nom@hf7y

15.04.13
15.04.06.tony
15.03.30.elle
15.03.16.phony
15.03.09.parenthese
15.03.06.doves
15.03.01.nihilabstractly
15.03.01.nihil1
15.02.23.nichols
15.02.21.newyear
15.02.21.2
15.02.19
15.02.18
15.02.17
15.02.16
15.02.15.2
15.02.15

15.04.13

writing about co's work
tony said yesterday
something about composition
what is expected of
a robust work, is structure.

In a large sense,
I really am meditating
here. It's not
as if I've had theses
thoughts already.

I will focus on what
enables that movie
we saw last time
to 'give me voice'
but not speak for me

I will discuss the
challenges of this,
the inevitable pull
toward the exotic,
for example

Finally, I will think
about my own work. I
will consider these
challenges as I confront
my project to make music
in (for, by) the suburbs

So first, this film
& how does it play
for me?

What is it that
lets me say, "it
gives me voice"?

Can it be a way it
listens ahead of me?
that there is a listener
anticipating my hearing,
taking care.

The attention to listening
let me become a listener,
it allowed me to listen
as myself. In that a
discovery of "myself"
a necessary uncovering
or becoming.

In that moment of listening
I am allowed to come into
being.



Necessarily, I must feel
as if I am centered. For
it to be mine I must feel,
not necessarily that I was
the imagined center of the
work, but that I may be
myself-as-center.

It is important that
I do not feel that I must
transform, shift into the
shape of some other viewer.
If I were not able to take
the film as myself, then
It could not be matter
for becoming.


So to the next point
in keeping with my structure.

My being-through-the-film
is only made possible by
a series of subversions,
decenterings, questionings
of the center.

Primarily I can focus on
the multiplicity of languages
that denies a single all-knowing
viewer position.

I am not forced to be jealous of
one viewer who knows it all.
That those who can understand
the Vietnamese, distinguish the
different dialects, they lack
that element of not-knowing.

I feel as if my not-knowing
as diaspora is not imagined,
anticipated in the films
production, as a place of
decay (of knowledge, of centering)
but is seen as another valid
position (not center, not off center)

When co in her interviews talks about
hearing as the Vietnamese in exile
as part of making the film, I am
allowed to trust in my experience.
I can read the specificities of
myself in the process of understanding,
coming to understand.





I make the claim, then,
that all of the politics
of interviews, they come to
this. They come to this point
in which I am let in. I am let
in wholly, or what feels more
complete than ever before.

Consequently, the archetypal
interview is one of closing,
bounding, of keeping out.
It imagines a world of only
two speakers and two listeners.
I am made a voyeur as I read,
or rather, I am an incomplete,
disempowered version of the
authors who read first.

The text is dead when
I come to it.

So lastly, as for my own work.

I will soon make the album
in the suburbs. I will join
with my increasingly talented
fellows. They've had nothing to
do but make this music, pump the
iron. In a way, I am nervous, to
meet them, to take them on, to do
them justice.

My question: how can I leave room
for them? How can I make this work
open to their experience? even further,
how can I open this work up to more
experiences? 

Co's work tells me: decenter, question
the center even in its absence.
So I must imagine the center,
and I cannot merely kill it,
It will remain as its corpse.
To move it, or to dance
with it, play, move
it around. Yes,
to open it up
to many.

Manifold
Manifest
Manufacture

15.04.06.tony

feeling nostalgia
time passing

I like the playfulness
choreography, dancing in
	Derrida

I trust him, or,
in fact, I am jealous
that he gets away with
being so much himself,
yet no-one ever calls him
"personal"

	"Dialanguages"
whatever that is in french,
he talks about voice, his
voice, and this particular
problem of interviews:
always artificial
[what isn't?]

Or he speaks of some
sacrifice in the writing,
a choice between what to
keep, or what to put, or
a kind of economy.

Yes I know that.

		Tony was saying:
	"I used to think there was
	all the time in the world"
	yesterday. He puts some
	emphasis on doing.

So that voice, is a 
condition of scarcity,
that I cannot display
my irridescent multi-
colored self. I must
choose; there is the
one for the moment.

Perhaps then I can
make sense of co when
she says I should stay
away from what could be
dismissed in the genre of
the 'merely personal'

There is a finding the voice.

Okay, okay so let me play
this idea of the voice

At first there is this will
towards the self, the self image
the coming to self, the seeing self.
It is a desire, a lust for self image.
That is first always there when I make
these words. Say nothing of purpose,
function, message, communication;
I give priority, pre-essence
to the self and my seeing it.
For I am the first one to read
each thing it is that I write.

But there is such a tension
It is that inevitable paradox
that emerges when anything
infinite tries to finds its
place in the world

Yes, there is an anguish I feel
at the passing of time. Can I
say that in each moment, confronted
with all the choice, I see myself
in my manifold futures.
		Tony with all the
	time in the world; yet this
	paralysis, this inability to
	do anything, because to act,
	each act, is a choice, an
	destruction of each other
	self.

I die infinitely in each
infinitessimal moment that
I am made. 

This anguish:
there we find the voice.

