Roughing (ralphing) a Draft

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing8 Comments

Bare Bones and Synapses : Oscillating (a Story)

Feel like I’ve been out of the game…aside from Friday Fictioneers I haven’t had time for concocting, playing and revising original texts for awhile…feeling this time opening up a little bit I’ll be trying to finish up some long-term projects, while also working out some ideas that have been swaying to and fro in me cranium…here’s a gutturally wrenched structure that I barfed up today…we’ll see what becomes of it…

 

#1 perks up, signaling  “it’s about time something truly great were written…at least what we’re capable of writing…the best we can do, right now.”

#2, energized by this, by the vibe that the entire gang might be on board, the whole shebang ready to summon resources and operate, sync up, as it were, breathlessly quivers, smiling shyly, eager

#3 promptly curls over and balks, doubts, folds under, clenches.  Mostly afraid of failure, or of not having what it takes to see this thing through – concoct something “great” – shimmies and blocks out, switches off the snaps and veils the crackling lights in nearest hallways

#4 is feeling good, having been freed to excesses in the night, sensing the throbbing in the basement and burning like a reptile in the sun, pleased and exotic, inspiring

#7 with pleasurable visions of fantasies and victory.  Floodlights on, matched to #4’s bask, but also pulling in air, rolling back shoulders and drawing up the chest while sucking in the tummy

#5 babbling away nondescript utterances, filterlessly spilling data, codes and equations of plots, prose and characters grabbed here and there from the crooks and crannies, gutterways and mushy sewage-scapes like pebbles stuck in gluey glia.

#1 now boisterous and bellowing, carried away in surges, blurting out hurrahs and coach-cliches, beckoning a kind of connective huddle

If #4 could think alone, he’d claim erotic inception for the will of #1, having woken aroused by images spun from #7 throughout their “sleeping” 8Hz

But #1 is wanting more and #3 isn’t giving or opening up

#6 and #7 providing soundtracks and scenarios, pressuring #4 to kick up the heartbeat, #2 to activate arms and hands

Four of the seven are joined, yawping and dipping, rippling a recursive wave – this group is on the move

#4 sends chills down the surface and tingles spine and loins

#2 adjusts all openings, focusing on bright lights and sparkly things, deep greens and muted blues

#4 pounds “approach” and “happy” buttons like timpani

#6 starts sweat and shuffles memory volts of breezes

#3 begins to forget as #5 yammers and badgers and #4 jacuzzies the mass in hot syrups

#1 commands #2 to to focus, clip and edit #5, while #6 and #7 distract with many-colored bouncing balls

Optimally they’ll link up and ride this wave in balance – each informing the other – shocking, supporting and inspiring the murky mass trapped in 22 inches of bone.

                          

Oscillating

On By NW FilbertIn Traces, WritingLeave a comment

Like margins, thresholds, beginnings.

Species of relation.

I am drawn to synthesizing agents, it seems.  I find myself attuned to, and triggered by, generalizations, and yet curiously constantly in search of them.

Fitting things where they converge, borders of meetings and passings.

.

Oscillation is one such theory.  Neurologically cognizable perceptively, passaging to and from hemispheres and lobes, neurons and systems, and productive.  From which we get “fire together – wire (conspire) together.”  Symphonic circuitry.  Fluctuate congruity.  A jazz band improvising.

Extended to bodies in spaces and times, collective moods, or space and time themselves, if you will.  Constructive theory of observation.  Oscillation.

As if a structural template for an expression of personal creative process.

As if an introduction toward a story, that story that’s been brewing, surging, throbbing and stewing throughout my physiological corpus for days, since an opening of light, of breath – a semester’s impending conclusion – aptly (I hope) nominated “break.”

If “break” belongs with “dance” and poetic feet fall into step, or sentences seek their stride.  She hopes so, as does he, now ungendered in a unison of copulatory oscillation, my hope for the tremoring bits that vibrate me toward a Nathan : writing.

