20080714

back on track

A little lapse with some blank dates,
but now returning to schedule.

One of my goals when starting this effort
was to try & post daily or at least e'ry other daily,
but circumstances can prevent the fullflow
& gaps will be gaping.

Attentive readers of this blog will have noted
my predilection for posting my "poetry" in
the commments box -- i wrota mini-explanation
aways back & iffin yr so inclined, you can
read it in this commments box ---

1 kommentar:

troylloyd sa...

this was kinda a short rebuttal to a comment
which sed:
"Obfuscation doesn't
make you cool, jack ass."
from
Monday, April 21, 2008
here:
ArtlantA


& the original klippoklistra
shit was from
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

i felt i had to somewhat try
and explain my nutty
tendency to go
frothing mad
& extralong stuffing
inna comment boxes --
altho rather poorly
written, it does
summup my stance
to a certain degree.


---



a an and A thru Z
(meeking maening aka
etc soforth or thushence
thudthot thingks)

written in plainenglish ©

"I divide all works of World literature into those written with permission and those without. The former are dirty stuff, the latter - stolen air."
- Osip Mandel'shtam, "Fourth Prose"

"we're all idiom now"
- Bruce Andrews

yes, this is me really writing (i'm me?) [i think!] No, this ain't no essay or exploration of lingual liminality, justa few explanatory notes toward elucidation, put forth to try and explain motive for an occasional operational procedure of a conceptual poetics i call "klippoklistra" (swedish for cutnpaste). What good is this banal inventorying & horde-piling & relocating & pluralicity? Whatwho reader actually reads such things? If you're not reading this now, cheerio! Not to be read is why i writing. But robbing isn't write, aren't you just stealing other peoples work and placing it in some obsessive repopulated context? The fascinating thing about other people is that they're other people and their work is other work, i'm in skin such singular and whole wet world is so wide with words that i can eat a feast of meanings & remeanings & demeanings & freemeanings & memeanings or simply eacheaning thru means. i'm asking you as a compiler to wread a rewrite and then to rewrite that rewrite. At least briefly. Such skimmers skrollquick to finish for add of their own sayso, okay is the object of clicking a comment, always known for closure on the little red x screened within screen. As usual, my arrows are missing mark; perhaps history can fillin my lack of useful elaboration. An easy starting point is the Ancient Greek Dudes : many of them operated in the oral tradition (which i think is essentially cut 'n paste), using memory as the cutter & mouth as the paster, of course some alterations occurred and also a time displacement of the content being placed into a different spatial realm.Altho the purpose was more noble than what i'm doing; it comes around again as peripatetic, the walking around of many "places" and collecting text as one goes - like the wooden spoon of Diogenes, it's only for eating, sampling each bowl and digesting the nutrients in my notepad.(Yet again, Diogenes proves much more noble than i : "On one occasion he saw a child drinking out of its hands, and so he threw away the cup which belonged to his wallet, saying, "That child has beaten me in simplicity." He also threw away his spoon, after seeing a boy, when he had broken his vessel, take up his lentils with a crust of bread." ) [ an interesting link talking about the concept of Creativity, Collaboration, and Ownership in the Digital Age... short read!
http://ludic.colophon.org/ludus/back-to-heraclitus-and-plato-the-gutenberg-parenthesis/ ]
Of course, any culture which was involved in oral tradition was operating along the same lines, i only used example of the Ancient Greek Dudes because most of us are readily familiar with them as most of us have been taught they're the bedrock of Western Civ and Barney Rubble means trouble in Britslang so as it goes a going oi oi oi! Another example of historical cut 'n paste would be preGutenberg writ-info dispersal : scribes to scrolls cutting 'n pasting page by page, blockprinting imprint lifts yadda yadda yadda. i discover most of the cutting material while researching for my "serious work", this activity bled over & became it's own activity, all the notetaking became a piece unto itself and the procedural detachment resulting from the process gives results i'm fascinated with - especially when transplanted in the narrow confines & particular placement of a comment box, invisible unless clicked, mostly unread, a subtext always in shadow of the "real content". The comment stream is an open forum inwhich everyone is included and by occupying this space, the "writer" is in the same position as reader, eliminating a certain hierarchy to an extent. Initially, it was difficult for my head to wrap around much of the conceptual art i came across, but yet it appealed to me greatly, esp how it asked the viewer/reader/receiver to actively interact and "finish the piece". So i began reading lotsa stuff about conceptual art, understandably much of it comes off as dry,overly intellectual,detached,silly or just dull and one can see why from its "height" in the late 60's/earlymid 70's exactly why such an expressionist/hyperrealist backlash fought against it (altho the entrenchment of minimalism also contributed), similar to how the ingrainededness of abstract expressionism led to pop-art,maybe i dunno. Regardless, the simple fact is that i enjoy this klippoklistra & gladly place it in my writing toolbox. Some say our tools define us, but the bland matter-of-fact instructions in the service manual are equally as vital - are we not all seeking to fix the brokenness of our embodiment?


if somewhat interested, further reading to be found @

http://www.ubu.com/concept/

http://www.ubu.com/papers/kg_ol_goldsmith.html

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/conceptual_paragraphs.html

http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/feature/tabbi/interview4.html

http://netlern.net/hyperdis/txt/alte/htutopia/kollab.htm




And when, as Theophrastus tells us, in his Megaric Philosopher, he saw a mouse running about and not seeking for a bed, nor taking care to keep in the dark, nor.looking for any of those things which appear enjoyable to such an animal, he found a remedy for his own poverty. He was, according to the account of some people, the first person who doubled up his cloak out of necessity, and who slept in it; and who carried a wallet, in which he kept his food; and who used whatever place was near for all sorts of purposes, eating, and sleeping, and conversing in it. In reference to which habit he used to say, pointing to the Colonnade of Jupiter. and to the Public Magazine, "that the Athenians had built him places to live in." Being attacked with illness, he supported himself with a staff; and after that he carried it continually, not indeed in the city, but whenever he was walking in the roads, together with his wallet, as Olympiodorus, the chief man of the Athenians tells us; and Polymeter, the orator, and Lysanias, the son of Aeschorion, tell the same story.

