I was impressing spoons; one spoon, one fresh dig. It took me one hour to make one spoon. Today is the big day. The lake stood perfect; still for moving. Everything had a place for itself. Best sleep I've had in a long time. I chipped two notches away and in two minutes had two new birds to speak to and to eat with. With every swing of the clock-hand my new friends twitched their bird-heads to eat and make even pace with the dawning clouds. Cover rained down in the early evening; long after I'd forgotten my place among the shifting seasons. Each droplet of sky tapped down on my forehead and I met it gratefully with a tap on the wood-block with my spoon. Every two swings of the minute hand met with two friends and two pecks eaten two even sweeps of cloud and fresh food served at the miming plaque of the wood-block. The clouds closed up at nightfall when as the day died my two friends closed their eyes above their keratin beaks and slowed down their breathing. I stayed awake to mark the silence.
As a daily patron of the arts i see myself viscerally disposed as an open filter to the mad flailings of the outer sphere of emotional tumult and direction. I am similar to an ad: people see a vacuous and empty smile, hear an open and vague and slightly intriguing question and decide that i am a shell. I make money and am a shell. I gain money to contain it. I eat food to contain it. I am drinking milk to contain it. I am avoiding the bar to contain it less. I do not wish to repeat earlier patterns. I'll be gone for half an hour. I'll be gone for two hours. I'll be gone for people more important. I'll be gone for the faces i've missed. I'll be gone to see faces other than yours. I'll be gone to drop you alone and sad while hoping things will be fine and of course they aren't. The childish wish that they could is empty, vacuous, an open and vague and slightly intriguing possibility and it is decided that i am a shell. I am cheese on sauce on bread on hope on skidding barely by on promises. It is not contested that those promises are important to have been made: must have had to have been made. Must have had. The loss of their performance, the collapse of the proposed arrangement is incidental and the collapse is entirely unaccompanied by response or a "heads-up." Heads, then, when returning home, remain down. Stay down. Put mine down. Books that have been read on. Feelings that have been anticipated. The stoking puts them away, but they return as if strengthened by a sort of fueling wind. It is alright and not alright; it is said not to be alright. It may easily not. It may not be easy: fueling wind. It may not be wind, but the thoughtless defense expunged loudly by a drunk and stupid desire. A shell that contains, drunk, desire. Alone, alone. Those two who so wish not to be alone, made alone, by each other. Perhaps by the shouting and unapologetic one. Perhaps it is the root of evil or perhaps the childish misunderstanding of the vacuous shell thinks it is deserved. Is this why men have invented Satan? A name to the shell-filler, the desire? The so simple desire, not to perform uninterrupted action, but to account for it, to make it seem as if desired. To make that desire universal. To impose the subjective on those who can only see the emptiness, not the hollow hallucinagen; the filling; the empty; the creme; the tart. The tart of tomorrow. I'm a big boy so i have to have more. I do more so i have to fill more. I'm leaking and constantly becoming more empty. I am three pages and following this expulsion will become three pages more empty. Where did the three pages come from? Who will have me a cigarette? Who will have me a beer? Who will decide that it is not OK; perhaps i know the one. The impish, impulsive I NEED I NEED I NEED is so quiet a voice yet so persistant as to reminisce of the dark one i love to forget and remember of. Perhaps i lost lessons learning her ways. Perhaps i learned desperately necessary facts and that is why i continue to pour myself, unrivaled, into others hearts empty yet forever wishing to pour, to pour what? To pour what is undoubtedly a wrecked self, a mishap created by the misshapen pours of a thousand reckless and amateur artisans attempting to create a wax sclupture. When it dried the peices are unarranged like fake letters pressed together into non-words, represented as reality and challenged constantly. Yet heated by an inside furnace which runs simply on the knowledge of its own disfigurement. I heat it up to rearrange, to pour it out and become empty, into others so that they may, in turn, re pour it angrily into my heart which, fit to shapes, re-uglies them. Perhaps the continuous pouring and recieving changes slightly the walls of those ugly shapes as the exchange is repeated. Perhaps over time, through the measured performance and repetition of pours, those walls will soften and allow simplicity, so cautious and contagious in the conscious realm of the rest of my life, to enter the way in which i know love. The way in which i share my very self. Perhaps.
