I think I know what freedom you're after, Chris. I'm
wrestling with the tyrany of the left margin.
--- Chris Jones <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-02-10 at 17:03 +0100, Anny Ballardini
> wrote:
>
> > What do you suffer from Chris?
>
> Life. Of course, life is a process of breaking down.
>
> Well, as Frederick suggests, it is a move from the
> first person personal
> narrative to third person universal immanent
> critique and a technique or
> way into ficto-criticism if I can use these terms
> very loosely and in a
> vulgar sense. (What Frederick is doing in moving
> from 1st to 3rd person
> is far more complex then simply saying 3rd person
> narrative, of course.
> Free indirect discourse may be closer.)
>
> I suffer from from coeliac disease and chronic
> fatigue syndrome, two
> inter-related autoimmune complexes, best treated by
> opiates like heroin.
> I am a heroin addict and injecting drug user, this
> is no secret. Before
> being forced into medical retirement I last worked
> in the HIV/AIDS
> industry as a communication specialist in injecting
> drug use and the
> transmission of blood borne viruses. It has been
> assumed time and time
> again that I have AIDS and should be dead by now. (A
> heroin addicted gay
> male with coeliac disease looks like a terminal AIDS
> case, so this I can
> understand.) One of the joys of this job was meeting
> David Hertk, after
> shooting up some speed in the disable toilets and
> then at my apartment
> calling my heroin dealer who arrived ten minutes
> later with some of the
> best heroin available in Sydney at that time I sat
> in a hotel room as
> David handed me drafts of a book he was writing
> called _The Bunker_ on
> the last days of Hitler's bunker. I read several
> poems in silence,
> unable to speak. I thought of my abortive attempts
> at line verse in what
> I vainly hoped would be my second book, called _The
> Bar-B-Q_ and a
> silence came over me. After reading these few draft
> poems I knew what
> freedom was. No longer could I write line verse.
>
> Freedom is knowing nothing left to loose and line
> verse, as written by
> David Hertk in these draft poems was line verse that
> need not be written
> again ever. It was line verse with that sort of
> power, that freedom
> which is nothing left to loose. I did continue with
> _Bar-B-Q_ as a
> series of multi-voice monologues and still try to
> add some more.
>
> But more so, I decided to move to what is said to be
> the traditional
> prose novel form only to find that this is like
> writing ninety thousand
> words and packed into three hundred pages of verse
> without line breaks.
> Each word must carry the same importance as if it
> were a word in line
> verse, a word in poetry. (So far as I can find out
> David has not
> published _The Bunker_ and is also working on a
> novel.)
>
> If you look at Federick's poem "The Congressman’s
> Daughter" and without
> meaning to do it some violence you can see that it
> can be made into what
> looks more like prose by removing the line breaks. I
> want to remove the
> line breaks as well.
>
> I can give an example from the draft of _Swindle
> Book One_:
>
> The surfer with the Bondi colours turns and looks at
> Gavin, takes three
> quick steps toward him and strikes Gavin between the
> eyes with a
> clenched fist. Gavin strikes back. They grapple and
> fall heavily into
> the sand. Broken glass buried in the sand cuts their
> wrists. Frothy red
> arterial blood mingles with deep red venous blood
> sucked of its oxygen.
> The two young men, faces white with shock, call a
> halt to the bloody
> fight.
>
> Sure, it appears a long way from line verse like
> this but I could
> imagine it as line verse, too. This is another
> aspect of free indirect
> discourse. The distinctions between verse and prose
> can get lost.
>
> Must go... more later.
>
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