Tag: Maurice Blanchot

Writing: the Apparatus

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Philosophy, Traces, WritingLeave a comment

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Writing: the Apparatus

“one can think of the work (of writing) as a dialogue between the two distinct demands bearing on it (the demand of possibility, the demand of the impossible).  Or between its two poles (measured form, measureless disintegration) or between the embodiments of these two ‘centers of gravity,’ if you will: reader and writer…two come together in a place where neither can be found…One of them keeps dragging it into the light of day as a completed oeuvre, a realized whole, something that has actually taken form and come to be (read, that is, or, you could say, heard), while the other pulls it back into the dark whence nothing ever springs (but where there is a chance that, coming to pieces, something might come to be written or said)”

– Anne Smock, What is There to Say? –

-the demand of possibility, the demand of the impossible-

            The tools the writer possesses.

That there must be something to say…that it is impossible to completely say.  Finally, definitively, to have done with, saying experience.

What does one make of this?  With this?  Paradoxical demand, desire, exigency – imperative, self-generating, uncaused and ineffectual, drive?

Our tools:  awareness.  Attention.  Passion.  We observe and take note, feel-with, and seek to spell it out (for ourselves, for world).

Our tools:  available language, sound, gesture.  Entering the woven barrier and thoroughfare of what is shared, common, constitutive, we act, operate, select, arrange, choose, rearrange from this quilted information of the world, our saying of it.  Or singing, or stating, shouting or whispering and mumbles.

It seeks into fact.  We construct an object, made up of nothing, of airwaves, scratch-marks, designs.  Barely effable cues, hints, notions and signs.  We begin again with that.  With what it fails to say, to communicate or reveal.  We tinker with and tamper, excise and expand.  Ever the remainder.  Inexact invention.  Something there, some things not.

We pursue what is not.  What fell aside or seeped away.  The evaporate.  The unknown (here I adore the French: je ne sais quoi – that feeling that one knows it, and knows it so well and so deeply, and yet is unable to say what it is that one knows!).

Endless anticipation, expectation, a lusted desiring…

Endless frustration, falling short or to the side, inevitable (inherent even?) failing, shortcoming, irresolution.

These are the tools of the trade.  The writer’s apparatus.

 

A caveat:  from time to time I’ll wager to say we all of us take in some language or sound, vision or world that seems “just,” feels ripe, adequate, full and exact to the perception of our experience.  This is wondrous, thrilling, satiating, “ecstatic,” a moment’s completion, wholeness, perhaps.

Yet is it?  What does the masterful painting, the pregnant poem, the echoing song or fulfilling experience result toward?  Yes, toward, not “in.”  Not arrival but generation, bursts of multiplications of words, sounds, sights and movements now invigoratingly fueled and stimulated – fecund to go on…for more…fuller…richer…or even repeat!?

“Such then, would be my task, to respond to…speech that passes my understanding, to respond to it without having really heard it, and to respond to it in repeating it, in making it speak…To name the possible, to respond to the impossible.  I remember that we had designated in this way the two centers of gravity of all language…Why two to say one thing?  – Because the one who says it is always the other…”

– Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation –

Another Rejected (albeit kindly!) fiction…

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing3 Comments

WHO THEN IS SPEAKING?

“the preliminary condition of any work of literature is that the person who is writing has to invent that first character – the author of the work… the author’s name and the various ‘I’s’ that go to make up the ‘I’ who is writing”

–Italo Calvino–

“’I’ can only be identified by the instance of speech which contains it, and by that alone”

–Emile Benveniste–

“Who, then, is speaking?”

