Further to:
For the web-challenged, I paste below Geraldine Monk's rather interesting
and no doubt endlessly arguable comment on her collaboration, as published
in Fascicle (the whole issue of which is, btw, well worth a look):
http://www.fascicle.com/issue02/main/issue02_frameset.htm
The potential infinities of poetry are impossible in one poet alone.
no(wo)(man)(is)(an)(is)land
Our minds are the embedded journalists of our bodies. We can't see
everything but everything we do see is edited by the determination of our
own psychological make-up. There may be trivial or profound reasons why we
prefer or obsess about a certain colour, sound, word or perfume or there may
be no reason at all except a physiological preference given at birth: to
luxuriate in the word, colour, texture and romantic provenance of Śolive'
but to abhor the taste creates an unavoidable ambivalence. The 'olive'
becomes the 'curate's egg' ‹ good in parts. Eggs and olives taste: paeans do
not make them perfect.
Together we produce x-trillion variegated preferences whereas individually
our variations are miniscule but it's what makes you not me. These are the
necessary limitations on the unlimited mind. No matter how much we try to
second guess or out-wit our own leanings, learnings and obsessions we can
never convincingly escape our own embedded psychological and physiological
states.
But we are human so we try.
Artists of all disciplines try even harder. We try every subterfuge we can
muster to undermine or overstep our given social, temporal, geographic and
individual entrenchments by experimenting with form and content. We
experimented to the point of abstraction via chance and random elements.
From the psychic dabblings of the ouija board or planchette to found
texts/objects, from surrealism to super realism, from the nonsense rhymes of
pre-speak to the disruptive devices of deletion and obliteration. The
ultimate form is the attempted obliteration of self or identity by forays
into persona or pseudonym.
But no matter what subterfuge we employ if we work alone we always have the
last word. Such an effective selfpolicing of the mind can only be truly
disrupted by the invasive undermining or enhancement of an other. This other
is Ścollaboration'. But collaboration can sometimes lead to a very negative
loss of control over one's work. It is a double-edged sword which may add
another voice that isn't necessarily going where we want it to go. Even if
we're not sure where that place is we know if we are going in the wrong
direction. It can be fraught and end in tears before bedtime.
So I collaborate with the dead.
- Geraldine Monk, Fascicle
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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