…to be continued…

Of Inquiry (Inquiring)

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Philosophy6 Comments

Of Inquiry (Inquiring)

“Inquiry, then, is more like running around a circle and back and forth between different points on it than walking in a straight line”

-Stephen Littlejohn / Karen Foss-

Theories of Human Communication

            And yet whoever thought of it otherwise?

Still sometimes we use logic, as diversion, among the so-called “points,” letting it go.  Circular, perhaps, in that way.  Much as we’d like to, never quite constructing a web.  For capture.  Or a moment to observe, re-flect.  Rather, more de-flect.

If you get their picture.

Would be something like this:

 

“Intention provides the field for inquiry and improvisation the means for inquiring”

-Lyn Hejinian-

The Language of Inquiry

That is, I assume, if for “improvisation” we substitute some creatively imagining wandering – the wonderings of intention or querying of some inceptive experiencing?  After a fashion.

I’m prone to argue the “point.”  I.e., “What/where/when/how – a ‘point’?”  Inconceivable for me.  As my understanding of ‘point’ is like my comprehension of ‘god’ or ‘time,’ ‘truth’ or ‘being’ – concepts as moving targets without definite characteristics – indefinable insubstantials.  E.g., the falsity of my diagram.

It wouldn’t surprise me if I thought of inquiry as motricity.  When we intend to inquire we’re moving (point-less) and inquiry moves us (point-less) among (therefore, obviously) moving things (thereby point-less), if only in relation to us.  The denial of a dead present.  Pointedly.

No stasis for the living.  Life (logic leads), as, literally, pointless.

 

So how do we refer?  Index?  Sign?  “Point” to – in all this motion?  Commotion?

Language levies us these lies.  These helpful and distorting machinations and maps of partial, hazy truths.  Like mathematical “laws” providing invisible scaffolding in which to graphically refer.  To question and inquire into falsely stable invisible objects.  Creative and imaginative markers.  Hypothetical space-time convergences – true experientially – but unlocatable save for the traces in ongoing movement – unstoppable, uncharitable, unrecordable – each stoppage (representation), chart or reading of ‘reality’ being an-Other, a deflection, an improvisation and wandering (i.e. a new experiencing)…

…dropping the term “experience” as blatantly false.

…retaining till death “experiencING.”

Not, then, “to question,” but questionING, one and same with observING, evaluatING, inquirING, seekING, readING, creatING, fabricatING the impossibility of a truthful past tense.

…running round and round and back and forth,

not between points,

simply, actually, between.

 

N Filbert 2012

 

On By NW FilbertIn WritingLeave a comment

another fascination…

NW Filbert's avatarGypsy Wall

I continue to be passionately intrigued by the processes of “camera-less photography.”  Chemigrams, Cyanotypes, C-Prints, Dye Destruction prints, Gelatin-Silver prints, Luminograms, Photogenic drawings and (overall category) Photograms.  The most recent inquiry being this fine collection (tied to an exhibition) by Martin Barnes: Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography.  In his introduction, Barnes makes statements like the following: “the essence of photography lies in its seemingly magical ability to fix shadows on to light-sensitive surfaces…an apparently unmediated emergence of form out of formlessness.”  “Camera-less photography can be viewed as an embodiment of this definition, the images created through the process itself harnessing the ephemeral…showing what never really existed, but have the appearance of fragments, signs, memories or dreams.”  That, dropping the distortion of lens and eye, camera-less photography is a process of “fixing traces, accepting elements of mystery and dealing with forces beyond normal vision.”  As if it confuses roles and relationships…

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Reasons for Thanks – inspiration

On By NW FilbertIn Uncategorized, Writing11 Comments

in·spire/inˈspī(ə)r/

Verb:
  1. Fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative
  2. Create (a feeling, esp. a positive one) in a person