And at this moment life has lived to form a wet and blacksoaked web of hardened oils into a blanket bare and irresponsible. Light falls across a sky made of bridges
and netted heads of my grandfather's daughters and sons get pushed down hard into the shoulders of their coats. Sliding a softened and heat-held, looked at as reborn- web of fur over my bare skin and
despair quickly is sandwiched by the awareness of time; it becomes morning. Those children are despair; have been heat-held, looked at as reborn- and are fitting desperately into new clothing.
I've chopped for them strawberries and taken away their pet needs from them. I've been told to head out their capital struggle through seeing the way that their eyes are filtering through the present pain. I've been told to write often; told to give and take away, resting on nothing but moving wheels over a heat-held, looked at as blank avenue.
Who will be their gods when i take theirs away. I've begun to allow the reinvention of their purpose and the threatening disappointment to place my hands
to push downward their netted heads into the shoulders of their coats. Breathing backwards across sun-dappled sidewalks I am the necessity of eternal surprise; the fig which is ripe but the fight is now to take it and destroy.
I am interested in the experiential narrative as the imperative and as the subjective. The delicate nature of the human brain makes it susceptible to many types of damage and disease. Topography is the description of such surface shapes and structures. Within one person is a multitude, an interior that braids together disparate structures as they are internalized, changing their shape and its own shape as each shred becomes known. There is no need for falseness or overt direction; outside of depicting emotion, the presentation of delicate facts is effective in relating a unified body of feeling. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality. Poetics is a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality. Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or may be thought to be. Hand-colored vision depicts a place that may be arbitrary through a lens of feeling that may be arbitrary, incorporating a variety of auxiliary language that may be arbitrary. Their painting is despotic and capricious as an unreasonable act of the individual. Agency is given to the prickling and invasive outside as it is filtered through webs of neural tissue and regurgitated. When related together, connected by language, it can be read as prescribed intent. It is my intent to intend. It is my intent to give history to the ultrapersonal and unrelatable.
Acts of creation such as the composition of music, of relationships, of woven thread, of loss, of narratives of a calm and tempered account of my existence so often in close proximity to abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality punctuate my experience of the self as living; to create is to provide proof of existence. These things have all happened to me. If I wish to represent clarity I must henceforward focus not on vitality nor on mortality, promote not reproduction nor reduction, seek not longevity nor brevity. The task is historical, philosophical, even metaphysical in scope. Representation must become the obverse, the opposite of its former self. I study the contemporary history of the developing nations. Famines do not simply represent a point of failure in a system, but rather can be called the final stage in an larger process of the breaking down of social reproduction mechanisms and are indicative of the global food complex’s vulnerability to the socially blind hand of the market, whose favor can only be called by the possibility of the highest return. I am just as likely to reinforce global patterns. I at times attempt through writing to rub my own nose in the shit of the West as it rests on the floor of the South. I invariably attempt to compound the issue, whose many facets do not lend gracefully to an overarching conclusion. It is more pure to give an accurate list than to defend a well-crafted argument, or it is less pure. I have often felt pain due to an overdependence on initial response. It is an investigation into the non-efficacy of the dominant method. It is to further aggravate this problem without uniform, or at least to shake the large hive of bees until the potency of their response can be observed. Interpretation is left to those who wish to destroy and illuminate the arrangement.
On April 12 i'll be critiqued for the second time this year in workshop. The "manuscript" is coming along- working title is 'Printbook.'
Here's the latest installment, entitled 'What is the chart create
& when.'
