turtle work

One out of every three turtles even swimming is one is in one the out one is a turtle his black back out is even keel and smooth is as it turtles to, fro one fin at times fin as ever swip thru the onward pond is a shoe in turns on takes off the turtle spits heaven knows whose thoughts are whose chewing in the murky glaze what a tuner one is turning the radio on after noon radio on

rays of heaven

headed into. in
the stippled presence of
of half-things junk
a squirrel white & grey
the necessary is

identical. identically present.
it is

threads the squirrel insisting
be exquisitely altered
see altar, hairs
headed

valor

rays of heaven stinging
his tail gold a hologram
rises
hath taxonomy
standing
water

eyes vibrate along the line
of green and grey shadows
the activity
of heaven
essays

runs on

laces up w/ little bones commas sticks
doublesided paths

in the wet leaves of
on the wet earth of

obelisk head as any one
thing would look outlying
the rake pulls back
the rake

announcement

I am now in love with Scott Carrier. Over and out.

earth day poem

god said secrets are stupid and then he created earth he flushed one for number one two for number two he made a buzzard machine he folded the sea together he unfolded it gave us this architecture of birds made us wait for what he created lies he hallowed his own name when you think about it he volleys us on jesses and we are paper squares we breathe up eat earth up but come back to his leather hands he said so so we try to say so the wind picks up water oaks our grandparents die we wonder if everything’s already been said if ideas are exercises the way of the worm is the way of god the earth is interface we likes not knowing we dislikes not knowing we itches in ditches foretold us

Bombs Away

Weddings remember started parting the hips elbeaux wrists of native acres, roundabouts' dark javelina hidden between roadwork, the glassy brassy knolls. you call that an orchard? yes the psychedelic feeling lasts and lasts.


Call Josh John Lennon Josh Paul McCarthy Call Josh Yoko Josh Lynda Fung Call Roadside Assistance Josh Just Below Josh Calling Donning Black Wig in the Starlight Ringo Starrlight Paul McCarthylight Call it a Raven Sitting On Your Head Josh There's a Raven Sitting on Your Head DrumAway DrumAway DrumAway Pixieland.


Chickeny nametags. Crop-circle nametags. Disco napkinlight happenstance nametags. Down to fraggle frocks. Clap, Clap. Round two Fraggle Frocks.


This is them thusly this is thimbles this trims the timbre thinner this tremors the thistles float forward thinking this and that this is


Anna looking a little like sardines looking forward certainly sardonic overlooking sedona looking at the fish in the air looking fishy liking to look fizzy likely fussing from one future event to its apparent ending concluding to remain mainlaid to hold course to not rock this nifty boat

Dance Salad Review

I went to Dance Salad last weekend with mom (visiting) which was a little nerve-wracking because I wasn't sure how she'd fair for two days of three-hour dances. I'll run down my high points:



Xing Liang performed a quick solo called Existence. I wish I had the dance vocabulary to give you a proper run-down on this one There weren't any bells or whistles, no tropes, narratives, shout-outs, or tricks. Can't really say where it all came from. But I can say it was straight-up and intense. Soaring, really. A side note, I will say the man appeared to have freakishly large hands. Mom said it was the dancing that made them look big but I'm not so sure. I've tried to research this online but haven't come up with much yet.



Four dancers from the Dresden Semper Oper Ballet performed Forsythe 's STEPTEXT . This is a an old piece, created in 1985, but I've never seen it done and was absolutely enthralled. It felt very intellectual and odd in the way the gestures spelled everything out (hence, the title). Many of the gestures didn't fit together exactly, didn't "flow" to use a pretty idiotic term, yet still proceeded as if finishing a sentence. This made me think of what a sentence does, what it means to do, and how it does it. Maybe a dance can be like a sentence, be this propulsion of gestures toward some new or undefined meaning? What I've learned about Forsythe does lend to this kind of reading of the dance. Tho I haven't got it quite right yet.



I also enjoyed the technicality of Forsythe 's Two Part Invention. Even tho the shtick was pretty ordinary (a piece was performed with flawless classical virtuosity and then redone in a jerky deconstructed way); the execution was flawless. I loved the movements. I just wish they were used as something more than just a reactionary/intellectual exercise. Maybe I wish the first 'classical' part were taken out and we got the crazy stuff straight-up, without any context.



