Beginings of a Treatise on Performance Poetry

What I wish to do is develop techniques for videotaping and presenting performance pieces.

The writer, poet, artist, composer usually works alone. It is the solitary nature of creativity. While there is a great dissemination of work on the Internet, poetry is not mainstream. A century ago people memorized poetry, recited poetry in their sitting rooms, poets, like Byron, or Tennyson, were best sellers.

With the advent of media, poetry has disappeared into obscure journals, or Internet sites of individuals and groups dedicated to poetry but who really only read each other. The culture-at-large has all but forgotten poetry.

Poetry is beautiful, where language is most astounding. Most songs don't achieve the simplicity, richness or depth of a finely written poem. Poetry is honed language reflecting and shaping the concerns of the milieu in which it comes to be.

Yet poets are not singers, if they were they'd be out there like Leonard Cohen, or Joni Mitchell. Nor should it be necessary for a poet to add to their years of study of literature by having to also study film-making. There is no reason why a film of a poem has to be illustrated by images and carried with music, though, of course, these filmic components can add to the piece. My point is that the poetry itself should be enough, as were Dylan Thomas' lyrical readings on stages across America in his time.

Not just the words of a poem, but the reading of it can be magic. Poets can recite their work. There are poetry readings all over the world. Poets can perform their own poems.

What I would like to develop are film and editing techniques whereby the solitary poet, writer, artist, composer may capture their work in a solitary fashion on film and present it in video format to a multi-media world. I don't want to turn the poet or composer into a director at the centre of the collaborative venture a film is because this runs contrary to the solitary and introspective nature of most poets or artists.

By nature, the creative process is solitary. Poets are not collaborative. They read; they write. Alone. Surely a camera can be set up and a film created in the solitary world that the creative spirit works in for sharing with others. I am, therefore, exploring how the single camera on a tripod capturing a single performance can be edited to create a charismatic film of poetry that may be appealing to wider audiences and thus bring poetry back into the mainstream.

In this way poetry may become available to the masses who may find many poets, writers, composers superlative and celebrate and support them in the ways that they should be doing and would be if their work was presented in a format that the culture favours.

The Waxworks by Ai!R

Today I found this on Jamendo (a community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses), 'Waxworks,' by Ai!R, a Russian band. This music touches me in deep places. Perhaps I may find I am able to put some prosepoetry and movement to music like this (the license looks okay, a first hurdle, and of course I'd ask for permission from the musicians and credit them):

twittergadget emoticon tweet

The ♫ was ♨, you know, ♀♂, even the ☃ melted & the ☆ came out in the ☼.

(TwitterGadget emoticon tweet.) ✉❤

(the music was hot, you know, man + woman, even the snow melted and the stars came out in the daylight)

Sold All My Classical Music in a Fit of Poverty

Once upon a time I sold all my classical music in a fit of poverty. Downloading all Bruckner's symphonies, 31y261d! Will I be alive still?!

Today on Jamendo (a community of free, legal and unlimited music published under Creative Commons licenses), I discovered this artist, Grace Valhalla, French, unique:

And then downloaded other techno, like a few albums of Project Mahlen Goscht, to paint by...

My kids were: Why are you listening to techno? And then I began dancing the dance of the pneumatic drill, the hammer, the screwdriver...

(they laughed as they shook their heads, crazy-mummy)

Yeah, I'm falling in love: with Jamendo. The entry of the Russians rocks my soul.

Slideshow

Find more photos like this on Creative Crossing

A slideshow that I posted to a site that a friend, Klara Elek, invited me to join. Not to replace my art website, but sometimes one should contribute to a site.

Looking at these pieces, I realize I haven't yet begun to paint. There was a very long hiatus of perhaps 20 years, and then a slow reunion to painting. These pieces are 'to regain my hand.'

The only one that's closer to 'painting,' for me, is the Landscape Figure. I painted this in November 2006, and shortly after began a series of contract positions in reception at the executive offices of a bank, and, while I'd hoped to follow the energy in this piece and produce a series of larger size, between my relationship at the time, my daughter, who went into crisis, full-time work and desperately searching for a larger place for us to live, I neglected to push myself to produce, always thinking, 'later, when time opens out.' But the emotional energy had dissipated when perhaps there was finally and again time.

Message: when 'it' happens, go with it, push your life aside, follow your art. They'll all understand, they always do.

Rubies in Crystal blog banner

I've put up a new banner and changed the colours in the blog.

I took the photograph, a self-portrait, last Fall, after reading Peter Handke's, A Sorrow Beyond Dreams.

(Click on photo to see it at full size, which looks better to my eye. I had to shrink the image for the blog header.)

Or this, which I... don't know what to say about.



The original photo, and don't ask how I did all the colour and whatnot, I did so many things in Photoshop Elements I can't remember!

Yesterday, our doctor thoroughly checked my daughter's foot and decided that she didn't need an x-ray. This was good news. It is most fortunate for the 'other' family that her foot wasn't broken because they did not make sure she received medical care after the ex's girlfriend drove over her foot. They left the "medical care" up to me, days after the accident happened, though 'the Commandant,' or what I call the ex's girlfriend, had enough wherewithal to drive her to Toronto rather than making her take a Greyhound bus home.