While I sound quite depressed, I think I am actually facing the wall now. Before, I wouldn't look at it, or acknowledge it. It's invisible, but wholly impenetrable.
It cannot be cracked, splintered, knocked down, for I've tried all this and more; it can only be burnt.
Like karma, though it is not like karma because there is no cause and effect. No lesson. Rather, irrational, what we can never fully know. It sounds like glass, but it's not. There isn't anything it's like except for an impenetrable, invisible wall. There is no reason for this, none at all. Kafka's trial.
the wall of resistance the impenetrable wall the wall that is invisible that is everywhere around me the wall of permanence try to imagine no wall I cannot I have lived behind this invisible wall I have flung boiling water at it I have attacked it with hammers I have attempted to pierce it with the lasers of my consciousness the wall stands tall higher than I can climb deeper than I can fall the wall is real the wall is karma the wall is what I cannot surmount I can touch the world
That's not all of it, but it still made for a midi track longer than the recording. I did a lot of things to the midi track to make that background, which came out the way I had hoped in the end.
While the voice may be a little flat (I was lying flat on my back), I went with this recording because it suits the words.
Whether I add this to a video I haven't yet conceived, I don't know.
I wrote Lacemaker in July 2007. A week ago I recorded it on my iPhone, a quiet reading, and added a track in the background from the Music Text Composition Generator that I had entered the poem into. While the midi file that the MTCG created is layered a few times, the poem is its own music, yes.
A few days ago I was tidying my desk, and came across a notebook from that year, and found a drawing I did in Starbucks during lunch and a draft in pencil of part of the poem. Click for larger size.
You can read the poem here: Lacemaker (it'll open in a new tab or window, which won't interrupt the recording if you're listening to it).
I wrote this prose poem in July 2007. Today I recorded it on my iPhone, a quiet reading, and added a track from the Music Text Composition Generator that I had entered this poem into. The poem is its own music, yes. I'm thinking to go back to the way I was recording before I got freaked out by, oh I don't know. A feeling that I was over-reaching prescribed bounds with layering voices, readings, allowing passion in my voice, that sort of thing.
Lacemaker
In a moment words will appear from which everything unravels.
Or begin with an explosion of lace.
Lace that is white, or whitened with the sun's steaming. Looped, twisted, braided threads, sewn with sharp needles, shaped like a cutwork of leaf veins in the sky. Finely-woven stitches, not broken or lost. Florals in white; sun-rises in white; waves in white. Spider webs of lace floating, an organic garden of cotton and linen and silk.
How many fine stitches I see everywhere.
Seams of perfect clothing, backs, shoulders, arms, waists, hips, the tight stitching of form-fitting shoes, the interlapping folds of purses. Fabric. Like skin. Woven tightly or loosely. Draped, tucked, formed, fitted. The soft velvet of the armchair in the cafe in which I sit, rounded, plush.
Colours in swathes, patterned. Different attire for different scenarios. Layers of warmth or mere covering if it's cold or hot. Whether a garment can open or close or covers in one swoop. Pieces of cloth fitted to hold the shape of the wearer. Clothes that adhere, drape, flow for sitting, walking, sleeping, dancing.
Looms and sewing machines and bobbins. Billions of miles of thread around the world. Stitching, this way of composing, holding together, covering ourselves, these metaphors, textual narratives.
What if I don't want to take a stance? What if I don't want to weave a garment out of these threads? A story out of all the stories filling my mind? If "Narratives, or more precisely plots, synthesize reality," (Snaevarr) can I exist without telling a tale of myself to you, or even to myself?
The flow of language like clothing, fashions that encase shaping how we present ourselves. Can we be naked without the speaking that stitches the world together, seam by seam, reams of bolts of cloth, patternings?
What was lost in the scrap lace pile, discarded, worn-out, old, the remnants, unraveled in the tears and rips, bleached out by wear?
How do I hem these words so they don't fray?
Shawls of Shetland lace are knitted first in the middle and then out to the edges and is so fine it can be pulled through a wedding ring. Can we marry ourselves to words that knit us to ourselves, each other, the world?
Social customs inform the attire of any given era and shape the body, but does the weave of worsted wool or soft cotton follow the curves and hollows of the skin and shape the wearer?
Or are the words we clothe ourselves with what we hide under?
