Ink-Black, but Moving Independently Across the Black and White Parquet of Print, the Ant Cancels the Author Out

High Holy Day in Egoslavia. Diana Rigg, first, still best crush ever, is 76 today. The Avengers, the Honor Blackman/Katherine Gale years in b/w, the Diana Rigg/Emma Peel years, but especially the first Emma year, in b/w, first, best crush ever. Two years ago I was able to post some episodes, last year some motherfuckers claimed rights and blocked them. Last year I was able to post the black & white opening theme song, this year some motherfuckers claimed rights and blocked that, here, have the vastly inferior color opening to the second Emma Peel season (which, fine metaphors abounding, was vastly inferior - though still better than almost everything else then, since, forever - to the first season in black and white):







That doesn't give me the toe-curling waves of nostalgic pleasure like the black & white opening still does. I haven't mentioned this here in a while: I remember seeing the Flintstones in color, the first time I'd see a color TV, I was five? six? I don't remember whose house, a relative's presumably, I know it was in western Pennsylvania, but I am convinced that seminal event, followed by a decade of TV repeats after school, home when sick or faking sick, color then B/W then B/W then color then less and less B/W as the old shows fell out of syndication, and especially the shows in syndication like Avengers and Get Smart and Bewitched whose first years were in B/W then toggled to color, influence, for good and bad, how I apprehend and interpret the world still.

Yes, I post a version of that paragraph every year on July 20. Here's the only black & white scene I can find:







Hey, then there's this email:

Hello,
Congratulations!
Your Google Apps domain name, blckdgrd.com, was successfully renewed with enom for one year. You can now continue using Google Apps through July 18, 2015 and your account will soon be charged for the purchase.
Please do not reply to this email; replies are not monitored.

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I'll believe it if this shitty blog is still here the morning of the 26th.

• Marmoud Darwish: Under Siege.
• Quotable: On Resistance.
• The bitter fruits of bellicose policy.
• Money as class dictatorship.
• Thomas Frank finally has his obamapostasy. Well, not really, but he tries.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Knausgaard, for those of you who do: on critical hype and book sales. For the record, I gave Book One a hundred pages and it didn't work for me. I'll take 9/10ths blame and reserve 1/10th for Knausgaard: the piece linked to does reveal that James Wood likes Knausgaard, so there's a chance it's not me.
• Thought Experiment: Mary in the Black and White Room.
• Oh, yesterday's hike? Not nearly as scenic as the guidebook suggested, I enjoyed myself for the workout, the other three? Not so much.
• All praise to Seattle Sounders.
• Summer hiatus: posted not only because it's a bleggalgaze but because of the photo: last night, on way home from my parents, we stopped at the Food Lion in Walnut Hill to buy half-and-half for the coffee I'm currently drinking, said Food Lion once and originally a Grand Union. People can vouch for the stop, Landru (yes, I put his name in a sentence next to a Kate Bush song) can vouch in was a Grand Union.

FABLE OF THE ANT AND THE WORD

Mary Barnard

Ink-black, but moving independently   

across the black and white parquet of print,   

the ant cancels the author out. The page,   

translated to itself, bears hair-like legs   

disturbing the fine hairs of its fiber.

These are the feet of summer, pillaging meaning,   

destroying Alexandria. Sunlight is silence   

laying waste all languages, until, thinly,   

the fictional dialogue begins again:   

the page goes on telling another story.

Here Come the Bald Arbiters with Their Eyes on Chains

At three friends' encouragement I have been watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine from beginning to end. I know the original series by heart; when I was managing Crown Books 826 and hired Hamster for a second key, we'd look through a TV Guide and compete to guess the episode by the episode's title (we also had a John McLaughlin head taped to a black file cabinet by the swinging door into the cash register and manager's office area, but that's another story). I know Star Trek: The Next Generation by heart from Season Three to finale: Seasons One and Two SUCK! SUCK! SUCK! and Maria Muldour as Doctor Polanski can send her camel to bed, so much do the first two seasons suck. I remember watching Star Trek: Voyager but nothing much about it other than Seven, second-in-command Chipotle, and Captain Janeway, now a Russian prisoner in some show, Chartreuse Is the New Vermillion, that Earthgirl and Planet watch.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - I never got. I never stopped to think why beyond what episodes I saw didn't make me want to care. My friends insist DS9 is vastly superior to Voyager (I have friends with whom I've discussed this who insist those who think DS9 vastly superior to Voyager are fucking nuts). The friends' book and music recommendations to me have been uniformly solid (even if a particular book or musician don't sing to me - I was the poorer receptacle, I can read or hear the merits even if I don't receive right), so I downloaded Netflix and started the series.

I'm in Season Five now: I don't dislike the series, I don't like the series. It does some story lines well, it develops some characters better than others. I really like Rom. I really dislike Deep Space Nine's homages to Star Trek legacies, its stroking of uberfans, which peaked last night when Sisko and Dax and O'Brien and Bashir and Odo beam over to Kirk's enterprise to stop a Klingon spy from stealing a Bejoran magic orb and going back in time to blow up Kirk with a Tribble. That's not the stupid part. (Here's a stupid part: O'Brien sees The Original Series Klingons who don't have face plates, looks at Worf, Worf says, We don't talk about it with outsiders.) Throughout the episode DS9 producers interwove scenes from The Original Series' Tribbles episode into the DS9 episode, superimposing DS9 actors into the scenes. That's fine, that's schtick I can handle. At the very end, though, Sisko, after an episode of We must not take chances to alter the timeline bullshit, alters the timeline to meet and shake hands with Kirk (to no timeline-changing harm, of course). That's not the really stupid part. No, for this scene producers didn't use The Original Series' Tribble episode for Kirk, they used the end of Mirror Mirror when Kirk recognized, on his Enterprise, the body double of the Captain's Woman he'd been banging in the alternative universe, Sisko interposed as the Captain's Woman, I....

I..... but.... fine metap..... am going to play two more  Kate Bush songs and post another John Ashbery poem in anticipation of their upcoming High Holy Days....