–Maurice Blanchot–

who is speaking: 

I am the one, come to tell the story, the code of information and words, with    letters and gestures and some touches of inflection, but I mean to tell it straight and impartially, save the parts I must needs factor in.

who is writing:

And I am the one, come to present the speech in images – to sketch, doodle, scrawl and scribble – marks and letters and symbolic dashes and curves, points and curls in order that you might decode, perceive and interpret the messages of speaker, silent though you both may be, with all of us reading what we each are choosing to see.

who is reading:

we, all of us, some before the text is made, some almost simultaneous with it, others far along and away, ingesting quite similar physical marks and gestures, each in our own way through our various individual-minds, group-minds, cultures, vocabularies, languages and eras.  In other words, nothing stays the same, and everything is alike in this.  We read, re-marking the text.

who is not-writing:

I am capable of inscribing in my mind and body, the world.  As if an invisible typing-machine, a reordering recorder, some receptive-creator-genius, as it were, a super-computer which you are incapable of judging for yourself, as each to our own mechanisms, susceptibilities, senses and necessary wiring.  Humana/inhumana – therein lies the distinctives, do not doubt it.  I am known by my knowing.

who is not-speaking:

Therefore I do not tell, have no voice of my own but merely exist to compile and report, as if I were a memory file tabbed for all occasions.  I absorb, alchemize and purify.  I add solvents and neutralize, catalyze, in effect I am a scientist or theorist, objectively observant as I play in my private lab.  Whereof I do not know I cannot speak, and results are eternally forth-coming, each instant a universe of new, each moment a rearrangement of all the parts in an ever-altering and incomplete whole…my lips are sealed.

who is not-reading:

[the non-readers, alas, are unable to report or tell.  Our theories include the “supernova” and “black holes;” however, some have suggested to add in this category “blind faith practitioners,” “idealists,” “atheists,” – actually all –isms and –ologies, but given their abilities to say and to write and/or gesture their positions, “non-reader” would have to be distorted to incorporate “those who read in only one way”] –editors note

who is speaking:

“and like I said, ‘it began,’ he said, ‘this way:  she turned the corner in a frenzy of hurry, skirt twirling this way and that, clop-clop of pumps, some windy vibration to her flesh,’ which corresponds very neatly to the moment I heard him exclaim, (he who I’m speaking of), and forthwith interviewed concerning the commotion, sitting (as he was), on the bench in the park, with such a beautiful female, I had thought, at the time I approached him, given the apparent accident of noise fomenting beneath my window”

who is writing:

wrote

who is reading:

is a little confused by the pronouns.  The speaker apparently involved in the he-she story that he tells, but is the she also the beautiful female or some other rushing one?  He being the same as exclaimed and sweated on the bench?  Am I reading this right?

who is writing:

I write it as I hear it, with the proviso of necessary adjustments, corrections and expansions to concoct a sensible array of language, given current grammatical and syntactic preferences of the culture at large and my own personal tastes.  Not that I actually “hear” it, as it were, more as if I see it occurring on the page where my hand is making marks, deriving setting, speech, movement and character from the silent leak of pen, like reading perhaps, a proto-reading of sorts, replete with imaged-in (image-ined?) activity, not physical, of course, save insofar as my hand and parts of my arm make a sort of jittery movement in utilizing the pen, but, well, is that any clearer?  Helpful in any way?

who is reading:

am I supposed to know all that?  I picked this up engage a story, a motion-picture-in-words type of thing, not a movie with commentary and special-effects how-tos;  I’m very uncertain as to what’s actually going on here – am I to believe I’m encountering a work of someone’s imagination that I might while away some hours of my life participating in, thereby stimulating my own?  Or is this some sort of step-by-step author-diary phenomenological-literary inquiry, with which I have no concern or interest whatsoever?

