Penny Arcadia

(Joseph Cornell 'listening' to a book, c. 1970)

Who has got close? Peter Gizzi in his series 'Locket'; Elisabeth Willis in The Human Abstract; Brian Catling, maybe. Those are the ones who strike a chord with me. Yet there's one more - perhaps the secret key to unlock the boxes - Emily Dickinson. "The thought beneath so slight a film", "soundless dots - on a Disc of Snow - " , "A sphere of simple Green", "An hour in Chrysalis to pass" ... lines like these continue to vibrate.

***

These are notes transcribed from a couple of summers ago. Writing off, away from, Cornell's boxes themselves and Rosmarie Waldrop's texts. I am fascinated by the boxes (of course) but also the archive Cornell assembled: dossiers, files, shoeboxes. Then there is the mass of scribbled notes, diary entries, sightings, 'extensions'.

The challenge - as I see it - is not so much translate the content. Instead, it is to find an equivalent method. A glass, a marble, a metal ring, a cut out of a parrot from a magazine, a Boys' Own diagram of the solar system, a lock of hair.

Paragraph units seem appropriate. Reading through these notes I see how much depends upon punning association. In fact, I think it might be more appropriate to juxtapose sounds: as Cornell sets dissimilar objects together to make them sound. Juxtaposition and arrangement certainly seem to be the way to go. I'm open for suggestions.

***

i

Four sentences. Four lines. Each line is a frame. A frame-up. Four by four by four. The cube route. Go fourth and multiply yourself.

ii

You are in the cross-sights. ⊕ . Perspective puts you in the picture. The eye around which it all circles. Eye-I by now a commonplace. Vanishing point. Everything flees from me.

iii

Naval and navel. Navigation of the waves which ripple constructively and destructively from my being. Circumnavigate mistaken for circumcision. My bull’s eye. Target. ‘Ex’ marks the spot. Unbelievable. Umbilical.

iv

Waves of sound, light, water.

v

Seismograph boxes. Seemingly fixed and stable, immovable, and yet sensitive to imperceptible tremors (here) but vast tectonic movements (there).

vi

Telescope boxes. Ways of sighting tiny specks of light which are vast burning masses of energy. The ‘now’ of seeing light years away from the source. Orbits, eclipses, returns, constellations. A bus schedule ephemeris. There’ll be another one along shortly. There are no corners in space to come around.

vii

Imagine of the stars came out only once in a hundred years. Who said that? Emerson? Thoreau?

viii

The language of mathematics. Line, curve, demonstration, proof, logic.

ix

The egg and its energies. Latent and developing. And the shell.

x

All that light exceeding me. Arcadia (Sidney) and Urania. Look away from the sun to see what it illumines.

xi

Box as trap. Imprison the viewer. Take you in. You are one among objects. To assemble resemblance of what?

xii

Scale & purpose? Elgin marbles. Children’s marbles which roll behind the sofa and between the cushions. Globes. Emersonian circles. The transparent eyeball. Harmony of the spheres. “What discord when planets to disorder wander ...” (Troilus and Cressida)

xiii

Voice box. Echo box. Loudspeakers. Amplifiers. Radio sets. Crystal sets. Transmitters. Receivers. Wave lengths? Stations? The World Service. Ear as well as the eye Black box. The last minutes of voices in distress. “We’re going down ...”. Air traffic copntrol loses sight. How many voices on board?

xiv

Disconcerting intimacies. Lick. Fur. Tickle. Tongue. Breath. Lip. Stroke. Shudder.

xv

The cabinets reflect. Your face looking out. “Your” contains “our”. Photo of Cornell looking at his own reflection (by Hans Namuth 1970). Cabinets of Curiosity. Jekyll & Hyde. “... marked E ... folded paper ...”. Means for self-transformation.

xvi

All books are secondhand. In movement in time. A watch seems to stop, then the hand moves.

xvii

All books are secondhand. Belong to someone else before & after & during. No such thing as a blank page. “The blank page is not blank”.

xviii

Intelligent collaborators. War-time interzones. A message is passed, left, picked up surreptitiously. The Third Man. (those notes? – April-July 05 red nbk) Cocteau’s ‘Orphee’ & radio broadcasts. Orpheus as double agent ‘above’ ground and in the Underworld. Jack Spicer. Poetry as broadcasts. Wallace Berman’s transistors.

