Gertrude, could you hand me a plane?
Tonight at 7pm at the very Barnes & Noble where I got my start in the book industry, (indeed, where I got my start in the being gainfully employed industry), Mr. Hodgman will be appearing with David Rees, creator of Get Your War On. While Mr. Rees is more famous for Get Your War On, and justly so, my enthusiasm for his work is mainly directed toward his series My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable. An unvarnished and straightforward opinion: I think that shit is the work of genius.
So, be there or be square. Or be there and square, like me.
My limited and probably naive efforts to raise public awareness of Tiny Bedtime Stories lead me now to address an issue I might otherwise avoid. If I am going to pester strangers and ask whether they would like a copy of the book, it seems appropriate to give some account of myself somewhere publicly accessible. Am I, JS van Buskirk, a real person? A weirdo? What is the big idea?
Yes. I am a real person. “JS van Buskirk” is an assumed name I use for creative work and online things, but it is my name for those purposes. I have been using it since sometime in the late 90's. It is difficult to remember exactly when I started. JS van Buskirk was the name I used for the first OPOYUL~ website (now gone) and for the first large-ish complicated art project I undertook. Perhaps that project will rise from the ashes one day. JS was also the name I used when I started a performance series here in Atlanta called INFO DEMO - a knock-off/homage to Mr. John Hodgman’s Little Gray Books Lectures. I was interviewed for Creative Loafing while that was going on - you can read the interview here.
Much of Tray’s interview is still fairly accurate, although I no longer have the fancy downtown office. I have a non-fancy downtown office and I work for the government. The brain tumor is still an issue - after surgery, chemo, radiation, chemo, and now chemo again, plus an increasing dosage of anti-seizure medicine. Keeps life interesting. I have not done much to increase the OPOYUL~ knowledge-base in recent years and I no longer produce OPOYUL~ trading cards for Art-O-Mat machines. You can print some out for yourself at the main site, if you like.
I write poetry more often these days than I did for a long while. The big project now is a collaboration with artist Julie Puttgen and composer Jim Carlson. It should be pretty fantastic. We are hoping to have the multi-media feast consumable by audience in August/September of ‘09. I need to get cracking, having written only about 1/4 of my portion. There might be a website for the project between now and then that will give tidbits.
I am a little weird, but not a weirdo.
The big idea is that I do things I enjoy doing, including giving out copies of this book I am very proud of.
I am deleting the other 'blog, because it is not happening. There are health concerns and other things I would like to work on when I have time and motivation to work on them.
My collection of Tiny Bedtime Stories is now available at Blurb.com. They were originally written on Twitter to ze frank's @bedtime account. Now they are edited and illustrated and for sale at cost. It is all pretty satisfying, really.
pace Dylan Thomas
I'm not the sort to rage and fuss and fight,
That kind of raving never was my way;
But I'm still young and wonder if I might.
The wise may guard themselves from foolish fright,
The old won't quail at calling it a day;
But I'm still young and wonder if I might.
In all, I think I've tried to do alright
And framed some words that no one else could say.
I'm not the sort to rage and fuss and fight.
Though fear tempts me to just turn out the light,
It's only cowards skip the end of play;
But I'm still young and wonder if I might.
While I have strength and love and hold them tight,
I'll live as if I had more time to stay.
I'm not the sort to rage and fuss and fight.
For now, my life, keep clear of that sad height.
Curse patience while it gets me through the day.
I'm not the sort to rage and fuss and fight,
But I'm still young and wonder if I might.
Let's first clear the air by going over the 4 stumbling blocks to truth:
The Four Stumbling Blocks to Truth
Attributed to Fr. Roger Bacon, by Don Tarquino, Baron Corvo:
No. 1 - The Influence of Fragile or Unworthy Authority
No. 2 - Custom
No. 3 - The Imperfection of Undisciplined Senses
No. 4 - Concealment of Ignorance by Ostentation of Seeming Wisdom
All four of these are probably at work both in my thought- and writing-processes, so beware. Beware also, however, the same four stumbling blocks at work in your own thought- and reading-processes. Please embark upon these pages with the suspicion that I am a person of good will and sincere in my queries and proposals. I am suspecting the same of anyone who gets this far down the page, and I wish you well. May all our suspicions be confirmed in time.
Having “Hail Poetry” for a title for this post assumes that someone who reads this knows the words to Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance. Not likely. So, to explain: there is a bit during a confrontation between the Major General and the Pirate King after the Pirates are interrupted in their attempt to carry off and marry the Major General’s daughters. The Major General objects to Pirates as sons-in-law. The Pirates object to Major Generals as fathers-in-law, but are willing to set that aside.
Protesting against the characterization of their band as churlish bad guys, the Pirate King sings: “Although our dark career / Sometimes involves the crime of stealing, / We rather think that we’re / Not altogether void of feeling. / Although we live by strife, / We’re always sorry to begin it, / For what, we ask, is life / Without a touch of Poetry in it?”
Then all kneel and sing: “Hail, Poetry, thou heav’n-born maid! / Thou gildest e’en the pirate’s trade. / Hail, flowing fount of sentiment! / All hail! All hail! Divine emollient!”
So, Hail Poetry. What is life without a touch of it? These days it is just life. In G&S’s day the hail to Poetry was scathingly funny to the sophisticated audience. The music was as satirical as the words, mimicking and mocking Handel, the King’s pet composer. Yes, we are all too sophisticated these days for love and ponies and lyric melancholy.
Some issues for consideration.
- Has anything really new happened in the Arts of communication with words in the English language since 1945?
- Have the past hundred or so years of Western European literary culture been driven by embarrassment/anger over our own cultural failure?
