and Evan Lavender-Smith’s MFA thesis from 2004: The Invention of Love!!!!
Tag: Art
Other Writing Wisdom
“Writing is a question of becoming, always incomplete, always in the midst of being formed, and goes beyond the matter of any livable or lived experience.
It is a process, that is, a passage of Life that traverses both the livable and the lived.
Writing is inseparable from becoming.”
-Gilles Deleuze-
from article Literature & Life (read full here)
Writing Wisdom
This turns out to be the best thing I read this week on the art of writing…
“The friends could not agree which way to go. Pooh looked for answers.
“Perhaps if we tell a story, the story will tell us how to get there…”
– Winnie the Pooh
struck me solidly as the way so very many of us who write
go about looking for answers.
Write on…
Inflexions: Issues
Inflexions: Issues.
Very exciting new discovery for me!
for instance: A Perspective of the Universe – Massumi & Manning
Synchronous Display – Serendipity
The books I first encountered today – and in such intriguing titular order….
and when is additional engagement with Olafur Arnald’s work not welcome
Ah, vitality
“Nietzsche is the most sarcastic son of a bitch ever to set foot on this
earth. Just say that; then write whatever else you want, like he would.” —
— So my friend Werner Timmermann tells me, with a gleam in his eye.
He helped with my translation of Thus Spake Zarathustra, a four-year-long
labor of love, so he knows what he is talking about. Zarathustra (1885)
was Nietzsche’s magnum opus; everything before it was preparation,
everything after it expatiation and elucidation.
But, for some, the question remains: Why Nietzsche? Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844-1900) was quite simply one of the most original and
influential philosophers who ever lived; in addition, his writing style was
brilliant, epigrammatic, idiosyncratic [“It is my ambition to say in ten
sentences what everyone else says in a book — what everyone else does
not say in a book.”] The language dances, prances, whirls and twirls; it
ranges from ghetto-verbalizations and vulgarizations to high art, from
lyricism to sardonicism, from satyr-play to passion play. No one really
writes like Nietzsche, though the number of his stylistic apes and
imitators is legion (especially in the ranks of academe).
-from the introduction 2004 translation of Ecce Homo & The Antichrist
Ecce Homo & The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche (2004)
sympatico-ally discovered via Time’s Flow Stemmed (take a look!)
Experience, anyway. cont’d
2
Like before, but never exactly. That’s why similar and memory, and that’s why it’s new. Begins. Never not change. If only pennies. It works. It goes on.
So that what seems a chasing, a tracing, a spy-archaeology-sci/fi-breathless-fragile-safebreak (i.e. “creative writing”) is also dirgy dredging, slurry stirring, re-invention redone renewing some old search. If he wrote “to get it right” it would be wrong.
Standard unlocatable with too many variations depending on, all boundaries shift with each decision – though it feels less freedom of choice than compulsion to find – where there’s nothing to find that’s not making (constructed – what’s there getting too little credit in general) – what’s done with what’s attended.
Not meant to be confusing – but from quark or qualia, wave-particle to universes full of looming holes, it plainly is. At least what we’re able to tell of it – representamen – hingey symbols we careen from like units of mobiles in wind or gyring pirate swings.
There is that. Is, is, is, is : handy set of markings and concepts “to be” the seeking and the sought – condition and conclusion – of begin.
Listening now – the statue the only Other besides the dogs – well, and whomever all conjoined to craft these scribblings to serve as silent sounds filled with elastic contents over meticulously-constructed time. The billions. And infinite (as far as he’s concerned or capable of “counting”) quanta of wave/particle/atom/molecule/element – dithering thoroughfares making up ginormous pervasive systems within systems in which he depends and participates toward is.
– To music, quiet head of Buddha lurked behind, no longer staring with the eyes as much as ears – sense shift and collusion – never one without another – it goes on.
New Fiction: “Experience, anyway.”
For some time I have been lacking for representation. Processes and patterns go on, no doubt, but nothing materializes save scattered words, informed thoughts, scholarly papers, and so on. Spouse says of self: “I need something to shoot for, develop toward, to propel…otherwise I stagnate, repeat…” and I agree with her – I’ve been itching for fiction – a larger project – something to belong to and build while fulfilling responsibilities, learning, parenting, husbanding, being “professional.” But the pages have been blank. This morning I began, and it started like this:
**************************************************************************************************************
Experience, anyway.
And stared at the head of Buddha. As if literature were whatever could be fitted to symbols. There were experiences anyway. Complex goings-on.
He started. As if starting were the only thing he could do. He, she, self, other, organism – whatever. It had begun. If there were a god, it might know where, but they – for the life of them – could not figure it. Not literature.
And for all the anyway-experiences, also.
In other words.
They stitched and thatched and wove, tore through, ripped out, clipped and pasted and tagged. For all the cross-hatching and shading, foregrounding and back-, no image came through. Or if it did, it never matched.
Representation. Representamen – for a more mystical suggesting. Arcane. Obtuse. That which is metaphor’d. That which signals, indices, or forms. That which functions. Which can be acted on, or with, within, without. Functioning ephemera. To latch.
And undo. It passes. Lock on – decipher. Pass around the room. Agreeing by argument, it becomes. Difference. Evaporate.
The head of the Buddha is shaped out of stone. More likely poured, cast. More likely art – official. What is artificial? – But human construction of world. That radical deflect. That begin. In symbol.
At a certain time (constructed, invent), cross-purposes : experience. Anyway, perceived. So aroused – appreciation, cognition, desire, belief – purchased (bought, fallen-for, faith-in) : acquired. Experience, anyway – head in corner on bookshelf knick-knack antiques, money (that wasn’t there), and taken away.
Evaluation = meaning. Interpretation. Somewhere whereabouts and how, or when – experience, anyway. Action occurs. It’s started.
ART IS A MISTAKE
-Maurice Blanchot, from The Book to Come-
MAKE THEM!
Transductive Conversations…cont’d (via Lance Olsen)
“One of the wonderful things about word processors is they transform all composition into continuous process. 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. 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-
All my Words are Silent 