 

who is writing:

Where does the reader fit in? (a marginal note)

who is speaking:

“so he says to me, I mean, I’m just sitting here enjoying a beautiful Spring day on my favorite perch in the local park with this incredible girl I finagled to my side with brilliant hubris and aesthetic chatter, just sensing the verdant nearness of her, knowing that just beneath that thin satiny-cotton her flesh continued – from her arms and knees to her chest and crotch, those virile thighs, I’m dizzy almost here – my intellect on autopilot while my senses imbibe, and this guy, this frantic frazzled business dude scurries up asking ‘What!?  Is everything – ?’  ‘What’s happened?  Is everyone okay?!’ and ‘What the hell is going on?!’  I bristle of course, no one likes shit instead of rain on parade day hoping for a carnival ride, and I cinch up, scowl, and I tell him, I tell this guy: ‘Sir!  What are you talking about?  Step back!  Calm down!  Breathe…then begin again, but slow it down – try to make sense!’ demonstrating my world-wizened calm and strong fearless demeanor to the steaming body right there up next to me – I’d picked the half-bench with a patch of sun so we’d necessarily be close and she’d need remove her sweater-shawl thingy – I wanted the curve of her shoulder, slight swell of the breast, and neck and jawline all around, the way her hair chose so many intricate ways to secretly touch her skin”

who is reading:

Wait.  So the guy telling the story isn’t the observer of the action?  Or did you forget to switch scenes or something?  I mean, I guess we are in the park now on a bench reeking with sensuality, you’ve brought me closer to the lady, but truly – who then, is speaking?

who is writing:

(seems readers have so much to say) [that, in parenthesis further along the side of the page, ed. note].  I’d like to involve the reader(s) here, to take them into account.  Who should I ask?  Or should I simply re-read what I’ve written, perhaps aloud, pretend I’m someone else – not the spider’s butt spinning the web, but the focused chameleon on the next branch?

who is speaking:

“Honestly, I don’t really feel that he ‘gets it,’ most of the time?  I’m not really here for the talking, you know?  As if I’m a silage pile feeding the hogs of his emotions or desires, or simply raw fuel for his machines.  I often feel like some objectified character or like I’m playing a role, you know?  Sometimes even as flimsy and see-through as an idea!  As if I’m here simply to be used.  A tool, like his cock or his pen.  I usually don’t let on because otherwise I’ve no way to be seen or heard, it would be like I don’t even exist if it weren’t for him.  He does pay attention to me, as far as that goes, a careful kind of threatening interest, truth be told, but it’s cheapened because he only cares insofar as he wants (or, as he might put it – ‘needs’).  I don’t know, all his ‘he saids, she saids, I say, you say,’ – it gets old, I get lost, and often become confused about who or what I am – this is sort of a caveat here, unscripted, I think, I’m just saying…”

who is reading:

            [writer notes: is speaking too]

who is reading:

I do get a “feel,” in my body, as to what’s going on here.  I’m hearing a lot of voices on a lot of levels and I’m trying to piece them all together – as if all the parts, in fact, are part of a whole – and the whole is this limited pulped object filled with typescripts that I’m holding in my hands and reading.  Representational then, I guess?  I reiterate: I didn’t purchase this for a mirror to life, or struggles of making sense.  I wasn’t itching to go back to my school-days – science, philosophies – I should have ordered a film, but now I feel stuck – what with the time spent and cursory effort – I got comfortable…I almost feel duped…and yet…

who is writing:

how can you drown a baby, right?  I mean, it’s begun its life, it has promise and as many possibilities as the next child – rebellious, colicky, all the spit-up and shit it throws back at you – I can’t just discard it, leave it to itself, it needs me, I think.  I brought it into this world, am I also responsible to take it out when it runs amok?  How the hell do you control a living thing like language?  Am I the man?  Wanting the girl?  Questioning confusion?  Discovering a traumatic event?  Exclaiming?

 

 

 

Flustercucks…the rejects…

On By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Photography, Writing2 Comments

The next few posts will be those “short stories” that did not finally go off to Fluster Magazine for their recent short story competition.  Leftovers in other words, or the puppies left in the barn…

No Oco do meu Peito by daniloz

Because Everyone Wants to Know

 

I want you to know that I’m using the blue notebook and pen that you left.  Why?  Because you asked.  Because everyone wants to know.