Structure corrupts. Like time so plenteous. Like snowed & food. Like the bulk of reneged cancellations. Like fruitful & time. Like seen luck & destined. Like flirtatious & foresight. Sight to scene & wings collapse. Like brimful & hot & a high-pitched believe. Like developing links & a close-cut head. The disposal of secrets sang comrade. Like question & pushing. Like what one ends up wanting to be. Place corrupts & a legend of Good Women. Like when schedule reveals. Like renaissance & a new need. Indulgences lessly create. Like the Pardoner is a traveler of crying. Like crying is a traveler of thinking. Like whistling, soft & known & various. Much like birds.
& when
it has less of a face than does daytime; a quite hum’s a seesaw and it lifts its hand from off of its neck, to think; it puts the bottle back not to favor;
hats keep your heads in my friends are here they all of them sing
two sharps relate three scratches/ see sharps minor/ take away two down days/ you can hear now how it is blank here, and the rhythm is good/ our relatives have positions and names, look down and learn quilting, and the rhythm is sad/ look at the light collection of ice, they’ve probably been cooking in the cold world since before we began/ there is no before we begin//
sing with me our major key/
we have restored our tonic memory/
those two wont go for walks again//
it’s a sort of a new growth when you set yourself up to forget to go to bed/ Lift lifts devil in a sky so brown with heels of fleeting fancies “a
diamond tear-tier waits,”
tremulous in the eye of the cloud dropping
A speculator in land;
Her chief delight lay in good manners.
If someone struck it a handsbreadth wide
As an A with an ornament. Provided with
Green beads to mark certain ridden lines
Overspread strands. She work pack fashion
A piece to bag or pillowcase
I believe so close we are seized & found
All discharge does. Don’t push through not oh not well. Press back purple. Shafted lace, design. We and shared weft are oft left to see north plowing. We are left under and downing tape. Stick to the last. Oh mister sun, so, sinister golden sun
Won’t you shine down on me I’ve lost the gatelock. We’ve been seen as a guesswork friendship, patchy. Stripe. Soumak. Rya knot. Stone—Black out the day its body looks like a head with eight long gentle
cures
A fat person will help youto eat your lunch.
A young man may make you breakfast.Wide out the day our feats are scalebased
seized upon.Our neck not wrapped up in tensile cures.Pervade the south mark rapt and safe. Traps in line stack pressure,
case.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Also, sculpture. Thomas Saraceno, Alan Watts, Cornelia Parker.
Ron Silliman, a large and legendary figure in the field of conceptual writing, keeps a fantastic and frequently updated blog detailing current events in the world of contemporary literature and art. It's pretty sick. He recently linked to a news piece on the University of Texas's recent acquisition of David Foster Wallace's surviving notes and personal writings. If you've not heard of David Foster Wallace, you simply must, because he largely completed and surpassed the contemporary relevance of what can be called Post-modernism. Anyway, they have his personal dictionary and compiled a list of the words that he underlined. They include such gems as
dis·ti·chous:
–adjective
1.
Botany. arranged alternately in two vertical rows on opposite sides of an axis, as leaves.
2.
Zoology. divided into two parts.
and
cete:
–noun
a number of badgers together.
as well as my favorite,
leg·a·tee:
–noun
a person to whom a legacy is bequeathed.
and many others. Abagail Adams, my new thrash/spaz/hardcore project, had its fourth practice tonight. We've been writing a new song every practice, and it takes about an hour and always comes out very productive. Lots of moving around in these newest ones. I'll post recordings the very day that they exist. Hopefully that day will be very soon. I recently came across photos from the York PA music scene that i was a part of when i was fifteen. Reminds me of original things.
-Fixed my bike today. It was the first warm day in a while and i rode around 5 or 6 miles in the streets today. It's a pressing and visceral charm that my sweat cannot ignore.