I enjoyed Mats Ek's performances. When I attended the talk he gave last Wednesday at the MFA, he emphasized the non-collaborative aspect to his choreography. He and he alone develops the dance, perfects the dance, and then begins directing the dancers. This is very different from most experimental dance now, where the dancer and choreographer often engage and influence the movements together. Ek said that this was dangerous because it allows the dancer to do what they like doing instead of what should be done. Anyways, his choreographic approach was clear in dances like Memory and O Sole Mio, both being humorous pieces about getting older, health, and death performed by Ana Laguna. Since Ek is getting on himself, his process lent itself to these confrontations with the body.

However, I was shocked by the youthfulness of the The Apartment, performed by the Royal Swedish Ballet’s touring group Stockholm 59° North. The dance was a really powerful look at new relationships, sex, miscommunication, etc. I felt like the piece sprung from my own head which really shocked me. Maybe I'm just susceptible to these types of topics right now, but I did think the dance was excellent (and not as hokey as some of the ones he screened during his lecture on Wednesday).





And who can forget the man on stilts, the women with hair to her toes, the mechanized insanity of an insect-like man and the yogi who tree posed for what felt like forever? Well, I didn't because I watched it both nights. The first night, I was interested, engaged, but felt that all the smoke and mirrors was covering up something. The "what's coming next?" questions was getting in the way of the choreography. So the next night I was able to really enjoy this peice (or actually it was two peices sort of slapped together), especially the music. The mucisicans of Ensemble Micrologus, an Italian Medieval and Renaissance instrumental and vocal group, were all situated on stage with the dancers (lit and everything). The music was really something. Also the choreography was better when I wasn't distracted with all the props and set-up and allusions.

Anyways. All in all, it was splendid, a word I don't use but think fitting.

SHORT ESSAYS

the Walrus

Note the relationship to alchemical literature is fetishistic at best. To collect phrases, spellings, patinas, ordinarily. To compile. At best, to skim along. To set out on vast instructions, put a bookcase together, a recipe, turn the reddifh rich Virgin Earth, impregnate it with ferene and dew, till the end of May. To guess. It is like writing a walrus stomp the snow. Captured, at best, quietly. At a good distance. To stand for the good distance. To watch nature make a mistake. By nature, be specific. Walrus. Between each motion is snowy blankness. Between each line. Between teeth. Mystacial vibrissae 30 centuries long. Writing whiskers 30 centimeters long.

o. romarus divergens

walvis ros / wal reus

hrossvalr

Its blockish history, ornery, onward. Sounds like. Typography. Tea-stains. The burned edges of Xeroxed pages. If it shall and it has and if its puffy text steps on. Blusteringly. A figment thrumming clams, its ungainly offerings, its see-thru show, is a vague perpetual place.

on Anchemy

Alchemy attends to language. Which whatever way. However lovingly applied. In the wet nursery of science; smudged, blooming, the alchemist. Writing by touch and smell, folds the question in on a particular color, ascribes, atones, imagines. This is the juicy center of science. Stretch it out, temper it, droplet one at a time to a piece of glass. A glass eye. Memorized like prayer. Unfoldingly. To Sublyme trewly therefore thou fhall not mys: / If thou can make thy Bodys firft fpirituall, / And then thy Spyryts as I have tought the corporall. It is and is not partaking. Taking a part. Taken apart.

Take Philosophers' Mercury, prepared and purified to its supreme degree. Dissolve this with its wife, that is to say, with quick mercury, so that the woman may dissolve the man, and the man may fix the woman. Then, just as the husband loves his wife and she her husband, the Philosophers' Mercury pursues the quick mercury with the most supreme love, and their nature is moved with the greatest affection towards us. …Conceal both in a glass vessel, thoroughly fastened, so that the woman may not escape or evaporate ; otherwise the whole work will be reduced to nothing.

the Economy

One step further. To maintain an economy of language. A system of hoodwinks, kickbacks, dead-ends, loopholes. Value slides around. To namesake it. To narrate the invisible performances of science. To capitalize, package assets, to price to sell.

These symbols... already start the mind on its way toward that fiery purification, that unification and that emaciation (in a horribly simplified and pure sense) of the natural molecules; on its way toward that operation which permits, by sheer force of destructive analysis, the reconception and re-constitution of solids according that equilibrium of spiritual descent by which they ultimately become gold again.

