From the upcoming book Various Devices (Moscow, Polyphem)

For She

THE BACK OF the head resting on the pillow was not wasted. We couldn’t hear each other speak. The puddle in the bathroom, the sassy one. There were many years between us. I stared the stranger into facing up to Maxine, who had come out of the forest bad from wet nights. I came from an odd bed, a vermilion riot attracted to loud dogs. Nonetheless, I could pay my rent and provide for him. On this occasion she apologized. An arrangement that did not provoke inspection. Outside on the stagnant water was a motto. He more than I perhaps though younger. I sweat at amphibians, managed to get home. The sunlight from the window played up his golden curls and a fist screwed over one eye. Right to left and left to right until the sides of her body were circuits. While dazed and hidden in the room, he sang to himself, severe songs, from a history he knew nothing of. Or should I say malicious? Some rustic gravure, soppy but delicate at pause. I wavered, held her up. I tremble, jack him up. Matted wallowings, I couldn’t organize the memory. Where does he find his friends? Maxine said to me, «But it was just you again.» In spite of the cars and the smoke and the many languages, the radio and appliances, the flat broad buzz of the tracks, the anxiety with which the eyes move to meet the phone and all the arbitrary colors, I am just the same. Unplug the glass, face the docks. I might have been in a more simple schoolyard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Open box (fragment)

Blank note
When one listens becomes
Don’t finish the thought
As it would shut away

The page will not inflate
Lungs do
That’s clink between
Thud and shine

Above kitchen rolling
Here
Kitchen
Is a fluid first, then later

Almost nothing
An illusion
Following from
Of

What wasted
As if gratitude were a kind of thing
To give up
Give it up

A whacky thing
But some waste, an extra whack for instance
Creates a little dogma
Vexed regard

Neither efficacious nor harmful
Something wanted here
A decision
With the option of turning back or resting between

Between us and a thing
Not yours, not mine
That owns us
Makes us relate to force

[. . .]

Said it’s good
To see
Face
Holding

What I mean is blending persons
The pleasures of abstraction
Meeting in a chill
Amplifies

Such that the box is equally present
From the perspective of any
Side and its open
Distance

Any combination will unpack
Already done
No more work
Even dawning will remarking make

[. . .]

A score without objective
Open hands deploy
Hope without hope
As future etch

Between a word and a thing
Lives a little dummy
Hired
To make sense of people

Someday
Some say
Snarl
For fun

One can love between words
For a long time
In bad times
Friends build dummies nests

[. . .]

Old song
Of what the hell is
Disappearing in
The mortar

Filling up
And cup
Today
They’re full

Thank something else
Not oneself for this
To avoid the greed
That stares down

You and me stared down
Unreasonably, friend
And younger people too
Let’s not pass that on

 

 

 

 

Adorno’s Noise (fragment)

consents to statements one knows ultimately to implicate murder (A Score)

········· I have never seen a dead             confounding array of information

········· one          a vast circular logic      two       we agreed to park it

········· three         each has been brought forward in the preceding statement mental distance is necessary           I am serving in the Senate

········· It’s buoyed our spirits         a road improvement plan            excuse it them, in times of peace

········· my sound mind’s distance             having become a bit overbearingly loud          no person pictured one two three         brought forward in the summons

········· dined is the precise sentence           designating a complete thought whether vegetarian or         the poet suffered a word death             the outcome     could    not    have     been     predicted having become reliant upon

········· other people          stepped between        many saw    it    coming two persons           riveting         against our better judgment the invasive species was permitted to appear          in unprotected

········· blind spots      or cloture         osmosis one vagrant two         crying out loud three          each has been brought forward        in the future site

········· cite          lived there first “this is not prose”      still       riveting        Rosie became the symbol of unemployment                the constitution revels in formalities           I think I know what this document is trying to convey           what I was to it, without question            who it was to it, without question

········· suffered a word death             knowing the literature           the dotted line they signed            I have never seen           a song with words intermixed such that all figures of speech borrow strikes from their roots             It is not that some grave responsibility awaits           It is not that this pleasure of                   Where the accused stand waiting            It is not that this picture of

········· Where the            was protected by            With             So that an appeal there not being thus to be done now                  actions are caused by chemicals           Leaving the earth for a phrase:               I had met her in the dark

To performers: note that density increases toward the bottom of the score

 

 

 

 

Memory Play (fragment)

Prologue
(A bedtime story/conversation in a little tent town out in the salt flats.)

