Hey Roger, quote that bit where i say that other cultures are better or more accepting, i can't find it? Meanwhile, you might foxtrot with the following . .
Marvin Carlson (Performance) cites a definition by Richard Bauman:
all performance involves a consciousness of doubleness, through which the actual
execution of an action is placed in mental comparison with a potential, an ideal, or
a remembered original model of that action . . . the double consciousness, not the external
observation, is what is most central . . . Performance is always performance for someone,
some audience that recognises and validates it as performance even when, as is
occasionally the case, that audience is the self.
This is true for all acts of writing; would at least be worth considering? i guess the tricky term would be consciousness?
And then i want to ask that question again Roger - in what ways does poetry
>
>> not perform on the page and / or if that is not clear enough . in what way
>> is what we find on the page not a notation for eye and ear . and more
>> besides???
cc
crusader cris
On Oct 28, 2011, at 3:08 PM, Roger Day wrote:
> Yes, you do think that other cultures are 'better' - or 'more accepting'
> which is still is valuative judgement, and you said that in a positive way
> - because you said it in black-and-white two posts ago ... ah, but I'm a
> mere Westerner who's less accepting ...
>
> Performing and creating are, for me, two separate things. I build this car,
> now I drive it. They function seperately. In creating, there is, for me, no
> view of the other, the one who is essential for the performance to take
> place. When I have dug my music or words out of me, it's then that the
> 'other' hoves in to view, part of the post-rationalising process. It is only
> when one conscious - or not - of the other that the performance begins i.e.
> when the poem is delivered to the reader who is not the writer. It takes two
> to tango, and that is a performance in artistic terms. For me, the creator
> will always have that special attachment to their created work which
> pre-cludes them for the magic of performance ... which I think your
> over-arching definition de-values. But then I'm not in the business of
> crusading for 'performance'.
>
> Regards
> Roger
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 12:30 PM, cris cheek <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Hi Roger,
>>
>> i am being boring actually, because i've said this same sort of thing for
>> years and i'm still alone in thinking it.
>>
>> i'm not sure how much i can add. I don't think that some cultures are
>> better than others at all, in terms of poetry. I am saying that poetry
>> performs both on and off the page and i am seeking to blur that old chestnut
>> of a binary held up by scholars such as Walter Ong, between orality and
>> literacy. Poetry was a complex activity from the get go and much of its
>> history has occurred between sits of performance. Those whole skeins of
>> poetic history that you refer to are, i agree, utterly fascinating in their
>> complex. In many many instances that complexity involves a sense of voice
>> that does not leave the body and that voice that does leave the body (the
>> voice in the head as one reads what is on the page and the voice in one's
>> head when one listens to a poem read by another and the voice one produces
>> when one reads a poem out loud - one written by you as well as one written
>> by another but being rewritten by you in those moments et cetera). These are
>> all, i contest, performances of the poem.
>>
>> I do go further and assert, at least in my more oring moment, that the
>> composition of a poem is itself a performance. Rather than rendering the
>> word performance meaningless it seems to me to remove the word performance
>> from being a potentially derisory term for poetry and instead suggests that
>> there are differing kinds of performance. Those differences, those
>> complexities, those skeins, allow for conversations about performance to
>> take on more subtlety.
>>
>> Maybe i can reframe this as a question to you . . in what ways does poetry
>> not perform on the page and / or if that is not clear enough . in what way
>> is what we find on the page not a notation for eye and ear . and more
>> besides???
>>
>>
>> cris
>>
>>
>> On Oct 28, 2011, at 2:46 AM, Roger Day wrote:
>>
>>> No you're not being boring but you are eliding whole skeins of
>> interesting
>>> history and culture to homogenize it to your own particular view point.
>> IMO,
>>> you are ascending olympia one step at a time and using that old punk
>> excuse
>>> to pretend you're not.