INSTEAD OF LOSING

John Ashbery

Anyone, growing up in a space you hadn't used yet
would've done the same: bother the family's bickering
to head straight into the channel. My, those times
crackled near about us, from sickly melodrama
instead of losing, and the odd confusion... confusion.

I thought if it then, and in the mountains.
During the day we perforated the eponymous city limits
and then some. No one knew all about us
but some knew plenty. It was time to leave that town
for an empty drawer
into which they sailed. Some of the eleven thousand
virgins were getting queasy. I say, stop the ship!
No can do. Here come the bald arbiters
with their eyes on chains, just so, like glasses.
Heck, it's only a muskrat
that's seen better years, when things were medieval
and gold....

So you people in the front,
leave. You see them. And you understand it all.
It doesn't end, night's sorcery notwithstanding.
Would you have preferred to be a grownup in earlier times
than the child can contain or imagine?
Or is right now the answer - you know, the radio
we heard news on late at night,
out checkered fortunes so pretty.
Here's your ton of plumes, and your Red Seal Recors.
The whole embrace.

Counterproductive, as You Realize Once Again That the Longest Way Is the Most Efficient Way, the One That Looped Among Islands, and You Always Seemed to Be Traveling in a Circle

This past Tuesday night. That's Canal to Clara Barton to Cabin John Parkway to Beltway, was supposed to be all the way to exit for Rockville Pike (though the signs on the Beltway call it Wisconsin Avenue - it doesn't change to Wisconsin until a further mile south) but either the iPhone cut it off prematurely, in which case fuck that, or I screwed up and accidentally turned it off, in which case fuck me.

Planet took us out to dinner for our anniversary last night and then I did no link-fishing (and a quick scan of Blegsylvania this morning suggests not much was posted yesterday at least in my Stringtown - though :-p wants to start a band, and Ethan has a mediation on taking scifi as seriously as those who distrust it - it's summer, blogs lay dormant then suddenly love come in spurts). As threatened, have two Kate Bush songs and a John Ashbery poem in anticipation of their Egoslavian Holy Days later this month. Please! send me links to Kate Bush songs you'd like to hear, the rarer the better.








JUST WALKING AROUND

John Ashbery

What name do I have for you?

Certainly there is not name for you

In the sense that the stars have names

That somehow fit them. Just walking around,

An object of curiosity to some,

But you are too preoccupied

By the secret smudge in the back of your soul

To say much and wander around,

Smiling to yourself and others.

It gets to be kind of lonely

But at the same time off-putting.

Counterproductive, as you realize once again

That the longest way is the most efficient way,

The one that looped among islands, and

You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.

And now that the end is near

The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.

There is light in there and mystery and food.

Come see it.

Come not for me but it.

But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.

Therefore, Since We Have to Do Our Business in Spite of Things, Why Not Make It in Spite of Everything?

We hiked! Six miles at Little Bennett, a circuit we'd done clockwise once we did counter-clockwise yesterday. Not rigorous at any point, Earthgirl thought it a good hike to test her knee, both before we started and when we ended, her knee was stiff when she started, fine when finished. Today's content? Here's content from Saturday which features a Resident's cascade, here's content from yesterday which features a This Heat cascade.

Two High Egoslavian Holy Days approaching, one in twenty-eight days, one in thirty, the latter an irreplaceable permanent member MSADI5G. Expect a lot of these two in the upcoming days, not everyday necessarily, but a lot.








PYROGRAPHY

John Ashbery

Out here on Cottage Grove it matters. The galloping

Wind balks at its shadow. The carriages

Are drawn forward under a sky of fumed oak.

This is America calling:

The mirroring of state to state,   

Of voice to voice on the wires,

The force of colloquial greetings like golden

Pollen sinking on the afternoon breeze.

In service stairs the sweet corruption thrives;

The page of dusk turns like a creaking revolving stage in Warren, Ohio.

If this is the way it is let’s leave,

They agree, and soon the slow boxcar journey begins,   

Gradually accelerating until the gyrating fans of suburbs   

Enfolding the darkness of cities are remembered   

Only as a recurring tic. And midway

We meet the disappointed, returning ones, without its   

Being able to stop us in the headlong night

Toward the nothing of the coast. At Bolinas

The houses doze and seem to wonder why through the   

Pacific haze, and the dreams alternately glow and grow dull.   

Why be hanging on here? Like kites, circling,   

Slipping on a ramp of air, but always circling?

But the variable cloudiness is pouring it on,

Flooding back to you like the meaning of a joke.

The land wasn’t immediately appealing; we built it

Partly over with fake ruins, in the image of ourselves:

An arch that terminates in mid-keystone, a crumbling stone pier   

For laundresses, an open-air theater, never completed

And only partially designed. How are we to inhabit

This space from which the fourth wall is invariably missing,   

As in a stage-set or dollhouse, except by staving as we are,   

In lost profile, facing the stars, with dozens of as yet

Unrealized projects, and a strict sense

Of time running out, of evening presenting   

The tactfully folded-over bill? And we fit   

Rather too easily into it, become transparent,   

Almost ghosts. One day

The birds and animals in the pasture have absorbed   

The color, the density of the surroundings,   

The leaves are alive, and too heavy with life.

A long period of adjustment followed.

In the cities at the turn of the century they knew about it   

But were careful not to let on as the iceman and the milkman   

Disappeared down the block and the postman shouted   

His daily rounds. The children under the trees knew it   

But all the fathers returning home

On streetcars after a satisfying day at the office undid it:   

The climate was still floral and all the wallpaper   

In a million homes all over the land conspired to hide it.   

One day we thought of painted furniture, of how   

It just slightly changes everything in the room

And in the yard outside, and how, if we were going

To be able to write the history of our time, starting with today,   

It would be necessary to model all these unimportant details   

So as to be able to include them; otherwise the narrative   

Would have that flat, sandpapered look the sky gets   

Out in the middle west toward the end of summer,   

The look of wanting to back out before the argument   

Has been resolved, and at the same time to save appearances

So that tomorrow will be pure. Therefore, since we have to do our business   

In spite of things, why not make it in spite of everything?   

