Kite: Listening is not a practice, but the practice of the unattainable. In that possibility of making anything—like new knowledge, where the act of listening becomes endless—you can only hope to hear something during each repetition of whatever it is you’re listening to. You only find the repetition through prolonged listening—it’s like having an extended ear and waiting for the pattern to show itself. Learning something new, listening to Elders, experiencing horrible things and experiencing really good things are some examples.
All I can hope is that each time the repetitions happen, I’m able to listen and catch something important. It’s always good to have a community that reminds me to remember. We constantly go back to the source material, back to the people—you always have to go back and consult. That’s a cyclical thing, to be more than metaphorical, but maybe less than totally tangible. That’s what frequencies do: each sound oscillation is just a cyclical wave that comes and goes infinitely. Technically, if a sound goes out into the universe, it has the potential to go on forever. A light wave is the light cone.
https://canadianart.ca/interviews/practising-the-unattainable-bellow-kite/
https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/everything-i-say-is-true-poetic-bibliography/
https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/lewis-arista-pechawis-kite/release/1
Category Archives: lit
Liars
A widespread, secret religion, whose followers believe that there is no God, no afterlife and no inherent meaning to existence. However, they also believe that life should be treasured and happiness is a good that should be pursued. Because the depressing truth of existence is counterproductive to achieving this goal, Liars endeavor to cultivate beautiful fabrications instead; among these fabrications are faiths, political movements, and high ideals, which are designed to improve upon history and mythology in order to increase the beauty of the world.
– from George R.R. Martin’s Thousand Worlds
…this chaos is generated out of a certain water that is not common, not out of Dew, nor Ayre condensed in the caverns of the Earth, or artificially in the Receiver; not out of water drawn out of the Sea, Fountains, Pitts, or Rivers, but out of a certain tortured water, that hath suffered some alteration, obvious it is to All, but known to very few. This water hath all in it that is necessarie to the perfection of the work, without any Extrinsecall Addition.
-Thomas Vaughan, Magica Adamica
In the Westernlands
One line — a road
Two lines — a cross
Three lines — post and lintel
In five lines the basis of civilization
Five lines — a star
The tallow candle
Dripping in the darkness
Shines through the eons
Shines in the sky
Shines onto humanity
Shines onto me
A bundle of lines
Imbued with shining life
Breaking down lines
Creating circles
Putting out the candle
Putting out itself
THE QUASAR (QUASI-STELLAR OR STAR-LIKE) EMITTED RADIO WAVES REACHED OUR GALAXY AFTER 13 BILLION LIGHT YEARS AND SUN RA, WHOSE MIND-WAVES ARE SYN-CHRONISED TO NATURE WITH COORDINATED INTUITION, PRISMED THE VOICE OF THE QUASAR ON A COSMIC TONE PIANO AND THIS THUNDER IS LIKE SHOCK WAVES SHAKING AWAY THE STAGNATION OF LIFE IN THE MIND, WHEN YOU CAN MOVE IN A DIMENSION FASTER THAN LIGHT YOU SOLVE THE RIDDLE OF TIME AND YOUR MIND’S COSMOSIS COMPLETES THE EQUATION: LIFE EQUALS DEATH, FOR IN THE EXPANDING UNIVERSE THE INFINITE DESTROYS THE ILLUSION OF LIMITATIONS WHICH TRAP MAN TO THE PLANET EARTH. THE INFINITY OF CONTINUOUS AND ACCELERATING MOTION CHASES THE FLEEING GALAXY ANDROMEDA . . . THE MUSIC OF THIS FLIGHT ENERGIZES THE QUASAR AND SUN RA RECEIVES TONES FROM THAT QUASAR WHICH HAS BECOME PREGNANT WITH RADIATION AND THIS COMPLETES THE EQUATION: DEATH EQUALS LIFE IN A DYING UNIVERSE WHERE GALAXIES COLLIDE AND WHERE DEATH WEARS A MYSTERIOUS CROWN OF CONSTELLATIONS CALLED CREATION. TO HEAR THIS MUSIC IS TO HEAR THE SOLAR BAND OF REVE-LATION. THE TONES REVERBERATING HERE PASS THROUGH THE TIME SPECTRUM OF THE ARKESTRA’S MIND AND YOU SEE WITH EAR AND WITH EYE AND YOU BECOME THE METAGENESIS OF COSMIC ATOMS.
