Wonderful Evening

The reading went really well. The folks at Wordsmith's were great - totally supportive and enthusiastic - and the audience had amazing energy. I don't read my work publicly very often and it was a boost to get so much positive feedback. The disc with the video of the Prelude to Unless and Until did not play quite as well in performance as it had on the wall of my apartment on the practice run-throughs, but that is always the way of it, and everybody seemed to dig it the most, glitches and all.

Laurel Snyder read beautifully. I really enjoy her work and it was a great performance - need to see her more often!

Megan I see very often, as we are near neighbors, but last night she was in fine fettle, full performance mode, and put on a hell of a show. Her new book, the Desense of Nonfense, is hot stuff, and she read selections from each section to give a sense of the whole collection.

Here is hoping there will be news of an Unless and Until website, more Anomity, more OPOYUL~, and more that is due for subversion to be identified at this blog in the future. For today, a recap is what there is, but it was a good show and worth recapping.

I almost forgot -

But didn't. Here is a post for today!

I have been occupied today primarily with preparing for the reading tonight at Wordsmith's on the Square in Decatur at 5pm. I am going first, then Laurel Snyder (Lara Glenum is unable to read tonight), then Megan Volpert launching her excellent new book - it will be a good show - and it will probably start right on time, so if you want to see my bit, get there at 5, then go have a beer at Brick Store after the show.

Not so much calling bullshit as, what -

Interesting post up at Kevin Kelly's Technium blog - "As if..." - [as if there isn't always an interesting post up at that blog.

But, because I am not interested in spelling everything out for me or for you, I will call something other than bullshit on the conclusion in that post. Just a crude way of saying I disagree but can't be bothered to really boil it down to fibers and bullet points.

Here is a quote from that Mr. Kelly's post:

In this Age of Metaphor, love will be the signal of real. One of the ways we will know when a thing has passed from "as-if to is" is when it earns unalloyed love from humans. When a virtual place wins the kind of full-blooded love that a real place on Earth wins. When a toy pet earns the same love as a breathing pet. When a synthetic actor earns the same love as a human movie star, when a virtual economy incites the same passion as the larger economy, when a global superorganism gains the same affection as a hamster.

Then it will no longer be as-if and it will just be.

Up until about a third or half of the way through that post I was very excited about the opoyuliness of it all. I am giddy at all promiscuous layers of fake-ness and imitation, of which theme parks aspiring to Disneyland is a good example but my favorite example is extruded plastic wallets that are molded with leather grain and fake stitching. I also like architecture that copies Greek temples, where the molded bits above the columns are copies of copies of the ends wooden beams that used to stick out over the stacks of material that held the roof up.

So, Mr. Kelly was talking about the "As if" society and discussing when it becomes real. He says it becomes real when we as individuals love it. NO. Nothing becomes real. Computers or networks or such might become real when they love us, perhaps. When they are a "they."

Hey! I am going to name drop! After a decade or so of minimal and sporadic email correspondence, I finally met Mr. John Hodgman in person at his Atlanta signing for "More Information than You Require." I hope to buy him a beverage someday and have an actual conversation because his work and the emails we have exchanged strongly suggest to me that I would enjoy conversing with him in person. Even so, that might turn out to be untrue. Because, as we both agreed in the minute or so of interaction at the signing table, "E-people aren't real." Ten years of interpersonal awareness doesn't change that. Blogs don't change that. Twitter won't change that. Second Life and World of Warcraft won't change that.

E-people and E-things exist in our heads. Like mathematics, the platonic cave shadows they cast in our heads might be internally consistent and useful - whatever the internet equivalent is of calculating the specs for a bridge that won't fall down - but you are never going to know until you know. And, most of the time, most of what you will be knowing is yourself, whether you realize it or not.

Day 7 and all that

I am back home from Minnesota. It is cold there, and it just trips me out that so many people live in wintry places and just put up with it.

In lieu of anything really on point, it occurred to me the other day to write about two images I use in my head for my own convenience. One is the hopper. The hopper is the basket for topics I am ready to speak about. I suppose it is like the hopper on a pitching machine. The topic is in the hopper, and it will shoot out of my mouth or onto this blog. The other is the big lazy susan. Projects I want to do are on the lazy susan. There might not be one in front of me at the moment, but there are many out there, spread around the circumference, and when I think of something that goes with a given potential project I can just put it on the pile. If it comes time to do a project, just pull on the edge and pull the project to right in front of me.

On the lazy susan and hopefully soon to be in the hopper is my part as one of the opening acts for Megan Volpert's book launch this Saturday at Wordsmith's - on the square in Decatur - TIME CORRECTION - THIS EVENT BEGINS AT 5PM - And I am probably going first, because my bit is the only one with techie stuff.

Day 6

I am still out of town.

Day 5

I am out of town today, so there is no post.

It is probably the BAD angel

So, here it is Day 4 and I am posting. I am also going to pre-load posts for launch tomorrow and the next day because tomorrow and the next day I will not be posting in person.

