no more anony
no more anonymous posts after last week's series of junk comment ads. was someone really paid for writing that program? just when you thought you had psyched the invasive, colonializing, brute force of capital...
appreciating intensities and imposing agendas
if anyone remembers last weeks discussion of trash/serious work, and the comment flurry around that, it proved useful for me in exploring and disodging this dualistic sense i have that there are 2 types of cultural products - trash ones, and high ones. now i don't go round embracing this duality, but it does alight upon me from time to time, and i carry it. those are two, not neccessarily opposed, axes of cultural products. nor is serious the same as high - we can have high camp, and we can have serious work that eschews its connection to any "high", ie annotied, canonical tradition. nor does either high or serious overlay perfectly on the academy, that sense of writing as institutionalized in the MA/MFA/PhD programs. The whole debate opened me up to a sense that, a) there is a lot of energy around this topic and b) my mental map of this territory is foggy, vague, and liable to error. the kind of map where California is an island, and there is still a NW route to China.
for me though, one connection is that work that begins to seem difficult ( a word i overlay, in a poststructury sense, with - to me - the less used/less relevent serious, and with a sort of new pomo high) exposes me to a certain risk of becoming - and being seen - as overly intellectual, all mind, or inaccessible, purposefully obscure, even insane. yet to me its the work with the highest level of return visits, work i can return to, develop, challenge, and see thru. i.e not abandon. i.e. there's something alive in it, a working-thru or -out which i am still a party too. the lighter, more casual, ironic, trashy, lyrical (fivemore words which are not exact synonyms in any way, yet which i associate) stuff tends to feel more throwaway, a kind of delightful, occasional metonymic sibling, or near relative (and subtextual visitor/leavening) of the meatier, darker, more experimental stuff.
somewhere inbetween is visual work, and formal experimentation. so not exact synoyms, yet overlapping terms, related closely, from a certain perspective - a subjective orienting - mine. mine, for now, at the moment. less dualities than adjoining, perhaps contested neighboring regions on a map. there ARE polarities, but which terms become polar depends on the culture, the writer, the text.
but what gets me is my projective tendency to take a simple map and totalize it for all of my work, and for all of us - for a comic, comedy is obviously not some sideline. i might hav areally fun poem, but if i dont think i do that stuff, it will never see light of day. if the heart of our writing practice is always some edge, or edges we are pushing, a question or knot we seek to penetrate/dissolve/unravel/embrace, then where that edge is, where the greatest risk and difficulty and adventure lies (the meat) is not easily predicted, nor fixed.
the lineup of creative powers, desires and blocks varies for each writer, and IN each writer - but i have a tough time - in the moment - accepting and appreciating that difference, the spectrums, the very real diversity we exhibit, even in this little corner of blogerdom. i tend to want to totalize, to group and categorize and rank/sort. its a fascist and useful organziational tendency, but it rarely helps me appreciate work. especially in its reductive, fascist (totalized) form. and given unfettered rein, its pure solipsism and a recipe for disaster.
appreciation of the work must always precede sorting it, linking it up to a lineage, grading it, etc. intimacy before distance, practice before critique. you might be surprised how much trouble i have maintaining those priorities, that ordering. this becomes the underlying dialectic for me, a continual awakening in this tension between the ordering, conclusion-oriented mindmind, and the appreciative, curious, explorative mindheart. and that tension cuts deep, can use some love, and is wholly necesary. and asks to be fully owned, made conscious, ridden.
written. the lovely thing, for an artist - its ALL a place to begin.
no more anonymous posts after last week's series of junk comment ads. was someone really paid for writing that program? just when you thought you had psyched the invasive, colonializing, brute force of capital...
appreciating intensities and imposing agendas
if anyone remembers last weeks discussion of trash/serious work, and the comment flurry around that, it proved useful for me in exploring and disodging this dualistic sense i have that there are 2 types of cultural products - trash ones, and high ones. now i don't go round embracing this duality, but it does alight upon me from time to time, and i carry it. those are two, not neccessarily opposed, axes of cultural products. nor is serious the same as high - we can have high camp, and we can have serious work that eschews its connection to any "high", ie annotied, canonical tradition. nor does either high or serious overlay perfectly on the academy, that sense of writing as institutionalized in the MA/MFA/PhD programs. The whole debate opened me up to a sense that, a) there is a lot of energy around this topic and b) my mental map of this territory is foggy, vague, and liable to error. the kind of map where California is an island, and there is still a NW route to China.
for me though, one connection is that work that begins to seem difficult ( a word i overlay, in a poststructury sense, with - to me - the less used/less relevent serious, and with a sort of new pomo high) exposes me to a certain risk of becoming - and being seen - as overly intellectual, all mind, or inaccessible, purposefully obscure, even insane. yet to me its the work with the highest level of return visits, work i can return to, develop, challenge, and see thru. i.e not abandon. i.e. there's something alive in it, a working-thru or -out which i am still a party too. the lighter, more casual, ironic, trashy, lyrical (fivemore words which are not exact synonyms in any way, yet which i associate) stuff tends to feel more throwaway, a kind of delightful, occasional metonymic sibling, or near relative (and subtextual visitor/leavening) of the meatier, darker, more experimental stuff.
somewhere inbetween is visual work, and formal experimentation. so not exact synoyms, yet overlapping terms, related closely, from a certain perspective - a subjective orienting - mine. mine, for now, at the moment. less dualities than adjoining, perhaps contested neighboring regions on a map. there ARE polarities, but which terms become polar depends on the culture, the writer, the text.
but what gets me is my projective tendency to take a simple map and totalize it for all of my work, and for all of us - for a comic, comedy is obviously not some sideline. i might hav areally fun poem, but if i dont think i do that stuff, it will never see light of day. if the heart of our writing practice is always some edge, or edges we are pushing, a question or knot we seek to penetrate/dissolve/unravel/embrace, then where that edge is, where the greatest risk and difficulty and adventure lies (the meat) is not easily predicted, nor fixed.
the lineup of creative powers, desires and blocks varies for each writer, and IN each writer - but i have a tough time - in the moment - accepting and appreciating that difference, the spectrums, the very real diversity we exhibit, even in this little corner of blogerdom. i tend to want to totalize, to group and categorize and rank/sort. its a fascist and useful organziational tendency, but it rarely helps me appreciate work. especially in its reductive, fascist (totalized) form. and given unfettered rein, its pure solipsism and a recipe for disaster.
appreciation of the work must always precede sorting it, linking it up to a lineage, grading it, etc. intimacy before distance, practice before critique. you might be surprised how much trouble i have maintaining those priorities, that ordering. this becomes the underlying dialectic for me, a continual awakening in this tension between the ordering, conclusion-oriented mindmind, and the appreciative, curious, explorative mindheart. and that tension cuts deep, can use some love, and is wholly necesary. and asks to be fully owned, made conscious, ridden.
written. the lovely thing, for an artist - its ALL a place to begin.
posted by Kyle at 4:15 PM
1 Comments:
Yes.
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