yhuth

yhuth (n/v)

1. Over, throughout, across but not close. 2. A miniature toy resembling the female organ formed of timber and covered with turf. An object of veneration. 3. The writer himself on board ship surrounded by the 'white'. 4. A 4,320,000 year itch. 

Only remaining: 'y' then 'z'. Once they're complete I can make the book. (At last!).

Went into town (Schleiper's) to buy a deep blue card for the cover. I'm thinking of a run of 50. (25 definition paragraphs which makes for three pages double-sided more or less.)

Further details to come.

xhuth

xhuth (n/v)

1. A sally in oscillation continued beyond the apex. 2. Of reading, etc. to flay the dregs that remain after sifting. 3. A moisture of words cursed upon the diocese. 

o

"Mercury represents syntony, or participation in the world around us; Vulcan focalization or constructive concentration... A writer's work has to take account of many rhythms: Vulcan's and Mercury's, a message of urgency obtained by dint of patient and meticulous adjustments and an intuition so instantaneous that, when formulated, it acquires the finality of something that could never have been otherwise. But it is also the rhythm of time that passes with no other aim than to let feelings and thoughts settle down, mature, and shed all impatience or ephemeral contingency."

(from 'Lightness', Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Italo Calvino)   

A volume to take slowly - letting each essay dissolve in the mind & to follow up over the next few days hints & names. 

Festina lente ...

whuth

whuth (n/v)

1. The action of binding a cloud tightly. 2. Downy, lanate, tomatose. A frothy exudation on the palate. 3. Due to the imbricated surface of the filaments, applied to words fished or scarfed. 4. The amorous solicitation of cuckoo spit. 5. (Not) to say anything (more) about (things).

ooo

This Pelican Original (price 95p, secondhand, I note) and the resissued The Quattro Cento and Stones of Rimini had been down on the bottom shelf in the lefthand corner since I shipped everything up into this room. They looked tempting but somehow the moment wasn't ripe. However, as the past twelve days or so have been spent thinking about stone and light and water Adrian Stokes seems to be the person to turn to. 

Indeed he is. 

Here's a taster of  'Art and the Sense of Rebirth' from Smooth and Rough:

"In Italy I have been much alive to what I eat. I cannot judge how the enjoyment of food has stimulated architectural interest but I feel certain that pleasure in building broadens the appetite, whether it be for the cylinders of maccheroni and spaghetti, the pilasters of tagliatelli, the lucent golden drums of gnocchi alla romana or for fruit and cheese like strong-lipped apertures upon the smooth wall of wine. We partake of an inexhaustible feeding mother (a fine building announces) ... " (p67)

Reading a passage such as this I'm hearing a Roland Barthes avant la lettre. Other pages recall (inevitably) Ruskin or Pater. And it's well-known how Stokes corresponded with Pound which perhaps explains why I also hear something of Hugh Kenner and Guy Davenport in the mix. 

It's a strange prose: in places overwrought yet saved from preciousness by the dislocations between sentences, the warped syntax, and the sheer weight of felt experience in the knowledge. 

Here's the opening to The Quatro Cento - you'll see what I mean:

"No sign of Frederick Hohenstaufen in the railway station at least. They say that his mother was delivered of him in the piazza San Giorgio, afterward named the piazza Federico. Jesi, to-day called the city of silk because there are silk factories outside the walled town, a city upon a hill with walls pushed half-way down the slope. A light afternoon rain has been prepared, falls upon the road from the station. Here, then, the town above the road that fumes into hovel doors. Before the gate there is a bridge over water that rushes to turn a mill. Inside the gate climbs old Jesi. At the moment three children under the age of six descend the steep cobbles under great eaves and long, shuttered buildings. Neither rain nor sunshine disturbs a corpse. But wait a minute! A siren yelling at the silk factories rattles every rickety shutter. Ruins are kindly; they have no shutters. They whisper through baked, uncovered lips. ..." 

Notice the abrupt opening - hovering between casual acquaintance and connoisseurship; the absent main verb in the third sentence; the morphing of "fumes" into a verb; the Ashberyian faux-immediacy of "wait a minute" (think 'The Instruction Manual') ... 

There are pages and pages of this kind of thing. Gorgeous. (And maybe add the Rilke of Malte Laurids Brigge and the Letters on Cezanne to the list of voices ghosting this text?). 

I'd put money on Stokes being a fave of John Latta. No? 

ooo

Back from the annual vacances en France ... and waiting for me on the window ledge next to the front door was a small packet containing six Steve Lacy CDs. In the haste & perspiration of unpacking the car yesterday afternoon I hadn't noticed. During the night we had a major downpour and so it was a bit of luck that the discs remained dry and intact. So far I've listened to the first two: Only Monk and More Monk and I'm wondering why has it taken me so long to 'dig' (as we jazzers say) Lacy. Cloth ears? Expecting something else & not finding it at the time (circa early1990s, Leicester)? So what (cf Miles). Now's the time (who wrote that? Charlie Parker, no?). I can't get enough of this sound. 

I delve into my piles of old Wire magazines dating back to 1992 & sure enough there's a long article/interview with Richard Cook and - 2002 - an Invisible Jukebox. 

"I started playing because I heard the call. It's an artistic calling. The first question is if you hear it, and the second question is if you heed it. ... Each thing you hear determines the direction that you go. You just follow the music, and if you follow the music you can go anywhere ... Music is just there, and you just have to leap, take a chance, go off the ledge, off the edge." 

Twelve days of - more or less - no internet & computer use which has allowed plenty of time for reflection & reconsideration. 

Lacy on Monk: "He told me: 'It's very important what you don't play ... Don't play everything. Let things go by.'" 

Why not expand this to a Philosophy of Life? 

If only ... 

http://youtu.be/0VU2sDxai1w

this might be a more reliable link.

I think this is the link to follow:

https://www.google.be/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=chris%20petit&source=video&cd=1&ved=0CDUQtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D0VU2sDxai1w&ei=ruriUe_mFcX60gXHuoH4DQ&usg=AFQjCNEYFFaYPpQBZQSorS9CPwL43z6VNw&sig2=QlOuviK4CSfrxY1DaH58-A&bvm=bv.48705608,d.d2k

Alternatively, google Chris Petit for videos and it will be the first to show up (76 minutes shown on ARTE).

I urge anyone & everyone to watch this film. Vital & important.

vhuth

vhuth (n/v)

1. i) A defender of fabrics; ii) A frequenter of inlets; iii) A hurdy-gurdy of epithets. 2. Committed depredations of llamas originating in Vienna. 3. More or less contiguous edges shading off into the surrounding. 4. That is to say. 

on the throne with zizek & zappa

o

ooo

The wife of a colleague asked a question on my behalf to Slavoj Zizek during a conference last week at Birkbeck. As far as I am aware Zizek has never made or published a statement on Zappa & they seem to have certain things in common. It seemed worth asking. 

Apparently Zizek's immediate response was violent & unpublishable for a family audience of this Blog (an expletive related to Zappa's original choice of name for The Mothers). His subsequent remarks were equally hostile - I have to wait to hear the exchange. 

However, the photographs above seem to suggest I'm on to something. So why such hostility? A classic case of repression/ denial? Or is Slavoj more a Captain Beefheart fan?

& let's not ignore the fact that Zappa's trousers are down around his ankles, whereas Zizek's jeans remain firmly in place. Philosophy refuses to bare all? The constipated nature of Western Thought? Material here for a thesis ... 

PS should our correspondent from Frimley be reading, could he confirm that the second photo is indeed Zizek & not him a few years ago? Uncanny ...