– Henry Dumas
[[[From Soundworld Disposition Settings (2022)
Each Disposition Setting can be played with any sounding equipment/material, necessitating only that electronic (including electroacoustic) sound sources are always utilized during performance of the material. Each Disposition Setting is otherwise an open invitation for a set of players (at least 2, excluding Derive Interity which should be done alone ) to explore a text’s tonal inclination as filtered through their own apparatus for noisemaking. Each composition acts as a sonopoetic nudging towards that should be followed from top to bottom in its performance.]]]
Derive Interity (Dipolar Acquisition of Extended Bodily Consciousness Through Ambient Biological Monitoring)
Set-up:
This score is for a single player only. In many places of varying terrains (at least 10), over an extended time (at least 3 months), follow these instructions:
“Go for a walk,
and breathe musically.”
Pay special attention to the differing percentages of your ability to focus on the sound taken up by your breath as you move through these different spaces, and make a list ordered by the varying levels. Once you have done as instructed in all chosen locations and your psychogeographical research is compiled, pick out the two places (which we will now refer to as Space 1 and Space 2) where your perception/consciousness of your breathing was the most and least prominent.
Re-visit the general areas of Space 1 and 2 (do not have to follow the exact same route as during your first visit) with a recording device and record 10-40 minutes of yourself following instruction #1, and 10-40 minutes of sitting neutrally not performing any action somewhere along your route. Once again keep track of the percentage of total aural perception your breath takes up in Space 1 and 2 while following instruction #1.
Sounding:
The performance of this score will be broken into two separate pieces, divided into information from Space 1 and Space 2. During the performance of each piece, do the following:
- Layer and play the set of two field recordings taken first at Space 1 (and later at Space 2) and allow them to take up a percentage of the total loudness of the soundfield equal to the halfway point between the percentages of aural perception of the breath during the first and the second visits to the space.
- The other part of the soundfield will be created via a ratio (expressed via percentage of time performing the two actions) of unsounded physical gestures (what gestures left at discretion of performer) in relation to the the performer sounding electronic sonic material (can be anything as long as it is not generated with an acoustic sound source) equal to the percentage of total aural perception taken up by the breath to one minus the percentage of total aural perception.
- So say that at Space 1, Visit 1, your total aural perception of your breath took up 30% of your aural soundfield. In this case, you would perform unsounded physical gestures for 30% of the performance time, and perform a sounding of electronic sonic material for 70% of the performance time. Performance time should be broken into minutes when accounting for this ratio to allow for 3b) to be followed correctly. The unsounded physical gestures and electronic sonic material can be interspersed as long as they do not overlap.
- Over the course of the length of the field recordings, transition this percentage of total aural perception (from which you are performing according to) from the one observed during visit one to that observed during visit two.
- When you arrive at about the halfway point between ratios of total aural perception during visit one and visit two (in above case, 50%), one should change style of both gestures and sounding.
- Piece should always end on at least 15 seconds of unsounded physical gesture (along with field recordings which have been playing the whole performance and whose end determines the end of the performance), no matter the performance ratio being used during the last minute of the performance.
- Allow a period of rest of at least thirty seconds before following the above Sounding instructions for Space 2.
- Allow a period of rest of at least thirty seconds before following the above Sounding instructions for Space 2.
When I say “I,” does it
include things around it?
When I say “I,” doesn’t it
include unknown mountains and rivers?
– Lee Ufan
“Early printing was long associated with devilry…
…One popular theory is linked to the fanciful belief among printers that a special demon, Titivillus (also referred to as “the original printer’s devil”), haunted every print shop, performing mischief such as inverting type, misspelling words, and removing entire lines of completed type. Titivillus was said to execute his pranks by influencing the young apprentices – or “printer’s devils” – as they set up type, or by causing errors to occur during the actual casting of metal type. High-profile printing errors “blamed” on Titivillus included the omission of the word not in the 1631 Authorized Version of the Bible, which resulted in Exodus 20:14 appearing as “Thou shalt commit adultery.”
Often depicted as a creature with claw-like feet and horns on his head, the origins of the Titivillus legend date back to the Middle Ages, when he was said to collect “fragments of words” that were dropped or misspoken by the clergy or laiety in a sack to deliver to Satan daily, and later, to record poorly recited prayers and gossip overheard in church with a pen on parchment, for use on Judgement Day.”