xix

When statement contains understatement. One sentence looks for another. Echo. Confirmation. Double vision. Squint. Cross your i’s and dot your t’s. I cross.

xx

How many of these sentences are echoes? After images. Ex-cited? Trailing their birth chords/cords? From whose matrix? Womb threads. The spin doctor. Scratch yourself on the mix. Historical events are always intimtae for someone. Again persepective. Now, then. Retrospect objectifies. First hand accounts. Eye witness.

xxi

Recurrent image of the ship voyaging across the waves. Rimes of ancient seamen. Ulysses. Oily seas. Coleridge. Baudelaire. Melville.

xxii

Image of high fidelity. The point around which we orbit. Pin & stylus. Dig the groove, man. Time lapse photo of the skies. Immense tracks of the stars circling above our heads. Send your head spinning. His Master’s Voice.

xxiii

At hand. At arm’s length. As far as I can throw it. One foot. The distance of an inch: between the tip and the first joint of the thumb. Out of sight. Within hearing. Rub your nose in it. On the tip of my tongue. Put my finger on it. Hair’s breadth. Pubic space & public space.

xxiv

At sea in language. Twefth Night. Salty solutions. Brine. Preserving love with tears. Viola. Olivia. Anagrams and twins. Jumbled letters. Alphabet soup from which our being is made. A-n-d/D-N-A. Conjunctions.

xxv

Shipwrecks. Oceanic memories & birth trauma. Boxes cast up on shore. The Piano. Wreckers. Drowning in language. Titanic. Man overboard. Scaling the high Cs.

xxvi

Footnote to the text equivalent to antique dealer’s provenance. Where is the value of a sentence to be located? On the back of the canvas? An accompanying letter (correspondence)? A photo of Mr X holding the cup with the King of - ? The signature looked genuine. The inscription. Hallmark. Another sign. Where does it end?

xxvii

Cornell’s dossiers. His archives. His extensions . What is in the box? The box as an attempt to shut the endless proliferation of sense? Pandora’s box in reverse. Once they’re sealed what apocalypse is unleashed? Apo + calyptos. Cut it out. Cut-outs. Time stalled.

xxix

There is – sometimes – a logic (unlogic?) that takes over. Dictates each sentence. Working between texts. Corresponding through putting your ear to the page. Photo of Cornell with a book to his ear (Hans Namuth c.1970).

xxx

A theoretical experiment (they call it a ‘thought experiment’) in which something occurs between two boxes even though they do not have any direct means of communication. A ‘jump’. The magician’s sleight of hand. How the electron acquires a different charge or ‘spin’.

xxxi

Suitcase. Travel belongings. Going through customs. Anything to declare? X-ray of a toothbrush, underpants, socks. See through nighties. The 100 per cent genuine leather hide. Border crossing. Passepartout. Passport.

xxxii

Story of a door. When is a door not a door? When it is a deaf ear. Dr J and Mr H. How to get back in when you’re not yourself. Sending myself a letter.

xxxiii

Overdetermination of names. Or what Freud calls condensation. Annette. Listen: a net. Rosmarie Waldrop. Mary Rose. Her name an interesting telescoping of a sunken ship. Valery on poems and shipwrecks. Wall drop. The barrier comes down.

xxxiv

Fairy stories – Cinderella. If the shoe fits. False translation: glass slipper. Transformation at midnight. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Phallicism of sheathing. Menstruation. Slips. Slippers. Poe’s raven. “Nevermore” versus “ever more” versus “once upon a time” versus “happily ever after”. Mother. The step mother replacement. Substitution. Penny in the slot. The penny drops. Arcade and arcadia. Penelope.

xxxv

i-m-a-g-i-n-e = e-n-i-g-m-a + I

xxxvi

Within one sentence the impression of a sudden warp. We’ve gone from ‘this’ to ‘this’ but no jump signalled. At what point – exactly – do we shift? Time warps – Dr Who – and those notes?

xxxvii

Cornell’s boxes are deceptively ‘present’. Each object haunted by its original context. Which was? The physical object empties itself. You hear quotation marks around it. At home in eviction.

xxxviii

My earlier thoughts on Cornell’s glasses – in fact in flux – the slow flow of liquid which is glass. Transparent. Eternal – in what sense? They lived happily ever after – and then?