That way, maybe the feeble lakes and swamps

Of the back country will get plugged into the circuit   

And not just the major events but the whole incredible

Mass of everything happening simultaneously and pairing off,

Channeling itself into history, will unroll

As carefully and as casually as a conversation in the next room,   

And the purity of today will invest us like a breeze,

Only be hard, spare, ironical: something one can

Tip one’s hat to and still get some use out of.

The parade is turning into our street.

My stars, the burnished uniforms and prismatic   

Features of this instant belong here. The land

Is pulling away from the magic, glittering coastal towns

To an aforementioned rendezvous with August and December.   

The hunch is it will always be this way,   

The look, the way things first scared you   

In the night light, and later turned out to be,   

Yet still capable, all the same, of a narrow fidelity   

To what you and they wanted to become:   

No sighs like Russian music, only a vast unravelling   

Out toward the junctions and to the darkness beyond

To these bare fields, built at today’s expense.

Small and Stupid, Too Slow to Get Away, It Was Only a Promise I Had Made to Myself Once and Then Forgot

I'm leaving shortly for an eight-miler on the Appalachian Trail, Crampton's Gap to top of Lambs Knoll and then down again, again without Earthgirl, she thinks she's a couple of weeks away though her leg is much better. When I get back to the car after the hike, a decision will have been made. There have been changes in the permanent three spots on my Sillyass Deserted Island Game before: twelve years ago I dropped XTC from a spot into the innermost circle of bands and artists who take turns in the two rotating spots in the Sillyass game to elevate Guided by Voices into a permanent spot. (Kate Bush and Pere Ubu/David Thomas had, have, and will always have permanent spots.) Have I ever mentioned how much I love Lambchop? It's not that I love GbV any less than ever, it's that I love Lambchop more than ever. I need two rotating spots and six circles, in ascending order, of bands and artists who cycle through the rotating spots. No, I cannot make it a Sillyass Deserted Island Six Game.

• Notes on conspiricism: This is not to say that there are not operatives in our midst giving the system a nudge here and there. It’s a testimony to the extent of our indoctrination, that in light of this country’s history and a year of revelations about mass surveillance, people still roll their eyes at any suggestion of organized state deception and malfeasance. Certainly Graeber is well aware of the extensive state interference with Occupy, so presumably he is intimating only the looniness of implicating him. But there is little profit in focusing on this aspect when the end result is the same. It doesn’t truly matter what compelled Graeber to knowingly run interference for defamation and red-baiting. What matters is that he did.
• Surveillance, capture, and the endless replay.
• On the war on teachers. Full disclosure, my wife is a teacher, my parents were teachers, my favorite aunts and uncles were teachers, I have beloved who are teachers. I am ridiculously biased.
• More on the above.
• Broadsnark's things you might have missed.
• Baffler's week that was.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Main character syndrome.
• Pale notes on friendship.
• The most difficult and painful turn.
• Go west in that case.
• I have an inkling the decision has already been made.

BROKEN PROMISES

David Kirby

I have met them in dark alleys, limping and one-armed;   

I have seen them playing cards under a single light-bulb   

and tried to join in, but they refused me rudely,   

knowing I would only let them win.   

I have seen them in the foyers of theaters,   

coming back late from the interval   

long after the others have taken their seats,   

and in deserted shopping malls late at night,   

peering at things they can never buy,   

and I have found them wandering   

in a wood where I too have wandered.   

This morning I caught one;   

small and stupid, too slow to get away,   

it was only a promise I had made to myself once   

and then forgot, but it screamed and kicked at me   

and ran to join the others, who looked at me with reproach   

in their long, sad faces.

When I drew near them, they scurried away,   

even though they will sleep in my yard tonight.   

I hate them for their ingratitude,   

I who have kept countless promises,   

as dead now as Shakespeare’s children.   

“You bastards,” I scream,   

“you have to love me—I gave you life!”

But on Saturday Evening

  
Requested by anne. Thanks much. Sweet to hear from you.

And If My Style Was Too Nostalgic and Where Were You When I Was Burning Alive, Nightingale?

Friend davidly gets mail:

We are contacting you as you are eligible to participate in the fan pre-sale for the "Before the Dawn" concerts in August & September 2014 at Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith 48 hours ahead of the general ticket sale on 28th March 2014.

Please visit www.eventim.co.uk at 9.30am on 26th March 2014, locate the show you’d like to attend, select the fan pre-sale from the drop-down menu and enter the unique access code below for your chance to purchase tickets to one of the shows:

Access code: xxxxxxxx

**ACCESS CODES ARE STRICTLY ONE USE ONLY AND SHOULD BE ENTERED AS DISPLAYED ABOVE IN LOWER CASE.  IF YOU LEAVE THE PAGE AND TRY TO USE THE CODE AGAIN IT WILL BE INVALID.**

**THE ACCESS CODE WILL BE INVALID IF YOU HAVE NOT RECEIVED THIS EMAIL DIRECTLY FROM KATEBUSH.COM**

**ALL NEW SIGNEES TO THE KATEBUSH.COM MAILING LIST FROM 00:00AM ON 1ST MARCH 2014 WILL NOT BE ELIGIBLE FOR PRE-SALE TICKETS**

This event is for fans only and the following rules are in place to ensure that tickets do not get sold on and fans do not pay a higher price for their tickets.

• Ticket purchases are limited to a maximum of 4 per order.  For example, you can try to purchase up to 4 tickets for just 1 of the 15 concerts, or 1 ticket for 4 separate shows.  All tickets MUST be purchased in the same transaction in order for the access code to remain valid.
• The name of the lead booker will be printed on each ticket. The name cannot be changed once the booking has been made.
• The lead booker will be asked to present ID to gain entry into the venue. Failure to adhere to the terms and conditions may result in the customer's order being void. There are no exceptions to this rule.
• If you are booking more than one ticket your guests must arrive at the concert at the same time as you. Failure to do so will result in the guests being turned away.
• Tickets cannot be resold or transferred under any circumstances. If the promoter reasonably believes this to be the case the barcode on the ticket will be voided, prohibiting entry to the concert.
• Age Restriction: 14+ (ALL UNDER 16's MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY AN ADULT)

As the number of tickets reserved is limited they will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis.  Sadly this means that not everyone receiving this offer has a guarantee of securing a ticket during the pre-sale, but anyone who doesn’t manage to get one will still be able to try again when general ticketsgo on sale at 9.30am 28th March 2014.Before The Dawn at London's Eventim Apollo, Hammersmith:

August:

Tuesday, 26th August
Wednesday, 27th August
Friday, 29th August
Saturday, 30th August

September:

Tuesday, 2nd September
Wednesday, 3rd September
Friday, 5th September
Saturday, 6th September
Tuesday, 9th September
Wednesday, 10th September
Friday, 12th September
Saturday, 13th September
Tuesday, 16th September
Wednesday, 17th September
Friday, 19th September

We hope to see you there.

