I give you, my friends, THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR:

Baby Gorillas

MVI_7599
Originally uploaded by Ululate

Today's ensemble: zoo day

IMG_7583, originally uploaded by Ululate.

What else to wear to the zoo but leopard print? Faux, of course. OF COURSE.

She seems a little nonplussed, but isn't she majestic? Her fur is REAL.

spoooooky

IMG_7552, originally uploaded by Ululate.

lately I'm a little like a car whose driver is slamming too hard on the accelerator and the brakes, accelerator and brakes... where's the agency in that? by which I mean I'm not the driver.

lackey

don't read this it's boring

aaargh the dreams... was about to fly off to Japan with G. for some reason the airport was on the lower east side near delancey street... I stopped in a little store to buy some olive oil... why would I need to bring olive oil? and then remembered I hadn't brought my cell phone or charger...so back to some apartment... not ours... but we'd been staying there... almost no furniture... an apparition slipped in... female, I think... maybe a homeless person using the bathroom... although too much like an apparition to actually use a bathroom... and then she slipped out again... and then I realized... Gary was nowhere to be seen... the flight was leaving in a half an hour... I still didn't have my cellphone... I thought OK I'll rent one... but where was Gary?... I noticed the olive oil was dark, like unprocessed argan oil...

Lynn you can have this boring stress dream if you want although I can't imagine why anyone would want to read it: it doesn't even have a denoument...

Today's ensemble: the turn from rhetoric

Yesterday morning attended a panel presentation (and this is what I wore) at The Algonquin (!) (old New York!) (swanky!) as part of a conference put on by the School Of Visual Arts. The panel theme was on teaching creative writing in visual arts schools and it was moderated by Hugh Behm-Steinberg. All of the panelists were interesting, but I was of course especially interested in Mairead Byrne's and Christine Wertheim's sections, because I knew and liked and admired these two in advance. Mairead addressed such fundamental questions as the SPACES students write in and the SURFACES they write on. Fundamental? Absolutely. Obvious? No! Quite inspiring.

Christine's presentation intrigued me, too. She said that in her time teaching at Cal Arts she had come to realize that there are two separate worlds of creative writing, one that aims for publication in the New Yorker, and then the other, which is, of course, our world. She said that (and I believe she attributed some of what follows to Ranciere. please insert accent) in the ancien regime, writing was employed exclusively for rhetorical purposes, but that in the mid-nineteenth century, writing broke off into realism a la Balzac and Flaubert, in which representation was still referential, but was no longer motivated by argumentation. She instead posited other modes for writing, saying that essentially "New Yorker" writing was still stuck at the point in the 19th century before the turn to realism. Some of these modes included:

realism

collapse of representation: language as subject rather than the world

language subjected to external force, pressure, constraint, or form to reveal what is unconscious or latent in culture or society

language literally as object, as in zaum

language as a medium of self analysis as in Rothenberg's shamanism

language as a medium of witness: "framing the namelessness"

writing as a medium as speculative possibilities for society & social relationships

.............................

My rhetorical questions in response to this division into "rhetorical/ non-rhetorical" are these:

Are not these other modes rhetorical as well?

Can it not be said that the location of the argument moves in them from message to form?

Is it ridiculous to say that even "writing-as-speculation" or "writing-as-analysis" or "writing as witness" is itself a kind of rhetoric arguing for the value of speculation or analysis or witness as such?

Are all forms of writing that are obviously argumentative necessarily passe?

...........................


I suppose I am sensing some flaws in this taxonomy. What do we do with works of literature that emerged before the mid-nineteenth century that are not argumentative?

What about Don Quixote?

What about The Pillow Book? Or Rabelais?

What about William Blake's works?

This list could grow and grow.


Anyway... I'm wondering about this. Certainly the mid nineteenth century was a turning point into something (although clearly you wouldn't know it from today's outfit :-)). I have noted that Moby Dick emerged in 1851: to me, it is a profoundly proto-modernist work. But I think there's something else to notice about the time rather than the turn from rhetoric. I haven't read Ranciere, and I'm curious to, but I wonder if anyone has the same questions...