REPTILE
If I tell you one thing that I remember, you will think I’m an idiot for remembering only one thing. This is one thing that makes theater different from real conversation. If I provide you with several of my most esteemed memories, you will probably believe there are more where those came from, and I will have earned your respect. This will make theater a little more like real conversation.

PELICAN
I have a job and it is virtually all I can think about; however, I think this: memory is nothing but words stored up in an inefficient computer. What you will remember of this conversation will be nothing like what went into its construction. Such understanding promotes success in business. I know that people want to see the tip of the iceberg only. Business is like a successful cabaret.

FISH
I had suffered for a long time from the illusion that remembering inhibited one’s experience. Now the illusion is almost my only memory- and that I am cold and that I have been cold for a long time and that this coldness was brought on gradually by an illusion. Yet, it is likely that I will not be cold later. Then, I will remember something else and not this. I will have forgotten the story to which I currently refer. Each person has her own theater. I propose this as an exhibit or a symptom of my personal stage.

REPTILE
Who is the bully?

PELICAN
The spitting image of continental drift.

FISH
Envy is the disease of the 90’s as opposed to…

PELICAN
…the person, it must be sellable, it must be way up there, but it must not make the normal consumer feel small, it must be way out there but something like what the regular kind of person sees in himself, something that can expand.

FISH
You must be a toy inventor. The image on the outside of the box is hot and fierce; inside, the toy itself is gray and cold. From this we learn that toys are the souls of aggressors.

REPTILE
Who is the bully?

PELICAN
The thing you want to buy. The thing I want to sell. Something to play with!

REPTILE
I think I remember who it is: a man slept here. He was going through the roof in this thought, he was saying this is driving me through the roof in my sleep, this is waking me up. The sky buzzed in the dim field. The pleasing buzz muted displaced events acting out their insane melodramas: women in large groups going upstairs to apartments leaving solitary males below imitating the habits of lizards, then the women reappearing, laughing or biting with an overtone of repulsive sincerity, but the distant buzzing distracts him from this center stage event, and he enjoys himself…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ocean approaching Berlin

A speck of someone in the middle of a Berlin Street out in the open. Clandestinely is it I? Or something else? Telescoping out to a view still close-in of many streets with people hiding in reconstruction doorways, several of them on varying cobbled and narrowed and paved streets some so broad and straight they exhaust the idea of walking to where one is going but there are also people out and about though I sense not for enjoyment, then I recall enjoyment, a noisy recall, as option and a falling in love sensation tracks my tracking from the ocular position of a digital surveillance device you also have on your computer, so I see that I am replicating google maps but in 3D. This world is too barren. Fullness goes missing. An ocean of sound swells and recedes through the spaces left in the absence of traffic noise. A broom scratches across a ground floor patio, already clean as a whistle. Then the ocean of sound, then the broom scratching, then an exhale ending in a whistle. The sweeper lowers self slowly onto a cushioned patio chair seat. The sound wells up in splashes washing out higher pitches. Elements intercede in elements. An ocean approaches Berlin. The Spree quietly courses through the city unhampered by encroaching waves and the threat of boundlessness, of water bodies mixed in cocktails of sorrow, in flashes of blue light through a hospital window on one side of the Spree and then the other. A fugue of blue flashes, brooms brushing surfaces. Time blinks in their hypnosis. It blinks, and again blinks unwittingly attracting tracking radar. A device in nowhere plucks at time with the assistance of the tracking. Track and pluck track and pluck. Then a wave of sound almost swallowing the city in a seductive wish coming from a mind—in there out there. That something else telescoping, not me. Or just neural phenomena. Then a literal wave threatening to crash the Spree—the Spree, nerveless and brusque. The through line continues its direction to merge with the Havel, flow into the Elbe, enter the North Sea. The landlocked Baltic via the Kiel Canal. Radionuclides flow into a scientist’s sample gatherings. The sweeper again sits down slowly on a cushioned patio chair, this time on an ocean liner. This time on a skiff carrying scientific gear to testing sites. Someone faint and far may be sweeping ocean surface. A sound of completing a task of breathing out a little heavily of painstaking movements and the pleasure in calibrated gesture. Time blinks again, loses a relay falling on the tracking signal and then the whole apparatus. Where did the time go someone asks from inside a garage I am passing, out in Spandau or suburb of a different city. Time doesn’t hold water. It washes through a child’s voice coming through the speaker phone. I or that not-me something else have overheard a private conversation again, captive to or captivated by surveillance again dreams circling back to where you and I live or have lived or will be living under time’s re- soundings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Toy Boats

