No Sounds Of My Own Making
Holding
A long
Rod, he was
Beating
The ground
As he walked.
A
Number of
Unconventional playing techniques
Are
Utilised, perhaps
Most notably in
The
Case of
The piano during
The
Closing bars,
Which requires a
Pencil
Or a
Similar object to
Be
Dropped onto
The strings whilst
They
Are simultaneously
Fanned with a
Wire
Brush, struck
With a timpani
Stick
And plucked
With the fingers.
It
Saturated life.
Accomplished itself. All
The
Things had
Accomplished the impossible …
Like
The first
Time I was
Swallowed
Whole ... some
Japanese gardens include
The
Landscape outside
Their borders ... low
Flock
Of clouds
Before the downpour.
I
Smiled and
Threw money into
The
Paper cup.
Toru used to
Jokingly
Describe the
Style of this
Piece
To me
As “schizo-eclectic”.
Knowing
Its splendour
Is vain, one
Adores
Colour … there
Is no shadow.
From
The silence
Of the womb
A
Child is
Born and the
Insane
Fellow will
Begin to bellow
About
Life floating
Through dangers and
Humanity’s
Fickleness alienated
From its five
Fingers.
Some of
The units are
Characterized
By a
Sense of fragility
And
Some form
Intricate skeins of
Heterophonic
Polyphony. A
Further characterization is
A
Disoriented, deliberately
Naïve and rudimental
Consonant
Tonal simplicity
Which indeed is
A
Feature of
The work as
A
Whole, as
Is the impression
Of
“Memory”, and …
This is what
Must
Be done
Or permitted to
Happen;
And at
The same stroke,
Allow
Us to
Hear just how
Precarious
These delicate
Polychromies are, that
They
Emanate from
A blind void
And
Are going
To return to
Vanish
In it,
Vanishing towards Black.
Still
You swim
Towards the sea …
Beautiful
Old rug
In natural vegetable
Dyes …
Substance of
Which light is
Made.
The ceiling
Fan and flowers
Shed
Their petals …
A tumbling of
Sorts
Happens in
Midair … bread with
Its
Hard crust
And soft inside.
An
Enormous butterfly
With exaggerated genitals
Again
Dissolves into
Aqueous elements – eau
Céleste
(Heavenly water
= rain) and
Its
Transformation into
Eau terrestre (earthly
Water
= rivers
And lakes). Sometimes
The
Naked sky
Roots out raw …
Sometimes
The pack
Of low fog-
Banks
Come in
From the open
Sea
Drowns the
Apparent beauties in
Its
Grey truth.
The two hands
Sewn
Into my
Pants pockets cannot
Be
Pulled out
To wave. “They
Think
I am
Alive, not in
A
Womb, either …
Well, so there
Is
An audience …
You never noticed
You
Were waiting.
You were waiting
Alone,
That is
The show …” and
So
On and
The indifferent fog.
Wolves
Are sharing
The corpse of
A
Crow. While
Visiting the death
Camps
Of Auschwitz
And Birkenau, Kernis
Watched
Children chew
Blades of grass.
Similarly,
The fidelity
Of words to
The
Immemorial potential
That is in
Them
Is what
Makes one dream
Of
Writing. This
Does not prevent
But
Explains the
Fact that in
The
Gesture of
Painting there is
An
Impossibility and
Ban on believing
In
Colours as
There is a
Disgust
In relying
On words in
The
Gesture of
Writing. I grazed
Her
Breasts and
Was wondering why
She
Did not
Smile. The cello’s
More
Grounded throaty
Sound gives it
A
Less ethereal
More elegiac tone,
Is
Heard in
The white silence
Of
Great empty
Patches. They spread
Out
Like a
Tide infiltrating imperceptibly
The
Marshes of
A flat bay.
The
Black cat
Gives birth to
A
Few blue
Eggs. He was
Working
For the
First time with
A
Twelve-tone
Row. We must
Have
Colours, repeated
Colours, multiple ones.
The
Black cat
Gives birth to
A
Few blue
Eggs. Les espaces
Du
Sommeil. Desnos,
A member of
The
Resistance, who
Died in Theresienstadt
In
1945, wrote
In a hypnotically
Induced
State. Paul
Klee’s grey; Malevich’s
Black
And white.
Lamentation. Jeremiah needs
A
Lot of
Words to say
That
They have
Nothing to say.
Once
I was
At the equator
Trying
To slice
The earth in
Half
Along the
Dotted line. Buddhism
Is
A performing
Art (interpolation from
Beyer’s
The Cult
Of Tara, a
Source
Outside the
Game). The title
For
This work
For solo guitar
Is
Taken from
An essay by
Walter
Benjamin which,
In Ferneyhough’s paraphrase,
“Talks
About the
Essentiality of the
Augenblick,
Of the
Experiential moment. He
Takes
As his
Example an image
Of
The sun
Progressively approaching its
Zenith
Until, at
Noon, it beats
Down
From directly
Overhead, at which
Moment
All shadows
Disappear; everything becomes
Itself …
A quintessential …”
Blessed be the
Accursed
Insouciance of
The star, prays
The
Painter. For
The star is
Born
Again tomorrow,
And painting too.
Sounds
Of leaves
Falling on a
Chest
Of a
Man lying under
A
Tree with
A hand grenade
Inside
His pants
Pocket. Sounds, including
Noises,
It seemed
To me, had
Four
Characteristics (pitch,
Timbre, loudness and
Duration),
While silence
Had only one.
The
Monkeys on
The Nile mourn
The
Setting of
The sun. As
A
Child I
Spat into the
Palm
Of a
Blind beggar. (Duration).
And
With it
The world wakes
And
Wonders, or
So it seems.
The
Sun was
Burning and our
Feet
Were buried.
What I remember
Most
About this
Particular dance. Dark
Blues
And blacks
Make the yellow
And
Red of
Life. E LA
NAVE
VA. In
The early 1970s
I
Visited an
Abandoned Buddhist temple
In
North-west
China. The snowy
Mountain
Ranges added
To its dignity
And
Glory. Standing
In the courtyard,
I
Could almost
Hear the praying
And
The chanting
Of the monks,
As
Well as
The violence committed
By
The Red
Guards. Already on
The
Cave walls,
The seeing beast
Confesses
And tries
To cure the
Lamento …
Let us
Fix and shelter
The
Fireworks before
They go out.
All
I have
Is jazz jazz
Jazz
And lots
Of gasoline in
My
Bloody abyss.
Brilliance, beauty and
Legerdemain.
Comic and
Comatose, mechanical and
Passionate,
Dreamlike and
Dancing. All the
Strokes
Weep their
Tears downwards in
Homage
To obstinate
Weight. Only to
See
Ducks and
Chickens pecking on
Graves.
“Everything that
Has happened before
Is
Now crammed
Together.” Once again,
Too,
There is
An ending that
Is
Not an
Ending. Dawn breaking?
The
Black stuffing
Empties out of
The
Heart of
The picture, arranges
Itself
In a
Square around a
Still,
Timid clearing
In which Etruscan
Red,
Sky blue,
Straw yellow jostle.
Dreamt
My daughter
Adopted a palm-
Sized
Burnt baby.
Second interpolation, real
Dream.
In the
End everything needs
To
Happen. You
Are wherever your
Thoughts
Are. Explanations
Come to an
End
Somewhere. Say
Little and do
Much.
The Hebrew
Sounds exactly like
What
It means:
“Ehmor m’aht,” – “say
Little” –
And then
“Ahsay harbay,” all
Those
Wonderful vowels
To stretch out
With.
They seem
To be visible.
Mix
Arsenic with
Wine to drink
With
Dragon meat.
Maya is incredible.
Say
Or see
What there is.
Each
Person who
Visits must bring
A
Door on
His back. Gamblers
And
Punks with
Pockmarked faces. Every
Note
Has a
Specific duration, suddenly
Without
Beyond, without
Tomorrow or yesterday.
Leaving
I also
Carry a door
On
My back.
Over a period
Of
183 days,
For 5 1/2
Hours
A day.
It practices seeing.
Not
All I
See is there.
For
Me to
Say this might
Make
A person
Laugh, for anyone
Can
See for
Themselves the sacred
Sites
Where the
Great Beings passed
When
They created
The world in
The
Dreamtime. Third
Interpolation, from Peter
Worsley’s
Knowledges. If
I were to
Mention
That “Todtnauberg”
Was precipitated by
Celan’s
Visit to
The home of
Martin
Heidegger – an
Experience fraught with
Painful
Ambivalence for
The poet – this
Piece
Of information
Would not begin
To
Elucidate what
Celan made of
The
Occasion, far
Less what Birtwhistle
Made
Of Celan’s
Response to it.
Always
The gesture
Delivers a desert.
For
Me to
Say this might
Make
A person
Laugh: Arnica, eyebright,
The
Draft from
The well with
The
Star-crowned
Die above it …
In
The silence
Thus made, colours
Can
Be heard,
Futile and holy.
A
Rainbow bends
Down to drink
Seawater,
A car
Discharges blue smoke.
Now
Follows the
Bitter-sweet nocturne,
Its
Plaintive melody
Sadly weaving its
Way
Through gently
Undulating shadows. The
Finale
Seems to
Be no longer
Of
This world.
Desire does not
Ask
For reality.
Little gulps of
Chromatic
Pulp. The
Man and the
Moon
Sink down
To sleep. The
Semitonal
Trill. Desire
Does not ask
For
Reality; it
Demands the impossible.
People
May be
Named after the
Sheen
On the
Surface of the
Sea,
Stormy weather,
The different phases
Of
Tides and
Winds, the smoky
Hazy
Appearance of
Distance, the relaxed
Nature
Of some
Waves, the power
Of
Others. Why
Does tragedy exist?
Because
You are
Full of rage.
Why
Are you
Full of rage?
Because
You are
Full of grief.
On
The biwa
The sawari is
Part
Of the
Neck. The concave
Area
Is the
Valley, the convex
The
Mountain. When
String is stretched
Between
These grooves
And plucked, it
Makes
A noisy
“Bin”. The player
Is
Advised to
Imitate the sound
Of
The cicada.
Only trees move.
Unusually
Moving trees.
They give birth
To
A black
Cat, the same
Black
Cat who
Gives birth to
A
Few blue
Eggs, who crosses
All
Roads. Sawari
Also means obstacle.
I
Swim until
I become a
Stranger
To my
Own gravity. We
Hear
A low-
Pitched darkness, a
Void
From which
The elements of
The
Universe
Begin to emerge.
Pale
Reds and
Yellows, mauves, light
Clouds
Seen from
Very high, caressed
By
The rising
Sun and the
Trade
Wind. Weightlessness,
Speed and peace.
The
Pacific is
64 million square
Miles.
The final
Chapter, Saturday, is
The
Most mysterious.
Ernst labels it
The
Key to
Songs. The gesture
Orchestrates
Fugues, amorous
As water-lilies,
On
The long
Stretches of murals.
Tomorrow
We will
Be read, said
The
Poet, filling
Her glass with
Ballerinas
And porcupine
Spines, hammer granite
Medicine,
A worn
Out knife expertly
Sharpened,
Flute (doubling
Alto flute and
Piccolo),
Clarinet (doubling
Bass clarinet), violin,
(Doubling
Viola), cello
Piano and harmonium,
The
Complaint of
Growing old, of
Rotting,
Of having
To die, of
Being
Only a
Flesh, solitary and
Precarious,
A worn
Out knife expertly
Sharpened,
Your arms,
And the sky,
All
By itself
In its waters.
The
Ceiling drips
On my head.
“Little
Did I
Know that the
Man
I was
Buying asparagus from
Was
A shakuhachi
Player.” The colours
Come
When they
Are already there.
Even
A touch
Can crumble the
Plaster.
As was
My custom at
That
Time, it
Was composed in
Just
A few
Days and was
Mostly
Improvised
Without significant revision.
One
Runs because
One is not
In
A hurry.
One must fumble
Along
The dark
Hallways. Ternaries
Was
Composed for
Rachel Rudich. The
Paper,
The stone,
The canvas, the
Beige
Skin of
Petals at dawn.
