I give myself to adjectives body and soul, I die with pleasure for them.
— Violette Leduc, Mad in Pursuit (via foxesinbreeches)
i speak volubly but i didn’t think that much about it
broad sand and me turning in broad circles
fluent, rotating easily on the axis
i speak repeatedly
talkativeness
as full of words as a baby
so thrilled to finally communicate something outside of the blood
i didn’t think that much about it
okay, that’s not really true. i didn’t think about anything else
i sleep in a rootless coil
i just spent three minutes chasing a roach around my bathroom
it ran in broad circles; i finally gave up and let it go and watched it run under the door and out into the hall
i feel like i’m rehearsing for a speech
some sort of concession, thanking my supporters for their hard work
and efforts on my behalf over the last few difficult years
here is an example of what we don’t want to see:
(volubly, volubly)
please come back
i am digging a tunnel through solid limestone
it’s 10:05 pm
everything is illuminated, if gently
something still keeping it from complete caliginious obscurity but not for long
dim, it’s fucking dim in here and futile
the resistance is building
and then, and then
i speak and don’t think
i should have learned something in all this time
you have to rehearse your presentation, practice completing within the time limits allowed
check your gestures and facial expressions for anything that could distract your audience
stand up, stand up
adapt to the actual situation
perhaps at some time you have acted in a play, even if it was when you were a child
take notes, don’t pretend this is not the most important thing that has ever happened to you
set it up, be purposeful
change the wording of your sentences if you think it might help
be literal in your bodily movements, your pitch, rate and volume
i have done something very wrong
i took advantage of the situation. i didn’t think that much about it.
okay, that’s not really true
i practiced until i bled and slept at the bottom of a lightsome pit
and re-read this in front of a mirror until i couldn’t recognize my own face or my own voice
i tried to hide under the pretense of concern, so wordy
smoothly, smoothly
as if i could be anything but the awkwardness you already know
do like to be like a man
with the most simple words: do like to be like a man.
my girlfriend had a sudden heart attack
she had no symptoms
yeah, i want to know she had a heart attack, very serious?
how can the treatment is good?
love her
in my opinion, the disease is not terrible. terrible disease is being intimidated.
red nose old sow eyes’ dew is not the color of a letter, lightly hum one and say “is it really so?”
also not flurried, dispassionate time way
i with proper friend to be the same as to match the person who fixed the meeting
what is true is that you are really remarkable, short short time got in to work correctly to turn
and congratulate the month in one side, though not knowing why he deceives the other party
can also see to settle among them reasonably, also not interrupt conversation, don’t see him as well
just calm down and stay over there
underneath it strangely fits also a chance and opportunity just
the remainder doesn’t see this old ghost remain a doubt vision
this space cannot recognize a thing, and things don’t know that you make me wait for you, or from which direction
or what month or what year listens to the sparse inside,
is careless and doesn’t know that two people say what matters, want what is necessary and have engagement previously
at present she also can’t completely believe a quarter of his method
how can they not tell the other party suddenly plots secretly against the moves
after treading repeatedly, and the hands suddenly choke and then want to display to protect a body
“My arrogance knows no bounds and I will make no peace today, and you should be so lucky to find a woman like me.”
Luc Ferrari- Hétérozygote - 1963-64
As a complement of the too short biography and his more intimate portrait, in the 2006 interview with Luc Ferrari’s wife, Brunhild Meyer, we felt it was important to explain more clearly the relationship Luc had with concrete sounds and electroacoustic composition techniques.
When he composed in the studio, Luc Ferrari simply put into practice the “do and hear” theory inherited from Pierre Schaeffer, back in the day when they had worked together at the GRM at the end of the fifties: record sounds, listen to the recording, change it by editing and some simple experiments, listen again, change, listen again, mix, and so on. Any new production started with several sound recordings, usually done outdoors with a tape recorder and a mike. He was not directive, when, for example, he passed on his knowledge during a training session or workshops. After a short technical introduction, he encouraged a collective effort around an initial general idea like, for example, Eros and Thanatos… and let the musical ideas come to light. During his sound reports, he tried to be the most receptive possible to the events he encountered, even directing himself by asking some passers-by questions. He was stimulated by all the sound sources he could find: Nature’s sounds, voices, classical instruments, and synthetic sounds. Then, while listening to the rushes in the studio and at all the other stages of composition, from editing to the final mix, he fine-tuned his understanding of the sound material in order to extract its “essence”.