Here's so you can see the footwear:



The velvet "wench" blouse is Anthropologie bought 2ndhand on eBay: I mentioned that trick to you, yes? I love the princess lines of the bodice, and the little peplum. And under that, my favorite UniQlo "heat technology" undershirt, fitted and cozy! Compexly tiered lace and taffeta skirt bought recently at Daffy's for under $30; it's Italian (whatever that means). Maroon tights of a satisfyingly thick denier. The burgundy suede clodhopper maryjanes are actually Earth shoes, oddly enough. I think of them as a sort of variation of a "Henry the VIII shoe." You know? My look has got so casual lately, I mean relatively speaking, I really felt it was time to bust out the ruffles and velvet again...because you know what? Life is short.

DISMAY

You didn’t want me
to sidle up to the high
chthonic voltage, number
than frost, number than
the coiled attachments:
a kind of siphon
for this hamhanded
burgeoning. If I imitate
your enthusiastic rejecting
anxious beloved, can I
enter your hall of
repressed dismay? I can’t
get her haircut: I don’t
have that kind of hair.
I’m better than she is,
who does not think of you,
just as you do not think
of me. The world spins
on these bitternesses: my XXXX
for you offends me yet.

SPLENDOR, generation, and VALOR SETS

Cy wrote me a nice comment about the poem two posts down from here, "SPLENDOR":

I confess I'm curious as to whether it's a Flarf generated poem or not (not that it matters!).

Let's discuss this, shall we? Or rather, deconstruct it. Firstly, Flarf is not (in the robotic sense of the term) "generated." Flarf poems are written. Their materials are, in Kasey's term, sought. I almost prefer the word rescued. Some poems may be "generated," like that wonderful "Random Poem Generator" that was hanging around the internet for a while, but Flarf poems are very much willed and constructed.

In a larger sense of the term, I suppose you could say this poem was generated if that is how you think of the mechanism of creation: I do often think of poems as almost biological extrusions, like skin tags or fibroids or, as I posted recently on facebook, reflux.

At any rate, if this poem or any has a generator it is me and not "Flarf." I'm curious, though, as to whether any of you read it as a "Flarf poem" and if so, why?

Let's look at the second part of the statement: the good-natured "not that it matters!" Well, hmm, let's think about that for a minute. Are you sure it doesn't matter? I am tempted of course to say, right, it doesn't matter a bit, but that's the lazy way out. I think we do assign value differently to poems we think of as being constructed from rescued materials than we do to poems that we imagine might have been "inspired." The assignment of value depends very much on who is doing the assignment and what their "valor sets" are for poetry. I like to keep my valor set somewhat uncodified, although I will swear up and down that I know what poetry is and what it is not, and that when I feel it to be good, I can argue for why I believe so and how it fits into my model of poetry.

My guess is that you, Cy, would like to test your cognitive reaction to the poem against your valor set. That's perfectly understandable. We all do that.

I'm also wondering whether anyone rather dislikes the poem, maybe finds it too closed or too "poetic," or too confrontational, or lacking in innovation, perhaps. Or maybe you find something a little naggy about it, or a little neurotic, or just dully unconceptual.

I'm super-tired. I would like to be at the Poetry Project tonight listening to Chris Nealon and Catherine Wagner, I would like that very much, but I'm just too tired. I really thought I was going to lose it on the train to work this morning: the door closing bell made me want to let loose a big guttural scream.

Which reminds me, how come women get maternity leaves for THREE MONTHS per baby when women who choose to be artists instead of having babies don't ever get TIME OFF to make their ART or write their POEMS? I suppose this unfairness could count for men, too. I want THREE MONTHS OFF RIGHT NOW. Do all those BABIES really "contribute more to society" than all this potential unmade art and poetry would? Or do they just DRAIN it with all their NEEDS? I'm almost ready to fake a pregnancy.

Gary Being Fonny

Noah and Paul Zukofsky's Ark

SPLENDOR

Maybe in the sandstorm of metaphor
you really don’t have a body –
but there’s something palpable
that makes me want to do battle
with your ectoplasmic splendor.
No alembic. Your body folds under you
as a collapsed puppet: my fervent
conquest of your gangliness now just
icky taxidermy. There are wings
under my armpits and also
secret beings. They straddle your
imagination in my imagination.
That is how we do not come
to know one another.

Stain reading video

Thanks Amy and Ana!

Today's ensemble, and yesterday's, and Louis Quatorze

Shall I be Louis Quatorze for Hallowe'en?




It doesn't seem like such a stretch, although I've been going through this matchy conservative thing lately.



I do like suede, suede boots, oh. Hate shininess, patent leather. Flannel bubble skirt in greens, Zara, bought secondhand in some other city. Where? I forget.



The fall which is now pretending to be winter making me oddly macho. I know I'm dressed like a secretary here more or less, but those are Harley-Davidson boots, and my stance is pure Sun King. N'est-ce pas?

Today's Ensemble: Eating the Railroad

I dressed like a grownup against the briskness today. I don’t feel like a grownup particularly, but like sailing chaos crashing about tiredly. Look how pale I am! I need to eat a train. Or a whole railroad.



I erased my post asking for help with what to do with opinions, because who cares, although I was reminded of it, tonally, by the most recent post by Lindsey Boldt. Really, the saddest posts are the cries for attention that everyone ignores. I’m reassured by the neediness of others (and this is the religious impulse), even if I’m repelled by it, too (and this is the impulse to nihilism).

Well, I can dwell, if uncomfortably, in ambiguities. Can you?

I am going to crash through this post. With notes and quotations from readings I’ve been to recently:

Laura Moriarty:

able to gyrate in marmalade only

Paul Foster Johnson

[lots of tripling, and triple negatives!]

not not not

Anna Moschavakis:

The Greek word cynic translates as doglike.

There were always low level scientologists hanging around the dumpsters in dirty uniforms.

Kim Rosenfield:

(in her panel of scientists' voice)

All these documents are registered on microcassettes.

No more, no less, then the study of intonation

Bhanu Kapil:

There were some sugar crystals on the carpet, I knew I should hoover them up before they got ground in.

I compared myself to a Safeway rotisserie chicken. I said I didn’t want to be one.

Monica de la Torre

The color is a readymade – a part of the industrial production of feeling.

Hats gags games and magic are subject to random searches

Christine Wertheim:

My eyes stutter – my patter is the swoon of the sound

(dogs barking in sympathy)

Vanessa Place:

election box

dripping pan

devil’s donut

popo

lap flounder

fish mitten

Michael Nicoloff:

I’ll start calling you the sub-prime mover

I hate other poets

This haircut reflects my experience

Woke up on the wrong side of my woman suit

and his collabs with Alli Warren

slurping ramen, experiencing “glow”

automatically I love pleather

getting all bulbous on my own ass

Mel Nichols

wet panties in sunlight/ save me from the scary clownheads

the lawn’s intense

oh… human poets
oh… extra second in the world

I love the way a leprechaun scab feels on my skin.

I mean, Ben Franklin was the Joyce Carol Oates of his time.

Catriona Strang

war is also mind

I get my drift

I’m so catty in green

blink light slobbers horns

Margaret Christakos

marvel comically

a portal that would open on a room full of squirming words

to be entertained is such release

I couldn’t bear to listen to Nicole Brossard. Who is she speaking to? [I wrote.]A bunch of meta-garble. My eyes glaaaaaze over… sounds better in French…. I started looking around: Anne Waldman in a coral/ orange scarf and tunic of maybe Tibetan ornament. Jen’s brilliant silver hybrid shoes… Vanessa’s pierced brow white shirt black jeans… Mark Weiss in Japonoiseries… Emily Beall in “Midwestern” plaid… Bernstein also in plaid pastel, sitting quite sideways slumped… Pierre Joris has a “dandy” face … his mouth… brown print shirt with torches or ice cream cones… Jen plays with her hair… checking ends?

“it is frightening, this carpet of words”

and this I don’t know if I wrote this or Brossard did. Maybe I was going all homophonic on her: “the snoot wind through the roses/ don’t be afraid to touch your mélange gully/ lil sketches/ your mother in her bed tub/ the klezmer barkeep“ [uh, this all sounds like me]

Rachel Z,’s pale pink shirt with silkscreened SQUIRREL– where did she get the SQUIRREL?

“of course we do write with letters” no! [feigned surprise!]

Huh: an ABECEDARIAN book! How INNOVATIVE!

I was thinking she’s actually incompetent.

remember my continuum from my erased poets, loyal readers?

MAKE IT STOP
UGH
HUH
WOW
OUT OF THIS WORLD


I'll just let you infer ratings, or tack on your own.

Kisses!

Here's me doing Navrang at Movie NIte

Here's yours truly in Neo-Benshi performance from the Movie Nite Festival, a benefit for Dixon Place In New York City, held on May 1st and 2nd, 2009. Based on footage from the film "Navrang" by the great V. Shantaram. Event organized by the great Brandon Downing.

so tired...

the hormones hate me

Tonight: Poetry Extravaganza at ISSUE PROJECT ROOM

This Friday, October 9, 7:00 pm — The Way of the Word
Poetry Extravaganza curated by Bob Holman, Suzanne Fiol, and Kenneth Goldsmith
ISSUE PROJECT ROOM
At the Old American Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215
Tel: 718-330-0313

featuring the amazing poets:

Bob Holman
Ken Goldsmith
Jonas Mekas
Anne Waldman
Judith Malina
Abiodoun Oyewole (of the Last Poets)
Hettie Jones
Jeff Wright
Esther K. Smith
Georgia Luna Faust
Michael Carter
Kathy Engel
Kimiko Hahn
Beau Sia
Holly Anderson
Max Blagg
Frank Lima
Betsey Andrews
Mike Topp
Steve Dalachinsky
Yuko Otumo

and the FLARF POETS:

Gary Sullivan
Sharon Mesmer
Drew Gardner
Katie Degentesh
Jordan Davis
Brandon Downing
Nada Gordon


Rest in peace and art, beautiful Suzanne.

to the tune of

In the greasy howls and fidgets
of our dirty knees, I’m a wannabe
In the clown hole of your rubber lime

To steam you adderall me
and Afghanistan
Now I’m a man
Ah but I mayonnaise
try and scratch chagrin

dee dee dada dadadadadada
dadada
dadada
da daaaaaaaa

For me to rub your jowl
‘Twould be a Swedish thing
‘Twould make me king
Ah but I mayonnaise
Try and scratch chagrin

discoveries at the new museum

Tetsumi Kudo

Vienna Action Group


I LOVED the Emory Douglas show. Beautiful lines, mixed media, pathos, power/

I loved also thinking again about the Black Panthers. They were no mere hand-wringers. They served the people, and put their bodies on the line.

Emory Douglas

I'm teaching my students about the Black Power Movement and taking them to see the Emory Douglas show at the New Museum on Thursday. They were floored by this image, and oddly, did not initially recognize the figure as a woman, pink background notwithstanding. They did get the reference to the imperial Japanese flag.



By the way, that's a pen she's holding, but she's got the gun as backup.

Ensembles Galore

Thrilled by fall’s fashion panoply. At the poetry project the other night, I rhapsodized with Stacy and Sharon and Mel over the joys of muted tones.

I admired Stacy’s recent lushness of hair, and entreated her to keep it that way. She said, can I be on your blog, and I said, of course! The subtle combination of burgundy and army green: perfect.



Sharon (who never looks bad either in life or in pictures: unfair) and Mel here wearing pale grays and blacks and sheer flarf charisma.



Mel had a marvelous faux vintage necklace of I think wrapped fake jet beads that is not quite visible in this picture. Really, I should have got a photo of her shoes, something like that great futurist Umberto Boccioni sculpture. Mel rocks the 70s and 80s like no one else: more delicately, more ironically, more adorably…

I was in muted tones, too, but the OUTFIT was anything but muted. When I took off my jacket, Sharon said, “what are you wearing?”



Taupe ruffled nylon thing bought for under $12 at a discount store (Janice’s) at the Fulton St. Mall, purple stretch miniskirt, tights striped two shades of lavender (but I ripped them, dammit, with the Velcro on my Steve Madden Frankenstein/Harajuku boots), chestnut shrug. I told Mel and Sharon and Stacy that I had learned about how to wear this sort of palette in Japan: all tones except maybe the shrug are somewhat grayed, and this color sensibility harks back to what is “shibui” (astringent, modest, subtle, austere) in that culture. Conversely, though, I find something lush in the mutedness. Such colors are hard to find in American shops, as the subtlety tends to be lost on, say, the consumers at American Apparel and Old Navy, but the fact is that these grayed tones tend to be very kind to the whole range, I think, of human skin colors.

We discussed the difficulty of mauve, how few Americans do it well, and how, despite its loveliness, it seems to call up a kind of 80s doctor’s office décor, especially when combined with gray. Well, I hope I avoided giving that effect.

As an antidote to mutedness, here’s this, a photo that Brenda Iijima posted on facebook some time ago and I asked for for this blog. Because it’s just splendid. Her caption follows.

By my side is Stephanie Hough—this photo was taken in my parent’s living room by my dad (we spent a few hours modeling Aunt Josephine’s clothing which we had to clean out of her house when she passed away. My father was the commissioned photographer). The campiness is an ode to her primadonna personality and she sure had the clothing to exquisitely don her mood and mode. I can’t remember the precise date this was taken but it was about 8-10 years ago.

A couple more recent outfits. Red seems to be dominating. Perhaps I’m trying to “build up my blood”? Look, look, how my skirt and ruffly scarf (a present from my dear mother-in-law) and hair catch the light! And the raw edges of the skirt!





Yesterday’s outfit: a rare sojourn into pants. Cranberry Fluevogs and lace scarf. Rose sweater. I think I look like Valentine’s Day.





Note to self: need to post on the semiotics of Frankenstein boots.

While you're waiting, why not check out this interesting article in the NY Times?


Unlike other artists whose materials come from the wardrobe — Cindy Sherman, Leigh Bowery, Yong Soon Min or Nikki S. Lee — Ms. Hardy seems less interested in making commentary on body morphology or the tensions between mainstream and minority cultures than in teasing out the subtle emotional meanings latent in clothes. “This blanket expression that you shouldn’t judge a person by their clothes is ridiculous to me,” she said. “Every article of clothing is so loaded with signifiers, I don’t know how you can help but make up stories about people and their desires based on what they wear.”

a New York encounter

A couple days ago a big black guy (in jeweled eyeglasses, fancy sneakers) I would say around my age (that would be mid- going on late forties, people) got on the G train with his friends, sat down, and started talking very audibly (the whole train car could hear him) about how he was gonna get his GED, go back to school…said he already had a business, that he came from the hood and has always been a hustler, and now he was worried about his son out smoking weed… well, everyone learned a lot of information about him.

He was sitting right by the door and I said to him as I got off at Clinton/Washington: “You’ll like school: it rocks.” I told him I was a teacher (you see, I try never to miss a “teachable moment”). “School rocks? Yeah?” he said, smiled hugely, and hi-fived me. Then he looked me up and down. “You fine, too.”

OK, so he “objectified” me or whatever… but I think it was a kind of beautiful little New York encounter.