The
Old house …
It wasn’t until
The
Second movement
I realized this
Was
My lost
Flute sonata … One
Runs
Because one
Is not in
A
Hurry … Even
During the day
One
Must fumble
Along the dark
Hallways …
Ternaries also
Alludes phonetically to
“Turneries” …
He does
Nothing other than
Be
The paper,
The stone, the
Canvas,
The beige
Skin of petals
At
Dawn … Even
A touch can
Crumble
The plaster …
Fanfare, lullaby, intermezzo,
Dithyramb,
Sonata and
Coda … The colours
Lie
Down because
They know that
They
Are loved,
Expected … the process
Of
Painting is
One of devotion.
Look
At the
Hands on the
Table.
Neither player
Knows when what
She
Plays will
Function as a
Cue.
The frame
Is going to
Fall.
Add hot
Peppers, Hoisin sauce,
And
Other impurities.
This may sometimes
Result
In an
Impasse: piano cannot
Play
Until the
Violin stops playing
While
The violin
Cannot stop until
The
Piano plays.
There remain spoils
Of
Blue, red,
A little yellow,
Tiny
Grey-blue
Humidities. I must
Endure
A long
Journey. The use
Of
Double sharps
And flats suggests
The
Possibility that
The violin adjust
Its
Tuning. But
It is the
Same
Gesture. How
To become a
Professional
Exile? A
Particularly awkward difference
Of
Sound. The
Draught of white
Black
Air, its
Guts ripped out.
I
Woke up
Twice in the
Night,
Once to
Urinate and once
To
Admire the
Stars. “The wine
Cups
Of daybreak
Are broken.” “Little
Black
Horse. Whither
With your dead
Rider?”
My clairvoyant
Soul - nothing ever
Appeases
Its desire
To see differently.
Clouds
Scrub the
Sky with fingerless
Hands.
“Black horses
And villainous people
Move
Along the
Deep paths of
The
Guitar.” Bottomless.
Ultramarine. “Come, I
Am
Your consolation …
Go … lose yourself …”
My
Pain is
Also my remedy.
I
Am an
Artist with feathers
Stuck
Under his
Armpits who flaps
His
Wings walking
In the night.
No,
So, okay,
Um … Every once
In
A while
Didn’t he wonder
Whether
He had
Made a complex
Issue
Out of
Something very simple?
Fifth
Interpolation, from
Steve Benson’s “Did
The
Lights just
Go out?” The
Numerological
Symbolism … these
“Magical” relationships … and
“The
Trillo Di
Diavolo.” The objects
Of
Ordinary life.
Dirt and sand.
My
Own skull.
Are those little,
Um,
Spikes peeking
Out from the
Sides,
And what’s
That underneath the
Edge
Of the
Leaf? Fifth interpolation,
Continued.
An arsenal
Of sounds including
Shouting,
Chanting, whistling,
Whispering, gongs, maracas,
And
Crystal glasses.
All the nuances.
Water-
Proof shoes.
Bones and flutes.
No,
So, okay,
Because, you know,
Fifth
Interpolation, finale:
Are you sure?
Far
Ahead, far
Beyond the threshold.
An
Old stooping
Monkey fed me
By
Shaking the
Tree. It allowed
Me
To feel
The music. When
The
Gaze is
Set ablaze. This
Is
My life,
Not beautiful, squashed
By
History and
Money, not beautiful,
But
With some
Meaning. This is
My
Toy, made
Of clay. Elements
Can
Be rearranged
At the pleasure
Of
The performer.
The eye burns.
Figs
Fell into
My mouth, allowed
Me
To feel
The music kinetically.
Why
It is
An art of
Time.
Green waits
In the air.
Green
Waits. Air
And fire flare
Up.
The hand.
The untitled eye.
To
Die many
Times in dreams.
As
Anyone who
Has experienced the
Full
Rush of
Radiant sound knows,
When
It ends
There is a
Marvelous
Aura of
Un-sounded sound
Floating
In the
Afterimage, disembodied, carrying
The
Spirit but
Not the gravity.
The
Machine begins
To smoke, deep
Beneath
The white
Foam. David said
That
It was
The softest hand
He
Had ever
Held. I’m slipping
Off,
Says the
Man. I didn’t
Do
Anything. Seagulls
Dance, ascending the
Heaven
Ladder. That
The paper retains.
Retains,
And keeps
In its swaddles.
For
More than
A decade he
Swam
During the
Day and rested
On
The bottom
At night. He
Was
A man
“Full of sun”
As
All who
Knew him will
Say.
He spreads
A bit of
Paper
On wood,
Exposes them to
The
Unknown, and
The demon of
The
Visual machine.
Arriving, one of
His
Lungs had
Turned into a
Gill,
One into
A leaf of
A
Dead tree.
“What beauty and
Strength!”
With a
Backward stroke of
A
Wing, he …
He lived in
A
Glass house,
Next to jars
Of
Insecticide. He
Took me into
Varèse’s
Old workroom.
He is not
The
God of
The origin, he
Is
Not an
État d’âme.
He
Refuses these
Motifs. How many
Other
Combinations were
Possible, remain pending …
I
Have no
Place left to
Migrate.
In the
Summer of 1973,
I
Visited the
Village of Trunk.
( )
Is an
Art of serving.
It
Has no
Secret, but requires
An
Ascesis. On
The corner a
Man
Stands very
Straight, an old
Horn
In his
Hands. The village
Welcomed
And accepted
Me. I was
Allowed
To record
Their ancient stories,
Tales
And songs.
That’s just being
A
Servant of
Vision. A rainy
Day
And the
Driver with a
Long
Scar on
The back of
His
Hand. I
Sent some photographs.
Half
A year
Later, the police
Identified
Those who
Had sung for
Me
And levied
Heavy fines on
Them.
( ) is
A way of
Being
Anchored in
The world. I
Watch
Two dogs
Tussle in the
Grass.
In March
1974, I received
A
Telegram: “Do
Not come again.”
Gesture
Not gesture.
Smeared on my
Hands.
DOOM. A
SIGH is based
On
Two songs
That Istvan Marta
Recorded
During his
Visit to Romania.
The
First, sung
By Mrs. Pieter
Benedek,
58, evokes
Her long dead
Parents,
And the
Second, sung by
Mrs.
Gergel Imre,
46, recounts the
Scene
Of a
Bloody battle. The
Territories
Crack, the
Horizon dilates … He
Sees
And cannot
Make seen … The
God
Is waiting
For something to
Divulge
The hidden
Faces of time.
To
Those who
Consider this a
Material
Loss I
Say put a
Little
More warble
Into your vibrato.
The
God is
Silent. We have
Made
The dawns
Bleed. We had
A
Huge amount
Of fun. Soft
Handfuls.
Faces pressed
Into the mud.
“Of
Course it’s
Difficult,” she laughed.
“You
Have to
Practice the horsehair
Fiddle
For a
Long time before
You
Can master
It.” Roll in
It,
As though
At a death.
You
Are a
Small dictionary defining
Secret
Words for
Me. Perpetual motions
Of
Water, wind,
Air and plant
Life.
Simple silent
Glory. In the
Middle
Of the
Square there’s a
Broken
Bench, a
Tree with foliage
So
Abundant that
After the night’s
Shower
Drops continue
To fall until
Mid-
Day. Sixth
Interpolation: Beth Sibley
Writes,
Suggests a
Word I can’t
Use
Here (alterity),
Goes on to
Muse
About Lew
Welch: “Amazing he
Was
Never found –
Maybe he’s still
Wandering …”
Which leads
Me to fantasize
The
Old hermit
Inscribing one more
Ghostly
Poem this
Morning, on one
More
Fallen leaf,
Floating it down
A
Boulder-strewn
Stream … a small
Dictionary
Defining secret
Words for me …
Simple
Silent glory.
In the middle
Of
The square
There’s a broken
Bench,
A tree
With foliage so
Abundant
That after
The night’s shower
Drops
Continue to
Fall until mid-
Day.
Little by
Little. Divine circumstance.
In
The middle
Of the square …
Acceptance,
Harmony, grief,
And a sense
Of
Exquisite regret …
Simple silent glory.
Heavy
Drops fell
From the trees
And
Made a
Plopping sound as
They
Hit the
Poodles. Shouldn’t that
Be
“Puddles”. No …
Poodles (Anselm Hollo,
“Pygmy
Huts”, read
At random the
Next
Morning while
Taking a shit.
Divine
Circum-happenstance).
Finis, interpolation six.
Summer
Dressed all
In white, falling
Asleep.
Shanti. Prashanti.
Well, it sometimes
Happens.
Roots, dirt,
Corpse: “body, mind,
And
Wealth I
Offer at thy
Feet.”
Well, it
Sometimes happens that
He
Wishes for
It. To pass
Through
A screen
Door, which opens
With
The sacred
Syllable. What his
Oeuvre
Will have
Signaled: roots, dirt,
Corpse:
“Fill our
Hearts with love
And
Peace.” Well,
It sometimes happens …
From
The darkness
Of the camera
They
Sang. There’ll
Be no end
To
It. What
Must have been
A
Beautiful day.
Hundreds lay dead,
Thousands
More fell
Wounded, and the
Snows
On the
Palace Square were
Dyed
Scarlet with
Blood. What’s the
Point
Of distinguishing
Episodes and narrating
Them?
His watch
Showed 10:05. “May
All
The blood
Still to be
Shed,
Hangman, fall
Upon thee and
Thine …”
Always and
Never the same.
Don’t
Think a
Poet can ask
For
More. What,
At first, appear
Like
Small gentle
Melodic strands, mere
Echoes
Or residues
Of the main
Event,
Gradually assume
An inner life
Of
Their own.
Let it come,
That’s
All. Put
Yourself flat on
Your
Back. The
Very ambiguity, it’s
Only
Natural. “Wild”,
Etc. Begin to
Receive
The kiss.
( ) is found
In
The saliva
Of the gods.
The
Song of
The sap in
The
Branches of
My arms, in
The
Middle of
All the possible
Musics
And sounds
Of the world,
The
Earth, listening
To us, the
Star
In my
Hair, the violin,
The
Tide erased,
All day sitting
In
The shade
Of your eyelashes,
A
Kind of
Vertigo … If I
Devoted
My life
To one of
Its
Feathers? If
I arrived in
A
Time of
Words and thread?
“I
Remember the
Future – I’m fated
To
Something odd –
To have patience
The
Color of
A refrigerator – synchronicity –
&
A forest
Of emerald Buddhas.”
That’s
Mông-Lan.
Is this interpolation
Number
Seven? Or
Interpolation number one?
Long,
Long have
You held between
Your
Hands the
Sound of water.
The
Sole touched
The ground, the
Ground
Touched the
Foot. Long, long
Have
You held
Between your hands
The
Half-darkness.
Chanting of monks:
“A
Time to
Love, a time
Of
Peace, a
Time to dance,
A
Time of
Silence …” We were
Traveling
On a
Voyage. Oblivion. Oblivious.
A
Transitory pact
Called “Bus Ride.”
When
Shall I
Sit down once
More
At the
Dark table of
Your
Breast? Blood
Gives way to
A
Cadenza for
Water (the bus,
Too,
Moves in
Primordial mythic time).
When
A girl
Is born, her
Mother
Puts a
Spider in her
Hand,
To teach
Her to weave.
I
Had no
Words / I was
Speechless
Before the
Golden riddle of
Your
Smile. I
Said, “In that
Case,
I will
Devote my life
To
Beating my
Head against that
Wall.”
I lay
Down on an
Empty
Street to
Feel as the
Pavement
Feels. I
Had no words /
I
Was speechless.
So it was
That
I gave
My Lecture on
Nothing.
Tired of
My room’s normality,
I
Crisscrossed it
With a blue
Thread …
Taut and
Geometrical as a
Sky
To communicate
With other worlds.
From
The top
Of the hill
Shaded
From light /
Where light takes
Refuge:
The blue
Forest of your
Hair.