Presentation and fashion. The way I compose myself every day; every piece of writing. Gathering myself in this historical time, a product of my age.
All the stitches of the world held in syntactical rhythms of meaning, social fabrics.
Is that why we want words to unfold in comfort from us? Wave-white words wedded. Words that aren't performative; that are dream-like, real.
Unraveling, I came to this, and I can't obscure it, truth, death, the words of the lover, and she who knits, knots, tapes, crochets, sews the world into being with her openwork, the lace maker.
This afternoon I recorded a reading of a prosepoem of Dave Bonta's, and found a 23 sec clip of chimes by morgantj on ccMixter, which was slowed, split, re-arranged, pasted, joined, and enrichened by a multivoice filter and other auditory magics until it became a rendition of what I was hearing in my mind when listening to the reading.
The reading wasn't planned. I read his series of images of poetry for reading poetry and turned on the voice memo of my iPhone and recorded. While I did do another take, the first one had an openness, and as the spoken recording was my second reading of the poem, the sense of discovery remains, I hope, within it.
How to read poetry (notes to self), by Dave Bonta
As if it were any other kind of communication that means what it says, not some kind of code to be deciphered.
As if it were code, where a single mistyped letter can change everything, and turn a webpage into the white screen of death.
As if you had nothing else to do: no news to skim, no email to hurry through, no other work, no purer entertainment.
As slowly as a lover performing oral sex: forget about me, what does the poem want?
As fast as a sunrise on the equator, so the mind won’t have any time to wander.
As if each line were an elaborate curse in some nearly extinct language with only four elderly speakers left, all of them converts to evangelical Christianity.
As if the stanzas were truly rooms, and not houses lined up on some quiet street.
As if the spirit killeth, but the letter giveth life.
As if it were perfectly useless and irrelevant to the cycle of discipline and indulgence we think of as real life.
As if each poem were an oracle just for you: a diagnosis from a physician, an interview with Human Resources, the suggestions of a therapist, the absolution given by a priest.
As if the real poem were buried like a deer tick ass-up in the flesh of your ear.
I like the edges of surrealism in How to read poetry (notes to self), the variety of images, all quite rich and meant to evoke the reader's imagination, that the only extended metaphor is the poet who is dreaming up a series images of the world that emerge with a cadence of similes, analogies, that, if followed, bring the reader (who is reading or speaking) back to the poem, the poem's reading.
And the touches of humour, as in the last line.
If you were inclined to record this poem, I'm sure Dave would be delighted!
Although I've dealt with long blocks in my life, for the last decade, writing has been easy. When an image arose that caught my imaginary, I'd begin writing, and the piece flowed almost of its own accord. Sure, there was lots of editing, tweaking, re-arranging, re-orienting, and a piece might go through many minor revisions, but the original image came easily and as if my magic. The last couple of months have not been like that. Key images have not been emerging of their own volition. In the creative cycle I am currently in, I have to work a lot harder to pull the material out of my visions, unconscious, knowledge, wherever it comes from.
Because so many poets wrote about the recent perigee moon, I also wanted to contribute a piece. For days, nothing. Staring at day and night sky. Nothing. Went for walks. Nothing. Looked at images of the fabulous moon. Nothing. So on the night of the greatest fullness, I went out with my dog late, my iPhone with me. As we rounded a street corner, there the moon was. A bright spotlight in the sky. I turned on the Voice Memo, and talked for two blocks. Anything and everything that came into my mind. From that chatter, I created this poem. It went through dozens of revisions. I am happy with the poem.
For your interest, loathe as I am to 'show all' -such nakedness!- I also paste in the transcript I typed from the monologue in the Voice Memo at the end of the post.
While I don't recommend recording a monologue as a poetic technique because it is laborious, it will generally give you enough images to write a poem. It's an aural brainstorm. I like to walk the dark streets and whisper into my phone recorder. People passing think I'm on the phone. Yet, and this has happened to me, what if the Voice Memo isn't on and doesn't record your words? Remember to remember enough of the trail to re-evoke it or grab the tail ends of images. When using this technique, think of Yeats, who wrote his poems from prose he had written first.
Here is the finished poem. I spent some hours memorizing it trying to use a 'palace of memory' technique. The recording is different to my other ones in that as I am reciting from memory (mostly) the reading is less dramatic, slower. Since your eye reads way faster than the recording, I recommend closing your eyes to listen.