I recently attended a poetry reading at TUCC by poet CA Conrad. His reading included selections from his newest publication, the Book of Frank, but most exhilarating and illuminating were his Somatic Poetry exercises. They are built around a set of conditions offered in imperative prose that often resembles a poem itself, filled with obstructions around which to impel the reader to construct a poem. For each exercise he would read first the obstructions and then his poetic response. To give you an idea of the depth and complexity of these exercises i'll include #36, which i saw him read:
#36 CONFETTI ALLEGIANCE Is there a deceased poet who was alive in your lifetime but you never met, and you wish you had met? A poet you would LOVE to correspond with, but it's too late? Take notes about this missed opportunity. What is your favorite poem by this poet? Write it on unlined paper by hand (no typing). If we were gods we wouldn't need to invent beautiful poems, and that's why our lives are more interesting, and that's why the gods are always meddling in our affairs out of boredom. It's like the fascination the rich have with the poor, as Alice Notley says, "the poor are more interesting than others, almost uniformly." This poem was written by a human poet, and we humans love our poets, if we have any sense. Does something strike flint in you from the process of engaging your body to write this poem you know and love? Notes, notes, take notes. The poet for me in doing this exercise is Jim Brodey, and his poem "Little Light," which he wrote in the bathtub while listening to the music of Eric Dolphy, masturbating in the middle of the poem, "while the soot-tinted noise of too-full streets echoes / and I pick up the quietly diminishing soap & do / myself again." Take your handwritten version of the poem and cut it into tiny confetti. Heat olive oil in a frying pan and toss the confetti poem in. Add garlic, onion, parsnip, whatever you want, pepper it, salt it, serve it over noodles or rice. Eat the delicious poem with a nice glass of red wine, pausing to read it out loud and toast the poet, "MANY APOLOGIES FOR NOT TOASTING YOU WHEN YOU WERE ALIVE!" Take notes while slowly chewing the poem. Chew slowly so your saliva breaks the poem down before it slides into your belly to feed your blood and cells of your body. Gather your notes, write your poem.
His response was direct, crisp, staccato, and carried elements of accusation and of overt remorse. It was also heavily abstract. My personal response to come, with photoes.
This is HEALTH's music video for their song, HEAVEN. Its appropriately titled, combining washy synths with the landscape of snow and the artistry of technical performance into an orgy of serene energy. It's composed of shots from Werner Herzog's documentary: The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner. Some of that here:
This is a great almost ten minutes of The Antlers performing live for an NPR recording. Their style is creepy, energetic, and fulfilling.
Hardwick Hall. Photo by Steven Bryson.
Lately its been necessary for me to heavily involve myself in the practice of compiling a manuscript. My writing has had to shift from a single-work oriented autonomy to a more inclusive 'book-like' format of carrying over themes or descriptors between pieces. Here's a draft of the beginning of a new longer work, entitled Swarm. It's being critiqued for me in workshop tomorrow evening. I'll let you know how it goes.
Swarm
Breeding of the interior lets loosening She may breathe grow fit only Once to pluck a pear again It was the best part of the day before she could see the sun out She lived a less parting dismay under the townhead We towned down often after links collapsed We laid down less after the noting shine
Spun clear, apt and south It was the bright part of the day when the sun was in bed Loam, loam, loam she pitched first two Left leaving bright part away summer stead We don’t need the extra space. You could Sure keep your thoughts in or run again
What would be the two notes that make up two measures. Why were we supposed to clap once right That but we’re not compared or to meet higher.
Loaming, Henry abridged me. Lets press less He gave birth to millions. Once he woke up to restless It was the blank side of the day when dark was in bed.
