Christopher,
Splendid reply. The point of "alienation effect" -- a wonderful poem as
most poems about meadow mice are-- is that the alienation strategy does not
compel us to encounter a strange new world but just a transformation that
is, to me, somewhat limiting -- engaged with theory and with ideas rather
and not a work of art as, for example, "King Lear," or "Guernica," or
"Ulysses."
That is, this sort of art is limited -- unlike the works I mention. I do
think that these works (the usual stuff I am reprehending) reconcile us to
the world as it is -- the only change is that this world now includes
veneration for works of "art" that are rather shallow. Very few claims can
be made for these and they are summarized in the aphorisms mentioned and
beyond that -- not much.
Ok, so let's play one note for 100 years. Ok, this means that we listen
more intently, or, or. And then when that list is completed there's nothing
else that can be said. I can read "Ulysses" for years and discover
splendors within (actually there not just imputed) again and again and I
cannot stand against it and summarize it adequately.
Art that is easy to execute (such as almost all the post avant poems admired
by whoever it is that has an execrable prose style and the most popular
poetry blog on the internet) can then make a claim to profundity because it
changes the world as it is, alienates us from language or does the opposite
and on and on but the actual art work simply exists to make rather obvious
points intended, many times, to be "improving."
My take on the post avant as I see it embodied most places is that it is
simply a return to the banal -- and actually creating this sort of stuff is
rather easy.
So, quietism and alienation strategies are reconciled in this sort of art. You
assume that the "alienation strategies" work to cause a turn something new
and better. I can find music to which I am not listening but surprises in
great art -- in Joyce, for example. I don't find it in the sort of art I
reprehend. That art takes the easy way.
And I find the shock of what isn't new in many places -- but not put forth
from the usual suspects. In fact, finding this is my specialty and
delighting in the mystery of this a chief pleasure. I recently found this
in Candice Ward's poems. And, I write about it a lot -- but am not
understood because the usual presumptions are made. Nevertheless.
On 11/29/07, kasper salonen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> <<(More recently
> he has, I believe, composed a ballet for artichokes or something of that
> sort; but that's another story.)>>
>
> HAHHAA.
> laughed
>
> KS
>
> On 29/11/2007, Christopher Walker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > <snip>
> > "If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still
> > boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one
> > discovers that it is not boring at all." --John Cage.
> >
> > Yes, tends to reconcile one to the world as it is. Very motivational.
> > I think Dale Carnegie said it first tho --in "How to Stop Worrying
> > and Start Living." [JG]
> > <snip>
> >
> > Actually that is precisely _not_ the point: 'this intolerable world'.
> >
> > Cage told this story of a reading from *Diary: How to Improve the World
> (You
> > Will Only Make Matters Worse)*: Cage read; audience listened. Observing
> that
> > the sheaf of pages in his hand was beginning to diminish, some showed
> signs
> > of relief. Finally the last page was reached. Cage picked up another
> > sheaf...
> >
> > Which is comparable, in a way, to Enzo Del Re, an Italian radical singer
> > (*Lavorare con lentezza*: *Work Slowly*) of the 70s. He used a chair for
> > percussion (an electric one had been used to execute the anarchists
> Saccho
> > and Vanzetti in 1920) and played for as long as it took. As long as it
> took,
> > that is, for the final audience member to get up and leave the room,
> > *winning* being a matter of who could hold out the longest. (More
> recently
> > he has, I believe, composed a ballet for artichokes or something of that
> > sort; but that's another story.)
> >
> > But this is only a (smallish) part of what's implied. Creation against
> > erasure ('the wrong end of the pencil'), attention changed through
> length
> > (in this sense reconciliation would be the _absence_ of attention;
> indeed
> > the best known example of Satie's *furniture music* may be *Vexations*)
> and
> > the dissolution of composition (*music* not *composition*, of course:
> use
> > rather than ownership) are just three others.
> >
> > CW
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> > 'How Much Better if Plymouth Rock Had Landed on the
> > Pilgrims' (piece by David Rosenboom 1969-72)
> >
>
--
Joseph Green
The Pleasant Reviewer
Headmaster, St. John Boscoe Laboratory School
Switchboard Captain, Hollywood Colonial Hotel
All complaints shall be directed to:
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