Only photocopies,
Photocopies of photocopies,
Etc.,
Survive. I
Proposed a day
Of
The seed.
I proposed a ...
How
Long is
It now since
I
Entered civilization
And still I
Have
Not succeeded
In appeasing the
White
God of
Sleep. But these
(Or
Further photocopies
Made from them)
Are
Quite adequate
For performance. ( )
Laughed
And said
Pensively: I shall
Rest
For a
Long time under
A
Blue-black
Peace / a peace
That
Is dark
Dark blue. She
Realized
The notation
By performing a
“Solo
Dance,” making
A painting by
Dipping
Her feet
From time to
Time
In paint
And walking on
A
Greatly enlarged
Copy of the
Notation.
Every year
I gathered and
Planted
Seeds. When
The trees reached
20
Cm I
Gave them away.
Listen
To the
Menace of the
Old
Men / the
Threatening wizards. Breathe.
Set
To music
Poems by ancient
Egyptian
And Persian
Writers and Marina
Tsvetayeva.
Make the
Urgency of the
Present
Palpable. Fingers
Bleed. The piece
Is
Titled Silenzio.
I tried to
Capture
Spring, but
The petals rotted.
Perhaps
Tomorrow the
Purple voice / the
Crimson
Voice will
Cease / will hush
Forever.
Breathe. Leaves
From the trees,
Though,
Were hardier.
Don’t be surprised,
My
Love. All
Of these sounds
Are
Festive. I
Wanted to keep
Them
Before they
Were swept up
Or
Burned, not
Out of a
Desire
To make
Them eternal, but
As
An act
Of folly. Several
Million
Years after
The creation of
Autumn
And a
Few years after
The
Creation of
The plastic bag.
I
Have spun
A song soft
As
The murmur
Of doves at
Noon.
I often
Regret having come
Into
This petty
World; not that
I
Hate the
World. No … I
Love
The world.
Sidewalk forests, small
Altars
On the
Streets, the opinions
Of
Birds, “the
Dangerous instant of
Transformation …”
I have
Offered you my
Wildflowers.
That’s life,
Mon vieux. It’s
Total
Nonsense. I
Began to compile
An
Encyclopedia of
Disgust, a document
Of
The abjection,
Violence and injustice
In
Which we
Lived: no one
Contributed
To it,
Everyone thought our
Era
Was the
Encyclopedia of Disgust.
The
Streets are
Quiet and white
As
In the
Afternoon naps of
Childhood.
So many
Of my symphonies
Are
Tombstones. Maximum
Fragility against maximum
Power.
Mildness at
The end of
Day
And flaming
Blossoms. I’m willing
To
Write a
Composition for each
Of
The victims
But that’s impossible.
A
Token, a
Strand of seaweed,
A
Shell, or
A pebble. The
Smiles
Of our
Dead who dance
In
The blue
Village, their smiles
Are
So gentle.
The violins sing
A
Serene duet,
Followed high on
The
Cello. The
Poverty of the
Thread
[Is] the
Limit and edge
Of
The world
[Is] any moment.
My
Sister, these
Hands of night
Upon
My eyelids,
The mutability of
Boundaries,
Tunes from
Pannonian Gypsy taverns,
Like
A drop
Of blood into
The
Void, the
Twittering of the
Milk-
White birds,
The fire of
Passion,
The pain
And paradise of
Love,
Death of
A more intimate
Kind,
La muerte
Chiquita, la muerte
Pequeña,
A few
Photos, the books
Burned,
The bodies
Disappeared, the high
Strings
Of the
Koras, many crossroads,
Many
Crossroads, I
Saw the suffering
That
Would come
To us, I
Tied
A red
Handkerchief around my
Wrist
And wore
It day and
Night
Until it
Frayed, eyelids so
Transparent,
“Sunday is
Gloomy, my hours
Are
Slumberless / Dearest,
The shadows I
Live
With are
Numberless / Little white
Flowers
Will never
Awaken you / Not
Where
The black
Coach of sorrow
Has
Taken you,”
The meeting of
Sun
And bone,
Trail of bones,
I
Laughed, I
Laughed, I laughed,
In
Search of
Star, stone, air,
Breath,
Snot, semen,
Urine, excrement, babies,
What
Goes in
And out, in
And
Out, of
The creation body.
Wild
Perfumes of
Presence that can
Last
An eternity.
The film To
Parti
Si Pate
Would begin with
This
Image. What
Is poetry to
You?
Pure and
Primordial masks upon
The
Wall. The
Most important text
Is
A twice-
Repeated fragment about
Birds
Flying in
The mild air,
As
If they
Were unconsciously questioning
Existence
Or trying
To remember something.
Plurivalent.
Part of
The material for
The
Flute work
Is also a
Text
About birds.
The sí in
Passion
(From the
Latin partire, to
Suffer).
Classic words
To cradle these
Obsessions.
Like the
Birds who are
Unaware
Of their
Shadows and thus
Create
For us
The illusion of
Freedom.
Weaving together
The two sides
Of
The road.
Joining the two
Banks,
Below and
Above the water.
The
River wants
To be heard.
“Everything
[Is] alive,
Even the stones.”
Stars
On the
Curved sea were
Another
Apparition de
L’église éternelle.
Interpolation
Number eight:
Shake before the
Real
Because it
Isn’t but it’s
Plugged
Right into
Your socket. (That’s
Alice
Notley, Alma
Or The Dead
Women).
The Chibchas
Weave lines, birds
Lose
Feathers and
Being makes its
Offering
To immensity.
Two or three
Lines,
A mark,
And silence begins
To
Speak. Readable
Asemic writing is
What
I'm interested
In. *Readable Asemic*
May
Be oxymoronic, but
Still, that’s what
I'm
Interested in.
(The Blind Chatelaine;
Interpolation
Continued). It
Was before we
Were
Born. The
Conditions in the
Camp
Were appalling.
Quatuor pour le
Fin
Du Temps
Was premiered in
Front
Of thousands
Of prisoners, with
A
Dilapidated piano
And a cello
With
Only three
Strings. The earth
Breathes
Through its
Cracks. The rock
Remembered.
The stars
On the concave
Sea
Were another
Echo. Vast landscapes,
Birds,
Are probably
The greatest musicians
To
Inhabit our
Planet. To be
Erect
Again, greening!
Who has not
Wished,
At some
Point, to create
An
Abecedarium,
Or even an
Entire
Vocabulary, from
Which the verbal
Would
Be entirely
Excluded? I saw
Her
Eyes liven,
Receptive to the
Signs.
The journey
Could continue (Henri
Michaux,
Stroke by
Stroke). Interpolation concluded.
I
Consulted the
Pale old men /
The
White-haired
Elders … They told
Me
Their silence,
The astounding darkness
Of
Their eyes
And ears … Interpolation
Nine:
Iraqi war
Dead estimate: around
650K.
Astounding darkness …
Tavener describes Eternal
Memory
As the
Remembrance of death …
To
Be erect
Again, greening! Waves
Of
Grass, blades,
Blades, surging … The
Poem
And the
Poet become a
Plant …
Your smile
Sets me a
Riddle …
The Paradise
Christ promised the
Repentant
Thief … I
Have not forgotten
To
Consult my
Heart (the first
Portable
Precario) … The
Bright wing … I
Heard
The music,
Chant-like in
Character,
As though
From a distance
As
If half-
Dreamt … The plant
Becomes
The fibers
Of the book …
I
Close the
Ninth interpolation with
A
Quote from
Ludwig Wittgenstein I
Borrowed
From Omo
Bob: I can
Well
Understand why
Children love sand.
Who
Hopes to
See / to find
My
Face among
The fluttering / in
The
Blossoming scarves?
Does the performer
Know
How to
Play these pieces,
Does
The listener
Know how to
Receive
Them? [Louder]
Can … you’re not
Hearing
Me? [No, …
Can’t hear you
At
All] Not
At all? [No …
Nah]
What do
I do [You
Can’t
Turn that
Up? Can you
Turn
The mike
Up?]
Try
To speak
Louder it will
Only …
[Let’s take
A three minute
Pause …]
It is
The silence of
Destroyed
Villages. Let
This silence resound
For
Them! The
Transcript refuses
To
Forget. You
Hear this hummm …
Angel
Of answers
That come with
The
Light, clear
As dawn, the
Image
Of surprise
And bewilderment. Only
An
Empty pedestal
Was left, three
Out-
Of-work
Fiddlers, and snow
Flakes,
Etc. I
Laughed, knowing what
Was
First. A
Being in. Salt,
Mists,
Doves, stones,
Sand. Two young
Apaches
Meet at
A Hoop Dance,
And
Dance only
With each other.
The
Next day
The boy plays
His
Flute for
Her. She puts
A
Leaf in
The stream which
Flows
Down to
Him, so he
Knows
She hears.
The first knot,
Beginning
Of the
Spiral. Radiant gate
Of
Riddles. Doves,
Stones, sand. The
Girl
Falls ill
And dies. The
Boy
Runs into
The hills. His
Flute
Still echoes
When breezes blow
Through
The cottonwoods,
And streams ripple
In
The canyons.
“Are you personally
Closing
The street?”
A man asked.
“Just
For a
While,” I said.
We
Played. Glissando
With a bamboo
Pole
Along the
Pegs. In my opinion,
I
Don’t write
Any secular music
At
All. The
Thread is a
Path
I lose
Myself on, the
Path
Is a
Scent I go
Down.
Like someone
Seeking the smoke
Of
A dream.
I am fascinated
By
The instruments.
A constellation of
Darkness,
Another of
Light. The transparent
Shadows
Of singers
Cried. Not a
Tree
Grew in
The courtyard. Paul
Celan:
“There are
Still songs to
Be
Sung on
The other side.”
Halo
Of blood.
A bear playing
The
Double bass.
At precipice’s edge.
Gathering
Many seeds
In one place.
My
Legs grow
Weary on the
Streets
At five
O’clock. My
Nerves
Collapse. This
Trembling that gnaws
My
Bones. There
Is no easy
Splendour
In either
The dissonant harmonies
Or
The piled-
Up fifths or
The
Primitive scoring
For brass.
Fire
Hydrant. White
Objects on black
Asphalt.
Gutter. Trash.
The two sister
Cities,
The purple
Of the living,
The
Blue of
The dead. A
Numbed
Chorus. In
This uncertain middle
May
I sleep
In the peace
Of
Your breasts.
Faust: I wish …
Mephisto:
I fear
This will be
The
Last of
Your wishes. Shrouded
Stone.
Silver helix.
Metal thread. We
Will
Drink the
Moon’s milk streaming
On
The sand.
Faust: they perished in
A
Smile. There
Is no beginningofthend.
Nalikena
(On they
Went), hanging on
To
The weather’s
Edge. Never turn
Your
Back on
A rogue wave.
In
My dream
Last night two
Lines
Of a
Poem came to
Me.
On waking
I lost one.
The
Flowering of
The “termite tree”
In
November/December
Means the rainy
Season
Will soon
Be here. Lunch
With
Its divers
Orders of sliced
Chicken.
What ho,
Old chap, gravity
Is
Working. Exhausted,
The mother has
Fallen
Asleep so
Her baby is
Listening
All alone
To the sound
Of
The night
Train. For
The
First time
I looked round
At
The wide
Stretch of water.
I
Don’t even
Have a hint
Of
A message.
A positively cheerful
Little
Tune in
Carefree dotted rhythms.
Simply
Time … and
Sound … written and
Breathing.
Pearls of
Dew. The pearls
Are
A musical
Cipher of the
Sinuous
Goddess. Lower
Strings and woodwind
Rising
In aching
Arpeggios, violins climbing
Ever
Higher and,
As the urgency
Increases,
A searing
Trumpet call. Vaya
Vaya …
Vaya vayaaa …
Aya vaya aya
Vaya
Aya vayaaa …
It is enough
To
Be sick,
Like an orphan
With
No gold
Anklets. What shall
My
Voice say
In response to …
I
Don’t even
Have the hint
Of
A message.
