2nd link in the chain

Andrew Maples to me

show details Nov 16

Get low and behold

That I might be so bold

to say my words will cajole the door of your soul

open

sesame's not working

because sometimes codes aren't spoken

they're broken

so we shovel the sidewalk snow

sweating pathways in a world so cold

swimming darkly beneath gymnasium floors

we massage out knots with the midnight oil

but oo la la

I bring the treatment like spa

and big banging beats leave breath deep like crater (cray-tah)

the only way to read body language is dance back

and there ain't no way I'm stepping in my own tracks

so we must walk far beside ourselves

and become newly dead ringing coffin bells

roads to heaven are paved with the worst intentions

is anybody listening I'm in suspension

but quick or no

hands go around like applause

I catch the wind

of time flying by and ears they bend

to my mouth like flowers to sun

and growing toward like the muzzle flash of a hot gun

I'm nobody, are you nobody too?

the brain is the weight of God

and they differ if they do

as syllable from sound

so I lift them pound for pound

but eventually I put it down

smooth the frown

because built into the head is the crown.

And I compose myself.

Kathryn Schetlick to Andrew

show details 8:58 AM (20 minutes ago)

rendition 1.0- body (work in progress)

Looking for my

swimming knots

the

broken muzzle

your

flying code

sesame's

listening?

nobody

my

sweating sound

the

cold bells

your

growing mouth

god's

banging pound

my

spoken sidewalk

the

language shovel

your

suspension floor

my

stepping breath

the

brain wind

my

newly dead

words

For my looking

I, myself

flash the syllable deep

-----------------

this kid i knew

you were this kid i knew

a moment's glance filled spaces

left empty

for years, vanished spaces

occupying nowhere

it was all a flicker

and maybe it's better that way

leaving, disappearing before

the flicker can

and so it remains

painfully so with no future

in sight, the spaces are only

gaps now filled with unending fantasy

pastless

From time to time

you are this kid I knew

and other times

you were this kid i know

the first link in the chain

Version one: a rendition remix style

Dead I ain’t and yet…

You read reality with holes

Flowing fine yarn flush, fuck

Words ain't me

Under wear like seams like

More cummings.

Flashes of smaller glass intentions seal heads like dreams

Recalling pretty metaphors built undercover with you

We hide the tunnel, keep it a disguise, watch

Suppose me say allegory can’t suppose necessity better than eyes, more than inside

Arrive, retreat

its life hanging games

personified impossibly

Blow your thoughts

Give yourself that light dance

Pet the sun without your brain around

Try the plateful of things in lower case

Face further trust before the story sneeze

Because homie,

We be

Living the cliche

like way

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 1:19 PM, Andrew Maples <> wrote:

And the brain say

mind your q's and p's

cross your t's

pupil your eyes

watch the cave mouth sneeze

allegory allergies

you can't own a shadow

like the sun gave us eyes

try to never arrive

before your destination do

or like a ship without a bottle

with intentions and designs

but no necessity

no message inside

glass will blow around you

impossibly

suppose further

you are yourself personified

in plain sight

you hide your thoughts

like a stomach

smaller than your eyes

I look by the plateful

grateful for helpings heaped

does reality give way to cliche?

probably

what's a metafor?

recalling true meanings

like a bad batch of weenies

we fall back like trust games

because heads have

more holes than bikinis

it's the homie on the range

flowing like I gotta go

and the seal just broke

and you got hips like rose

it ain't about me

like cummings keep it lower case

crank the hurdy gurdy

make a monkey dance

and flush your face

I sweat your pretty things

may I pet your sweaty things?

under each fine woman

is the story of lifting

her off her feet

with words and hot heat

I built a one stick pop tent

where we can retreat

and animate dreams

without seams

but if a story is a yarn

what the fuck is a sweater

maybe it's a disguise

but you wear it better

so let's hide undercover

I’ll be the train

You be the tunnel

you can read your way through

with eyes hanging out

but when life flashes before you

that light

it's the living you done

come to find out

And I ain't dead yet.

New Mexico series

she walked in with those

still flowers, unmoving

never to grow, nor to wilt

color brought the kinetic energy

a blue that strikes

a pale yellow slips through the pores

a deep violet whose infinite retreat intrigues

tugs and twists, until

the still curves and static edges become violent

free from life, death and the eroticism in between

a moment of magnified realism

Georgia.

entering the breeze catches my face

its faint rustling prepares the ear

high octaves, high hills

mountains

her voice smoothly hikes, ascends

almost unnoticeably until

I feel its peek

vibrations climbing from the toes out the skull, my skull

the now silhouetted peaks hum

from the reverberations of her box, my body

in silence the movement heightens

reaches the pinnacle

the moment when all sound becomes clear 

forever vacillating

sedimentary structures rivaling architectural wonders

angularity, irregularity, and rarity

confusing formations, continually unforming to reform,

find, found, finding resolve in the surrounding fluency of the wind

sand kicking up sand, sanding through the wonder

forming wonders and rewonders

makes wonderers out of all,

rivaling the sedimentary

Ajit Chauhan: ReRecord

floating hostess

mingling lashes a death defying purple purse

simultaneous back/side sweep white album

ghost smoke reproducible pins reproduced

twin red manes searching fingers

the secret whisper

ever lingering flair of tangled emptiness

http://www.jackhanley.com/current.php?site=ny

Progressive Barbarians

The Golden Age from My Barbarian on Vimeo.