Many thanks to Music & Meaning / The Rag Tree for awarding me the “Very Inspiring Blogger” award.  The work there is genuinely inspiring, in fact, just this week I was speaking with my spouse, artist & blogger Holly Suzanne, about RT’s work, particularly in translations and all that brings with it regarding languages and cultures and purposes of art.  Thank you Rag Tree!  I am honored and, indeed, inspired, by your work.  In fact, I would hazard to guess that the decision to begin a personal blog or website, followed by the clunky and quirky process of finding or constructing a steady community of readers or viewers might be characterized by inspiration.  As we watch one another follow their urges to “do or feel something…creative” it does “create a feeling, esp. a positive one” in us to continue doing/working/creating our own.  I am thankful to the blogosphere for providing such a cheap and relatively easy format for those of us who will to expose our work far beyond our limited personal spheres, and especially to receive comments and criticism, and gather multitudes of inputs from others works all throughout the world, that we, most likely, would never have otherwise been exposed to.  It gladdens me deeply if my work inspires others to work or think or be, and all of you that I follow have done the same for me.

I relish in giving awards to other bloggers, as there are so many out there, but we’d live in social media were we not forced continually to edit and select the number we can truly “follow,” and actually attend to.  By that point, a blogger has gone through (for me) the same sort of criteria any music I listen to, literature I read, or conversation or activity I participate in does – engaging it involves an enhancement of meaning for my life.  How can one not want to award or acknowledge, thank or praise those whose work and words enhance and expand your daily living?!  So I find no difficulty in finding bloggers to pass the gratitude on to, the hardest thing is choosing!  This blog comes with a few “rules”, as follows:

  1. Display the Nomination logo on your blog
  2. Link back to the person who nominated you
  3. State 7 things about yourself
  4. Nominate 15 others and link to them
  5. Notify those bloggers of the nominations & award requirement

Seven Things About Myself

1.  Writing joins me to the world.

2.  I love theory – as a way of thinking about thinking about the world and anything in it.

3.  I am particularly fascinated by the way humans learn and change.

4.  My wife and children amaze me and expose and explode un-countable aspects of the world into me.

5.  Rain is my favorite weather – especially the thick drizzly kind, the all-day kind (or all-week or -month) – optimum temperatures 40s     or 50s.

6.  I read 4-6 hours a day.

7.  I like cabins and caves.

Now for those I recommend.  For the selections for this, I have spent a good deal of time thinking “which blogs do I truly go to for inspiration?”  Not only interest or admiration, information or curiosity, but that I seek out and miss if I don’t see, and that genuinely create in me the urge to “do or feel something creative…” perhaps even the “ability” to do so.  Here they are:

Life In Relation to Art – see also www.hollysuzanne.net: yes, this is my wife and co-creator in everything I do.  It’s true she always makes my lists for blogger awards, and it is also true that no other’s life or work inspires me remotely as much as living life side-by-side with her.  I can attest to the effort and deep work that goes into each of her creations, and how her creating fuses into every aspect of our lives and activities.  Thank you, love, for inspiring me every moment of my life.

Objects – see also www.spoondeep.wordpress.com – contributions by author “severnspoon.”  This author also occurs with each of my kudos and thanks because he, too, constructs the courage to be alive in me.  His work in graphics, poetry and mixed media ALWAYS inspirit me to do and make and think.  Thanks, compadre.

Draw and Shoot – see also www.karenmcrae.photoshelter.com – when I first spied Karen’s work I was impressed by the mood and quality of each shot.  Now, over months, I must say that I anticipate each shot, and have truly come to be amazed by the “capturing” her eye, technique and production do in relation to the world.  These are photos I go back over again and again, almost as a meditation, guaranteed to evoke feelings, thoughts and the urge to create in me.

Christian Mihai – how can one NOT be inspired by the quality, content and sheer verve of Christian Mihai – he is instructive, productive and full of ideas and insights, as well as fine and evocative creative writing.  Press “random post” again and again – let me know how many times it took before you stumbled across something “not interesting.”!  Thanks CM – for all your work – and work FOR all of us!