In other words, if it’s going to count for something, something that really matters, it’s going to have to be special, set apart, somehow final and complete.  I’ll use it for the whole shebang – my photos, drawings and more – all in this blue notebook with its matching ball-point pen, for you.  Because, apparently, everyone wants to know.

Yes, mom and dad have asked (in their roundabout, passive-aggressive, surreptitiously accusatory way, as is their fashion), kindly, quiet, with ever the look of care and concern (secretly shouting their “what is wrong with you?” and “what is wrong with us that you…”) and so on…

It really wasn’t like this my first five years of life or so, that I remember.  But then what I mostly remember from that time are smells and sounds and light.  Trees, grass, dirt, how the light glanced and filtered through, times of wind and rain.

Not that you care.  I’m fairly certain that that is not what you are asking for, nor them, nor my siblings or “lifetime of ‘friends’ and family,” whoever, wherever they’ve become.

So you’re the livewire, and perhaps our children.  Perhaps they will want to know too, at some point.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps everyone’s already figured my story – diagnosed and prescribed.  Perhaps.

Be that as it may, I’ve thought long and hard about this.  Reviewing all I think I know, how I feel I felt, what it seems I’ve seen and so on, and decided, for you, for you, really, and maybe a little bit for me (curiosity) and I suppose a percentage for the kids should they ever wonder, or need it for their psychological freedom, or ever give a shit about who or why…I decided to use your god-damned blue notebook with its little matching pen and find out just what I think about it all, mostly because, at least as you put it, “everyone wants to know.”

Should I start with my hands or my head or my heart?  I suppose the limbs and loins will come into play here too, god knows the guts and goiter.

I remember, there was an opening.  A time you touched me, in the rain.  Suddenly, my skin. My self-enclosure became an opening, a veil, a fabric. A screen.

I wanted to make a difference, you know.  Make something.  I don’t know what – construct something everyone could hold on to.  Take in hand, heart and head.  Keep or repeat as needed.  Something like that.  I knew I wasn’t going to last, that none of this was, nothing.  A “center cannot hold” type of thing.

I can’t begin there.  It’s all wound up together like a knot: head looking down, arms wrapped around, concealing and revealing my heart, the guts, loins and moving limbs.  I’m unable to take one without the other, now that I think and feel about it, my actions…

Perhaps I’ll pretend.  (Just what you always loved so well about me – to find out I was pretending – molding myself to perceived desires).  I’ll pretend that I’m an old man seated on a stiff wooden chair, children and grandchildren gathered all around – like a specimen, a model – something you take apart, observe, examine.  I’ll shakily lift off my shirt and “everyone” can read my body, ask their questions.  That might get us somewhere.

Let’s see, here along the shoulder – a self-portrait by the artist Egon Schiele (self-tormenting asylum brother), and a snake eating its tail.  “The Ouroborous” I’d hack out – “don’t you know it kids?”  Sign of doctors and alchemy, medicine and art; creation and destruction entwined, going round and round.  Self-devouring while giving birth to your own, form as it changes.  Chewing up and regurgitating the “I.”

One of the little critters may point and ask “what’s that?  All those curlicues and fancy lines?”  Federico Garcia Lorca’s signature, I’d sigh.  Ah yes.  Little leaping bugger of light.  He’s yellow and lemons and crickets and birds.  You know the stuff that sends you – portal moments of sight or song – a-ha!’s.  When all the crap that’s pelted and melted in your brains gets shaken together like a surrealist still life.  Incongruity making sense.  Opposites attract, no, even better, look at your old mama and I – a juxtaposed spectrum and fantastic balancing paradox – a carnival!

Well, you wanted to know.

