten level on up a few grades. In part of my introduction to this book I wrote. “This is personal involvement with the poem which transforms the experience of poetry from the dull process of analysis and memorization to the intimate relationship of conversation, This form of poetry need not be limited to conversations with well-known poets. We may also write conversation poems with our friends or with that most special person in our lives-----ourselves”
1 When I was one I had just begun. 2 When did you begin? Did you have fun?
2 When were you a few? You were still quite young. 1 I was nearly new. When I was three 2 When were you free Were you 1 I was hardly me. When I was four 2 really free? I’ll bet you were big 1 I was not much more. When I was five 2 as big as me When to school? 1 I was just alive. But now I’m six 2 Did you like it there? You’re getting big 1 I’m as clever as clever So I think 2 three plus three But you’ll never be 1 I’ll be six now for ever and ever…
These are vocal poems to be read aloud by two voices. So this process stimulates reading skills, performance skill and writing skills. I’ve been working with this conversation form for almost forty years and it is the essence of my writing from that time until today.
“How can you call this music?” he asked. “You have three voices speaking words, There is no pronounced rhythm, melody or harmony. By what standard can you call this music?” My first reaction was to defend my compositions. To argue that all language when spoken has a musical quality; is, in fact, a form of music. But that was not enough for my friend, nor for me, and I left him with unanswered concerns in my own mind. I feel and have felt for a long time that conversation between individuals is a subtle form of music. When we interrupt or speak over one another we are engaging in a subtle form of counterpoint. When we repeat ourselves or what others are saying we are speaking in a form of imitation or canon. And all of our moods, passions, nuances, arguments are a part of the ‘coloring’ process which gives life, form and music to language. And as I use the word ‘coloring’, I’m passing over the border which separates one art form from another, but seems such a logical partner in the process. There’s even the cadence in spoken language which compares to the cadence in music. When people say goodbye, often repeating themselves over and over before uttering the final word, and then the plagal cadence is articulated. And certainly, in conversation one can hear consonance and dissonance, common qualities in music. But what my friend said nagged at me. He was very open; accepting and experimental in his approaches to language.. Yet he had asked me the question. “How can you call this music?” I knew it was music. Know it today. But did others, and if they didn’t, was it my responsibility to convince them, and would it be possible. How important was it for me to make my case? I accepted his question as a challenge and in subsequent compositions I approached my task with renewed effort. When I created an ostinato I reinforced it with unisons. I tried to bring more clarity to my fugues through repetitions and voice doublings. I’m not speaking of compositions with scored rhythms, so I gave thought to ways of emphasizing the feeling of clearly pronounced rhythm, accomplishing this through silence, fragmentation and repetition. I had always felt that my rondos and compositions using augmentation and diminution were clearly expressed as music, but I attempted to emphasize this fact with explanations and more in-depth rehearsals for performances. And I introduced visual devices to more clearly delineate the relationships between the various voices. Finally, I accepted the fact that my spoken-voiced compositions would be perceived as music by some and never so by others no matter what measures I took to make it so. Henry Miller once commented that his best paintings were his worst mistakes. He would take a painting which seemed failed and try to sponge it from his paper. It was mostly water-color so it smudged. The result would be an indistinct or barely recognizable product over which he painted anew to product a satisfactory result. Sometimes when I seem to be failing I find myself on the edge of ripping a work from my easel in disgust and destroying it. But more often I will calm myself and simply overwhelm it with color. Last night this happened and by the early light of morning I discovered a painting quite pleasing and powerful. My roommate who judges my work with a critical eye, (suggesting from time to time that it might not be a bad idea if I took a few lessons), saw this painting and bestowed upon it one of his rare unsolicited compliments. I believe that my mistakes often become quite successful because, at some time in the painting process my attitude toward creating a masterpiece transforms itself into indifference and my effort becomes effortless. And so, my attitude is to approach my canvas or paper simply with the attitude of enjoying the process; of pleasing myself. No constraints; no other goals. Since painting has become an integral part of my creative life I’ve experienced an increasing difficulty in getting on-campus invitations. This is an age of specialization. So when I present myself as a Synesthesiologist; one who engages in the cross-referencing and integration of many art disciplines I am looked upon with awe, confusion and cynicism. If I’m in the Art department they will refer me to someone in the Music department. If I first visit the English department they will refer me to Art and if I’m in Music they will refer me to Drama or Dance. So I find myself shunted from here to there and back again. All departments have their own agendas. some are peculiarly secretive. All departments are understaffed, overworked and brutally underfinanced. That’s the way of our economy. Less and less money for education as other countries increase financial aid for education. So, while I imagine myself to be at least a triple-threat and thought my painting would finally bring me some recognition as a poet; my poetry would ensure my success as a performer and my music would re-enforce my aspiration to become a recognized painter, I have merely managed to construct an invulnerable web of confusion and doubt about myself. I believe, absolutely, that my three principal disciplines are connected in a logical and authentic manner. I’ve heard critics praise in most glowing terms the poetry in music and dance. I’ve heard them expostulate with passions the musical qualities of poetry, but rarely have I been convinced of their conviction or accuracy. It’s the artist who understands and creates these connections, and for me, on my journey, the validity of these connections exists, beyond a doubt. My background in composition was a natural vehicle for my poetry, as I shall explain. My early experiences with conductors who berated me for my laziness in terms of detailing my compositions with proper notations regarding: tempo, phrasings, bowing instructions and all the other details which convert sound into music, were invaluable. So when I came to the spoken word, to poetry, my music came with me and I applied that experience to the way in which I approached words. I remember a linguist , Edith Trager Johnson, telling me that the meaning in spoken language is determined more by how it is said than what is said. So when scoring my poetry with the materials of music I’m careful about giving the dynamic values to words which express their meanings with thorough accuracy. When I came to painting, my music and my language came with me. It could not have happened otherwise. One could not have existed without the others for they seem as much a part of my paintings as the pigments. The musical symbols which appear in my paintings seem almost inescapable, a foundation and a format which I am unable to excise, even had I the need or desire to so. Looking back on these writings I have the feeling that I’m projecting a defensive attitude . If it feels this way to me it will certainly feel that way to others, and not without just cause. I feel passionately about my work and while my greatest pleasure, I must remind myself, comes from the doing, there is also, for every artist, no matter how they might protest otherwise, a need and a desire to be acknowledged; at least to be heard. It’s part of the challenge of being who we are. Yüklə 1,3 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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