Every procedure, balanced on the tide of consumer confidence. Symbols for earth, air, fire, water up, up for exchange and then down smashingly five, four, down to three and two and one. More powerful now crashing, writing the orchestra down. Wreathed in whispering flames . Snapdragons. Whooping cranes. Extinct sounds like there.

Go outside and find something new and convert it into freedom.

A Convenient Woman by Teresa Chapman and Leslie Scates

Let me not forget A Convenient Woman, a dance-theater piece by Teresa Chapman and Leslie Scates. I went last Friday and quite enjoyed it. I will not give you the play by play because Nancy Wozny has already cleared the way for me. I just want to offer some freak applause where ol' Nanc might be stitching things a little too tight.

First off, Frederique DeMontblanc produced some wonderful lo-tech visuals. I was surprised how much I enjoyed watching the cursor click thru different high-end websites like Barney's and Nordstrom's, pick out items of interest, save them, then push pictures of shoes and dresses side-by-side to test whether they "go." Instead of making a (tired) point about the commercialization of femininity, this was doing something far more complicated and interesting: the process of "outfitting." Shopping is a very complicated activity of discovery and assimilation. I was pleasantly suprised (and entertained) by the story of subjectivity playing itself out online.

Me and Nanc both enjoyed watching magazine cutouts of diamonds and rubies slide across the screen. I actually squealed when little paper hands scooped them around. How great is it to compare magazine-obsession with paper dolls? Why didn't I think of that? Not long after that, I had another "Why didn't I think of that" moment. We watch a giant headshot of Teresa Chapman's big beautiful face staring into the camera (blinking, but being very still). Chapman's intense expression is pretty great by itself, but slowly you realize that the image is changing, morphing actually, but you can't figure out why. Bit but bit you see eyebrows getting dark, lashes heavier, eyes lined. It was subtle. It took me a while to figure it out. The timing of this thing is impeccable. By the end, Chapman is so drag-queened out, the intensity of her eyes takes on this really masculine look. She's a man! Just add makeup! Yay!

I do hate going on about the video, since there were parts of the choreography that I also enjoyed. Admittedly, Nancy is right about the text/gesture in parts. Sometimes too robotic, sometimes too hippy. But I argue that terms like "unkempt" and "messy" and "rough around the edges" are exactly what this piece SHOULD be doing. If anything, concepts should be less defined, murkier, jerkier, more "stuck on." Something that I kept looking/listening for: to hear and feel the exhaustion of the choreography in their voices. Ah, but no such luck. They timed little breaks between dancing to avoid such "messiness," but I say BRING IT ON TIRED AND OUT OF BREATH. Thay mastered dancing in high heels but they never faltered. If I missed anything in this show, it was a faltering.

Enough with the criticism, tho. There were gestures that really stuck with me. One that I keep coming back to is this truncated shimmy that both dancers do. They shake the head and shoulders wiggly-like but don't really loosen up, it's like the movements of a little girl and an old woman at the same time. I keep thinking of that gesture. I do it at home sometimes trying to recreate it. It was totally female without being feminine. To me, this was the highlight of the show.

Portrait of A-Walking Along

We walk the dog
day in day in
geraniums, terrariums
fiddlesticks it's
doing it once
it's done & again
walkie dog walkie
at night lighting
across green
houses
how lifted
between complexes
shitty moon one
hour
one
hour
here
walking
wearing
sweaters

Wind Song

Wind hawk part
wind sock
take this
night
gold on your nose
and over,

go
you

river runners
thru smudgy
open flames

take this
shell
ex on a shell

take two
REASONS
THAT WORK


go
river
no
down

no whirl

so stew
so sweet
heapings oh!

wingy rattle-

tooth
nooks

mini-pins
whiteheads
look
where
there
where
there

REASON
WORKS A CRUX
IN

a magisterial beaver

straightup
teeth
affix the fort
da fort da
take two

wooden
wedges
where

the short stick
clocks
the bay
take two

shadows
Achoo! Achoo!

