Hi
thanks for the Blake Alison.
I've become more pragmatic than utopian, although there is still a
space-cadet that lurks within in. However the romance of the 'artist'
strikes me as one of our blessings and our burdens.
A student at Miami Uni in Ohio asked me last year:
AM: what is the one piece of advice you received from a non-poet or
non-artist that you carry with you, and who was it?
cc : stop - look - listen (UK government traffic drill for kids)
Iıd want to add the word playı if employed by the gov as a copy re-writer
some day. But where to add it? Should it be play, stop - look - listen OR
play stop play look play listen OR stop play look play listen play (. . .).
The sequence of events in a creative process is not a received procedure.
For example thereıs little point in going ahead and writing a text that is
intended to be projected without exploring the means of projection and the
potential site of projection. Everything requires negotiation in relation to
everything else to a tune of appropriateness.
The idea of tuning to a phantom pitch strikes me as the poetic that
interests me now.
I hope I never stop wanting to play and having the ability to respond
playfully to whatever is thrown at me.
Meaning making is play (Bahktinıs model). Talking then is play. Putting
sounds together into a shape is play. Moving one word out of what appears to
be the body of the text into the margin is play. Setting up a dialectic
across the two interconnected spaces, the interlocking chambers, of a
double-pages spread is play. Framing something can be wickedly playful.
Writing is a certain and an uncertain form of play. Translation is play.
Iım afraid I donıt buy the frivolous view of play that betrays a soggy
protestant work ethic. Play is serious too. Play is material engagement, it
is pleasurable struggle. It isnıt always easyı for adults to play.
And then I want another word tipped into that mix and that word is
constraintı. Itıs a deceptive word but it lingers in everything we do, so
why not acknowledge it and apply its presence creatively / imaginatively?
So play stop constraint look - listen and all possible assemblages
between them
Hold this term assemblage. Itıs one way of looking at how one goes about
play. Watch a kid mucking around with things, moving them, trying to put one
thing on top of another, seeing if they break, chewing them . . .
love and love
cris
|