*
The woods are misty this morning, the colours duller. A new routine has established itself this week - an hour's walk between 8:30 and 9:30 after dropping the girls off.
The first morning phrases kept forming and fading. I did my best on getting home to scribble them down. Tuesday morning I deliberately took pen and notebook. Inevitably, little came - far too self conscious.
Yesterday I took the girls and a one-hour walk turned into two hours (time for hide and seek, stick finding, stitches, cold noses, groans and moans).
Yet, I've got a new idea based upon an old notebook. And other things are taking shape. I'm rethinking what this Blog is for as against the value of working more between the covers of a notebook. I'm even thinking about handwriting, looking at pages by Philip Whalen in particular. The discipline of shaping letters with the pen and hand rather than the keyboard.
So while it's hard to specify how - or why - but I think these walks have been doing me good.
*
Watched this yesterday afternoon with the girls. The central message seems to be: you wait for the wave and then ride it. And you do it because you love it.
Always good to keep this in mind.
*
Reading Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier between times.
*
A method:
Take an old notebook (one that seems dull or especially distant from your current interests). Go through page by page taking phrases that catch your eye. Give some phrases their own space. Others place in proximity. Number the sections. When the book is exhausted, read through the sections/phrases. Listen to what they say - at different times of day and from different perspectives - and the directions they suggest. Try to read as someone else. Then work back into them: shaping, extending, rearranging, interpolating other material.
I'll see what comes out of this.
2 comments:
Loved seeing the notebook -- the handwriting etc -- a qualitative difference to typed words on a screen -- the raw and the cooked . . . Your notebook discovery sounds full of potential & reminded me of something I read a while back in Barry Miles's Ginsberg -- just dug it out: pp.145-6. He goes back through old journals and takes out some of the lines, arranging them as WCW might. 'These were just the ordinary, unselfconscious notebooks, prose, and I took the nuts out of it, the intensest moments of prose, pushing everything else aside, isolating it, framing it on the page,' he said. WCW loved the result. 'You must have a book!' he cried. 'I have a new method of Poetry,' Ginsberg told all his friends. 'All you got to do is look over your notebooks (that's where I got those poems) or lay down on a couch, and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries, the mis'ries, or night thoughts when you can't sleep an hour before sleeping, only get up and write it down. Then arrange in lines of 2, 3 or 4 words each, don't bother about sentences, in sections 2, 3 or 4 lines each.'
Ah, if only it were that simple -- or perhaps it is . . .
I was intrigued by that Vashti woman -- I cd see what you were getting at -- sometimes the more autistic & less sophisticated music works best. At the more extreme end of this you really should try Jandek. I've got Ready for the House. Weird, haunting stuff. "European Jewel" is sublime (I think) -- you can hear it on YouTube.
Au revoir,
Walrus
Hello again!
We're just back from a few days in France - o the wind & the rain (mostly).
The AG quote is really good - I think it is a legitimate method (well, anything is, I suppose, if it gets you off your arse and writing!).
Actually, I was more thinking of Bernadette Mayer's list of writing exercises - she suggests something along these lines. (fyi the notes were mostly done while reading some Berrigan poems.)
As for Vashti - certainly another in my Hall of The Overlooked. Her first album is certainly worth a listen.
I'll look into Jandek - I'm sure The Wire has run an article on him/them/it.
During the weekend I was rereading 'Another Smashed Pinecone' by Mayer - she is SSSOOOOO good. Someone who just makes it seem effortless and the most seemingly inconsequential events suddenly shine. I see more and more the lineage between her and Lisa J. You close a volume of her poems and realise that it is absurd not to write every day - every moment of every day for that matter - it's just a question of mind. If only one could maintain that level of alertness... . On the level everyday - as Ted B. would say.
Day one back at the chalkface - can I maintain the newfound enthusiasm?
Hmmm...
Cheers
the C.
Post a Comment