We draw back,
it is not easy but there is no other way.
White fire spills from the cauldron of the night.
A pregnant belly of illumination where spirits gather before they arrive and after they return.
Moths against the lantern, our scorching hearts. Clouds skein like silver wool. Earth and stars spin falling into the vortex of whitening and darkening.
The moon is a rock that flew from our oceans and seeks to return to her womb within us.
Stark, startling, as I round the corner of a busy street. A spotlight in the charred sky. In the moisture of my eyes, squinting, a gleaming halo moon.
A barren rock of mountains and dried seabeds up there, dragging the oceans with her, her dress of tides. A queen of debauchery, a mythos of dark permissions. Or the purity of a white goddess worshipped by the skyclad among the trees dancing in naked circles drawing her power.
She is a pearl like a grain of sand in the oyster of the night that opens, a mystical lamp for the mutterings of poets and visionaries and the crazed in a world of forgotten harrowings. In the perigee moon what is untamed reigns.
Wear white paint, my love, so we may dance savage across the stage lit by the moon in the night sky.
Wear white paint, my love, so we may dance before the dawn draws us away.
A crystal ball for seers, the beginning of time crumbles into the end.
And as we sleep, faint and far apart,
we guard the moon in our dreams.
2:15pm.
OMG, this is so funny! YouTube is offering some 'video-making' sites. This one is a text-to-video animation by xtranormal. It took 3 tries, but eventually a video appeared. It was free. Do try it!
What I spoke into the Voice Memo as a way to deal with my current writer's block, which is impossible to read, impossible! The blocked poet strips herself, reveals a technique only to be used in desperation:
As I turn the corner from the busy street into the tree-lined street with bare branches I am stricken by the spotlight in the sky. The white, round, full moon. Athena is close tonight. She sends her arrows of protection; her arrows of strength; her arrows of forbearance; and her arrows of delight in self-empowerment. I walk down this street and feel the full white perigee moon, the largest in decades is watching even me, even my insignificance, smaller than a cell as I crawl the face of the earth. Gazing across planets, from my darkness into the light. She is blazing white fire. I bow down before her, on Lent, on Purim. The generosity of the light that guides us in the darkness, whiteness of the shadowed world. Pregnant belly of the world. Where souls gather, before they arrive and after they leave, to watch the pageants of life on earth. Who pulls the tides of the earth's oceans, and who caused the nutrients of life to flow together and combust. The moon. The moon. The moon. Celestial sister so close, exerting a large gravitational pull on the earth at this moment, so close I could touch her and I am fully magnetized with moon power, I am drawing the moon down, down. I am being drawn up through the moonbeams, up, up. The earth falls into the sky, the earth falls into the moon. The earth falls into the moon's eye in the sky. The moon is clear-seeing. The moon may be gazed upon. The moon is mystery. The moon is water. The moon is water. The moon pulls the waters with her as she travels through the sky. Her white wedding gowns flowing. Dazzling moon beams She is a queen of the night. And she guides me along the white sidewalk, shadowed, mysterious. Magic is afoot. Magic is everywhere. The moon is the mystical lamp of the mystics. The moon is the feminine; the moon is the masculine. The moon is a rock in the sky that was cast off from our ocean and who is forever trying to return to her womb within us. The moon the moon is a majestic tutelary spirit circling the earth protecting the earth watching over us. The moon reflects of the sun whitely. The moon in its whiteness reflects the light of the sun. The moon is a combustion of white fire. The moon sparkles in the whiteness of the round whiteness of the dark sky. The clouds flow like silver ghosts about her; the smoke about her is silver, is the grey clouds, the grey white clouds. She is stark and startling in the sky. She is a spotlight in the sky. She is bright. The moisture of my eyes causes her to gleam, her white halo. Moonbeams. She is heavenly. She is earthly. She is barren. She is full. She belongs to the realm of ghosts. She is of the beginning of time; she will crumble like a pearl at the end of time. She is a pearl of great price; she is the alchemist's pearl. She is the pearl that is like a grain of sand in the oyster of the night that causes poets and visionaries and madmen to induces reverie and madness when the moon is full the wildness begins. She is queen of the debauchery of the night. When the moon is full the sky clad people emerge from behind the trees in the forests and they dance and they have rituals and they bathe in moonlight on their bare skin. The moon is a psychic force. The moon is a crystal ball. The moon portends the future. The moon is past, present and future. The moon is the Buddha, the cool light of the intellect. The moon follows us, everywhere we walk the moon, the moon is following, a spotlight. Our way is lit. The moon is the white goddess, the triple goddess, White Tara, Kuan Yin. The whiteness of the spirit in its purity. The moon is a paradox. The moon has caught our imaginations and gathered them and spread them to the stars. The moon is our guardian. We guard the moon in our dreams.