He was very violent in expressing his haughty disdain of others. He said that the scholê (school) of Eueides was cholê (gall). And he used to call Plato’s diatribê (discussions) katatribê (disguise). It was also a saying of his that the Dionysian games were a great marvel to fools; and that the demagogues were the ministers of the multitude. He used likewise to say, "that when in the course of his life he beheld pilots, and physicians, and philosophers, he thought man the wisest of all animals; but when again he beheld interpreters of dreams, and soothsayers. and those who listened to them, and men puffed up with glory or riches, then he thought that there was not a more foolish animal than man," Another of his sayings was, "that he thought a man ought oftener to provide himself with a reason than with a halter."

On one occasion Plato had invited some friends who had come to him from Dionysius to a banquet, and Diogenes trampled on his carpets, and said, "Thus I trample on the empty pride of Plato;" and Plato made him answer, "How much arrogance are you displaying, O Diogenes when you think that you are not arrogant at all." But, as others tell the story, Diogenes said, "Thus I trample on the pride of Plato ;" and that Plato rejoined, "With quite as much pride yourself, O Diogenes." Sotion too, in his fourth book, states, that the Cynic made the following speech to Plato: Diogenes once asked him for some wine, and then for some dried figs; so he sent him an entire jar full; and Diogenes said to him "Will you, if you are asked how many two and two make, answer twenty? In this way, you neither give with any reference to what you are asked for, nor do you answer with reference to the question put to you."

This anecdote I have derived from Hecaton, in the first book of his Apophthegms. They also relate that Alexander said that if he had not been Alexander, he should have liked to be Diogenes. He used to call annátêriu (cripples), not those who were dumb and blind, but those who had no wallet (pêra). On one occasion he went half shaved into an entertainment of young men, as Metrocles tells us in his Apophthegms, and so was beaten by them. And afterwards he wrote the names of all those who had beaten him, on a white tablet, and went about with the tablet round his neck, so as to expose them to insult, as they were generally condemned and reproached for their conduct.

On one occasion he was working with his hands [viz., masturbating] in the market-place, and said, "I wish I could rub my stomach in the same way, and so avoid hunger." When he saw a young man going with some satraps to supper, he dragged him away and led him off to his relations, and bade them take care of him. He was once addressed by a youth beautifully adorned, who asked him some question; and he refused to give him any answer, till he satisfied him whether he was a man or a woman. And on one occasion, when a youth was playing the cottabus in the bath, he sad to him, "The better you do it, the worse you do it [to yourself]." Once at a banquet, some of the guests threw him bones, as if he had been a dog; so he, as he went away, put up his leg against them as if he had been a dog in reality. He used to call the orators, and all those who speak for fame trisanthropoi (thrice men), instead of [rather: meaning instead] trisathlioi (thrice miserable). He said that a rich but ignorant man, was like a sheep with a golden fleece. When he saw a notice on the house of a profligate man, "To be sold." "I knew," said he, "that you who are so incessantly drunk, would soon vomit up your owner." To a young man, who was complaining of the number of people who sought his acquaintance, he said, "Do not make such a parade of your vanity." [Or: Cease to hang out a sign of invitation.]

When asked what wine he liked to drink, he said, "That which belongs to another," A man said to him one day, "Many people laugh at you." "But I," he replied, am not laughed down." When a man said to him, that it was a bad thing to live; "Not to live," said he, "but to live badly."

When asked why people give to beggars and not to philosophers, he said, "Because they think it possible that they themselves may become lame and blind, but they do not expect ever to turn out philosophers." He once begged of a covetous man, and as he was slow to give, he said, "Man, I am asking you for something to maintain me (eis trophên) and not to bury me (eis taphên)." When some one reproached him for having tampered with the coinage, he said, "There was a time when I was such a person as you are now; but there never was when you were such as I am now, and never will be." And to another person who reproached him on the same grounds, he said, "There were times when I did what I did not wish to, but that is not the case now."

Once Alexander the Great came and stood by him, and said, "I am Alexander, the great king." "And I," said he, "am Diogenes the dog [cuôn, also, Cynic]." And when he was asked to what actions of his it was owing that he was called a dog, he said, "Because I fawn upon those who give me anything, and bark at those who give me nothing, and bite the rogues."

Once he was going into a theatre while every one else was coming out of it; and when asked why he did so, "It is," said he, "what I have been doing all my life."

He used to say, that education was, for the young sobriety, for the old comfort, for the poor riches, and for the rich an ornament."

"ABCDEFGH
IJKLMNOPQRSTUVW
XYZ"
(ALPHABET)
The alphabet is a universal ordering system within our culture
and an arbitrary one.Practically everyone knows the order of
the letters of the alphabet.It is one of the first things a child is
taught and yet there is no inherent logic to the actual ordering
of the letters.Nevertheless,the alphabet is a useful system for
manual retrieval of stored information and a useful memory
device.Anything that has been named or can be placed in a
category can be alphabetized.The alphabet assumes spoken
language and is the basic code for written language,although
in English phoneticism is chaotic.
---Steven Ungar