In association with making a recent "haptic" drawing, I listened to John O'Keefe's wonderful recent performance adaptation of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. It was a presentation last summer here at the Marsh in San Francisco, filmed by William Farley, and just released on as DVD, (Go to www.farleyfilm.com for an exerpt and ordering details). O'Keefe's voices achieves a robust, sensual and ecstatic relationship with the original text and brings, at least, his sense of the man, quite to life. A real delight
I am naive to much critical work on Whitman. However, listening to the poet's spirited sense of intimacy of eye and ear for the streets of his Manhattan (folks et al), it's impossible not to make connections with Frank O'Hara's work on that island approximately a hundred years later. I cannot imaging that O'Hara was not imbued by this work.
Oh, if you want to see the drawing go to my blog (below my short riff on Rashenberg/Raushenberg Erased
http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
For the drawing In addition to O'Keefe's Whitman, I was also listening to Ornette Coleman's Meta Body. I also imagine a relationship between Ornette's sense poly-expansiveness in rhythms and idioms and Whitman. But that's an idea for another day. Of course, you can look at the "haptic" and see nothing to do with any of the above compadres.
Stephen
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