"As important as poetry is to me, I love making physical art... things you can see, touch. It makes me so happy to be able to do this again. I put things together. Stuff. Trash I find on the street. I lay pieces on my work table. I move them around. I go away. I come back. I look at them. I go away. I see something else on the street and see it in my mind with something I left on the table. I go back. I move the pieces around--and feel a certain rush of happiness. I mix Mod Podge and Elmer's Glue, take out acrylics and paintbrushes & begin to mount them together. I go away. I come back and work some more. I go away. I play with this until I feel another--and this time--definitive rush to confirm that it's finished--better than MaryJane! This is a kind of thinking outside my body, and most important, outside language. A language of things outside language--and so I can't own it. That's the joy!
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Physical art
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Assemblages/ Found Things
My Worktable: Photo, Greg Duff
The significance of a found object is that it has none. Decathected, by being lost—though I don’t mean lost, so much as discarded. The objects I find on the street, in empty lots. Not things still useful—things sticky with the snare of desire. The desire that adheres to and generates the delusion of ownership. I like these objects because they are free. I don’t want to own them. I don’t want to return them to a state of servitude, to become their slave. When collected, placed in some degree of proximity, they suggest their own form of desire… objects placed beside, under, inside another object--I sense affinity—or indifference. If the former—it is as though they have become a new object, each retaining its own identity, but now also, a part—of something else. These are the assemblages that I build… or better-- build themselves when I lend them my attention. The prime rule… is that there must be no rules. Else I would be the Master, the enforcer, the tyrant god … and so, eviscerate my own existence… for there are no gods. No Masters. Were I to aspire to that… I would not be.
Poor Hamlet…
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Is Occupy a Leaderless Movement?
On the oft repeated question of Occupy & 'leadership.' -- We all know that in any group action, some individuals will emerge, who, by their greater competence or knowledge in that area, or their communication skills, will become 'leaders.' But their leadership is situational and temporary, altogether different than the INSTITUTIONALIZATION of a POSITION of leadership... where one person may be replaced by another, and which creates a structure which determines roles & positions in relation to that office--a self-perpetuating structural hierarchy. Yes we can have, and need, LEADERS... but reject OFFICES of leadership. This is a CRUCIAL distinction.
Ceremony, Death, Memory--personal thoughts
Funeral in the rain. My sister's oldest child... driving home, the rain on the windows of the car, half asleep... what I was thinking...
When I've been asked by my sons what I might want done with the post-death waste, I've always said--whatever seems right to the living--I won't be there to give a damn! And let it go at that. But having time to run the question through again... maybe there's more to say. Maybe it does matter. Now. If not then.
First off--disposal of the body is a technical problem. This doesn't concern me. To be accomplished in the most environmentally sensible and cheapest way possible. I don't care now, and won't be there to care then.
Cremation ain't cheap. forget it. Unless you can sneak the waste into an incinerator on the sly.
Funerals... if I were to die in present circumstances... telling stories and reading poems and drinking wine on the roof of the Ox sounds about right... An empty city lot would be super --especially if there were plans to turn it into a community garden, but only if it's ok to read poems and drink wine there.& NO MOWED GRASS OR ENGLISH FUCKING IVY! .. no place with fluorescent lights, nice furniture or god help us--vinyl or imitation wood laminate. .
and though there seems not be any plots open in Summit Township Cemetery (see the photo above), there is a space left between the stones... and some suitable found object... a bit of rubble from a razed building (say several bricks still mortared together from a wall), a small section of rusted steel I-beam, an object of fused bottles and cans... stuff like that... placed in the site (with notice of what it was and some contribution for maintenance so it wouldn't be removed)... that kinda touches my heart. Maybe I'll make something like that--in lieu of cliche tombstone.
"Odd" is my home in this world... in or out of it. Taken me a long time to find my comfort level... how I want to be remembered
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Damn cops
Please, don't tell me your uncle and grandfather were policemen, and what good people they were. Whatever they once were (and that this was ever different is problematic), they are the thug-force for the predictors, the moneyed class, and their job--however individuals may rationalize it, is to protect the orderly transfer of capital--and those who are essential to that task. Whatever they do beyond that... is part accident... and part, that some sort of general order is needed for their primary goal. If you don't count--don't belong, are nothing more than a pawn in the system--you will be fucked, neglected, beaten, harassed... which is also part of that job--keeping the exploited class intimidated, the marginalized in their place. Cops are themselves a pariah class, servants to do the dirty work of the predictors.
Cops are hired to protect property, and those who have it. Period. The more property, the more protection. If you have nothing, you are dirt to trample under their feet.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Collateral Damage
Dissecting the euphemisms: 'collateral damage,' 'accidental death'.
When we choose to take actions that make these 'unfortunate incidents' inevitable, we are CHOOSING the whole package--the intended and 'unintended' casualties. The reality is--decisions to drop bombs from drones--make the distinction between 'intended'' and 'unintended' a semantic rationalization. This is the reality of ALL forms of violent force, and those pretty distinctions merely serve as excuses to continue the carnage. When we decide to kill, every death is intended, every body confirms the success of our goal.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Frances Madeson interviews me for The Crier
Upload the PDF and scroll down to page 15. Madison County Crier Or better, read the whole thing! This is what a local newspaper should look like!
Monday, September 10, 2012
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Dance of Life
Thinking back on partners I've lived with... married and otherwise... how good sex can be a kind of inoculent as you get to know one anoth... .... then I think... "know one another?" I don't think so.
What is it then? More like... learning each other's moves. When to cuddle, when to duck, when to offer a hand, or ask for one... when to just stay out of the way. when it didn't work... pretty much what it came down to, aggravating whatever underlying dissatisfactions might be present... if you get in each other's way. Have the wrong moves... no coordination... it won't work.
Has to be a kind of dance, where the movements, the accommodations, the comings together and the retreats--feel right in themselves. Describe something... like a dance (and how many dances describe exactly this?) It's choreography.
No one can hope to "know" another person... the hope is... while hope lasts... that you can learn to like their moves, and they yours, and learn to move together... pas de deux ... of life.
Nuclear Poetry
Monday, September 3, 2012
Lacan via Pogo
Nothing quite holds up to a rainy day traversing a fantasy of a sort one might have thought one had left behind years ago. Freud to Lear in the 3 caskets: "give up youthful passions, make friends with death!" The Big Other can't hide anymore... we has found the enemy, and they is us!
... and discover ...we are already happy in our own lives, and our best hope... is that someone else is a little happier because we've crossed paths.
It's all so simple... so fucking simple... why are we compelled to play most of our lives in the labyrinth, prey to he Minotaur of our wounded desires?
Sunday, September 2, 2012
The Wise Child Reclaiming Her World
Physicians and medical professionals in Spain assert the primacy of their medical oath over the oppression of the state, and their right to treat immigrants.
... using a gesture from childhood is brilliant... primal, the undoing not only of the oath, but of the whole oppressive apparatus of adulthood gone wrong, the power of visionary imagination reclaimed.
... using a gesture from childhood is brilliant... primal, the undoing not only of the oath, but of the whole oppressive apparatus of adulthood gone wrong, the power of visionary imagination reclaimed.
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