I like the implied concept, here, Doug of URL's as the contemporary shrines
- little journeys that one takes each day (visits to particular blogs de
poets, lit sites, elegy sites such as Tom Raworth's, etc.) It's akin to
walking only on a digital trail. A thought: Spammers are dogs that
constantly shit on the trail!
Stephen V
Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
> Ha, Stephen
>
> Only very large monitors, or the speakers to the sky at stadium
> concerts.
>
> No, I'm thinking even a few words properly placed (was looking through
> Tom Raworth's collection of elegiac commentary on Robert Creeley
> yesterday) can build something within which to 'worship' but worship
> the world as it is (or might be if we give it still some room of its
> own)....
>
> Doug
> On 20-Jul-05, at 2:22 PM, Stephen Vincent wrote:
>
>> Hi Doug: I hope you did not take my affections for Renaissance Catholic
>> architecture and ritual (!!) as some desire to resurrect all of that
>> into
>> the present, or the present of life here in the west. I don't think so.
>> We go with we got (relatively barren or not).
>>
>> I am sure some are turning - or have already turned - monitors into
>> cathedrals as we speak.
>>
>> (Off the cuff I just heard an ultra-marathon runner describe how he
>> will use
>> his cell phone - periodically during a 200 mile run - to call the next
>> town
>> to have Round Table Pizza deliver him a small pizza as he runs by a
>> certain
>> corner. I suspect - in his spirit - each slice tastes like the Lord's
>> wafer
>> - Gatorade, the wine. I would think it pretty special, too.)
>>
>> Stephen V
>> Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> I take your points here, Stephen, but want to suggest that what we are
>>> smitten with are monuments of the past, now rather empty of
>>> contemporary spiritual meaning for all but a few, & those still locked
>>> into a past unrecoverable. Any attempt to reconstruct it is even more
>>> empty, as my experience of a brand new cathedral to Mary in the middle
>>> of a field in Poland proved to be (overwrought but dead). And it seems
>>> to me that it's a strain of Christianity that insists we can do
>>> whatever we want with the lower orders of animals & plants, ie, the
>>> environment.
>>>
>>> So, we need to find in the world as it is (or can be if not totally
>>> exploited) the icons of faith in what is that inheres in art, it seems
>>> to me.
>>>
>>> Doug
>>> On 19-Jul-05, at 10:02 AM, Stephen Vincent wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks, Doug. What was (in the piece, "Word Icons") is an awareness
>>>> of
>>>> how
>>>> stripped bare of icons - with attendant architecture - we are in this
>>>> west.
>>>> I got that consciousness particularly after being in Rome and inside
>>>> a
>>>> number of Churches with all the adherent sculpture, painting and the
>>>> iconic
>>>> architecture implicit to the rituals and celebration of Catholic
>>>> belief. I,
>>>> as many Protestants before me, was totally smitten, infatuated, etc.
>>>> Along with that experience came the consciousness of how such
>>>> adoration is
>>>> so minimally expressed in a west of simple churches; "Direct Faith"
>>>> or
>>>> communication with God involved renouncing - as "we" know - most of
>>>> all of
>>>> the icons, the intermediaries, including the complexities of Church
>>>> hierarchy. Comparatively, early on, the western US the west, as a
>>>> religious
>>>> situation, is/was terribly barren. At best we were left celebrating
>>>> the
>>>> sublime as manifested in the landscape (Beirdstadt, Carleton
>>>> Watksins,
>>>> Ansel
>>>> Adams,Weston, etc.) And, that celebration is more often now than not
>>>> a
>>>> besmirched myth, replaced by environmental exploitation and
>>>> destruction of
>>>> all sorts.
>>>>
>>>> Curiously, Ed Rusha - raised Catholic - turns Hollywood and LA
>>>> signage
>>>> and
>>>> street maps into relative - perhaps bemused - signs of the Cross.
>>>> Yes, I think part of the aim of my piece, was to celebrate the ways
>>>> in
>>>> which
>>>> we - among the bereft of formal iconography (and now an increasingly
>>>> bereft
>>>> landscape) - exploit a deep consciousness of the empirical
>>>> to make a transformative practice of art and poetry. And boy, not to
>>>> be
>>>> self-piteous, does that take faith!
>>>> The importance of Jewish and Buddhist traditions - among others - to
>>>> becoming at home with the Protestant separation from the Church is
>>>> another
>>>> important element in this story, as well. But today, I will not risk
>>>> articulating any or all of such!
>>>>
>>>> Stephen V
>>>> Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
>>>>
>>> Douglas Barbour
>>> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
>>> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
>>> (780) 436 3320
>>>
>>> NOT MUCH
>>>
>>> Not much you ever
>>> said you were thinking
>>> of, not much to
>>> say in answer.
>>>
>>> Robert Creeley
>>
>>
> Douglas Barbour
> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
> (780) 436 3320
>
> I give up these words easily, they are easy
> to give up, like changing currency before
> a border: the cursive line between mountain
> and sky, say, as perfect a mismatch as any
> made in heaven.
>
> Méira Cook
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