Alligator & Cormorant
Pelican & Banana Spider
Pineneedle & Copperhead

take two dogs on leash
fast on saturdays
on dandillion bridges
thru wooden air
and tubes of light

Take the eye ten parades
of our economy
metal ladders up
chubby vats

Hello

word was
listless
see yer
fingers shuck
corn cobbler
Bottleface
Count the corn
Sitter, git. in. a. hole.
shorn meal-dog
muffin tooth
relax n’
sniff
this
corny
corn canopy pan-
opticon corn
trucked
loaded
on a stick
it's you
unique corn
who stun
you stun
who stun
you stun

Vibrations: Chinese Chippendale

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Vibrations: Chinese Chippendale by Gerald William Covey. This is far-and-away one of my all-time favorite book finds. Covey was born in Milledgeville, Ga and bopped around in the Navy, studied 'the graphic arts,' poetry, chiropractics, and aerospace physiology.

The poems are a "portamental portfolio" arranged in a formal concert, where different colors represent different notes. Below is the color code Covey created with a footnote that the "the color red is considered vulgar in some societies."

I copied out a poem (below) called "Windchimes" and tried to remain as true to the form as possible. Every poem begins with concert instructions/notations and ends with a time/date stamp.

Campanile I:
Cappriccio I:

Deja vu VI:
Divertissement II:
Pas Seul:
Danseur: Leo:
(tiger)

Windchimes

Ching. China samisens sing.

Whirlwinds wind songs,
Fonging, tonging, zonging,
Hong Kong's bongs and gongs.

Ping. Porcelain windpipes ling.

Timbal clicks:
A Bengal tiger in a forest of copper tibre,
Holds timbel,
Brass rings in a Tigerbalm garden of Victorian splendor.

Ring. Bronze glockenspiels bing.

Kowloon junks trunk,
Chunks of sandpan,
Cinnabar brindges of Aberdeen.

Sing. Silver celestras Qing.

Timbrel licks,
Of Chinese coins,
Timber yen and tick.

Ting. Tin tubular bells wing.

Timbre Styx.
Of Pompeian cameos,
Chopped with shillings,
Pyxed with farthings,
Nicked with crowns,
Profile of a British queen.

Wing. Wooden xylophones Ming.

Victoria, Hong Kong China, Asia
Circa 1970

There is also an extensive glossary of terms found at the end of the concert. Here's where all the musical terms are defined, languages are translated, Greek and Roman references explained. It's this beautiful attempt at an absolutely transparent complexity.

What an endeavor. I just had to copy out Appendix III to give you the right idea:

"The author, being born in Washington D.C., in 1944;
having traveled extensively through many cities throughout the globe; being a native of Milledgeville, Georgia, and having been fortunate to attend various centers of higher learning here in the United States, is now a patron of the arts and writes with the plural purposes of honorably promoting the fine arts to all classes of people, regardless of economic level, by offering art in a medium which most can afford and of adventurously promoting the cultures of minority groups (including minority ethnic groups and socially oppressed peoples) in an effort to achieve a more complete understanding and acceptance between various cultural and social groups (The promotion of the higher arts or any art to only the socially privileged is useless in developing an appreciation of the higher arts among the socially deprived.); the author feels that art for art's sake is an insult to the artist and a sham to those who are seeking entertainment as well as environmental improvement; after all, the purpose of any art is to tell or remind man (humanity) that he, above all else on Earth, is a gifted creature, regardless of his imperfections, having the power to benefit himself even in the face of uncertain fate."

Throughout the book there are little marks and spelling corrections. At first I didn't think anything of it until I saw this note on the last page:

Be a chooser go

Carrion be whistled in generous air of the bay. hey bay. Be letters thready strokes on brown sea be a genuflection thing. market collapses takes me in grants one dance one only see a newt stranding there. be pale mists discrepancies curls of pollen pineneedles erroneous melodies sheesh the helm falters. rain places where it tenders. dogwoods bust out white non white everywheres inseams, catalogues the gist. Be longing weak ends to days slicker be ever outlying an academy of branches hello misses recline kits this is anywhere texas, freckles the roadside, bridge

Unfinished Portrait of Jimmy in Green

My unfinished portrait of jimmy in green. I can't seem to get the rest of his face right. I just keep doing the hair. His hair is prodigious.

At first I thought I would one-day give this to Jimmy. But now I know I need to look at it often so it's staying right where it it Mr Lo.

Picture

of hands
ittle
lenders them
ands
shelvers
ush
runners
up-doing
ingers
fleece as
hen
flakes
allen
older
hold
it
lit