Forecast: Dystopia in the 22^nd century, a collection of bodies so overly saturated with meaning that they become cultureless, a return to a barbarianism that resides in the singular body - My Barbarian.

Alex, Malik, and Jade embody allusion, fantasy, allegory, myth, and the notion that perhaps culture, in our modern understanding and use of the term, is a spectacle, an object of curiosity. What does Canada Day celebrate? What is Canadian “culture”? More importantly, where does “it” reside? It is the element of embodiment that seems to actualize culture; specifically, embodiment through the mode of spectacle, where the body as physical container of a cosmology becomes a watchful object.

My Barbarian’s use of spectacle within a spectacle objectifies the “cultural” body as to make the audience reconstitute the subjugation of their own bodies. But what is left to contain a body’s location? As borders separating countries are dismantled by transnationalism, it becomes difficult and even inconsequential, to a point, to locate a body on the east, west, north, or south side of a defining line. Such a fluidity of space places further emphasis on the individual body as a political entity. Thus, a new paradigm emerges- the paradigm of the performing self where borders become internalized allowing for the simultaneous embodiment of multiple spectacles.

How fitting then, to this theorizing, that in My Barbarian’s “The Golden Age” the audience’s physical body occupies the very space where meaning manifests, the space between spectacle and spectator. The spectator’s body, now the scene of the spectacle, becomes the canvas:

Standing between opposing video projections, the spectacle of a song and dance exoticising enslavement on one side and the performance of watchful spectators mimicking this cultural commodification of slavery on the other, the present, live body becomes the vessel through which allusions pass. The transference gives voice to the physical entity that is now left to decipher its place between the two walls. American, African American, middle class American, foreigner, perpetuator of the institution of slavery, evidence of the institution of slavery. How do the many constitutions of the singular body reconcile, must they reconcile?

Through the creation of hyper saturated bodies Alex, Malik, and Jade avoid the forecasting of their own political identities and place the risk and uncertainty of defining borders in the hands of the viewing body. As the only certain delineator of space, the physical body may become so impregnated with identities and histories that, as My Barbarian do forecast in one song, “only the supernatural will survive”.

a first attempt

May 6th 2009, NYU

To protest

The body did not know where to stand.  Hovering, attempting to straddle; outstretched right and left. One side longing for recognition and justice, the other for transcendence and anarchy.  So extreme a pull, the brain and heart are left floating in a horizontal plane. Thinking feeling; indiscernible.  No longer relegated to particular spaces by an anatomical form, the organs, their functions conflate.  I become confused. Horrified, in fact.

 

form

The forms disappear and reappear, judgements evaporate and solidify, senses stop and continue- death hushes, death amplifies. A perpetual swing between the known and the unknown, leaves us in a state of neither consciousness nor unconsciousness, but rather in a state of the eternal sleep, a sleep that some may call death.

"Start floating," she said.

The thought came gently and steadily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rishing decent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe.

"Go back to your form for a moment," she said.

How long it lasted of course, I know not; but when once again I unclosed my eyes, the objects around me were visible. By a wild sulphurous luster, the origin of which I could not at first determine, I was enabled to see the extent and aspect of the prison.

(italics- Edgar Allen Poe)

Silence

(Newport Folk Festival 1965)

Listen:


closer



The voice of a generation is about to sing to you, the American spirit, the one who found himself in the woods, alone. The raw gritty rasps will fill your soul with the truth and beauty of the world. You can almost anticipate how the vibrations will resonant in your mind and ooze back out through your pores. That simple repetitious melody, the pure sound of an unaltered strum, from a single pick, his pick, the diva of folk music. You wait for the moment when your heart will swell up in your throat, the moment the first note of “Blowin’ in the Wind” escapes the speakers.

the moment has arrived the diva takes the stage

You are blown away. Blown away by a sound that does not conform to your understanding of folk or the signature of its leading figure. Tension arises. Distorted, dissonant, reverberating, fuzzy. The words “I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more” sound from the voice of a generation meaning nothing but noise and egotism. The American spirit, you, becomes angry, boos, and demands silence. The electrified troubadour continues against the background of rioting pacifists. You know from the collective reaction around you that this is a moment in history that will enliven and give further voice to the diva before you.

The collective voice does not have a grain, a particular timbre, tone, it is beyond quality. It is silent. Perhaps this silence has duped the American spirit into worshiping the power of the individual voice (the writer, the musician, the diva). But it is through collective voice’s silence that action may be heard.

“The best communion men have is in silence.” - Thoreau