All the earth is a grave and nothing escapes it. Nothing is so perfect that it does not descend to its tomb. Rivers, rivulets, fountains and waters flow, but never return to their joyful beginnings; anxiously they hasten to the vast realms of the rain god. As they widen their banks, they fashion the sad urn of their burial.
Nezahualcoyōtl (1431-72)
two poems by Ariana Reines
Blue Palestine
Only one grass whistles out the tooth of my horse
And the moon drops fast behind the fences
And the wheat lolls back
And waits for death
I could see the sea from where I was
My mesh hat shone blue
The jagged cheek of Gibraltar
Solid, sucked in the mouth and never melting
Where my dog’s warm underleg soothes the whetstone
I speak of it thusly
I say it thusly
I lisp its name into the curl of wall stained dark in the impression of
my mouth
Only one grass whistles out the tooth of my horse
And the moon bends back
And the wheat lolls back
And opens its stomach
And waits for death
I soak it in my black water
It seethes in bags I have hung up among the rafters
It seethes in bags of amber and jasper transfusions
Flower liquids in cellophane pouches
Streaked with goo clots of plastic soldier sun
When the pitcher is poured out the length of my tongue
And ten vats of grease ignite in unison
Only one grass whistles out the tooth of my horse
A too-tight phylactory
The moon bending back
The wheat lolling back
Scrollboxes clattering on the stone
Jugs of gasoline and jugs of sand
I threw my coat on the sea
The velvet sea
My coat spread
My coat spread
It was the blue of the top of the column of milk
Its soaked embroidery
It was the ditty two winds whined into the anus of night
Skating along the floor of the brook
Are leaves and ice. Devolving on the brook floor
It is only one little one. One blue shard of pale Palestine.
The wineskins are pricked
Goats’ udders banged sore
Where mica lodges in the mucus house
Where my velvet is sucked down
Where the cheek blows thick with sleep to be brushed by the sea
Blue Palestine
Wrung swan neck in oil
Tasseling dirty day with rocks that fly and fly and fall and fall and
fall.
The moon bends back
And the wheat lolls back
A cracker whitens on the tongue of the hanged man
My velvet is sucked down the sea
The sea wall is chipped blue
The clock of Palestine
Gulls’ salt beaks
Iron drums soldered shut and stuffed with salt cod
An anvil of rammed earth in the form of a baby belly button
Hair raised on the hat of the imperatrix
Embossed forever in her brass annal
No grass screams against the foot of my horse
No rock whinnies down the side of the sea
No scroll staves off the reeds quivering in my rib wall
And no algaes quiver
And no frogs belch out the tablet over the song of my purchase of
night
Blue Palestine
Red sucker bloody on the bib of the world
Blue Palestine
Ice tray soaked in solid sun
———————————————————————–
Beauty
Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre
(Baudelaire)
These poisoned sensations have to be
Accepted if they’re to be
Overcome. Looking
Up calories on my phone
Not that I’m counting
Don’t even like numbers
It’s something vestigial
It comes in bad minutes
To teach my body something’s in control
Something little & unholy, wrong idea
Of information, chiseling a transparent minute
Into myself with the afterimage of a form
If I did this kind of thing
On the bigger machine it’d be
Worse. Worse
Things than this are bombing
The world. A terrible
Fate is coming to power tomorrow. I’m reading
The early poems of Sherman Alexie. Desolation
Of secular life. I remember the luxury of speculating
All mystical traditions grew up
In the souls of a disciplined few
Turned in on themselves while under
Occupation by tyrants. That was then. This
Morning I could see one comfort: to become rock
Hard. Could imagine one comfort:
To have become rock. I had no
Imagination. I had his. I had theirs. “Formalism
& grammar are ways to be thin…” masochism
Merely thought of, the idea of a calorie
Most boring way to feel womanly doing itself to me
This morning I was panicking, burning, I was desperate
Scanning the body of my bedfellow
Its beautiful cheeks & chin
& long smooth abdomen
My silence growing fat like an old fruit
Still making me sick
It makes me sick I longed
For the wrong thing
I longed for death. I dreamed of stone
sent by hand
19 January 2017