Kindest regards,
The Fish People

• From The Guardian: Kate Bush will play her first series of shows since 1979, performing August and September in the UK. Bush will play 15 shows at London’s Eventim Apollo starting 26 August as part of her Before the Dawn series of shows. Announcing the news on her website on Friday, the singer said: “I hope you will be able to join us and I look forward to seeing you there.” Famously, Bush has only toured once before, during a six-week jaunt around Britain and mainland Europe. “By the end,” she subsequently recalled, “I felt a terrific need to retreat as a person, because I felt that my sexuality – which in a way I hadn’t really had a chance to explore myself – was being given to the world in a way which I found impersonal.” Theories to explain her absence from the tour circuit have included a fear of flying, perfectionism and the death of her lighting director, Bill Duffield, who was killed in an accident during her 2 April 1979 concert at Poole Arts Centre. In an interview with Mojo magazine in 2011, Bush said she’d also endured extreme exhaustion as a result of the tour. “It was enormously enjoyable. But physically it was absolutely exhausting.” “I still don’t give up hope completely that I’ll be able to do some live work,” she added, “but it’s certainly not in the picture at the moment because I just don’t quite know how that would work with how my life is now.”
• Not that we can afford to fly to London to see Kate Bush, but even if we could afford to fly to London to see Kate Bush the show dates coincide with (a) taking Planet back for the start of her senior year in college and (b) the start of the academic year for Earthgirl at her elementary school and (c) the three hardest weeks of my job at Hilltop. Fun to daydream though.
• davidly says he's gonna try for a ticket.
• Hopefully this all means a new album. Hopefully she enjoys this experience so she considers touring more. I doubt she'd ever tour Murka. Yurp yes, Murka no.

• Have I ever mentioned I love Kate Bush?
• Somebody posted a Kate Bush song yesterday I post here all the time, most recently for David Gilmour's birthday.
• Please consider throwing Arthur the coins in your pocket.
• Meanwhile at Hilltop. Not quite as dramatic as the discovery of a meth lab in the freshmen dorm a couple of years ago.
• Scenes from the Inhumanity Museum. From Gass' Middle C, which I am just now beginning, my first attempt thwarted a year ago by what was - Baal be taunted - a currently dormant reading slump.
• This is my favorite lazyass aarghfree post since the last until the next.
• Yes, the guy in the middle of the header is 83 today.
• Party animals.
• Adventures in time and space.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• It's probably Martha & the Muffins most known song. Not my favorite, not my least.

BOLERO

Gerald Stern

So one day when the azalea bush was firing

away and the Japanese maple was roaring I

came into the kitchen full of daylight and

turned on my son’s Sony sliding over the

lacquered floor in my stocking feet for it was

time to rattle the canisters and see what

sugar and barley have come to and how Bolero

sounds after all these years and if I’m loyal

still and when did I have a waist that thin?

And if my style was too nostalgic and where

were you when I was burning alive, nightingale?   

How Could There Be a Word for Silence?

The traditional March 7 song and sentence, this year on March 8 since I didn't remember until yesterday afternoon as I was driving to BWI to pick up Planet: David Gilmour is sixty-eight yesterday. I neither hate or love Pink Floyd and lean more towards like than dislike depending on the song though I can state experientially that me and mushrooms and Floyd didn't play well together the two times we tried thirty or so years ago, so while there's not much Floyd here, I'll celebrate Gilmour's birthday as an excellent excuse to play Kate Bush, David Gilmour playing lead guitar on the above, watch it, you'll see him.

• There's a second reason I post Kate Bush today, you'll see. Not that I need a reason to post Kate Bush.
• Seventeen contradictions and the end of Capitalism.
• Edward Snowden, tattletale: A tattletale is someone who reports "something bad or wrong" to an authority. And that is precisely what Snowden has done. He has entrusted the documents to "responsible journalists," who have adopted the rationales and methods of the States themselves. Moreover, these "responsible journalists" work together with "government stakeholders" to determine which documents may be "safely disclosed" on the basis of factors that are explained in only the vaguest and most vacuous of terms. We haven't escaped the oppression and abuses of authority: we have only added to the authorities who decide what we will be allowed to know. Before, we were concerned with oppression by the State. Now we can look forward to oppression by the State and by those "responsible journalists" who have lucked into the story of a lifetime, which they then stripped of almost all meaning and impact.
• Vladimir Putin, master satirist: Putin is a nerd, and his excesses are all classic loser fantasies: learning judo, shooting large animals, flying fighter jets, bedding gymnasts, invading sovereign states, being the tough guy – all have their place in the sociopathic pantheon of nerdy wish-fulfilment. When it comes to nerds I’ll defer to the wisdom of the American right-wing radio host and lunatic Alex Jones: Nerds are the one of the most dangerous groups in this country, because they end up running things, but they still hate everybody, because they weren’t the jocks in high school, so they play little dirty games on everybody. They use their brains to hurt people. And I’m aware of them. OK? I see you, you little rats! As ever, Alex Jones is completely correct; there’s definite malice in the intrusive new reign of the Silicon Valley dorkocrats. But at the same time, nerds are attuned to the cruel ironies of the world in a way that high-school jocks like Alex Jones and self-righteous stoner fratboys like Barack Obama will never understand. They might be vicious, but at least they have a sense of humour.
• Another bleggal suicide.
• Cultural capital doesn't pay the rent (h/t Frances): This pairing of two smart and interesting women is my first done on a volunteer basis: after the first column ran back in December, Miranda Merklein and Jessica Lawless emailed me (independently of each other) to ask if they could participate. I knew Miranda somewhat from Twitter, but Jessica not at all. Miranda requested to be paired with Jessica, in part because they’re both writers who already knew each other. Their experiences of creative performances, gender roles, teaching, and what Jessica calls below “the brick ceiling laid over our heads at every turn as we tried to build careers” make them ideal participants for the kinds of discussions I’m trying to generate in this column.

