Saturday, June 14, 2008


dream last night involving Jeremy Prynne. We're in a bar somewhere - London, Cambridge Oxford (?) with an assortment of Prynne-ites. He looks his real age and yet i) resembles the golfer Greg Norman (i.e. kind of sandy blonde raked-across hairstyle); ii) speaks with an East Anglian farmer's burr and Cambridge High Table posh. At one point he starts reading his poems in a duet with an acolyte - all the while holding an old Sony Walkman cassette recorder to preserve the event.

Needless to say, I cannot remember a phrase he read.

(Two years ago, a similar dream in which Robert Creeley showed me his notebooks).

4 comments:

walrus said...

I'm stumped as to how to interpret that one!

Just came across this & thought you might be interested: Outsider Art by . . . Louis Armstrong!

http://www.theparisreview.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5835

Walrus

PS The vidlink worked fine, though I'm not entirely sure what I made of it! Enlighten me . . .

belgianwaffle said...

re. Misha Mengelberg ...

... one of those "I've heard the name but never knowingly followed him up" candidates for me (in fact, he's on the Evan Parker/Bailey CD I posted earlier).

The DVD contains a documentary about MM in which he comes across as a bit of a crotchety irritable type - I can identify with that! A key moment in his career was seeing Duke Elington come on stage and simply start playing - the other band members resuming their positions a bit later. That a music could 'work' like that stuck in MM's mind. I suppose it's a bit like my first visit to Company Week at the Conway Hall with OTL and witnessing 'impro' music. That this was possible was life-changing & head expanding.

And so ... the way MM walks on stage and places the coffee cup on the floor (a deliberate provocation in itself?) and then starts to play those runs ... yes, I can get something out of this. And, of course, I'm thinking of extensions to the world of poetry. (This morning I re-read sections of Joan Retallack's book on John Cage).

And, finally, there's Hans Bennink's drumming. Wow! (And his cover art is pretty damn good too!).

As for the J.H.P. dream - I get recurrent 'Master' dreams. No doubt all sorts of Oedipal-Harold Bloom-neuroses bubbling under the surface.

OK. Last week before the school holidays begin. Yippee!

The C.

walrus said...

Lucky you. And thence to the sessions of sweet silent thought... Are you still planning to write sonnets? Good luck with 'em. No more anxiety of influence, just confluence without anxiety.

W

belgianwaffle said...

Yes, more Sonnets - as and when they come - more anything! It's a case of getting 'in the zone', waiting for the wind to blow, the Muse to smile favourably, the ink to flow, the etc. etc. etc.

So many good intentions!

So many prevarications!

doucement, doucement ...

April Fool?