>>>
>>> Clearly, you think that some cultures are 'better' than others when it
>> comes
>>> to this touchy subject, otherwise you wouldn't have make that remark
>> about
>>> 'non-western' - I'm interested in hearing on what criteria you come to
>> this
>>> conclusion.
>>>
>>> I'm reminded of Terry Eagleton's remark about 'ideology' - if you think
>> that
>>> eveything is based around ideology, then the word 'ideology' becomes
>>> meaningless. I think that when you use your word performance to embrace
>> all
>>> of of poetical practice, 'performance' becomes meaningless ...
>>>
>>> Regards
>>> Roger
>>>
>>> On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 12:19 PM, cris cheek <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> indd Roger
>>>>
>>>> i'm being boring
>>>>
>>>> i'm saying, again, that poetry has a long history of performing on and
>> off
>>>> the page
>>>>
>>>> and that in many cultures the page still does not pertain
>>>>
>>>> they are not mutually exclusive
>>>>
>>>> they support the same premise
>>>>
>>>> where there is not a page the poem in in the body, the mouth the air the
>>>> ear and the memory of the listener
>>>>
>>>> where there is a a page the poem is both on it and off it (one might say
>>>> that they take part in differing models of communication . one ritual
>> and
>>>> the other transmission)
>>>>
>>>> sometimes when it is off the page (perhaps it is both indeed there is a
>> lot
>>>> of that about ;=0) then it approaches other art forms . . unsurprising .
>> .
>>>> song, for exmle, and monologue and drama and stand up and live art et al
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> what i often hear and i was hearing it again but perhaps it was my fault
>>>> for mishearing it . is the sense that either is somehow somehow superior
>>>>
>>>> or more evolved or more sophisticated or more complex or more generally
>> a
>>>> subject of disdain
>>>>
>>>> and as an old punk i am more inclined to force my head up my ass under
>> such
>>>> circumstances
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> cris
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Oct 27, 2011, at 6:54 AM, Roger Day wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Oh, cris. Your Olympian view is so ... bracing. But what do you mean,
>>>>> 'non-western'? I don't understand ... I thought, like Dave, that the
>>>> 'west'
>>>>> - whatever that is - still has some idea of multiple performances of a
>>>> poem
>>>>> ...
>>>>>
>>>>> Didn't Tennyson do one of the first wax cylinder recordings?
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 7:37 AM, David Bircumshaw <
>>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> cris cheek wrote on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 21:25:19 -0400
>>>>>>
>>>>>> " . . but since it's clear that poetry has for several thousand years
>>>> been
>>>>>> (in many cultures) integrally implicated in the deveopments of
>>>> performance,
>>>>>> from early epic through the mead halls into contemporary rap . the
>>>>>> non-western acceptance that poetry is to be enjoyed both through
>> reading
>>>> on
>>>>>> the page and being explored off the page
>>>>>>
>>>>>> what on earth is the problem here?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> point-scoring is as addled a past-time in respect of poetry on the
>> page
>>>> as
>>>>>> off the page"
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I agree, point-scoring poetry is an addled pastime, so in what context
>>>>>> would
>>>>>> anyone want to 'quantify' 'quality' in poetry? Which was the question
>>>>>> asked.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Other than that, I am interested in your version of literary history,
>>>> this
>>>>>> one where say Tennyson or Dylan Thomas or Wordsworth rejected the
>>>>>> performing
>>>>>> of poetry, as did the Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights, or the
>> whole
>>>> of
>>>>>> Russian poetry, or Lorca, or Miguel Hernandez, while that most
>> literary
>>>> and
>>>>>> textual poetic culture in China has presumably migrated across a
>>>>>> continent.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> best
>>>>>>
>>>>>> dave
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> David Joseph Bircumshaw
>>>>>> "The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the
>> universe
>>>> is
>>>>>> that none of it has tried to contact us."
>>>>>> - Calvin & Hobbes
>>>>>> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
>>>>>> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
>>>>>> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
>>>>>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw
>>>>>> twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave
>>>>>> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>
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