• The Boy with Spirograph Eyes! Hopefully I can buy one via mail order.
• Yes, every time I see a ZC post with that title the above Kate Bush plays in my head.
• Lordy, Serendipity be blessed. 
• The key question of bleggalgazing.
• Then and now. Tom's latest.
• Anything going on tonight?

• *!wOOt!*
• More on Robert Ashley.
• More on Robert Ashley.
• More on Robert Ashley.
• Nurse with Wound's Journey through Cheese. (h/t).
• Looking for today's poem I rediscovered this gorgeous, brilliant, heartbreaking Jane Kenyon poem. It didn't fit this post for title, though I am always astonished anew at how Kenyon's poems slay me.

YOU CAN'T WARM YOUR HANDS IN FRONT OF A BOOK BUT YOU CAN WARM YOU HOPES THERE

Fanny Howe

Feathers fluffed the ashtray bin at the bottom of the elevator. Feathers and a smeared black look littered the parking lot like mascara. A cage would glide back and let them out to merge with the other cars on La Brea. It looked as if a struggle had ended in tears between the bird and an enemy. She broke through the fear to examine it. No chicken claws, or comb, no wing, no egg. The neutrality of words like “nothing” and “silence” vibrated at her back like plastic drapes. How could there be a word for silence? A child’s lips might blow, the North wind bring snow, a few stars explode, boats rock, but whatever moved in air did not by necessity move in ears and require the word “silence” therefore. She had personally sunk to a level where she could produce thought, and only “violence” remained a problem. It was common in her circle. A bush could turn into a fire, or a face at a clap of the hand could release spit and infection. The deviants were like herself unable to control their feelings. Los Angeles for them was only hostile as a real situation during the rainy season when torrents ripped down the sides of the canyons and overnight turned them sloshy. Then they hid in underground places, carrying Must the Morgue be my Only Shelter?? signs. But the rest of the time the sort of whiteness spread out by a Southland sun kept them warm, and they could shit whenever they wanted to, in those places they had long ago staked out. My personal angel is my maid, said one to another, putting down his Rilke with a gentle smile.

Birdsong, Face It, Some Male Machine Gone Addled - Repeat, Repeat - the Damage Keeps Doing, the World Ending Then Starting, the First Word, the Last, Etc.

• Birdsong today and then I'll keep Messiaen to myself until next time I don't.
• Prunella sends a clarification: she didn't receive the email, a colleague did. My apologies. The story has gone national, read more here.
• What's the point if we can't have fun? Is it meaningful to say an electron “chooses” to jump the way it does? Obviously, there’s no way to prove it. The only evidence we could have (that we can’t predict what it’s going to do), we do have. But it’s hardly decisive. Still, if one wants a consistently materialist explanation of the world—that is, if one does not wish to treat the mind as some supernatural entity imposed on the material world, but rather as simply a more complex organization of processes that are already going on, at every level of material reality—then it makes sense that something at least a little like intentionality, something at least a little like experience, something at least a little like freedom, would have to exist on every level of physical reality as well.
• Synecdochly embedded seppuku.
• You take the low road and I'll take the low road.
• RIP, Stuart Hall.
• Two Stuart Hall essays on neoliberalism.
• UPDATE! Lots more on Hall and lots of links.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• The New Inquiry's Sunday readings.

• Bleggalgazing. I don't think the Kate Bush allusion was intended (I hope I'm wrong) that has put Hounds of Love - the album, not just the song alluded to - on permanent replay today in my head. It's a good thing.
• Bleggalgazing - over the next few days I'm going to move more blogs that haven't updated in at least two months to Moribund: if and when the owner does blog again I want to be sure to see it, something easier to notice in Moribund than in the more active blogrolls. As always, unless the owner has killed the blog itself, no one is purged.
• Beatallica.
• People still care. Tom Clark's latest.
• [I] [Lied]. I'm surprised you're promoting it, said L last night at Sunday Night Pints, though I approve. Thank you, I said. I like what you sent me, said K. Thank you, I said. Are you going to point out what you're doing, L asked. Nope, I said. And that's today's Sunday Night Pints monologue, I love you, but much of what we talked about is none of your business.
• UPDATE! [I] [Lied] dead. [I] [Lied] [Dog] lives.
• The thousand somethings of someone.
• RIP, Maxine Kumin.
• More.
• Something that stutters sincerely: In the work of Hart, Lin, and others, I will argue, this deliberate embrace of failure is worked out through an explicit departure from an allegedly exhausted aesthetic and a movement toward a renewed emphasis on emotion. This ends up looking like a testing of the grounds between, on the one hand, the sincere or expressive, and on the other, the ironic or unemotional. The form this relation takes, though, depends upon thinking about postmodernism as representative of modes of discourse which thrive on techniques like parody and pastiche, on aesthetic distance and heightened self-consciousness through a variety of methods (recycling of old forms, appropriation, collage). hough postmodern art is obviously far more complex and diverse than the above characterization acknowledges, poets like Hart and Lin seem to see postmodernist poetics as having reached its limit, and are now in a position to critique its methods through (ironically) oscillating between an embrace and rejection of such techniques.

BIRDSONG, FACE IT, SOME MALE MACHINE

Marianne Boruch

Birdsong, face it, some male machine   

gone addled—repeat, repeat—the damage

keeps doing, the world ending then starting,

the first word the last, etc. It's that   

etcetera. How to love. Is a wire   

just loose? Build an ear for that. Fewer, they say.   