Free at three. When time pokes out. Break open the night not snaps not clasped. When apart pokes out. Invent broken terminology. Break open the work all known not said. Movement shines. When remember dancing. Break open the neck bones not sit not think. Not sit not think. Strings detense. When alert unfocused. When head extends and feel the wind noise. When eyes when lids turn clear. When white blinding pokes out. Stomach doesn’t remember dancing breaks. Break open the thought not lonely all movement. It grows a slow burn at its edges. The container reveals arrangement. When loves pokes out. Break open the warm mind not tea nor key nor teacup nor egg nor paper nor fuck nor cold. It is not cold. Pieces fall low and lay and look to lay the way that snow lays. Look to lay the way that snow lays. When water as strings as flat mats and as floors. When stark eye pokes out. Contain your recoil breaks open not wind all wet and becoming. When to leave. How to decide when to need. How to lay flat hot slabs that burn when you leave them alone. When thought when love pokes in. Break open the pyramid not reasons not sit, and not think nor slide in. When to press hands. When to press hands. When to. When to break books. When to move forehead against forehead. Not thinking. All breathing. All grateful. Sojourned.
I'm putting together a new live set in the upcoming few weeks and will begin performing again in Philadelphia. Updates of progress to come.
i'm taking a jewelry class and i'm becoming fascinated by chain. if you like jewelry too, then you will probably think this website is pretty cool. updates of my progress to come. speaking of coming, i started a new band two days ago called Abagail Adams. it's a nice blend between technical/spazy hardcore and more straightforward driving punk, kind of the way that I FARM does it. updates of our progress to come.
I'm spending a lot of time lately waking up early in the morning and it has a sort of luminescence. It conveys two types of reinvention, it drags wide and bright versions of our everyday objects that by afternoon have straightened and have paled. There is an affect conversion, a shuffling of the peace that smiles with a sort of dapper intranquility. I cannot compete with its charm.
what does this weekend look like.
tonight, friday Jan 22. Lituania, Teeth of Mammals, Sundials - THE OX, 2nd and Oxford Apparently these bands are awesome because everyone is excited. One of the bands has a member of DR DOG M.D. in it so it is obviously worth seeing. facebook *~*~* http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#/event.php?eid=265851012152&index=1
Toy Soldiers - Johnny Brenda's, Frankford and Girard This band is awesome because it is huge. Also Dan King is in it and he's the best. How will you decide where to go tonight? How will i decide? Will i even go out? Am i tired? check it *~*~*~*~*~*~ http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#/event.php?eid=207534692291&index=1
Also tonight! This thing:
for the future beyond today:::::::
thursday, january 28th. maybe we should start from the beginning. 6-9 downstairs at Tyler. Another art BFA show, this one promising "life fulfilling experiences" which in my opinion is the reason why they invented events. We all want them. We all. abcdefg http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=273722078523&index=1
I've been putting together another EP. This one has some better recordings, an iron and wine cover, and even some collaboration. King Bones, the first track, features backup vocals, piano, and guitar additions from Mike Leuchtenberger. He's a friend from the old days, the ones where we used to hit each other with sticks for fun. He's also playing guitar on the third track, A New Leash On Them. The one i'm excited about is track five, Lethe. He wrote and recorded the instrumentation for the whole song and the vocals for the beginning, then asked me to come in and write the second half. Additional vocals from my good friend Jess Orlidge pulled the whole thing together.
This is the second Virtual EP, entitled Boat Sleeve. It is a collection of works dating from Fall '08 to Fall '09. One track, Musk Indonesia (rhythm box demo), was recorded with help from Gabriel Mink who played drums and twisted some knobs. Eat it up.
1. King Bones (live loop) 2. Shine 3. Pocket Minds 4 Sing 5. Musk Indonesia (rhythm box demo) 6. Do This Enough 7. Sonnets (old standards now standing) 8. Effry Morning
I'm Nicholas. I'm Land fr Teeth, a solo project based in Philadelphia. Here for free download is my first Virtual EP, entitled Live fr Town. It is composed of five songs, recorded over the period of two weeks in April of 2009. Enjoy.
1. collapse of the drums team 2. corner sound 3. tank dreams 4. blind theater 5. colonnade