He used to check out morphologies, spatial relationships and natural theatrical games between sound sources and arranged them like stories. The sounds were seen as characters with adventures. He was interested in the sound treatments inasmuch as they were able to reinforce the first impressions while listening or as a specific formal objective: to create a contrast or even a touch of humour with another sound or sequence, reinforce a movement, give extra depth to a fly-on-the-wall scene. He often worked with allegories: women laughing or speaking represented the eternal feminine, sheep baaing symbolised Nature that he loved so much or even the attitude of Panurgian sheep that men sometimes took. According to him, every technique was valid to reach this freedom of expression, so typical of his character, notwithstanding as wide a range of sounds possible. To do that, he integrated the different successive technical advances, from the VCR to the synthesizer to the computer.
Finally, all these accounts converge to remind us of his wonderful ability to mix sounds. He knew how to keep a sound sequence alive while losing the anecdotal side to it. He was able to bring us to the edge between the concrete and the abstract, between sounds with recognizable sources and sounds thereto unheard of, thereby giving us extra depth to those events.
It was in this form of art, which went hand in hand with the trends in vogue among artists in the sixties, situated somewhere between American Pop Art and French New Narrative Figuration, that Luc Ferrari constantly called for and perfected his electroacoustic repertoire; his piece Hétérozygote (1963-64), is considered a prototype of “anecdotal” musical works. However, he returned regularly to the most classical writing because he never followed any one style or method exclusively; the chronology of his repertoire is there to prove it.
Évelyne Gayou
A forgotten Ted Hughes interview
”[…]To me, of course, she was not only herself—she was America and American literature in person. I don’t know what I was to her. “
(Source: languidsoul)
sophisticated
i want to warn you that i am not very sophisticated.
i do not know how to dance and when i laugh my mouth flaps open like a transom
and my head flies back and sometimes (if i am in a chair, which i often am not)
the force of my laughter thrusts the whole chair backward
so that its legs make a rude sound against the floor like someone breaking wind.
i am not skilled in the pleasures that even mildly refined people are moved by.
i only know how to have sex in two different ways; i mean, i’m aware of others
but i’ve certainly never attempted them, even when i’m drunk,
which i should also mention is not infrequent.
there has not been a social grace invented by humankind that i cannot graze against
or bruise with my bulk.
i get angry far too easily over things that are not important,
and chafe at the burden of even the most minor responsibilities that others shrug off with ease.
i interrupt my friends and talk over their more thoughtful words like a glazed-eyed, stagestruck donkey.
i scratch my legs on the bus like an ape and in the evening in my room i scratch worse,
flung wide like a screen door.
my body appears to me to be a soft, pale ledger book for an endless and ever-growing array
of embarrassing ailments and flaws
that even in the moments when almost all are afforded some scrap of beauty still heaves and wracks like an old radiator or the creaky hull of a cargo ship.
i am often distracted and curt with strangers. i use terrible language.
i let dishes pile up in the sink precipitously while i stare out of the window and think about singing au claire de la lune on the little path in your garden right under the brickwork archway that leads to the awning over your back door.
falling
i fall a lot
i want to be good at something besides that
i don’t hurt myself, hardly ever. i sort of bounce or slide like a penguin on ice
it’s become a joke among people i know how often it happens
my best friend’s ex-girlfriend started to hate me because i fell so frequently
she couldn’t respect someone with so little kinesthetic awareness
she was a bit of an animal and fully inhabited her body at all times
and couldn’t understand how someone could be distracted and lose track of where their feet were,
where any part of them was
the idea of that was inconceivable to her
it was one afternoon of museumgoing that really put her over the edge
it was wet out and i must have fallen five times in three hours,
at least, i might even be blocking some of the instances out
all up and down the hilly sidewalks of seattle
the slippery museum stairs, the smoothly uneven wood of shop floors
the rubbery mats on accordion buses slick from rainy shoes
and every time i would fall i would hear her sigh and mutter hoarsely under her breath
she never could look me in the eye after that
my body was never in balance, the orientation of my head in directional movement never consistent
i’m actually writing a poem about falling, that’s how often i do it
my right knee (i suppose i must fall to the right) is almost always a little grazed
as is, sometimes, the palm of the same hand
it never has time to heal from the last fall before it meets the ground again
i swear it’s been like that since i was ten years old
somehow in all this time falling over and over it still is a surprise every time it happens
you never see it coming until it’s overtaken you and i suppose if you did, you would avoid it.
I wasn’t always smart, I was actually very stupid in school… [T]here was a boy who was very attractive who was even stupider than I was. And in order to ingratiate myself with this boy who was very beautiful, I began to do his homework for him – and that’s how I became smart, I had to do all this work to just keep ahead of him a little bit, in order to help him. In a sense, all the rest of my life I’ve been trying to do intellectual things that would attract beautiful boys.
— Michel Foucault speaks truth (via miasname)