Ironwoodwind and Photography Of Nia – Doug and Nia are two of the most humane, attentive, genuine, interested and interesting blogger-people I’ve come across.  Both obviously care about the world around them and the people and organisms in it, and express themselves warmly and carefully into it.  I notice from many that their efforts at commenting and encouraging others goes a LONG way in inspiring ongoing work in the community of WordPress.  Thank you both for your kindness and creativity and communal encouragement.

Settle + Chase – in line with Draw & Shoot, S+C’s work indeed settles deep into the subject and chases what is ephemeral, mysterious, or not objectifiable in it.  This leads consistently to photography that we are able to “enter in” instead of just observe and admire.  I enjoy work like this that asks to be questioned over time…and continually provides new responses.  Thank you S&C!

Boy With a Hat – I can’t remember how I came across this blog, but have not missed a post since I did.  Here is some ingenious, fresh and alive writing and thinking.  His 50-word stories are little explosions of insight, and his particular way of involving the reader in whatever it is he is considering in language is admirable and unique.  Thank you Vincent Mars!

atelierscheune2012 – see also Ute Schatzmuller – here you’ll find visual art and collaborative work that I promise will evoke new ideas in you, inspire new collaborative desires, and set your mind or hands or eyes off on new explorations internally and externally.  Ute’s work is suggestive and entire in a spiraling manner – each piece feels complete and yet also as if it’s the beginning of a journey. Thank you Ute!

The Disorder of Things – I promote this blog because I admire blogs that take on big issues and are willing to dig deep and explore options and ideas.  I appreciate this because whether or not I agree with any position or concept under inquiry – it invites and enervates more thinking – which is inspiring.

Ooggetuige – primarily portraiture of some sort, the settings and background textures combined with perspective on subject consistently intrigue me.  These photos start stories.  Thank you!

The Hour of Soft Light – the writings, images, poems, quotations and reflections here nearly always brush some deep human place of longing, nostalgia, wonder or gratitude.  Important things to keep alive in us.  I appreciate the breadth and depth of the entries – the range of our human experiences.

Quirk’n It – inspiring in subject, expression and real-lifeness of it.  The energy, interest and genuineness of her intention and attention to subjects, meanings, and scene are delightful to follow.  (Also, there’s collaboration in the works – being considered for it is inspiring in itself).  Thanks!

It Started With a Quote – likewise – so much of my life is inspired or rises out of what I read and then winds in and out of my lived relational experience, testing, proving, questioning the language of it.  Here you encounter all sorts of worthy inspirations and get a chance to watch them thread through, effect and alter an able mind into the world of experience.  

The Artsy Forager – I am SO thankful for the work of the Artsy Forager – bringing all manner of creative, enlivening, interesting works and activities into our days.  Our family has a funny attribution to “feeling artsy” – for when we have that curious, active want-to…the Forager satisfies and often increases this want-to.

barbaraelka.com and Dark Pines Photos  – two sites that do things with photographs that make me want to do things with words – change the finish, crack the background, tear the edges, skew the subjects…MAKE IT NEW!  Very thankful for their work and steady spontaneous creativity.

There it is – longer than usual, but fortunately for me – it’s Thanksgiving Week in the USA, so seems appropriate.  Hope you visit and enjoy each of these!  And follow the tags onward to new brilliant blogs!

Sincerely, mano’theword

in·spire  (n-spr)

v. in·spired, in·spir·ing, in·spires
v.tr.

1. To affect, guide, or arouse by  influence.
2. To fill with enlivening or exalting emotion: hymns that inspire the congregation; an artist who was inspired by Impressionism.
3.

a. To stimulate to action; motivate: a sales force that was inspired by the prospect of a bonus.
b. To affect or touch: The falling leaves inspired her with sadness.
4. To draw forth; elicit or arouse: a teacher who inspired admiration and respect.
5. To be the cause or source of; bring about: an invention that inspired many imitations.
6. To draw in (air) by inhaling.
7. Archaic

a. To breathe on.
b. To breathe life into.
v.intr.