So many fewer, by far. He's showing off   

to call her back. Or claiming the tree.   

Or a complaint—the food around here,   

the ants, the moths, the berries. She's making   

the nest, or both are. In feathers, in hair or twigs,   

in rootlets and tin foil. Shiny bits seen

from a distance, a mistake. But fate   

has reasons to dress up. Stupid   

and dazzling have a place, a place, a place   

though never. She can't sing it.

Fifty-Five Today

Hounds of Love has to be one of my three most listened to albums, and the song cycle of side two back in the days of album sides, youngsters, unquestionably the side of music I've listened to most. Dream of Sheep and Under Ice and Waking the Witch and Watching You Without Me and Jig of Life and Hello Earth and finishing with, and you must listen in order like I just did for full kaboom, holyfuck, I love this song:






The line between loving the music and loving the memories the music evokes (and there are ten formative years and three exceptional women - one of whom I'm still married to - when Kate Bush was on the daily soundtrack) has long blurred, but she's one of three permanent members in my Sillyass Desert Island Five Game for both reasons. Lordy, the rush when I first here her voice again after not hearing it for a week. Yes, I post this same post every year.

 


 

The above a request, as are the six below:

*

*

*

*

*

"New Narrative" Is Judged Seditious

Found something I wrote twenty-five years ago while looking for something else. I thought it was gone forever, I'd been regretting its disappearance for years. It won't appear here, neither what I wrote or what a friend and mentor wrote in the margins. See tags for hint. Should I be more pleased than aghast or more aghast than pleased I recognize a younger me as my obvious predecessor? As mentioned yesterday, the objects of adoration change, the ardor of faith doesn't. Light reading elsewhere in any case, and an arrghfree day of links in celebration of surprise discovery and exhumation of previous self. Figures in a landscape. The above photo from a project from last year. In the shit. Serendipitously, new moleskin required two days ago. This is sand. Because reevaluation of old work requires reexamination of current work. Old rockers. I'd like to think it could appear here, it probably won't, though why it won't will no doubt make an appearance. No tears. Ashbery and Pasternak part one, part two. Working to change the equations which involves factoring damn on both sides of equal. RIP Faye Hunter. Ashbery's birthday in four days, I haven't forgot. The tennis-court oath. I realize I always approach the what-the-fuck and turn away, I'll see. The instruction manual. I haven't forgot Kate Bush's birthday is in six days.




 
...BY AN EARTHQUAKE

John Ashbery

A hears by chance a familiar name, and the name involves a riddle of the past.

B, in love with A, receives an unsigned letter in which the writer states that she is the mistress of A and begs B not to take him away from her.

B, compelled by circumstances to be a companion of A in an isolated place, alters her rosy views of love and marriage when she discovers, through A, the selfishness of men.

A, an intruder in a strange house, is discovered; he flees through the nearest door into a windowless closet and is trapped by a spring lock.

A is so content with what he has that any impulse toward enterprise is throttled.

A solves an important mystery when falling plaster reveals the place where some old love letters are concealed.

A-4, missing food from his larder, half believes it was taken by a “ghost.”

A, a crook, seeks unlawful gain by selling A-8 an object, X, which A-8 already owns.

A sees a stranger, A-5, stealthily remove papers, X, from the pocket

of another stranger, A-8, who is asleep. A follows A-5.

A sends an infernal machine, X, to his enemy, A-3, and it falls into

the hands of A’s friend, A-2.

Angela tells Philip of her husband’s enlarged prostate, and asks for money.

Philip, ignorant of her request, has the money placed in an escrow account.

A discovers that his pal, W, is a girl masquerading as a boy.

A, discovering that W is a girl masquerading as a boy, keeps the knowledge to himself and does his utmost to save the masquerader from annoying experiences.

A, giving ten years of his life to a miserly uncle, U, in exchange for a college education, loses his ambition and enterprise.

A, undergoing a strange experience among a people weirdly deluded, discovers the secret of the delusion from Herschel, one of the victims who has died. By means of information obtained from the notebook, A succeeds in rescuing the other victims of the delusion.

A dies of psychic shock.

Albert has a dream, or an unusual experience, psychic or otherwise, which enables him to conquer a serious character weakness and become successful in his new narrative, “Boris Karloff.”

Silver coins from the Mojave Desert turn up in the possession of a sinister jeweler.

Three musicians wager that one will win the affections of the local kapellmeister’s wife; the losers must drown themselves in a nearby stream.

Ardis, caught in a trap and held powerless under a huge burning glass, is saved by an eclipse of the sun.

Kent has a dream so vivid that it seems a part of his waking experience.   

A and A-2 meet with a tragic adventure, and A-2 is killed.

Elvira, seeking to unravel the mystery of a strange house in the hills, is caught in an electrical storm. During the storm the house vanishes and the site on which it stood becomes a lake.

Alphonse has a wound, a terrible psychic wound, an invisible psychic wound, which causes pain in flesh and tissue which, otherwise, are perfectly healthy and normal.

A has a dream which he conceives to be an actual experience.   

Jenny, homeward bound, drives and drives, and is still driving, no nearer to her home than she was when she first started.

Petronius B. Furlong’s friend, Morgan Windhover, receives a wound from which he dies.

Thirteen guests, unknown to one another, gather in a spooky house to hear Toe reading Buster’s will.

Buster has left everything to Lydia, a beautiful Siamese girl poet of whom no one has heard.

Lassie and Rex tussle together politely; Lassie, wounded, is forced to limp home.

In the Mexican gold rush a city planner is found imprisoned by outlaws in a crude cage of sticks.

More people flow over the dam and more is learned about the missing electric cactus.

Too many passengers have piled onto a cable car in San Francisco; the conductor is obliged to push some of them off.

Maddalena, because of certain revelations she has received, firmly resolves that she will not carry out an enterprise that had formerly been dear to her heart.

Fog enters into the shaft of a coal mine in Wales.

A violent wind blows the fog around.

Two miners, Shawn and Hillary, are pursued by fumes.

Perhaps Emily’s datebook holds the clue to the mystery of the seven swans under the upas tree.