At what might
Have
Been the
High point of
The
Work with
Anyone else, she
Plunges
The chorus
Back into the
Depths
Of darkness,
From where it
Must
Resume the
Struggle. I also
Wanted
To say
That it is
Good
To be
In front of
A
Painting that’s
Called an ode
To
Joy and
Yet is so …
We
Dared our
Trembling hands, our
Mouths
Opened and
Closed. A single
Tree
Grew in
The courtyard. I
Thought
That all
This was nothing
Other
Than a
Way of remembering.
Moon-
Faced moths
Rested gently. Their
Happiness
Scalded us.
I don’t know
Why
I am
Religious. First, there
Was
Listening with
The fingers. The
Shared
Bones, sticks
And feathers were
Sacred
Things I
Had to arrange.
Your
Eyes, these
Sudden flashes of
Lightning
In the
Rainy season. I
Had
Been composing
For a long
Time,
Knowing nobody
Was going to
Hear
Me. What
Are we doing
With
Our lives?
Interpolation ten: Predicting
The
Weather is
One thing. Predicting
It
Correctly is
Another … that’s Bob
Cobbing.
And here’s
Liz Lochhead: A
Good
Fuck makes
Me feel like
Custard.
And here’s
JBR: Chrysanthemum tea
In
The morning:
Not bad. Then
The
Bronze crunch
Of sand. Leaves
Flickered
Like eyelids.
In the depths
Of
The world.
The body: a
Metaphor.
To pray
Is to feel.
A
Language of
Gestures, to quote
Jessica
Smith, verdure,
Issue 7. Interpolation’s end.
The
Sign begins.
The precarious is,
Is
Nothing and
Is and is.
The
Cries of
The hunter’s dogs
Straining
At the
Glowing leashes of
The
Great dream,
Night sounds of
The
Nights, quick
Precise and certain
As
The non-
Thoughts of the
Feather,
The calm
Dreams of lizards,
Canyon
Echoes, sunrays
Producing starlike points
On
The stone
Walls, islands floating
On
The earth,
Hands off in
The
Distance at
The self’s outer
Limits,
The mango
Tree’s dark blue
Lips,
The aulos
And the kithara,
A
Metaphor spun,
A woven message.
Sometimes
It is
A cloud. I
Can
Neither write
Nor speak about
The
Triumph of
The spirit. In
Ancient
Peru the
Diviners traced
Lines
Of dust
In the earth,
As
A way
Of divining, or
Letting
The divine
Speak to them.
Sometimes
I turn
Around in the
Street.
Every glance
May be expanded
To
A poem,
Every sigh to
A
Novel, happiness
By a single
Breath.
Suddenly the
Feeling that a
Word
Just came
Into my field
Of
Sight, en-amor-ados,
A word almost
Like
A person.
Like the sweep
Of
A wing.
“Tender, completely tender …”
Mist
Into flesh
Into mist into …
Sometimes
It is
A cloud. I
Can
Neither write
Nor speak about
The
Triumph of
The spirit. In
Ancient
Peru the
Diviners traced
Lines
Of dust
In the earth,
As
A way
Of divining, or
Letting
The divine
Speak to them.
Sometimes
I turn
Around in the
Street.
Every glance
May be expanded
To
A poem,
Every sigh to
A
Novel, happiness
By a single
Breath.
Suddenly the
Feeling that a
Word
Just came
Into my field
Of
Sight, en-amor-ados,
A word almost
Like
A person.
Like the sweep
Of
A wing.
“Tender, completely tender …”
Mist
Into flesh
Into mist into …
This
Long voyage,
This slow sweet-
And-
Sour kiss.
With great peace
And
Serenity, slightly
Grotesque. “The flickering
Lights …
Produce the
Trance … and a
Gleam
In the
Dark is seminal.”
Shall
We go
To the Belborg
Where
Men eat
Nourishing ice? “I
Dreamed
The Hidden
Treasure in 25
Notes,
Which I
Immediately saw as
A
Byzantine palindrome
Representing Paradise.” Waterrrr.
Zigzag
Meander. Playing.
Splashing. Gone around
The
Bend. Where
The peacocks flourish
Wild.
The coffin
Is full of
Wild
Peacocks. The
Coffin is borne
Out
Of church
Followed by mourners
With
Lighted candles.
I go up
In
Smoke. A
Hummingbird becomes a
Metaphor
For poetry,
And vice versa.
What
To me
Are when I
Am
Only? A
Dilapidated piano and
A
Cello with
Only three strings.
Clay
Snakes. Where
Are the what
Does
It matter?
Saint François d’
Assise.
She hides
Bundles of twigs.
But
Will the
Lovers sing? Extensive
Field
Research. She
Spills a glass
Of
Milk. She
Floats tiny rafts,
Ties
String between
The boulders, assembles
Bits
Of natural
And artificial debris.
The
Hummingbirds make
Flickering lace / the
Hummingbirds
Shriek. Soprano
Flute, oboe, cello,
Prepared
Piano and
Live electronics. Humming
Feather,
Mirror in
Flight. The cries
Answer
Me, like
Children slaughtered at
Night.
A twinkling
Of the eye
That
Can last
An eternity. Light
Of
The edge.
Eleventh interpolation (Lyotard):
“After
Auschwitz” (JBR:
Shorthand for “After
Everything”)
It is
Necessary to add
Another
Verse to
The story of
The
Forgetting of
The recollection beside
The
Fire in
The forest. I
Cannot
Light the
Fire, I do
Not
Know the
Prayer, I can
No
Longer find
The spot in
The
Forest, I
Cannot even tell
The
Story any
Longer. All I
Know
How to
Do is to
Say
I no
Longer know how
To
Tell this
Story. O flute!
The
Haze over
My sleep and
Original
Face. Highly
Coloured and plurivalent
Lines.
Sip sip
Hummingbird. Nobody so
Fragile.
Beckett: yes,
I work now,
A
Little like
I used to,
Except
That I
Don’t know how
To
Work anymore.
That doesn’t matter,
Apparently.
End interpolation.
Sip sip hummingbird …
The
White gold
Of the sand
Under
The light.
There are no
Mountains
Or hills
As far as
The
Eye can
See. Silence begins
To
Speak. Muffled
Drum … slow drum …
Heavy
Drum … full
Of saudade, the
Fire
Of passion,
The pain of
Paradise.
“To walk
Empty” is to
Have
No thread
Of water, no
“Flower
Inside.” Flames
Of a thousand
Aderas
Fill the
Air with pitch-
Bends
And vibrato
Fluctuations, pizzicato
Pluckings
And a
Steady pulse, the
Rim-
Blown reed
Flute of Rumi …
“Have
Something to
Say, hummingbird? Hummingbird
Flashes
Rays of
Light. The juice
From
Your flowers
Has made you
Dizzy.
Hummingbird flashes
Rays of light.”
Am
I not
The son of
Thorns
And thickets?
Some say the
Flute
Is one
Of the first
Instruments
Ever made.
The earth receives
Love
When offered
Food and drink.
Am
I not
The son of
Milk
Blood, new
Palm wine? Perhaps
The
Sound of
My modern flute
Evokes
The spirits
Of its ancestors.
(Mother
Of clouds,
Grant me leave
To
Go through).
Am I not
The
Son of
Giddy With Desire?
These
Are my
Incantations. Seedbed of
Images
In the
Sun. Maria Sabina:
“I
Am a
Sprouting woman.” The
Common
Ground shared
By these and
So
Many other
Texts – what does
It
Say? That
We are all
Thinking
Together, but
Expressing ourselves in
Thousands
Of ways,
Different and the
Same?
To communicate
Is to listen.
Listen
To the
Shape of a
Pear,
The thousand
Tiny ribs of
The
Feather, the
Lost my heart,
The
Fat man
Made of wood,
The
Empty string,
The yellow watchdogs
With
Their hungry
Mugs, the never
Was
I so
Despised, the feet
Walking
In the
Grass, listen to
The
Lion, the
Completely white paper,
The
Weave, weban,
Wefta, weft, web,
The
Leaping above
The hills, the
Totally
Excluded, the
First spiral, the
Sweet
Belly and
The gleaming thighs,
The
Moto perpetuo,
The to feel
The
Earth as
One’s own skin,
The
Even stone
Wears away, the
Ancient
Silence waiting
To be heard.
I
Pace / I
Turn around where
Dead
Men flower.
They gaze at
Me
With their
Deep / from the
Bottom
Of their
Eyes. Abrupt leaps
Of
Sonorous clusters.
Two or three
Lines,
A marking.
The sex is
One
Antenna among
Many where flashing
Messages
Are exchanged.
From the deep
Dark
Up into
The high bright.
Lempad,
In Bali,
Says “God tastes
The
Essence of
The offerings, and
The
People eat
The material remains.”
I
Who grew
Up like the
Wheat
Of spring,
Which made me
Drunk
From green
Water, from green
Streaming
In the
Gold of this
Instrument’s
Ability to
Breathe – love in
Its
Most ancient
Form is thirst.
You:
A drop
Of water. You:
A
Zigzag serpent
In the void.
Let
Us die,
Let us dance,
The
Drums plow
Up the silence,
The
Waves are
The colour of
Dawn.
Please don’t
Make your Oms
Too
Holy-holy.
The blood passes
From
The heart
And talks at
The
Joints. The
Drum furrows the
Silence,
Beats out
The rhythm of
The
Sap. Om
In a landscape.
Water
And its
Thirst are one.
The
Secret of
Daily life, of
The
Ordinary without
End, of the
Nonetheless
Extraordinary ordinary,
When a certain
Detachment
Allows it
To regain its
Uncanniness,
Its fatal
Uncanniness … I was
Following.
But what
Was I following?
With
A frail
Tilted structure in
The
Air, I
Joined into the
Grand
And noble
Exalting adventure of
Elucidating
The Universe
In its entirety.
Twelfth
Interpolation. I
Quote Michaux again.
I
Listen up
From the depths
To
The shadowy.
Split the stick
And
There is
Jesus. Silence turns
The
Page. The
Happy Island. Sharks
Have
White wings.
No matter what
We
Do it
Ends by being
Melodic.
Alba de
Habla. Awakening, Buddha
Said:
Too loose
Won’t sing, too
Tight
Will snap.
Unbidden illegal interpolation:
A
Black, E
White, I red
U
Green, O
Blue. Sing with
Your
Low voice /
Deep voice. Series
Of
Questions left
Unanswered. Elizabeth Robinson’s
Son:
Once upon
A time. There
Was.
The end.
The question feeds
The
Enigma. I
Have no taste
For
Magic. Love
Is my marvel.
You
May want
To cut that
Last
Sound. It’s
An ugly. Silence
Turns
The page,
Alba de habla.
Awareness
Awakens (who
Weaves?) the thread?
Out
Of the
Corpse-warm foyer
Of
Heaven steps
The sun. End, unbidden
Illegal
Interpolation (“Message”
By Ingeborg Bachmann).
*
Awareness
Awakens (who
Weaves?) the thread?
*
... I was
Following.
But what
Was I following?
*
Am
I not
The son of
Thorns
And thickets? ...
*
Am
I not
The son of
Milk
Blood, new
Palm wine? ...
*
... Am I not
The
Son of
Giddy With Desire?
*
... The
Common
Ground shared
By these and
So
Many other
Texts – what does
It
Say? That
We are all
Thinking
Together, but
Expressing ourselves in
Thousands
Of ways,
Different and the
Same? ...
*
“Have
Something to
Say, hummingbird?
*
What
To me
Are when I
Am
Only? ...
*
... Where
Are the what
Does
It matter? ...
*
Who
Hopes to
See / to find
My
Face among
The fluttering / in
The
Blossoming scarves? ...
*
But
Will the
Lovers sing?
*
... Who has not
Wished,
At some
Point, to create
An
Abecedarium,
Or even an
Entire
Vocabulary, from
Which the verbal
Would
Be entirely
Excluded? ...
*
... What
Is poetry to
You? ...
*
... What’s the
Point
Of distinguishing
Episodes and narrating
Them? ...
*
... Every once
In
A while
Didn’t he wonder
Whether
He had
Made a complex
Issue
Out of
Something very simple?