1. To stimulate energies, ideals, or reverence: a leader who inspires by example.
2. To inhale.

Decisions

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing9 Comments

A quick response to this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt, a quirky, multi-faceted, and wonderfully open collective of writers from all over the globe riffing their words to an image – a weekly task I am thankful for, and company I admire.  So, from the midst of this holiday week in N. America, something:

And Yet

Mom is right.  It is hard to deny that something points a clear direction, unambiguously, and difficult to argue.  But for reasons I’m at pains to reveal or explain, I am uneasy.  Seriously, I couldn’t ask for a more definite sign – but is clarity everything?  I mean, what about signals from below?  Like how I feel?  Or that strange uninterpretable “intuitive” stuff?   Something isn’t right.  As if I were standing at an intersection without a crossroad, a highway with no exits, opened out before me, shining bright.  And yet.  I have misgivings, doubts.  Troubling the obvious. Are all exceptions exhausted?  Every option foreclosed?  Pressure is on, expectations real – I’ll be a laughing idiot to choose otherwise.  And yet.  And yet.  I have the feeling it will end in a horrible guffaw.

N Filbert 2012

Black Friday, Artist’s Reception for Holly Suzanne

On By NW FilbertIn Art3 Comments

Black Friday, Artist’s Reception for Holly Suzanne.

Black Friday, Artist's Reception for Holly Suzanne

Spilling the Marbles

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes4 Comments

Spilling the Marbles

Which got me thinking (a process I’d describe as internal), about how we find things out when we act.

My wife was talking (a process I’d call external), about what occurs for her when she journals (with a physical pen or pencil on physical paper).  Which she described as “internal processing,” (an activity I’d designate externalizing), whereby she mysteriously splits herself into observer and subject at once, providing case-notes or records of the interaction.  (Did I listen well?).  The arm a kind of thread-of-self arcing out to the needle of a writing instrument, jittering and inscribing its EKG-like “reading” onto the blank pages and looping back in for more.  The self as inkwell?

My body hitched at this.  Read: torso clinched and weather vane set spinning in grey matter.  Like I might if someone told me “god told me to…”, or that they were “inspired by the Muse,” or “carried away by the spirit” and whatnot.  A reaction remote from wife’s account – so what was happening for me?  In other words, am I re-enacting her activity presently?

There’s the thinking part, surely.  And then there’s the intention to find something out – observation, attention, inquiry – “why did I cinch up at that depiction?”, “what felt ‘off’ to me in that account (as related to my own experience)?”, “what was I ‘feeling’”?

I felt uncomfortable, that’s what.  Squirmy, antsy, bothered.  Was that chemically induced, like overall mood-disorder stuff, or related to her message?  I thought about this, and now I’m writing about thinking about it – what’s the difference?

It leaves traces?  It does.  And so?

I’m making something of it?  I suppose.  Why?  How?  And – ?

Why?  Hmmmm.  It comforts me to write.  Like organizing marbles on a tabletop.  It diverts my attention.

To the marbles.

Ah, yes.  That’s it, exactly.

That is to say (in this case silently with tangible markings), the reason I am unable to identify with my wife’s remarks about writing about thinking about her “self,” is that I get distracted.  In my head, it’s a swirl of sounds and concepts, images and sensation-symbols or impulses infiltrating and becoming one another like smoke strands in an overturned glass.  But transforming to paper it becomes language, marbles, metaphors.

            Some whispering gap of translation.  I wouldn’t have thought marbles on a tabletop or envisioned smoke swirling in an upside-down glass – what would be the point?  Do I need to describe myself to myself?  Could I even?  Deceive myself so?  But through a medium – a thick, loamy, granular medium like language – that’s cause for intention, apparatus of selection and choice, opportunities outside the body, drawn from the big wide world.  That’s external, that’s INTERACTION with a history, a culture, and a society of humans that gave rise to its agreements and standards, components and flavors and rules.