Jarvis seeks to manage Emily’s dress shop and place it on a paying basis. Jarvis’s bibulous friend, Emily, influences Jarvis to take to drink, scoffing at the doctor who has forbidden Jarvis to indulge in spirituous liquors.

Jarvis, because of a disturbing experience, is compelled to turn against his friend, Emily.

A ham has his double, “Donnie,” take his place in an important enterprise.

Jarvis loses his small fortune in trying to help a friend.

Lodovico’s friend, Ambrosius, goes insane from eating the berries of a strange plant, and makes a murderous attack on Lodovico.

“New narrative” is judged seditious. Hogs from all over go squealing down the street.

Ambrosius, suffering misfortune, seeks happiness in the companionship of Joe, and in playing golf.

Arthur, in a city street, has a glimpse of Cathy, a strange woman who has caused him to become involved in a puzzling mystery.   

Cathy, walking in the street, sees Arthur, a stranger, weeping.

Cathy abandons Arthur after he loses his money and is injured and sent to a hospital.

Arthur, married to Beatrice, is haunted by memories of a former sweetheart, Cornelia, a heartless coquette whom Alvin loves.

Sauntering in a park on a fine day in spring, Tricia and Plotinus encounter a little girl grabbing a rabbit by its ears. As they remonstrate with her, the girl is transformed into a mature woman who regrets her feverish act.

Running up to the girl, Alvin stumbles and loses his coins.

In a nearby dell, two murderers are plotting to execute a third.   

Beatrice loved Alvin before he married.

B, second wife of A, discovers that B-3, A’s first wife, was unfaithful.   

B, wife of A, dons the mask and costume of B-3, A’s paramour, and meets A as B-3; his memory returns and he forgets B-3, and goes back to B.

A discovers the “Hortensius,” a lost dialogue of Cicero, and returns it to the crevice where it lay.

Ambrose marries Phyllis, a nice girl from another town.

Donnie and Charlene are among the guests invited to the window.   

No one remembers old Everett, who is left to shrivel in a tower.   

Pellegrino, a rough frontiersman in a rough frontier camp, undertakes to care for an orphan.

Ildebrando constructs a concealed trap, and a person near to him, Gwen, falls into the trap and cannot escape.

Yet Sad that Her Frankenstein Had Become Just a Name, Like Dracula or Satan, Something that Stood for a Kind of Scariness, Good for a Laugh

Slide show is from yesterday's production of Richard Campbell's Frankenstein, a rock opera, the first musical I have voluntarily gone to see since the movie Tommy in 1975 with my cousin Jennifer. The lead guitarist is my friend Mr Alarum. We were told we could take photos as long as we turned off the flash, so I think it's OK to post that, if it's not please let me know. Planet and Earthgirl and Ari were particularly impressed with the monster, especially his spasticity when rising from the operating table. I was happily amused with the emcee guy - his voice, in the upper registers, the tone and timber of Geddy Lee. When I said so to Planet and Earthgirl and Ari they said, Who?

• No, no Rush song. Though the guy's voice brought back memories of field parties.
• Light links today, little reading last night, no time to read this morning. I might add some at links at lunch (or not) but there's plenty of links in Saturday and Sunday posts you haven't read yet if you want more.
• Yes.
• SCOTUS works for Triskelions.
• Relay failures.
• The stupor of power.
• New Inquiry's Sunday links.
• New York Review of Books celebrates Czeslaw Milosz's 102nd birthday with a collection of pieces by and articles about Milosz. I posted a bunch of Milosz poems earlier this year, use this label to read them. You're not going to, are you. Your loss.
• Empty space.
• Why being a POC writer sucks sometimes.
• Not committing to a Kate Bush song a day for July, though until I decide....
• Well, both Scarlet Tracery and Dave Mandl played the below Peter Jefferies's song within the past 24 hours and I can take a hint.

MARY SHELLEY IN BRIGANTINE

Stephen Dunn

Because the ostracized experience the world

in ways peculiar to themselves, often seeing it

clearly yet with such anger and longing

that they sometimes enlarge what they see,

she at first saw Brigantine as a paradise for gulls.

She must be a horseshoe crab washed ashore.

How startling, though, no one knew about her past,

the scandal with Percy, the tragic early deaths,

yet sad that her Frankenstein had become

just a name, like Dracula or Satan, something

that stood for a kind of scariness, good for a laugh.

She found herself welcome everywhere.

People would tell her about Brigantine Castle,

turned into a house of horror. They thought

she'd be pleased that her monster roamed

its dark corridors, making children scream.

They lamented the day it was razed.

Thus Mary Shelley found herself accepted

by those who had no monster in them —

the most frightening people alive, she thought.

Didn't they know Frankenstein had abandoned

his creation, set him loose without guidance

or a name? Didn't they know what it feels like

to be lost, freaky, forever seeking who you are?

She was amazed now that people believed

you could shop for everything you might need.

She loved that in the dunes you could almost hide.

At the computer store she asked an expert

if there was such a thing as too much knowledge,

or going too far? He directed her to a website

where he thought the answers were.

Yet Mary Shelley realized that the pain she felt

all her life was gone. Could her children, dead so young,

be alive somewhere, too? She couldn't know

that only her famous mother had such a chance.

She was almost ready to praise this awful world.

Keep Your Units Pliable and Folded, the Recourse a Mere Specter, Like You Have It Coming to You, Awash with the New Day and Its Abominable Antithesis

Two days left in June, two more Pere Ubu songs. When I started the gag June 1 in celebration of David Thomas' music having one of three permanent spots in My Sillyass Deserted Island Game (Thomas turned 60 on June 14th) I had no idea it would result in a Pere Ubu concert being scheduled for September in DC. Thank me, I'm welcome. In fact, had Prunella not alerted me to a Pere Ubu concert in Columbus Ohio I wouldn't have gone to Ubu Projex to look at the tour schedule - when last I looked in early June all scheduled concerts were in Europe, none for the US. That, combined with the fact that Pere Ubu never comes to DC, means I need reevaluate my promise that the July 30th birthday of another permanent member of My Sillyass Deserted Island Game doesn't mean a Kate Bush song every day of July. She doesn't tour. As of today.