*
... Are you sure?
*
… How
To become a
Professional
Exile? …
*
... Why
Does tragedy exist?
*
Why
Are you
Full of rage?
*
What
Could one
Paint except the
Spleen
That comes
From those floods?
*
In
The West
And East, distant
Peoples
Are lying
On the sand.
Asleep
On the
Sand. Cast down
On
The sand.
The stage is
Defined
By seventeen
Transparent bowls, lit
From
Below. Turning
With the stars.
Arrogant
Cities lie
And whimper under
A
Hopeless sky.
All the performers
Play
Pairs of
Smooth-contoured stones.
Ibn
Arabi dreamt
He made love
To
The stars.
Lord have pity
On
The ten
Just words. “There
Is
No beginning,
No ending, only
Continuing.”
Na, I
Don’t remember anymore,
Na,
I suddenly
Remember. Not a
Glass
Of weary
Wine. Not a
Glass
Of water.
A sound is
Heard
In water.
Hear the image?
See
The sound?
The crossing performed?
Here
Is our
Seal and the
Wheel
Is the
Sign of our
Fate,
In the
Middle of the
One
Possible music,
Word loom star,
The
Grass is
Growing again, tender
For
The antelopes
After the November
Fires,
Delicato, impetuoso,
Libero, dolce, misterioso,
“To
Grow,” “To
Set in motion,”
And
“Yes, it
May be so,”
What
Formidable calm
Beneath the sky,
Raining
Its bloody
Dust, sempre molto
Energico,
Ma espressivo,
Instan, el libro
De
La palabra
Estrella, it began
As
A night
Vision, it began
As
A night
Vision, it began
As
A night
Vision that landed
On
The page
As a wave.
From
The tree-
Lined carp pond
Out
Back a
Sangha of frogs
Added
Their voices.
“Like church bells –
Spaciously.”
“Wild.” Etc.
Even before that
I
Was making
Small works on
Paper
Using bodily
Fluids as material.
The
Body – a
“Morning mushroom” (as
They
Used to
Say in ancient
China)
That fades
In bright daylight
And
Has vanished
By noon. Each
Stanza
Is rich
With powerful imagery,
Ranging
From the
Eerie to the
Intensely
Violent. That
Was when I
Used
A live
Video camera for
The
First time,
To scan and
Annoy
Members of
The audience while
They
Were trying
To watch the
Performance.
To conjure
(Or instill) non-
Ordinary
States of
Mind. What, at
First,
Appear like
Small gentle melodic
Strands,
Mere echoes
Or residues of
The
Main events,
Gradually assume an
Inner
Life of
Their own. I
Was
Considering the
Body in terms
Of
Its orifices.
Drinking. Pissing. “Micturation” –
To
Use the
Scientific term. My
Accent
Was much
More pronounced then.
Trying
To read
All those scientific
Words
Made the
Whole thing quite
Funny.
I was
Also interested in
Surveillance
And the
Gentle penetrating gaze.
Thirteenth
Counted interlude,
From something Beth
Sent
Me, by
Barbara Guest: “Lo,
From
The outside
A poem is
With
Us, of
Another composition. Travelled
From
An antique
Place … Writing, narrow
And
Sparse, pungent
As the lemon
Tree.” …
A poem
Is with us …
We,
Spawned from
The ethers by
Coupled
Monkey and
Demon, we, in
This
Floating Boschian
Domain, let us
Recall
The given
As praxis, the
Life
Of leper’s
Drill … the solo
Flute
And double
Basses … the little
Doormat
Made of
Pins with “Welcome”
On
It … the
Astral warfare … the
Vast
Body … A
Thousand Bullets for
A
Stone … If
We speak as
Mystic
Cannibals or
Darkened scorpion dwellers
From
On high
It is because
We
Know existence
To be nameless …
Rosary
Bits of
Human bone … bloody
Snow …
Each stone
Was labeled and
Numbered …
Sunless ferocity …
Sudden chilling return
To
The quiet
Music of the
First
Movement …
The expression “the
Light
At the
End of the
Tunnel”
Came to
Mind … I used
It
In the
Title to set
Up
Something positive
Which is then
Disrupted
When you
Realize the light
Could
Burn you
To the bone.
After
All, we’re
Living through a
Conjecture.
We don’t
Stop to wonder
Whether
It will
Live beyond the
Day.
Still, what
Must we fight
For?
Our skin
Of ignorance and
Seemingly
Unrelated musical
Traditions from across
The
Globe. The
Sensuousness of the
Materials
And the
Emotional charge. The
Strange
Furry texture.
What of oranges
Hanging
Like bats,
Their discomfort
In
Being ripe?
The gossamer shimmer?
The
Sheep’s testicle?
Marigolds can be
Grown
In an
Empty kerosene barrel.
What
Must we
Fight for? Earth,
Water,
Sky, trees,
Air, mind, body,
And
Everything throughout
The universe, nonsense
Syllables
Covered in
Transparent glass beads,
Which
[Have] the
Additional quality of
Reflecting
Light beautifully,
Unstable surface on
Which
We could
Slip and fall.
The
Way the
Daddy-long-legs
Moved
On the
White walls of
The
Bath. The
Cadenza-like passages
Of
Water, wind.
Yes, it was
Exactly
That. A
Two-by-four
Banging
On the
Head. Grief and
A
Sense of
The nearness (far
Beyond
Chrysanthemums and
November fog) of
Death.
Look. No.
Body. Thud of
Footsteps
Over the
Wooden bridge. The
Three
Stars in
The belt in
The
Constellation Orion.
I made a
Hair
Ball every
Time I washed
My
Hair and
They ended up
In
Shoe boxes
Under my bed.
Never
Mind. Get your
Shoes on and
Let’s
Get out
Of here. We’ve
Learned
Bits of
Each other’s languages;
We’ve
Shared our
Stories, have become
More
Aware of
The body’s fragility,
And
The work
Has become more
Humble
In a
Sense. In the
Nest.
What happens
When strangers meet?
Meetings.
We all
Know what happens.
Locate
Your question.
Did you draw
The
Map on
Soap because when
It
Dissolves we
Won’t have any
Of
These stupid
Borders? Right. Yes.
No
Way. Nothing.
Nothing. A small
Number
Of words
Are stretched over
A
Long duration.
Do you want
To
Say anything
Else? Every cage
Had
A light
Bulb lying at
The
Bottom. Do
You want to
Say
Anything else?
The glass infant.
Never
Mind. We
All know what
Happens.
Did you
Draw the map
On
Soap because
Of concentration camps?
Do
You want
To say anything
Else?
A computerized
Device dimmed the
Lights.
On off
On off off
On
In a
Quick random sequence.
One
Three two
Four intrinsically meaningless
Religious
Noises. I
Have never put
My
Hope in
Any other but
The
World’s greatest
Idiot. Do you
Think
The humbleness
You speak of?
Hum
Phat svaha.
Hum phat svaha.
Grah
Gooooor. There
Were terrifying things
In
The air:
Departure. Absence. Numerological
Symbolism.
Defiance cannot
Be easily separated
From
Vulnerability, order
From chaos, beauty
From
Revulsion, the
Brain from the
Body,
The self
From the other,
Affirmation
From negation,
Form from content,
Light
From dark.
White clouds clinging
To
Vague rock,
Just one just
One
Just one
If only. In tempore
Belli.
Sounds of
The artist’s heart-
Beat
And stomach.
Self-erasing drawing.
One
Three two
Four. Spiritual formulae.
Electric
Insects. Sustained
B-major tonality.
The
God-Music.
A given from
Which
To induce
A physiological change.
A
Newborn babe
Or a naked
Grub
Or a
Manzanita and a
Laurel
Low to
The ground in
A
Rock or
A highly ornate
Statue
Of Monjushri
In the Gate
Gate
Paragate Parasamgate
Bodhi Svaha gone
Worlds
Dangling from
The blooey. Numerous
Large
(In size)
And long (in
Number
Of measures)
Signs of crescendo
And
Diminuendo, with
No indications of
What
These hairpin
Signs are for.
Rusty
Hand-tools,
Mud covering her
Body.
Any time
Is breakfast time.
Bursting
Colors, cascading
Sonorities, explosive dynamics,
Swirling
Rhythms, Poème
Électronique. The artist
Lay
Motionless, wrapped
In plastic and
Gauze,
Heaped with
Entrails, just breathing.
As
The old
Greek said, “We
Walk
On the
Faces of the
Dead.”
The mountaintop
Of Mt. Diablo
Has
One of
The most expansive
Vistas
In the
World. A reductio
Ad
Absurdam of
A closed system.
To
Live amid
The great vanishing
As
A shadow
Must live. This
Simone
Weil called
Prayer. Arnold Schoenberg
Liked
The piece.
Two figures appeared,
Barefoot,
Dressed in
Overalls, with taped
Mouths.
One pulled
The other to
The
Pavement and
Drew a forensic
Line
Around the
Body. This figure
Was
In turn
Pulled to the
Ground
By the
One who had
Been
Lying prone,
And so the
Process
Continued. Sortes
Virgilianae: year in
Year
Out, the
Urn stands ready,
The
Fateful lots
Are drawn (Book
Six,
Early, Fagles
Translation). Interpolation fourteen.
The
Untranslatable thought
Must be the
Most
Precise, immense.
This piece was
Written
During my
Los Angeles period.
And
So the
Process continued, in
A
Chain, one
Figure’s fall becoming
The
Other’s rise,
And vice-versa.
More
Briefly, try;
But stymied, give
It
Up, do
Something else. Thicken
The
Plot. Dance.
The feet were
Naked
And vulnerable,
Yet they had
The
Strength. They
Dragged along the
Doc
Martens like
Laughing laceless puppets.
And
As for
Senzaki, he died
In
Obscurity, an
Old dishwasher, with
Few
Friends, a
Kind of parable,
Lost
Bells, lost
Bells (echo). The
Resulting
Video is
A complex and
Poignant
Work, which
Is more Radiation
Than
Power Path,
More Doom. A
Sigh
Than Spared
By Civilization and
Mass
Media. Obviously,
However, the eye
Is
Part of
The body. And
It
Was an
Amusing sight to
See
These old
People shuffle about
In
Dust … still
As they put
It,
This place
Was perfect for
Pebbles,
So rich
With rounded stones,
Transcendent
Thought, body,
Senses, mind, emotions
Everything,
The moment
Of transition from
Optical
To bodily
Sensation, the world’s
Largest
Replica of
A butterfly tongue,
The
World’s greatest
Greatest, that you
Waver
Constantly between
Contradiction and meaning,
A
Sense of
Beauty and anxiety.
So
That this
Kiss, she said,
Might
Shiver out
To the end
Of
The world,
Shimmer outward into
What
Has no
Opposite, the primitive
Voice
Of the
Dream-like beginning,
The
Deep mystical
Deep, the naked
Liquid
Rippling extraordinary,
The sleep of
Words
Towards which
The poem sees,
The
Gently screaming
Nocturnal lux aeterna,
The
Cloud of
Quiet wild. As
You
Move around
Your face is
Very
Lightly brushed
By single strands
Of
Hair hanging
From the beams.
Then
Full moon
Skunk appears / delightful /
With
Tiny frightful
Screams. Musically exactly
On
The same
Plane as a
Pencil.
Meanwhile the
Strands of hair
Gently
But insistently
Catch in your
Mouth.
The hair
Gets to you.
And
Some people
Blinded by this
Magical
Hokum-pokum
And those far-
Off
Peaks shining
Pure and rare,
Timeless
Cultural artifacts,
Sometimes have their
Own
Material, a
Wedge-shaped sign
Of
A space
For silence whose
Duration
Is entirely
Open and variable.
Why
Not sneeze?
The hair gets
Say
What? I’m
Going to be
Cool
And soften
The dreadful oh
Ick
I have
In my heart,
Wanting
To be
As close to
Nature
Poetry as
Possible. The most
Delicate,
Eroticized and
Lasting of human
Materials
Is also
Considered unclean. Anna
Freud:
When traced
Back to their
Source,
Displacements of
Feeling reveal themselves
As
Based on
Early childhood events
When
The loser
Was himself “lost”,
That
Is, felt
Deserted, rejected, alone,
And
Experienced in
Full force as
His
Own all
The painful emotions
Which
He later
Ascribes to the
Objects
Lost by
Him. “I’m sure
I
Cleaned this
Space just a …
And
Now, in
No time, it’s
Full
Of cobwebs?”
Wondered the woman
Taking
Care of
The large room.
The
Infinite space
Between dendrites. The
Ordinary
Drop of
Calm light of
The
Roar of
The black walls.
One
Day Henry
Went to the
Stand
For some
Vegetables. “Little did
I
Know that
The man I
Was
Buying asparagus
From was a
Master
Shakuhachi player.”
Thus began a
Long
Friendship. “Every
Force evolves a
Form” –
Strangely enough
These words do
Not
Come from
Hatoum herself, nor
From
A theoretician
Of aesthetics, but
From
Mother Ann
Lee (1736-84),
The
Founder of
The Shaker Sect
In
America. Art
Is life and
Life
Is transformation,
The supreme goal
Of
The traveler
Being to remain
In
Ignorance of
His [yes] destiny
(Youssef
Ishagpour, in
Tàpies, Works, Writings,
Interviews:
Interpolation fifteen).
((L L L
L
L L
L L L
L
L L
L L L))
Homage
To Charlie
Parker. Absorb the
Atmosphere
And share
The activities. An
Old
Culture with
A luminous tradition
And
Expression, at
The origin of
Which
Is Ramon
Llull, The Enlightened
Doctor,
As he
Was known, creator
Of
The language:
Silence, the night,
The
Dark face
Of the world,
Infinite
Empty spaces,
The elements of
Everyday
Life. Box
Of strings. Silence
Is
A roar
With hands. You
Are
Still here.
The pièce de
Résistance
Of the
Evening. Empty enormous
Empty
Empty enormous
Empty. Rooted in
The
Earth, part
Plant, part animal,
In
A playful
Atmosphere of panic
And
Feverish, elated
Sexual large eyes,
Lengths
Of yarn,
And string, rings,
Rice,
Newspaper, silver
Foil, toilet paper.
Incised
In the
Rock. Graffiti. End,
Interpolation
Fifteen. Even
Dada failed. Peace.
Hair
And air.
They stir lightly.
Therefore,
Be it
Enacted by the
Senate
And House
Of Representatives of
The
United States
Of America in
Congress
Assembled, Mud,
Water, Fire, Blackness,
Sight
And Unknown.
The Key to
Songs.
A haptic
Rather than optical
Perception.
Multi-dimensional
Relations to a
World
Where “threatening”
Difference is mitigated
And
Negotiated. You’re
All just a
Box
Of crayons.
The appearance of
A
Comet. One
Comment I really
Liked
Was when
A group of
Builders,
Standing having
Their lunch break,
Said,
“What the
Hell is happening
Here?”
And this
Black woman, passing
By
With her
Shopping, said to
Them,
“It’s obvious.
She’s being followed
By
The police.”
Be it enacted:
The
Whole ball
Of wax would
Make
A lovely
Crayon decorator candle
On
A Day
Of the Dead
Santeria
Petro Voudou
Altar. Be it
Enacted:
An out-
Of-whack music
Box.
An orbiting
Ball of dust.
“The
Color of
Face and the
Warmth
Of body,
The light of
Heart
And eye.”
Simultaneous dimensions. Contrapuntal.
Another
Unbidden interpolation.
13 November: there
Is
A rabbit’s
Severed head on
The
Sidewalk in
Front of our
Toledo
Hotel. 15
November: “Mis pasos
En
Esta calle /
Resuenan / en otra
Calle /
Donde / Oigo
Mis pasos / Pasar
En
Esta calle /
Donde / Sólo es
Real
La niebla”
(Octavio Paz). My
Steps
In this
Street sound in
Another
Street where
I hear them
Echo
In this
Street where all
That’s
Real is
The fog (tr.
Sam
And John
B-R). The
Paz
Is painted
On the wall
Of
Our hotel
Room in Madrid.
Sky
Fall down.
We are here
In
A tree
With a wire
Star.
Nearly translucent.
Sky fall down.
$1
Will get
You history. History,
You
Seem a
Tiny wrecked thing.
In
The night
And at the
Fading.
Massacres in
The camps. Could
You
Elaborate on
That? Buddha’s ears
Are
Droopy. We
Are here in
Our
Skin. “Flowers
For ritual or
Medicine.”
Away alone
A last a
Loved
Along the
Sólo es real.
A
“Celebratory / destabilizing
Framework.” Complicating patterns.
We
Are here
In our skin.
I
Rush my
Only into your
Arms.
Loud heap
Miseries upon us.
Nightmare:
I went
To Beirut looking
For
My parents.
In the wreckage
Of
Their home
I found two
Plastic
Boxes. The
Blue box was
Full
Of tiny
Toy soldiers that
Exploded
Becoming a
Cloud of flies
A
Rabbit’s severed
Head. La niebla.
One
Day, then,
The walls reveal
Their
Mystery. The
Density of the
Sacred
Withdrawn into
Itself. And this
Makes
The hand
A scene for
A
Strange exchange.
Each of the
Marks
Or scratches
An episode of
The
Supplicium. Like
A ritual scar
Signed
By a
Worm. And God
Knows
What else.
“He scratched himself
With
A fawn’s
Bone.” That very
Evening,
Having dinner
With Conchi in
A
Greek restaurant,
I solemnly announced
That
After ten
Years of not
Writing
A book,
The moment had
Come
To try
Again. “Bloody brilliant!”
Shouted
Conchi, who
Was hoping to
Add
A third
Book to the
Two
Escorting her
Virgin of Guadalupe
In
The living
Room; with a
Piece
Of pita
Bread dipped in
Tzatziki
On the
Way to her
Mouth,
She added:
“I hope it’s
Not
A novel.”
Later when I’d
Already /
Caused myself
Much pain / And
All
I could
Do was smile, /
I
Chose the
Simplest / words to
Tell
Myself / how
The sun’s golden
Rays /
Had slowly
Crossed the ivy /
Of
The garden
Of five trees.
Like
The reader-
Cicada of the
Ancient
Greek epigram,
We sing our
Freedom
Within the
Fabric of the
Text.
Don Andrés
Had been reading
Medieval
German mystics.
With him, therefore,
“New
Image of
The world” had
An
Ironical meaning:
“The sun, the
Moon,
The stars,
The other beings.”
“Quite
Right,” he
Said, “with the
World
The way
It is …” “Yes,”
I
Agreed. “If
It had been
Different,
I’d have
Demonstrated my doubts
Rather
Than my
Beliefs.” He smiled,
Then
Lowered his
Voice to say:
“When
Faith preaches
Hate, blessed are
The
Doubters.” I
Smiled back, and
Lowered
My voice
To say: “We
Are
All lost
Sheep.” Oh wretched
Heart,
Why not
Admit it’s hopeless?
She
Said jonquils
Came out of
Their
Bulbs very
Slowly so people
Would
Long for
Them more. Gochiku:
The
Long night /
The sound of
Water /
Says what
I am thinking.
Nothing
Is paltry.
One day I
Tried
To arrive
At silence directly.
Those
Millions of
Furious clawings were
Transformed
Into millions
Of grains of
Dust,
Of sand.
Solidarity. So. “To
Become
One with dust …”
(Tao Te Ching).
Emptiness
Never refers
To the absence
Of
Living beings
Themselves (Thich Nhat
Hanh).
On the
Limited surface of
The
Painting … / Later
With the heart,
As
In the
Void … (Shi-Tao).
Where
Are they
All, those, you
Know,
Configurations? The
Viola emerges once
More
To carry
The music higher
And
Higher. An
Electrical charge capable
Of
Shocking the
Spectator like a
Fetish
Or talisman
With therapeutic properties.
Or
At least
The ability to
Stir
And awaken.
I think so.
But
Then, I
Don't know. The
Finale
Seems to
Be … Or rather,
Somewhere
Between the
Earth in flames
And
The heavens,
The mind in
A
Whirl and
The laying on
Of
Hands, like
Rays of light …
Or
Rather, in
Her fingertips. The
World’s
A song
Of weird mutterings,
Tappings,
Wailings, and
Tremblings. Tracks left
On
A surface
By insects with
Wet
Feet. The
Multiple crosses of
The
Obituaries page
In a newspaper.
The
World’s a
Song of Kuan-
Yin
Shan, Mother-
Of-Mercy Mountain,
[Reflected]
Low in
The rainbow oily
Water.
She heals.
Wants to give
Me
Her umbrella.
There’s hardly a
Raindrop
In the
Rain-sweetened air.
Or
Take a
Stone from a
Mound
Of sorrow
And move it
To
A mound
Of joy. Hammer
A
Nail into
A mirror. Remove
All
The light.
Yes Yoko Ono.
Messages
In a
Bottle thrown into
The
Sea, to
Be washed ashore
Perhaps
And received.
It is not
A
Question of
Something to come.
Rabbi
Shim’on said,
“Not one is
Missing.”
Rabbi El’azar
Said, “My silence.”
Thus
Begins interpolation
Numero sixteen. Stones
Arrange
Themselves on
Separate scraps of
Paper
With an
Unobstructed view of
The
Sky, psalm
Praised be your
Name,
No one …
“As you know,
I
Have never
Pondered much about
My
Work. What
Pushed me hardest:
The
Sound of
A solitary flute.”
Something
Like the
Sound of trees.
Cover
The whole
Thing in a
Wash
Of white,
In melody, in
Marble
Dust, something
Striven for and
Won,
The mystery
If it is
A
Mystery. I
Want a nice
Kitchen,
Nice knives,
Roll, interpolation sixteen.
If
It is
A mystery, stand
Up
Next to
It. Why not.
Yeah.
Why not.
Chop it down
With
The edge
Of your goddamn
Hand.
Rabbi Shim’on
Said, “Not one
Is
Missing.” And
El’azar, “My silence.”
I’m
Just about
Done interpolating. But
Fuck
All, it
Is my birthday.
If
I don’t
Meet you no
More
In this
World, I’ll meet
You
In the
Next one, and
Don’t
Be late.
Don’t be late.
Who
Speaks this
Language? We sit.
Laugh.
Sing. We
Dream. Many neurotransmitters
Are
Of ancient
Lineage. I mean,
This
Music consists
Of important aspects
Of
The serial
Tradition, and at
The
Same time –
In the absence
Of
A possibility
That will revolutionize
The
Total existential
Content of life –
A
Return to
The state of
The
Simple “creature.”
Sacred plants have
Been
Our companions
Since the Paleolithic.
Possibly
They discovered
Language. Some of
Them
Saw all
The way to
The
Core. Every
Note has a
Specific
Duration, rhythmic
Value and intensity.
Each
Reflects itself
Backwards, as in
A
Mirror, standing
On its head.
Somewhat
Closer we
Find Walter Benjamin,
Who
Deals with
The “game of
Sadness”
Because history
Falls into the
Muteness
Of the
World. Sit. Laugh.
Sing.
Psychoactive animals,
Flowing outward toward
The
Nectar-King,
The poison for
Poison,
Sit, laugh,
Sing, dream. Who
Speaks
This language?
It is played
Once
Quite openly,
And then as
A
Kind of
Prayer, time and
Again
In all
Its ratios of
Pitches.
Late –
And post –. A
Wall,
A door
Without a door.
And
The stream
Falls off the
Mountain.
Frankly, I
Enjoyed this immensely
Since
I was
Following spontaneous musical
Intuition.
You are
Wherever your thoughts
Are.
I began
Piling all four
Pianos
On top
Of each other.
As
Suzuki said,
“All moral values
And
All social
Practices emanate from
The
Non-conditioned
Life that is
The
Void.” The
Night has got
A
Grip on
The tops of
The
Pines. Explanations
Come to an
End
Somewhere. A
Short cycle of
Chords.
Tàpies: “Many
Suggestions can be
Derived
From the
Image of the
Wall
And all
Its possible permutations:
Separation,
Cloistering, the
Wailing wall, prison,
Witness
To the
Passing of time;
Smooth
Surfaces, serene
And white; tortured
Surfaces,
Old and
Decrepit; signs of
Human
Imprints, objects,
Natural elements; a
Sense
Of struggle,
Of effort; of
Destruction,
Cataclysm; or
Of construction, re-
Emergence,
Equilibrium; traces
Of love, pain
Disgust,
Disorder; the
Romantic prestige of
Ruins;
The contribution
Of organic elements,
Forms
That suggest
Natural rhythms and
The
Spontaneous movements
Of matter; a
Sense
Of landscape,
The suggestion of
The
Primordial unity
Of all things;
Generalized
Matter; affirmation
Of and esteem
For
The things
Of the earth;
The
Possibility of
A varied and
Combined
Distribution of
Great masses; a
Sense
Of falling,
Of the bottom
Falling
Out. Of
Expansion, of
Concentration;
The rejection
Of the world,
Inner
Contemplation, annihilation
Of the passions,
Silence,
Death; twisting
And tortures, quartered
Bodies,
Human remains;
The equivalent of
Sounds,
Clawings, scrapings,
Explosions; shots, blows,
Hammerings,
Cries, reverberations,
Echoes in space;
Meditation
On a
Cosmic theme, reflections
For
Contemplation of
The earth, of
The
Magma, of
Lava, of ash;
Battlefield;
Garden; playing
Field; the destiny
Of
The ephemeral …”
The fire works
The
Side of
The log. I
Found
Myself in
Some new and
Surprising
Harmonic territory.
This is surely
Where
All the
Common fateful contingencies
And
Innumerable resonances
Must be stored.
Later
You say,
Got the message?
It
Unfolds in
A treble region
Of
Shimmering brightness.
Things cease to
Be
Things, cease
To cease to
Be
Things. Your
Face breaks up
In
Leaves, spreads
Itself out like
A
Cloud of
Passionate expressivity. “Just
Be
Ordinary and
Nothing special.” You
Stand
Under a
Cottonwood tree, wind
Blows,
Clarifies first
At a major
Third,
Then opens
Up to a
Fourth,
A fifth,
Is squeezed up
To
A high
E, long sustained,
Is
Abruptly torn
Off. Over and
Above
The muteness
Of walls. Got
The
Message? Once
Again there is
An
Ending that
Is not an
Ending.
The music
Has arrived at
The
Very extremes
Of the orchestral
Range,
From where
It may be
Imagined
Continuing into
Spheres beyond hearing.
It
Scorches and
Burns as it
Goes,
Leaving ruins,
Trash, scrap, rags
And
Tatters, traces,
Dust, dilapidation and
Dirt,
The divine,
Our lives, our
Hope,
Our why,
In its wake.
Such
Happiness being
Related to everybody.
Promise
You won’t
Die, ever! What
I
Meant to
Say … Stars out
And
All the
Unidentified shining objects.
The
Melody grows.
Pi, pa, pi
Pa,
Peu à
Peu, affirmation all
Affirmations.
Thus beginneth
Interpolation seventeen, with
The
Peu à
Peu of Theresa
Hak
Kyung Cha,
And her affirmation
All
Affirmations. It
Continueth with Tom
Beckett’s
I … am
Often mistaken for
Someone
Else. When
A stranger says
Aren’t
You _____
Or _____ or
_____,
I just
Nod and smile.
I
Forget about
Almost everything. I
Was
The model
Closest to hand.
Such
Happiness being
Related to everybody.
A
White ceramic
Bodhisattva with an
Unconvincing
Number of
Arms. The melody
Grows
Pi, pa,
Pi, pa, peu
À
Peu. To
Distinguish no more
The
Rain from
Dreams from breaths.
It
Is my
Policy to answer
To
Whatever name
I’m called: Body,
Sexuality,
Death, the
Banal, the Contingent
And
The Political.
Maybe you’re wondering
Why
I, a plate
Of green black
Eggplant,
Am telling
You this. It
Is
Sad and
Melancholic. It is
Traditionally
Sung by
Daughters when visiting
Their
Mothers’ graves.
The commas. The
Periods.
The pauses.
I heard the
Swans
In the
Rain. A person
Is
An odd
Collage. End interpolation.
And
Naturally there
Will always be
Someone
Who will
Say: “What is
This
Guy talking
About? There’s nothing
There
But a
Bunch of straw
Stuck
To a
White canvas with
A
Stick in
The middle!” And
We’ll
Have to
Say he’s right.
Moon
Day now
Both walking O.
People
Remember more
Noise each year.
It
Is not
To sketch something.
They
Are forms
And signs that
Talk
Of themselves.
Because one sees
But
Silver half
Freezing in day.
And
What is
The purpose of
Writing
Music? One
Is of course
Not
Dealing with
Purposes but dealing
With
Sounds. What
Then are the
Roots
Of nonbelievers’
Values? Quiet illumined
Grass
Land moon
Day now both
Walking
O both
Walking O. A
Way
Of waking
Up to the
Very
Life we’re
Living which is
So
Excellent once
One gets one’s
Mind
And one’s
Desires out of
Its
Way and
Lets it act
Of
Its own
Accord. So what’s
Going
On? It
Is just day
One’s
In. We
Now know that
What
We term
Natural laws are
Merely
Statistical truths
Slithering through the
Earth
And sand
And lakes of
Ink
And straw,
Manure and, which,
Being
Themselves, become
Their own allegory.
Pages
Radiant with
Script of luminous
Interstellar
Dust somehow
Embodied in the
Actual
Texture of
African dances or
Tantric
Breathing or
The deeper you
Go
The who
Might have guessed?
The
Sun beats
Down from directly
Overhead.
“Move your
Bowels and pass
Water,
Put on
Your clothes and
Eat
Your rice.”
Pages radiant with
Dewdrop
Reflection of
Moon and wasted
Cherryblossom
Quavering branch.
And the instrument
Comes
Closer to
Its natural resonance.
This
Is a
Little white magic
For
Alan, my
Friend. Anything is
Maniacal,
For everything
Takes place in
A
Field infinitely
Large and grand,
Radiant
With continuous
Present and beginning
Again
And again
And forty days
In
The desert
And and and.
Endless
Dumb music,
Splendidly nowhere, walks
Out
Of the
Sky. Stone walks
Out
Of the
Sky. Mu walks
Out
Of the
Sky. Splendidly, Nowhere
Walks
Out of
The sky. What’s
Behind
Door number
One or the
Curtain
Of fire?
On other occasions
The
Artist has
Chosen earth, mud,
Space,
The hole,
Burn marks, pieces
Of
Cardboard, the
Wall, garbage, newspaper,
The
Pastry chef’s
Cookie sheet, the
Traces
Of the
Wind, the imprint
Of
The human
Body, bed sheets,
Broken
Dishes, knots,
The traces of
The
Ram, footsteps,
Body hairs, hairs
From
The head,
Grilles, cracks, strings,
Rubble,
Pillows, soldier’s
Blankets, rice and
Hundreds
Of other
Things. Old sawdust
Rotten
And rich.
The dusty and
Broken
Bush. Hundreds
Of sandhill cranes.
“Those
Gurgling sandhill
Crane calls are
Coming
Out of
The sky.” Tell
Me
How a
Heart like a
Heart,
Without being
Caught at the
Base
Of my
Throat, how do
We
Continue to
Live this imperfect
Capacity
Of sympathy?
The enormous dirty
Swollen
Foot, and
And and, the
Suffering,
Pain, fatigue,
Waxy, assaulted, marked
By
Wounds and
Bite marks. “So
We
Celebrate breasts.
We all love
To
Kiss them –
They’re like philosophers!”
(Endless
Dumb music,
Splendidly nowhere …) But
Again,
Blood and
Again, as in
This
Huge body
With legs slightly
Apart,
And and
And, there is
Often
A tremendous
Total immortal ambiguity.
And
In the
Sun’s reflection, ten
Thousand
Miles of
Gold on the
River,
In the
Gold-leafed sexual
Embrace,
In the
Gold of the
Zero,
In the
Gold of the
Beginning
And the
End have no
Beginning
And no
End, children chew
Blood-
Soaked blades
Of grass. A
Parable
Whose phrases
Seem to outlast
The
Biggest human
Breath? It must
Be
Because I
Too suffer from
This
Love for
Fleeting things, it
Must
Be because
I too observe
Black
Specks swirling
In the inky
Tonic,
Sip shudder,
Shudder sip. The
Cello
Part lies
Down an octave
From
The violin.
Is this graffiti?
In
General, graffiti
Makes reference to
Sexuality,
Politics and
Death. This is
A
Time when
Mosquitoes are hatching
Near
The Arctic
Circle. After a
Mournful
Introduction with
Oboe and solo
Viola,
The cellist
Is led in.
He
Saw himself /
She saw herself /
All
The combinations /
All the permutations /
Saw
Themselves / in
This universe. There,
Before
The mirror,
The not-yet-
Known
Pronoun drew
Its own ineffable
Magical
Hyper-sensitive
Place in it.
Come
Forth then,
As if pain
Were
Singing in
Joy. Leaves fell
In
A blaze.
When the ocean
Was
Formed, the
Great symphony wanted
To
Bathe in
It. We have
The
Actuality of
This impossibility. We
Have
The unrepresentable
And the presence.
We
Have tree’s
Self at home
In
Cloud, cloud
In high sky.
And
Differently ordered,
The phonemes keep
Returning.
Like waves.
Socrates is asked
Whether
He thinks
There is an
Idea
For “mud”
And “hair” distinct
From
The objects
Themselves. “How intolerably
We
Are part
Of a circle
Of
Those who
Give and take
Pain
At this
One time.” The
Text
Crumbles into
Scraps, coalesces again,
Again
Dissolves. Bodhidharma
Spent twelve years
In
Front of
A wall, the
Wall
We all
Crash into. As
If
Pain were
Singing in joy.
A
Beautiful young
Woman had been
Wooed
By an
Admirer for a
Long
Time, but,
For fear of
Harming
Her soul
And her chastity,
She
Rejected him
Again and again.
Her
Resistance against
The man’s wooing
Was
Supported by
A priest of
The
Town, who
Continually admonished her
To
Preserve her
Virtue. One day
When
The priest
Was forced to
Leave
The town
To travel to
Venice,
He made
The woman solemnly
Pledge
Not to
Weaken in his
Absence.
She promised,
But on the
Condition
That the
Priest bring her
One
Of the
Famous mirrors from
Venice.
During the
Priest’s absence, she
In
Fact withstood
All temptations. After
His
Return, however,
She asked for
The
Promised Venetian
Mirror. Thereupon the
Priest
Pulled a
Skull out from
Under
His robe
And thrust it
Cynically
Into the
Young woman’s face:
“Vain
Woman, here
You see your
True
Face! Consider
That you must
Die
And that
You are nothing
Before
God.” The
Young woman was
Horrified
To the
Marrow. That same
Night,
She surrendered
Herself to her
Suitor
And from
Then on enjoyed
With
Him the
Da-sein of love.
(Unfortunately,
I [Peter
Sloterdijk] had to
Relate
This story
From memory, since
I
Could not
Relocate the source;
Therefore,
I can
Vouchsafe only the
Gist,
But not
The wording or
The
Detail of
The novella). Here
Begins,
And possibly
Ends, the final
Interpolation,
The most
Beloved body, a
Wedding
Of the
Pepper to the
Salt.
My mind
Goes up into
The
High pines
And sits among
The
Crows
In one of
The
Most unusual
Drum rolls to
Appear
In music.
The parenthesis of
The
Shadows midway
Through carries us
Into
The smoke
And mirrors at
The
End. And fish
Turn into birds,
And
An empty
Trunk produces a
Young
Princess, and
The stroke of
A
Fan makes
Flowers grow, while
Coins
Come out
Of the ears
Of
The most
Unbelieving [yes!], and
In
The alcoves
And grand halls,
In
The great
Mystery of five-
Thirty
On a
Summer’s afternoon, are
Rhythmically
Free passages
With no bar-
Lines,
In which
Sounds are truly
Projected
Into space.
Yet in the
Middle
Of this
Are measures of
Rests
With meticulous
Tempo markings, and
The
Marvelous shimmer
Of “abrash.” Time
Goes
Hand in
Hand with the
Laying
On of
Hands, on skin,
Hair,
Bodily secretions.
Nothing is paltry.
Take
Heart from
This thousand-year-
Old
Fragment: yonder,
Over the bridge!
Being
Is said
In many ways
(Aristotle,
Metaphysics, Book
IV). The page
Turns.
It’s the
Same one. True,
Mon
Ami, the
Colors are only
Themselves,
And yet …
(Alan Baker, “Enter
Fisherboy,
Stage Left”).
End interpolation? We
Are
The thread.
Intricate skeins of
Heterophonic
Polyphony. Here
Are the lost
Paradises,
Here are
The rarest of
Gifts.
Here is
The non-idea.
We
Are the
Threadiness of thread.
Thread
Plays. I
Transform into a
Magical
Object that
Has healing powers,
Violence,
Sexuality, huge
Mortality, that experiments
With
Wrinkled,
Torn or burnt
Writing
To be
Used in the
Body,
The body
Already a writing
Of
Arteries and
Veins traveling without
End.
My lines
Have turned into
Serpents
And living
Beings. Birds. You
Are
Bewitched, mon
Ami, the colors
Are
Only themselves,
And yet … “Being”
Is
A compound
Of three forms:
“To
Grow”, “to
Set in motion”,
And
“Yes, it
May be so.”
Peeb
A weet!
Gaia, void in
Which
Forms emerge
And metamorphose, appear
And
Are destroyed,
One must sit
Before
It with
Devotion. Its ephemeral
Fragility
Has great
Import, urging us
To
Unfailingly bestow
Loving care and
Vigilant
Attention. And
If I devoted
My
Life to
One of its
Feathers,
To living
Its nature, being
It,
Understanding it,
Until the end,
Peeb
A weet,
Peeb a weet,
To
A minimum
Of decency, to
Not
Losing heart,
Peeb a weet …
Both
Chang Cho
In the 8th
Century
And Chang
Chiu-ko in
The
11th century
Could cut out
Paper
Butterflies that
Would flutter around
And
Then return
To their hands.
I
Use “dream”
And “window” as
Metaphors.
And one
Cannot help but
Think
Of the
Dead body of
The
Man lying
On the sand
Behind
Candles. Chang
Seng-yu, in
The
6th century,
Painted a pair
Of
Dragons without
Eyes on the
Temple
Of Peace
And Joy, and
Warned
That the
Painting should never
Be
Completed. A
Skeptic filled in
The
Eyes, and
The walls of
The
Temple crashed
To ruins as
The
Dragons flew
Off. I use
“Inner”
And “outer”
And “moss-covered
Gardens”
As metaphors.
Thread and string,
Rice,
A button,
Dirty paper, a
Torn
Bit of
Cardboard, a length
Of
Rope, a
Broken plate, straw,
Hair,
Fur, are
Thread and string,
Rice,
A button,
Dirty paper, a
Torn
Bit of
Cardboard, a length
Of
Rope, a
Broken plate, straw,
Hair,
Not the
Ephemeral, the ugly,
The
Repulsive, the
Repugnant, the ruin.
Chang
Hsun held
Out bravely in
The
Siege of
Sui-yang in
756 and,
As supplies
And food ran
Short,
Even sacrificed
His favorite concubine,
To
No avail.
His patriotic rage
Caused
Him to
Grind his teeth
With
Such fury
That after his
Execution
It was
Discovered that he
Had
No teeth
Left at all.
I
Use “incoherent”
As a metaphor.
All
This research
Is intended to
Provide
An understanding
Of the world.
Yes,
I use
“All this research
Is
Intended to
Provide an understanding
Of
The world”
As a metaphor.
Now
Everything is
Completed, quite suddenly.
Say
What? You’ve
Got to be
Kidding.
Now it
Will all commence
To
Dissociate. You
Can’t get a
Fix
On what’s
Constantly moving. The
Work
Falls into
Three overlapping sections
Scored
For 52
Strings, a pencil,
The
Apocalypse, great
War crimes, controlled
Aleatoricism,
The semi-
Indefinite and the
Useless.
Tears &
Recriminations don’t cut
No
Ice. The
Piano turns to
Stone.
The work
Is scored for
Four
Saxophones, a
Contra-bass clarinet,
Musical
Saw, electric
Bass guitar, harmonium
And
A costly
Dissuasive against frequent
Performance.
There is
No dazzling luminosity
Of
The first
Day but the
Darkness
Of the
Ruin and the
Fragment.
My shorts
Are threadbare. The
Work
Is scored
For – one senses,
That
Is – heart-
Felt microtonal glissandi
And
An out-
And-out tip-
Of-
The-iceberg
Something, perhaps bewilderment …
_____
John Bloomberg-Rissman’s most recent publications are No Sounds Of My Own Making (Leafe Press), World Zero, and (forthcoming) A Spectrum of Other Instances. His work is anthologized in The Hay(na)ku Anthology Vol. II. His current project(s) are Autopoiesis, 1000 Views Of “Girl Singing” (an anthology he is assembling), and Thrownnest (a collaborative bit of theater). He is co-editor of Leafe Press. You can catch him in action at http://www.johnbr.com/, Zeitgeist Spam.
NOTES:
No Sounds of My Own Making was written in 3 parts and each part was written in 30 sections (not including intermezzos). At some point, around the time I was writing the 6th section of part 1, it became obvious to me at least this thing was one long poem.
The title is from something John Cage said in an interview. My brother Omo Bob’s use of it first brought it to my attention. My appropriation is without Cage’s, but with Omo Bob’s, permission.
I would like it acknowledged that I got the title from Omo Bob (with permission), but not only the title—also the idea. Though my first 1st “No Sounds” bit (which is not part of the published No Sounds) is dated 19 July 2006, one should note that he published a piece with the same title on his Omo Studios blog, 16 November 2006, and that the period of composition of this text was 1-20 June 2006—predating my own first effort. Of course, I was aware of his work. We brothers have always wandered the same infinite library in the center of the same garden of the same forking paths, constantly calling to each other across distances however vast, “man you just GOTTA check this out!” I don't know how many times I have committed the ‘sin of the older brother’ and not sufficiently acknowledged his role as inspiration and eternal auditor. Let me make up for it here.
The link to his text is http://omobob.blogspot.com/2006/11/no-sounds-of-my-own-making.html.
Virtually all the other sounds that are not of my own making in each part come from 3 sources and are found in the same order, round and round and round.
In part 1 use Phan Nhien Hao, Night, Fish and Charlie Parker (tr. Linh Dinh); liner notes for music I was listening to; Jean-François Lyotard, Sam Francis, Lesson of Darkness … like the paintings of a blind man … (tr. Geoffrey Bennington).
Part 2 makes use of L. S. Senghor’s Nocturnes (tr. John Reed and Clive Wake and/or Melvin Dixon); liner notes for music I was listening to (up to the halfway point; from there to the end of No Sounds I make use of the liner notes I’ve already used (more or less, though more more than less) in reverse order); Cecilia Vicuña, Instan, quipoem (tr. Esther Allen), Unravelling Words & the Weaving of Water (tr. Eliot Weinberger and Suzanne Jill Levine, in collaboration with the author), and The Precarious: The Art and Poetry of Cecilia Vicuña (ed. M. Catherine de Zegher).
In part 3 I use The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry (ed. Andrew Schelling); liner notes (see immediately above); Mona Hatoum (eds. Michael Archer, Guy Brett, Catherine de Zegher), for parts 1-15; and Antoni Tàpies: Works Writing Interviews (ed. Youssef Ishagpour), for parts 16-30.
For anyone interested in the liner notes, a list is available upon request to j@johnbr.com.
All these sources, like the title, are used without the original authors’ or composers’ or translators’ knowledge or permission. And I have done violence to some of the original source material (without introducing any sounds that weren’t already there one way or another). I hope I have made something “new” and am forgiven. In any case, 100,000 prostrations.
In each part I have allowed myself 6 interpolations from other sources (because there are 6 words per each hay(na)ku stanza) – though, unbidden, an additional interpolation or two slipped in. Most sources (yet again used without permission) are clearly indicated within the text, in sounds of my own making (sources that are not: Alan Baker, Steve Mitchell, Arthur Rimbaud – and Alice Notley, the inclusion of whose words have nothing to do with an interpolation, but are rather the result of a high fever, and kari edwards, whose words too have nothing to do with an interpolation, but which appear in acknowledgement of her death on 2 Dec 06). Besides these sounds of my own making, a few others here and there slipped in. Therefore the title, like most other statements one makes in this world, is only more-or-less true.
Each part includes a buried intermezzo. Part 2 also includes a relatively formless bit consisting of questions culled from various places in “my” text, called “Questions for Eileen”. They are and aren’t interpolations. I don’t count them among the 18 – 20? – I allow myself. Neither do I count the few verb tense changes I’ve made (all of which (most of which?) are bracketed).
The sources for part 1’s buried intermezzo are: Peter Worsley, Knowledges; Anne Carson, Grief Lessons; Toru Takemitsu, “Sound of East, Sound of West”; Rafal Wojaczek, “Season” (tr. Frank L. Vigoda).
Part 2’s are: Worsley’s Knowledges again; Robert Creeley, “The Edge” and “Wishes”, in Mirrors (as found in Collected Poems 1975-2005); conversations with Kathy Bloomberg-Rissman; Ko Un, Flowers of a Moment (trs. Brother Anthony, Young-moo Kim, and Gary Gach).
Part 3’s are all books I bought in Spain or brought with me (i.e. the Bernhard): Antoni Tàpies: Works Writing Interviews (ed. Youssef Ishagpour); Guillermo Solana, “Nausea and the Hand”, in Soledad Lorenzo gallery catalog Antoni Tàpies, 16 de noviembre – 23 de diciembre 2006; Arturo Barea, The Forging of a Rebel; Thomas Bernhard, Frost; Javier Cercas, Soldier of Salamis; Salvador Espriu, “The Garden of Five Trees” (tr. Louis J. Rodrigues) in Selected Poems; Yves-Alain Bois, “From the Spider’s Web” in Gego: Defying Structures; Jose Lezama Lima, Paradiso (tr. Gregory Rabassa); Amin Maalouf, Balthasar’s Odyssey (tr. Barbara Bray); Ausias March, “XI” (tr. Robert Archer), in Verse translations of thirty poems; Merce Rodoreda, The Time of the Doves (tr. David Rosenthal).
Another 100,000 prostrations. Minimum.
I guess this could be considered serial music, in which each part has been composed using a 3-tone row. I guess it could be considered a mosaic; cf. the shibbuts and iktibas found in the poetry of Al-Andalus: “poets employed [them] to such an extent that the verse frequently seems to become a web of quotation, with all the indirection, multiple meaning, and mirrored or magical effect that entails” (Peter Cole, introduction to his Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid, pp. xviii-xix).
Being is said in many ways (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book IV).
No Sounds is for Nick and Debra.
_____
For an audio-based remix of No Sounds, please go to:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.johnbr.com/zeitgeist_spam/2008/12/no-sounds-of-my-own-making-first-remix.html
Sr Priego has now graced us w/a 2nd and 3rd remix, as well, to be found at
ReplyDeletehttp://www.johnbr.com/zeitgeist_spam/2008/12/no-sounds-of-my-own-making-second-remix.html
http://www.johnbr.com/zeitgeist_spam/2008/12/no-sounds-of-my-own-making-third-remix.html
"Out
ReplyDeleteOf the
Corpse-warm foyer
Of
Heaven steps
The sun. End, unbidden"
wow you stole that right from a translation of ingeborg bachmann:
"out of the corpse-warm foyer of heaven
steps the sun
here, it is not the immortals', we perceive,
but rather, the fallen"
thief