Jolting out through the arm via muscle controllers and a mechanical tool, I’m participant far outside my finite organism – in contents and structures, systems and meanings way beyond my doing or the thinks I might think.  The threads that I sew, the fabric I stitch in, the stylus, ink and letters I write are not mine – the pen, paper, leaves, spark, or smoke emitted into the clear crystal container all already exist, given or available, as it were, to me.

It’s hard to find the part I play in the process, or how the words relate to me – more like the words relate me – render me relatable – if I’m able to finagle myself to their categories and nuances.

So it is (for me) as if the movement to write is spilling the marbles – turning me out of myself into a world where language matters – discursive, discussive, dialogically or to some expressive purpose – catching at these rolling targets and corralling them toward some organizational assemblage (that, I suppose, being my part in the meaningful game).  I pick the red one and set it there, not there.  Or prefer the one with the chip in it next to the tiger’s eye, and so forth.  (There’s no accounting for taste – is that “style”?  (Really!?)).

So “what have I written?” I think, and I’m sure I don’t know, but thanks for the language and time, it’s a process – and now you have the bagful of marbles…

Happy Thanksgiving!!

“Bless Babel.”

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Traces5 Comments

Below I am going to share with you an essay that I promise is worth every hour or two you lend your attention to each paragraph.

It is written by this person:

(Donald Barthelme)

and it is called: “Not Knowing“

from his collection of the same name.

it contains statements like the following:

“Any work of art depends upon a complex series of interdependences”

“tear a mystery to tatters and you have tatters, not mystery”

“What is magical about the object is that it at once invites and resists interpretation.  Its artistic worth is measurable by the degree to which it remains, after interpretation, vital – no interpretation or cardiopulminary push-pull can exhaust or empty it”

“The combinatory agility of words, the exponential generation of meaning once they’re allowed to go to bed together, allows the writer to surprise himself, makes art possible, reveals how much of Being we haven’t yet encountered.”

“Art is a true account of the activity of mind”

“The aim of meditating about the world is finally to change the world”

and so forth.

Please understand me, if you maintain a blog, take photos, love your children, think about your self or the world you live in, dialogue with books or pictures or animals or people or movements…

take a little time to read this

Thank you.

  Not Knowing

                            

Enough about Writing…

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, TracesLeave a comment

 

Came across this article…seems to jibe with many blog discussions/posts floating about out there just now…thought I’d like to share it.  It’s a bit dated in places, but the overall concept seems worth your ruminations….

Introduction:
Why Books?
LIBRARIES 2000
Libraries 2000, a seminar to re-examine the function and future
development of libraries in Alberta, was held in 1983. A committee
consisting of representatives of Alberta Culture, the Alberta Library
Board, the Alberta Library Trustees Association, the Library Association
of Alberta and the Learning Resources Council of the Alberta
Teachers Association was set up to look into ways of following
up on the suggestions arising out of the seminar. This is the second
booklet commissioned as a result of these discussions.
Public libraries have long attempted to fulfil many functions and
roles in our society. As financial and human resources have become
harder to obtain, librarians and library trustees have had to give
more attention to examining these roles and assessing their relative
worth. In recent years, there has been increasing discussion of the
public library as an information provider, but less discussion of the
more traditional view of library service.
Sam Neill is a professor at the School of Library and Information
Science at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario.
This booklet is based on a speech delivered at the Ontario Library
Association Conference, Ottawa, 1984, entitled “The Role of a
Traditional Library in an Age Bludgeoned by Information.” The
opinions and ideas expressed are those of the author and do not
necessarily represent the view of Albe11a Culture, or the Alberta
Library Board. The assistance of the Alberta Library Board in editing
and printing this booklet is gratefully acknowledged .

Why Books? by Sam Neill

(click for full article, please)

dove-tailing ever-so-nicely with another book I stumbled across in the library (which also contains a fine consideration of David Foster Wallace in one of the chapters), and considers, I think, the same sorts of issues of humaneness and being alive meaninfully: