ART IS A MISTAKE
Category: Writing
June 23, 2013 β 3:44 pm β if you had the coordinates you could Google Map it.
What I was composing the other day in my head, or wherever daydreaming occurs: filling up that gap between inside or outside, idea and actual, etcetera.Β They told me not to worry about losing it β that it would return, re-emerge.Β I lost it.Β The idea, sensation, form, content β everything.Β Well, not everything, exactly, I guess, because how could I conjure that there was something, some experience, some initiative or other, had I truthfully lost it?Β Okay, maybe theyβre right, and βeverythingβ is a question of access.
In any case, well, no β in present case or tense or whatever now-situation might be (βWeatherβ? β see Roland Barthes, The Preparation of the Novel, or Tim Ingoldβs essay in Vital Beauty) I am not experiencing βaccessβ to something some part or parts of me (some connectivities) believe or invent a past tense for β a disjunction/abstraction/detachment from.Β A difference.
I am believing that I felt differently about something at some other time, that language was forming out of me relating to that affect, and that I had the potential capacity to express all that semiotically β or, in a way that it might make sense, be shared, exist.
Now Iβm languaging nothing.Β Or, not exactly nothing, more like a different something that in fact is the semiosis of another inexpressible or inaccessible possible something.Β Which means, potentially, anyone could find it, discover/uncover/invent/compose/co-construct (co- probably redundant to con- but then Iβm not Russian, at least not currently) that initiative and perhaps Iβd re-cognize or re-member whatever realigned threads rewove into this particular weaving (what is βnowβ).
Etcetera.Β This is how it goes down for me (current context taken mostly for granted).
Writing’s Toxin
“Is it possible to make a Narrative (a Novel) out of the Present? Β How to reconcile – dialecticize – theΒ distance implied by theΒ enunciation of writing and theΒ proximity, the transportation of the present experienced as it happens? Β (The present is whatΒ adheres, as if your eyes were glued to a mirror). Β Present: to have your eyes glued to the page; how to writeΒ at length, fluentlyΒ (in a fluent, flowing, fluid manner) with one eye on the page and the other on ‘what’s happening to me?'”
“The novelistic ‘drive’ (the love of the material) is not directed toward my past. Β It’s not that I don’t like my past; it’s rather that I don’t likeΒ the past (perhaps because it rends the heart), and my resistance takes the form of the mist i spoke of – a kind of general resistance to rehearsing, to narratingΒ what will never happen again (the dreaming, the cruising, the life of the past). Β The affective link is with theΒ present, my present, in its affective, relational, intellectual dimensions = the material I’m hoping for (cf. ‘to depict whom I love’).”
“This is actually to go back to that simple and ultimately uncompromising idea that ‘literature’ (because, when it comes down to it, my project is ‘literary’) is always made out of ‘life.’ Β My problem is that I don’t think I can access my past life; it’s in theΒ mist, meaning that its intensity (without which there is no writing) is weak. Β What is intense is the life of the present, structurally mixed (there’sΒ my basic idea) with the desire to write it. Β The ‘Preparation’ of the Novel therefore refers to the capturing of this parallel text, the text of ‘contemporary,’ concomitant life.”
“Now, although at first glance making a novel out of present life looks difficult to me, it would be wrong to say that you can’t make writing out of the Present. Β You can write the PresentΒ by noting it – as it ‘happens’ upon you or under you (under your eyes, your ears) – In this way, we at last come in sight of the double problem, the key to which organizes the Novel – on the one hand,Β Notation, the practice of ‘noting’:Β notatio. Β On what level is it situated? Β The level of ‘reality’ (what to choose), the level of the ‘saying’ (what’s the form, what’s the product ofΒ Notatio)? Β What does this practice involve in terms of meaning, time, the instant, the act of saying? Β Notatio instantly appears at theΒ problematic intersection between a river of language, of uninterrupted language –Β life, both a continuous, ongoing, sequenced text and a layered text, a histology of cut-up texts, a palimpsest – and a sacred gesture:Β to mark life (to isolate: sacrifice, scapegoat, etc.)”
“On the other hand, how to pass from Notation, and so from theΒ Note, to the Novel, from the discontinuous to the flowing (to theΒ continuous, the smooth)? Β For me, the problem is psychostructural because it involves making the transition from the fragment to the nonfragment, which involves changing my relationship to writing, which involves my relationship to enunciation, which is to say the subject that I am: fragmented subject (=a certain relationship) or effusive subject (a different relationship)…a Novel-Fragment…”
Grenzsituationen II
Please read previous post with this in mind:
I would love for any/all to share what those “Limit Texts/Artifacts” are for you?
Please share via comment what encounters or engagements with works of art, science, philosophy, writing, music, and any other cultural artifactual form has altered from then on how you select, evaluate, engage other related artifacts from then on?
Thank you!
Transductive Conversations…cont’d (via Lance Olsen)
“One of the wonderful things about word processors is they transform all composition into continuous process. Β You can rearrange, rewrite, tinker, copy, cut, paste, open separate files for separate chapters or story sections or poem fragments, a window for notes, another for your outline, and still another for your list of characters and their attributes, and have them all on your screen simultaneously so you can flip among them as necessary while your web browser provides you with a dictionary, a thesaurus, a Wikipedia page, a website to aid you checking this fact or that…
(The less than wonderful thing about word processors is they make every draft look like a final draft, sloppy writing look as polished as just-published. Β Careful about being duped by the sheen, and don’t disregard the notion of trying to compose on a lined tablet unless you’ve already tried it and found it lacking; it is a method that both slows perception and increases conscientiousness).”
-Lance Olsen-
for Friday Fictioneers – 21 June 2013
As long as nobody moves.Β Scenario accomplished.Β Sky filled with blues.Β Reflected in waters, reassembled by lines β manufactured / emergent.Β The breath would come.Β Optionally.Β A reality could be structured with less than this.Β Hold still.Β In the beginning β world.Β Populous, variegated, intricate with potential.Β A setting of pebbles and mimes.Β Activities at the ready.Β Engine set to whirl.Β As long as nobody moves.Β Nobody says.Β Nobody breathes.Β Still-pointed swirl.Β Anticipation.Β The drawing of the sneeze.Β A trickling toward itch.Β Hummingbird-eyelid.Β A sudden rush of wind.Β Transgress.
On entering the world(s) of the text: Prologue
via J.M.G. Le Clezio
The Last Bookshop
A providential addendum!
Γgua Viva – Clarice Lispector and reading the invisable text. (Book Review)
Lispector…
The journey one takes toward Clarice Lispector has a great deal to do with the way she is read. I came to her through Helene Cixous, and therefore she (CL) has become inseparable from me, as I experiment with my reading of her, paying almost as much attention to my internal carry-on-chorus that wobbles along side my conscious movement from word to word in the linear structure. Clarice Lispector exists for me outside the text, using the context defined βinner worldβ to stretch out and beyond into the borderless βouter worldβ. It is her ability to create this (anti)structure that separates her work from βstream of consciousnessβ or circular topic based narratives. I read a lot of experimental fiction that tires to appear deliberate when marrying avant-garde techniques such as experiments with grammar, reflexive thinking/acting and searching for the space between the words, but hers is the only writing Iβ¦
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The Gifted
a pretty obvious take, but in the midst of a nearly impossible week,
it’s what i could do…Friday Fictioneers 6-14-2013
The obvious one.Β Anyone could tell.Β The way he bobbed his head in traffic or nodded slowly in the wind, syncopating steps with the train railsβ click-clack, fingers never still at the table – proverbially whistling as he worked.Β Even his breath had a cadence – nary emitting verbal lines without their shaping tones.Β Foot bevel harmonizing crossed-legged knee bounce β friends said βhe always had it in him.βΒ Phrasing his rises and his falls.Β Ears ever plugged wide open β he tasted and he touched, he heard, saw and smelled the world as sound.Β He really was into music.
All my Words are Silent 