The angel I refer to is one of the cartoon angels everybody has on each shoulder that tug in opposing directions. Usually the tug is portrayed as between good and evil, but that seems a bit two dimensional. There are probably at least 64 angels, if it is a binary thing. But, the angel in question is the one that occasionally pipes up about somehow getting a lot of public attention. Fame and fortune and everything that goes with it (hopefully, excellent health insurance and better possibilities for subverting American literary culture).

That angel says "You are photogenic, well-spoken, and you have a fascinating medical condition that will probably kill you without deteriorating your looks! Write a poignant meditation on the fragility and beauty of life and it is next stop, Good Morning America! First, we take Manhattan, baby!"

When I think about how many people I would have to talk to every day if I did that, plus all the other items on the very long list of reasons I have not done that so far, I get tired all over and just buy a lotto ticket. I had a long odds totally random bad thing happen to me, I figure I am due for a long odds totally random satisfying thing that could definitely include excellent health insurance and possibilities for subverting American literary culture.

Best regards to you all.

Yes! Third time is the charm -

I am hereby posting for a third day in a row. Haven't Twittered today at all (except just a tiny bit) because (1) I don't feel well; (2) I am preoccupied; and (3) the energy I have had has been devoted largely to Wii. Check me out! I am au courant!

With regard to the DIY book discussed in the last post- I am enjoying the section on music much more than the section on poetry, which was what set me off yesterday. There is some good information on pirate radio in the UK (more specifically, in international waters near the UK) and on the relationships between Zine culture and Riot Grrrl - showing that in many ways the public perception of Riot Grrrl everything was inaccurate. Interesting. BUT I think the author of DIY needs some brush up on American music history- there is a paragraph or so leading up to skiffle taking off in the UK that does not make sense, although the big picture is as accurate as really needs be.

Delusions of Banjer today, for the first time in a while. Thank you, Bad Livers.

The Only Thing That is Difficult

The only thing that is difficult is putting your pants on over your head. In theory, it is possible and would even be easy that I could do at least one post every day for a year (excluding Jan 1st, which I missed).

It is calculated future disappointment for me to set out projects like this. If I do this one, several days will read "'Here Is a Post for Today' - A post for today." Just so you know.

What to say. OK. I read a book yesterday and am reading another one today that have me a little riled up about online communication. The one I am still reading has an obvious connection. "DIY: The Rise of Lo-Fi Culture" by Amy Spencer. The rise and evolution of 'Zines and other DIY anti-mainstream self-produced culture. It is pretty interesting stuff - tracing threads from Dada to punk to queercore to riotgrrl to crafting. I recommend it, at about 100 pages in.

The other book, the one I read yesterday is a less obvious candidate for "get somebody riled up about actively participating in communication online." The book is "Love All the People" and is a collection of all of Bill Hick's words - sets, interviews, notes, sayings, articles. Highly recommended. He was a fire and brimstone preacher/shaman who was visible in this dimension as a stand-up comedian. He is a personal hero of mine.

Well, the obvious connections between me and him are Georgia, religious upbringing, dedicated smoking, and terminal cancer totally unrelated to smoking. He had less than a year after his diagnosis (pancreatic metastasized to liver, advanced stage IV). I was anticipating less than five years at diagnosis (right temporal mixed glioma, low stage III), but that was almost eight years ago.

His modus of righteous fury and catharsis could never be mine, but it is tremendous and wonderful. It is not a matter of "agreeing" with everything he says, and I don't laugh at everything in his set, but he was righteous and motivated and true to his self. I hope I can be as well.

He did not understand why it was so difficult for the American media to grok what he was up to - his audiences were often totally on board. He was huge in England.

It was inspiring (and a little wearying) to read his work and be reminded so forcefully of my own abortive lunges toward more public avenues for attempting reclamation of some particularly noxious cultural waste. I had a recommendation lined up from Kenneth Koch for applying to MFA programs and then realized I would never write what I need to write if I went through academic channels for poetry. I repeatedly attempted in high school, college, and out in the world to get involved with video, writing, and comedy scenes and found that attractive women who did not want to date any of the guys there (and were funnier than the guys there) rarely get an invite to the next meeting. Many women do get into the scene, and I do feel that I have a personality issue that conflicted with the folks I tried to interact with. And yet, and yet, and yet. I still believe that American culture needs the cleansing fire from somewhere, and not nearly enough people are producing it.

I am trying to find them, they must be out there. It could be prose, it could be poetry, and there is probably a great deal of it in what is called (hilariously) comedy. I follow these guys on podcasts and Twitter and they are talented and funny, but they are guys (not adults), and it seems they are in a bit of a "Warmed-over-Bill-Hicks" rut, like they heard his words but never listened to what he was saying. I am not sure whether they are listening to anyone but each other. Makes me want to throw my shoes at their heads. Oh well.

Average Productivity + Public Appearance

I have been Twittering and not blogging. It is not unusual that I not be blogging, so Twitter is a plus there. Not much to report, except that I have at last completed the first of four sections of the big multi-media collaboration with Julie Puttgen and Jim Carlson. I will be presenting the prelude of the work at Megan Volpert's book launch for The Desense of Nonfence at Wordsmith's Books in Decatur, GA on January 10th at 2pm. Also appearing at the launch shall be Lara Glenum. Cool!