- Are we decadent?
- Why don't you like poetry?
Is it because the only available options are (i) heartwarming crap; (ii) meandering prose broken up into short lines and published in the New Yorker; (iii) mystifying or stupid performance art; (iv) stuff not aimed at your particular demographic, which thus alienates you; (v) artsy word-games that are essentially just wanking; (vi) old-fashioned stuff that doesn't make sense in the 21st century; (vii) stuff that makes the educated elite feel less guilty or more awesome for being the educated elite; or (viii) TMI from people "expressing" themselves? OR
- Simply because it is not relevant to your interests?
- Because they made you read it in high school and high school sucked?
- Because nothing gold can stay?
- Because except for that one bit you had to memorize in high school that got you laid once or twice, poetry doesn't serve any useful purpose?
- Because that poetry-spouting bitch/jerk broke your heart?
- Does poetry today just need more tits and explosions? Just a little bit, maybe? Are tits and explosions the true poetry of our time?
PS- The obvious answer to one of the questions up there (anything new since 1945) is computers, but I don’t buy it. Poets and other artists were playing with computers and their potential in the creation of new forms of art back before WWII. Even random generation using mass-media (newspapers) started back in the 20s and before. What "computers" (the internet, more like) do for me is free me from a potentially depressing fixation on Emily Dickinson. Computers have changed distribution, but not enough, and not in the direction of really being something else completely. In part, I think, because there has not been enough recognition among the people who might enjoy a touch of poetry in their life and the people who could put it there.
Of course, still on the Barzun.
Here is a passage from page 623:
"The social motive for the aesthetes' retreat into art being clear, there remains the question, what motive made purity a second necessity? Mallarme gives the answer in his superb sonnet, written in clear language and entitled "Brise Marine" (Sea Breeze). The first line reads: "The flesh is sad and I have read all the books." The last six words tell us that the whole weight of past literature bears down on him and adds to his pre-existing sorrow. Exactly 100 years earlier Faust had said the same thing, also in the first line of his soliloquy--all the books are dust, not life. Each of the two utterances records the end of a cultural age, 1790 and 1890."
So here we are, and the end of another hundred something years we have spent (artistically at least) continuing to demolish what was already collapsing by the turn of the last century. It is not that long ago, really - my grandpa was born in 1898 - but Americans naturally believe one hundred years is a long time.
I want to find, to learn and to build. We are alive, with minds, with access to knowlege and each other. There are many in the world who do not have enough life and access- that is one of the challenges. Communication and exchange with people facing different challenges is one way to grow beyond what your own challenges have driven you to. So it is all there to be done, in mutually beneficial ways.
On a slightly different subject, something I chose not to twitter yesterday was along the lines of "Q: So is academia just a circle jerk then? A: No, but it is an especially ponderous form of asexual reproduction." I don't trust academia and I don't trust the Permanent Art Council, though without animosity.
They are fine - they do their things: product is produced, people get paid, conferences are held, lunch is done, the world turns. The creative people I keep track of in the course of my dowsing for civilization aren't interested in poetry and probably don't catch my drift, but they are the ones striking out, trying to figure out what a new direction might be. I am impatient to know how this will develop, not simply because of my own personal ticking clock but because there must be some very fun, very cool stuff to talk about, to learn, and to do.
[I just deleted the last paragraph. Nobody wants to hear about how they should be glad to be alive if they aren't already. It's your call.]
Still re-reading Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence. It is a lot to take in. Scarfed Anathem in less than three days (granted, that did affect my productivity at work) and that is almost 100 pages longer. Maybe the font is smaller in Barzun’s book.
Regardless. This time around, I am finding the descriptions of Romanticism far more interesting than I did on the first read. I notice in particular M. Barzun’s evaluation of the movements that followed as siblings rather than successor descendants. That is, he describes Realism, Naturalism, and Symbolism as all aspects of Romanticism - which got me to thinking in terms of the big project being to reassemble everything we have done since 1800 or so back into one thing. Nice to think about, but it might require footnotes. Not my department. I need to get Megan on board with this stuff.
This morning as I sat in my car reading in the parking lot, I came across an interesting passage on page 513. The context is a discussion of how much stuff was produced in the 19th century.
"The enabling condition of the plethora was what one may term the 'cultural courage' of Romanticism. Its makers were not afraid of failure–nor of being foolish. They did not exercise caution to look acceptable, dignified, 'mature' or 'realistic.'"
Now, these days we don’t have any trouble with that. As an example I point to my regret that my computer circumstances prevent me from linking the word "plethora" to the scene in the Three Amigos regarding whether the bad guy has a plethora of pinatas. Given that we have no trouble with being foolish, should we confront instead a fear of looking acceptable, dignified, "mature" or "realistic?"
ps - Further thought on the "Official Verse Culture." My immediate concern with Charles Bernstein’s characterization and critique of official verse culture is that he was focusing on what the institution does - the taste exhibited and the poems selected. Why do we need to care? Why grant the institutions and the Permanent Art Council such relevance? Let them do whatever they feel like. It is their power and money to do with as they please. You don’t have to care.
This morning on the drive in I heard about how advertisers are paying to have products integrated into storylines on TV shows. Some are outraged. (A) How is this new? ("Drink More Ovaltine!"), (B) If it is done well, perhaps it will be less irritating than commercial breaks, and (C) I haven’t watched television, except for the Tour de France with my fella, in six months or so, and haven’t really missed it. If you don’t like the rules, play a different game. If there isn't a different game to play, start one.
pps - All hail Ze Frank for having a Twitter account devoted to tiny bedtime stories. I have a new hobby and an increased joy in life.