And there’s Kafka, Blanchot, Cixous and Lispector.  Jabes and Beckett now seeped in my veins.  Dostoevsky, Bakhtin and Rilke.  Writers all, I’d say, them that fed the innards my life gave rise to.  Gods and angels, drink and demons all beneath the skin of their names.  Nietzsche – ridiculous happiness.  Wittgenstein and the torment of words, of meanings, of none.  I’m a walking inscription, on the surface.

To touch on that.  Head, heart, hands.

Are you sure anyone wants to know?

The sounds of a piano, that too.  Coaxing keys to a steady patter – mimicking rain.  Or poems, yes, we forgot Giacometti’s Man Falling – perpetual stumble on the back of my hand, the hoping that neither knows what the other is up to.  But they do.  I see that now.  All part of the same body, stretched in the same cells.  Poems as stripped-down sculpture, some essential chant or spell – just a gaze, a whisp of caress, a drop of blood.  The miracle that something remains after we’re all done twisting and grasping at it.

Is this what you wanted?  Does it explain…anything?  I hardly think so.

Read on.

Here in the ribs.  The cracked and lumpen one.  There was a time.  A time I thought maybe risk or danger – some gasping euphoria – some panicked life – might vitalize.  How’d you think you all got here?  Desperate plunges into the unknown, dear ones, mad scientists messing around in the lab!  At the edge of cliffs, out on proverbial limbs, insecure at wit’s end, to go for broke.

And break we did.

But then look at you fertile seeds, you good eggs.  I never meant to be rough with you all.  To risk what is fragile in you.  Ribs, here, a cave and cage for the heart.

I still breathe you (examining the lungs).  Charred and chortled, this was one great pleasure – to know I was breathing, in-spired.  I know you all hated it and it caused me to smell real bad, but the rush of smoke down this pipe here into the bellows of slimy flesh…that told me I was taking it in.  Not some automaton or senseless machine, no, I was hearing, seeing, touching, tasting and smelling – I could feel it in my ashen lungs.  With every breath.  And sometimes it hurt.  What we ingest.  But it was really going in, and visibly coming out – all of it – for good or ill.  I needed to know it.

Why, you ask, why?

Look at that cranium stooped and weighed down.  That sucker was a burden of liquid fire.  All curled over like that all of my life, looking in, at, in.  What’s there?  How does it work?  For whom?  When?  (Is there even why?)  Examining and dreaming, recording to imagine – listen, say it back, say it forth, combine and copulate, shake it and stir – use that heavy weight – whirr whirr, charge and whirr.  Profile the shape of a jagged question mark, dotted where the heart must be.

There it is now, nearly buried in the chest.  It happens.  Weather-systems, signsponge, it all runs its course.  Oh it used to be pointed upwards and outwards, into fantasies and abstractions; then for years I kept it aiming straight ahead – horizontal and seeking direction – but slowly and surely it drags down toward the heart, the muscle pulsing, the plug for all the cords.  Everything up and away, out there or behind, it all happens here – filtering through – latched up or broken down, in the system.

What was it you wanted to know?  Head, hands, heart, limbs and loins, I’m acknowledging, affording view.  Yes I’m aware that description doesn’t explain a thing – wonderful world of science – how to explain?

Waste processed below, and there has always been plenty of it.  Legs down there often running away or at cross-purposes, now knobby and stiff.  And then there, clinging to its corner like a core, that erratic, agitated, beaten and beating beast.  Entire web of inexplicable drive and energy, fear and misery, desire and dread – my heart.  Does this explain it?  What everyone wanted to know?

Gasping there like the mouth of a fish on land, pulsing purplish like my aroused member – my heart.  If I poke at it and coax it, tear it out and wring it onto this blue notebook with white pages, this blue blood, will it explain?

Here, whomever, look.  Here it lies, cheats and steals.  Here it gives and aches and breaks.  Here it prolongs and stops short.  Pulpy mass of living beast, humana, the am therefore am.  Take it, read it, test it.  Heal it if you wish or can.  I’m open.

Is this what you wanted?

What everyone wants to know?

N Filbert 2012