_
By way of apology, or perhaps explanation, though many poets included reference to the terrible Japanese tsunmai in their perigee moon poems, mine has no reference to the tragedy. They were 8 days apart. I blame violent tectonic plates, the Ring of Fire, not the moon. The moon was a few inches closer to the earth than usual, and could not possibly have caused the earthquake which caused the tsunami. I wrote a long prosepoem on the Sumatra tsunami in 2005, and may write another on the terrible Japanese one, but it did not find its way into my meditation on the huge full moon that just passed.
__
I'm including this as a piece in this week's Big Tent Poetry prompt: "to take a piece of your writing, or some other bit of written text, and try out one of the toys or tricks (on our new Poetry Toys page) to generate (reformulate) new work." The prompt sat in the back of my mind fertilizing ideas for how to write a poem on a topic this week (the perigee moon), and while I didn't attempt to try any of the 'toys,' I definitely used a technique to generate imagery for a poem. See here for other responses.
Secrets, 20.5cm x 25.5cm, 8"x10", India inks, archival pen inks, graphite, coffee spill, and some digitally drawn lines as well as text, January, 2011.
A voice recording (2:48min) as I was writing the words (you can hear the pen scratching on paper in some of it, my flipping through pages looking for written images, and the slowness of the process of writing). The speaking follows the writing fingers. I'm discovering the story of the drawing, the poetry of it as I write the words which are a mostly unreadable pictorial element around one of the characters like a cloud or veil or tree of words. But I didn't want a drawing of only dream words: words that are inaccessible because the viewer cannot read them.
It is an invisible intersection, where the words are slowly voiced as they are being written, created enroute, without knowing where they'll go, and the viewer/listener's responses which are evoked by the slow reading that allows time for meditation, for the meandering of thought.
And, these words are interconnected with thoughts and feelings that occurred during the drawing, which was done in three sessions over a month.
In the recording, which is 'real time' (mostly, I did stop and start my iPhone's voice memo a few times, and I cut out some dead space in editing), I'm reading what's being written rather than composing out loud. Unable to post as is, the flat voice, so I had to. Bamboo Music, a background.
Raw drawing; raw recording. No performance or finesse here. As it was happening.
transcribed:
a cloud of light
swept over the land
across the expanse
bare branches of trees
against a winter sky
ocean drifting overhead
dark minnow streaks
my mug of sand
roots, sky, solid
tense, open, terrible,
told
birdwing
cross hatching of ink lines
secrets,
secrets, secrets,
secrets, secrets
secrets of women
secrets
of women
secrets secrets secrets
secrets
there are no secrets
and then the veil descended
like a cloud of light
sea curls, foam
what is the moment of belief?
how long does it last?
does it matter?
and then,
and then…
and then.
Secrets, 20.5cm x 25.5cm, 8"x10", India inks, archival pen inks, graphite, coffee spill, uploaded January 11, 2011 - a doodle, though I did make a stop and start voice recording as I was writing the words (you can hear the pen scratching on paper in some of it). I'll see about hosting the recording somewhere, and transcribing it I guess. I don't think this piece is finished yet, though maybe it is.
If you click on the drawing, it'll open to a larger size in a new window. It's later, and I've made an .mp3. You can listen. The words are in the drawing, all of them and I'm reading them to you via a 'voice memo' on my iPhone as I'm writing them.
Raw drawing; raw recording. No performance or finesse here. I had to try this once, and once is enough truly.
Not sure how listenable... recorded while composing the writing in the drawing, and you can hear the pen scratching, me flipping pages to look for written images, and the slowness. Voice following the fingers. Reading what's being written, rather than composing out loud. Unable to post as is, the flat voice, so I had to. Bamboo Music, a background.