I PREFER TO distribute narrative rather than deny it.
          The enemies of narrative are those who believe in it and those who deny it. Both belief and denial throw existence into question. Narrative exists, and arguments either for or against it are false. Narrative is a ping-pong ball among blind spots when considered in the light of its advantages and defects.
          Narrative holds within its boundaries both its advantages and defects. It can demonstrate its own development as it mutates throughout history. This is its great advantage. I.e., in accomplishing its mutability, it achieves an ongoing existence.
          Narrative might be thought to be a character and its defects lie in his «potential to observe his own practice of making falsehoods.» If this narrative is imitating anything, its intention is to convince the audience to enjoy the imitation, whatever its lack of truth or reasonableness.
          Those who object to this artifice are narrative’s enemies, but they, too, are part of the story. They are subjects in the hypothetical world of a story. «I» too am a subject of narrative; I see enemies all around.

          Because nothing is happening these days, no weather, no fighting, morning and nights, I had thought to begin my account with a little fable or narration. But I have been intercepted en route by a question, attempting to trap in flight that which forms a narration. What does it mean to allow oneself this indulgence? The indulgence of a little story? Meanwhile we have gone down in defeat and my account has entered history.

          This is a more or less inaccurate translation of a bit of writing from Jean-Pierre Faye’s Le Récit hunique. It is a story about the temptation to tell a story whose fate by the mere coincidence of time is to enter history. Faye tells us the story about the story rather than the original story, which has disappeared into history along with the enemy. The original has been replaced with a story that functions as a critique. The critique holds its story up as an example. Or, another way to look at this is that a story can be an example of a story and so serve as a critique.

What Is the Status of Narrative in Your Work?

Oh, the boats are large, are they not?
Whatever gave you that idea?
From looking at myself.
You are introspective?

          I am an indication of what occurs around me. For instance, some snakes occur in forests, whereas others occur at the zoo. This is something zoos will not confess, for when you read the labels, snakes occur someplace other than in their cages.
          Your argument doesn’t follow. You are a bad philosopher.
          I am showing you around behind the scenes and you call me a bad philosopher. You don’t have to call me anything. Look at those large boats, dream of the ports they have come from. Think of the miscellany they carry, the weapons that can drive anyone into a frenzy of fear and conjure a story. From out of the blue, the boats descended upon us. We were dwarfed by their size. What were they doing here and why so many? The German and the Mongolian were nearly touching hulls. It was as if they were human and we were ants. The children playing behind us had not yet noticed this ominous display. But as you can see, I can only make fun of the possibility of your tale.
          My tale?
          Isn’t that what you wanted?
          You have no tact, no skills, no frame of, frame of…
          You mean no plan.
          Nor do you produce resemblance or have a serious purpose or struggle with truth.
          Or dally in genre literature.
          There are no sentiments. It seems we are beginning to find some points of agreement. A resemblance to death and destruction is death and destruction, etc.
          Like beans on the same shelf.
          Yes, a bond.
          The reality principle is continuous with our relationship so we don’t have to trace things.
          The facts we have come up against are in need of processing.
          I don’t have to tell a story to make a point.
          The story is an example of your point. An ugly howling face comes out of nowhere. It is artfully executed.
          You mean a bad boat.
          No, you have provided that information. But don’t get upset by the disparity. A harmonious relationship produces a tedious vanity and a single repetitive conversation…
          (Then the boat sank, leaving behind them pieces of purple debris floating out of the harbor.)

           The question of the status of narrative presupposes a hierarchy of literary values I don’t entertain in my work. Narrative is neither an oppressor to be obliterated nor the validating force of all literary impulse.
           «You get to the world through the person. Anyway, it’s true. And yet, I keep wondering what does this mean in some larger sense? And then I wonder what larger sense I am getting at. There is something on the other side of what I can articulate that grabs the writing to it.»
           Extension is inside and outside of the writer. But I could also say that the thing pulling the writing toward it is chaos: the words fall in place in anticipation of a jumble. Or equally it could be an as yet unarticulated theory, which if ever made articulate would comprise a number of fragmented histories. Histories that have been intercepted en route by questions. The result might be something like a montage of collapsed ideas. This is a reflection on the enormity of the world. I am not in possession of all the facts.
          Because I continue to avoid those absolutes like morning and then night, I can’t get back to the original statement. And yet I contradict myself, as these statements distribute themselves in their oblique reference. The word ground here comes to mind. The ground is the constructed ideology. Or a world of print.
          Do I see the ground but can’t make sense of it?
          I am already anticipating exhausting this subject.
          A structure for writing that comes from anticipation relative to an elsewhere, which to become somewhere—i.e., a writing—must borrow from the things of this world in their partiality.