• When I mentioned this on twitter yesterday I got four votes for a daily Bush song.
• Yes and yes.
• NSA surveillance and the male gaze.
• The dark forces behind Snowden smears.
• The wonderful American world of informers and agents provocateurs.
• Daily yodel: the surveillance is not about terrorism.
• How to circumvent the will of the people.
• Police state Canada.
• Reflections on violence.
• Song that can only be sung once.
• Bleggalgaze: coffee, sofa, quiet, reading, aggregating, writing on Saturday morning, my favorite post of the week on the slowest blogday of the week.
• Pyrography.
• Epistle: Leaving.
• Two people have recommended InoReader as google reader replacement. Haven't tried in yet so can't vouch. Anyone use it?
• What we need is a new sort of paintbrush.
• One possible meaning.
• Lost fugue for Chet.
• Jim's Hawaiian Adventure, part four.
• You thought the Buckingham cascade was over?

MOTTLED TUESDAY

John Ashbery

Something was about to go laughably wrong,
whether directly at home or here,
on this random shoal pleading with its eyes
till it too breaks loose, caught in a hail of references.
I’ll add one more scoop
to the pile of retail.

Hey, you’re doing it, like I didn’t tell you
to, my sinking laundry boat, point of departure,
my white pomegranate, my swizzle stick.
We’re leaving again of our own volition f
or bogus patterned plains streaked by canals,
maybe. Amorous ghosts will pursue us
for a time, but sometimes they get, you know, confused and
forget to stop when we do, as they continue to populate this
fertile land with their own bizarre self-imaginings.
Here’s hoping the referral goes tidily, O brother.
Chime authoritatively with the pop-ups and extras.
Keep your units pliable and folded,
the recourse a mere specter, like you have it coming to you,
awash with the new day and its abominable antithesis,
OK? Don’t be able to make that distinction.

I Wander to the Window with Its Strict Bang of Blind

                              
Yesterday's post title made Charley think of this Scorpions' song. I don't know Scorpions, I know the name and have surely heard songs, I couldn't pick them out of a line-up or pick a song out of the air. It is not currently a discretionary choice, I've only two ears, one brain, so many hours, I've made so many errant yes-or-no snap-judgments, rash decisions made of first song I hear, first poem I read, there's another song on the radio already, the world doesn't lack thin books of poetry. I am always hearing music or reading poets I blithely dismissed decades ago as crap and am reminded constantly what a dope I was, am, and will be. I think this thought - is smaller bigger than big? - daily if not constantly. You may or not have noticed. Charley's comment yesterday made me think of this Gass excerpt from The Tunnel, I usually save it for his birthday (he shares one with one of the three musicians with permanent spots in my Sillyass Deserted Island Game, she's the song below). It was either post this excerpt or dig out and copy and paste this, which I thought of first, so have the excerpt:

The other large carton unpacked in the same way - box into box - but the feeling it gave me was the opposite of that suggested by the endless nest of Russians dollies in otherwise resembled, for what I was opening was a den of spaces which now covered the floor near my feet. It was plain that every ten-by-ten-by eight container contained cubes which were nine by nine by seven, and eight by eight by six, and seven by seven by five, and so on down to three by three by two, as well as many smaller, thinly sided one at every interval in between, so that out of one box a million more might multiply, confirming Zeno's view, although at that age, with an unfurnished mind, I couldn't have known of his paradoxes let alone have been able to describe one with any succinctness. What I had discovered is that every space contains more space than the space it contains.

• To be honest, I didn't like that Scorpions' song, though to be fair, I don't like ballads in any genre.
• EFF. 
• An EFF sticker on Snowden's laptop should have disqualified him from clearance says security expert.
• UPDATE! Intelligence, corporatism, dance of death.
• Disciplining Terrorism: How Experts Invented Terrorism.
• A Froomkin tweet: The elite media’s identification with the ruling class, rather than the public, has never been more obvious than in reaction to Snowden.
• UPDATE! My newest musical crush!

• What % of each anti-Snowden tweet is sub-consciously motivated by desire to have obedience on file when archived account eventually searched? I tweeted yesterday. I added the second E in searched for this post, the sentence here has 141 characters.
• The counter, of course, is what % of each pro-tweet is consciously a pathetic little Fuck You to a vacuum cleaner in Annapolis Junction Maryland.
• PRISM, privacy, politics with a small p.
• Internet spying: a tip from the Gypsies.
• Elite denial of corruption and inequality.
• Tis of thee...

• I like to put a song between the cataloging of clusterfuckery and the cataloging of music and reads, and will continue to do so, but while the clusterfuckery not only never ends but always increases, even during the Blog Days of Summer, the cataloging of music and reads always slows during the Blog Days of Summer, not by choice but by the reduction, for whatever reason, I suppose Summer's academic hiatuses primarily, of available fruit.
• Suggestions solicited please for new places to find music and reads.
• Jack Gilbert interview from 2005.
• The principles of concealment.
• Frank O'Hara.
• PDF of Malone Dies via Anthony.
• Praxis and poetry. 
• Complete destruction.
• More Hawaiian Life of Jim. 

DREAM IN WHICH I MEET MYSELF

Lynn Emanuel

Even the butter's a block of sleazy light. I see that first,
as though I am a dreary guest come to a dreary supper.
On her table, its scrubbed deal trim and lonely as a cot,
is food for one, and everything we've ever hated: a plate of pallid
grays and whites is succotash and chops are those dark shapes glaring up at us.
Are you going to eat this? I want to ask; she's at the stove dishing up,
wearing that apron black and stiff as burned bacon, reserved for maids
     and waitresses.
The dream tells us: She is still a servant. Even here.
So she has to clean our plate. It's horrible to watch.
She pokes the bits of stuff into her mouth. The roll's glued shut like a little box
with all that sticky butter. Is this all living gets you? The room, a gun stuck
     in your back?
Don't move, It says. She's at the bureau lining up bobby pins.
Worried and fed up I wander to the window
with its strict bang of blind. My eyes fidget and scratch.
And then I see myself: I am this dream's dog. I want out.