Let me say
	Derrida
just so you don't think
I'm lost.

He speaks of it as a dream
idiomatic writing
"the voice, its timbre"
He makes me think musically.

Now I think of each moment
the singer, each choice of
inflection, the composerly
choice of each note. What
is to follow in the melody.
There is one and only one
note that is next.

So there is a crisis of choice,
the infinite, the death of the
infinite, its collapse at the
moment of the infinitessimal.

It is watching the self come to
be, its manifestation from its
many folds.

There is a powerlessness,
that even though one has
infinite choice, one must
choose; 
one may not not choose.

Fundamentally it is terror.
I love myself; I lust for
the sight of my image. Yet,
in each moment that I see
myself I loose infinitely
more.

So is the writerly act one of
control, hubristic wresting
from the inevitable wear of
time a little power to make
myself of myself?

Singing: to have a voice
Singing: to be dying
that time is passing.
An ornament, perhaps,
of death: an exhaltation.
Decay.

So I place this having a voice
and this writing for a voice,
seeking the expression, seeing
the self in this world; it is
all morbid.

I am nostalgic for the paradise
of not choosing, the paradise
immediately before the moment
of choice. In that moment I am
everything. I love myself
infinitely; hate.

derridaderridaderridaderridader

I will move further from this
initial morbid and perhaps not
so fresh idea

or perhaps I am lost in it.

There was a moment I truly
hated	Derrida. I hated him
because he was me.

It was writing about women,
feminitiy, the feminine.
I couldn't stand it; I would
not let his ideas form in my
mind; I was closed.

I did not want to have his
ideas about this. And it is
all because of who he is, or
who I am, or who he is not.

I won't let him have his thoughts
because I see him in myself and
the opposite. Indeed, I won't let
myself have these thoughts either.

Maybe I will play that it is a
consequence of the masculine,
that I will not let myself
feel very often anything.
This is certainly true;
I am suspended in a
numbness.

-----

Okay let me out of a pause.
I was worried that I was going
too far into the personal, into
that inditable, dismissable world,
so I stopped writing. Too bad for
you! and the world, those thoughts
never thought and feelings never
felt (if I could ever feel).

Let me out into the logical
consequent (the word ancillary
came forth) of the selfish writing
the singing in the shower perhaps,
these dismissable things.

It is the question of address,
audience, that I know for
certain at least one who
will read this.

Is there a certain way that
writing, this mediated form
is transformed in the face
of the audience? Surely it
must be so. It seems essential,
fundamental, axiomatic and
beyond question.

But if I am finding myself,
if I am making myself, making
irreversable choices toward the
collapse of my manifold selves
and into an infinitessimal single
self that I merely am in each
moment of writing,,, then what
about this other person? this
silent voice? YOU

What can I say? if in each word
I am "becoming"
	-- De/luze --
		then there must
be a way in which You contribute
or rather are a fundamental
element of such a thing.

Or let me question this becoming
and place it into the world of the
lacy entre-deux. Then I will say it
is not me that is becoming, rather
the becoming is against, inbetween
me (and thus you).

Can it be that we are both becoming,
weaving in and out of each other in
this text?

I love this about our frenchman's
interviews. The particular way in which
his play refutes translation; it forces
the translaters blatant interjection
["blatant" was a tough choice of words.
The author was looking for something closer,
more adjacent to "uninvisible" or "opaque"]

Interruptions, punctuations,
punctures of the needle inserted
between pulling the thread, making
of two.

Yet there is always something untranslatable
even between two speakers of the same
language. I would say, even between
Zach the author and Zach the reader
in this very moment. I surprise myself;
	Derrida does too, I gather.

Yes yes. There is a delicate balance
between control and "improvisation"
as our frenchman said before me.

If we are to speak about dancing,
choreography: who is dancing?
Me and You! Even Me and You-that-is-me.
There are rules. I suppose, in dancing,
expectations, not stepping on eachother's
feet. But it is no fun if there are no
surprises; it is not dancing.

How can I collect this constellation?
You/me/the weaving of the entredeux.
Improvisation, surprise, coming to be.
Becoming and being surprised at becoming.
Being terrified at becoming and seeking control.
The infinite loss and powerlessness of becoming.
		Tony and I
		standing there together
		with all the time in the world.

15.03.30.elle

back in after Recess
co asked me to a be
a bit more focused.
I have been putting
on the weight, now
cut down to
the muscle

	So let me have a
	structure, just to
	be clear. Let's have
	our buddy Giles over
	here.
		& Beethoven, my ever
		present interlocutor
		who is always behind
		my forward thoughts,
		and sometimes right
		at the front; he can
		live here.
This side will be for
me, and the class. Those
personalities that make
meaning possible.

Nihil		would tell me of this quote,
		one of Richard Feynman, advising
		to keep a few "unsolved" problems
		in the back of your mind as you
		learn new things. So I have read
	Deluze.	I have read him thinking about
		Beethoven, this hero I have learned
		to worship. He is a hero I ought to
	Become.

	& How about this French stuff,
	so opaque in English but perhaps
	not much better in the lingua.
	It washes over me, like the
	colloidal sand in the undertow.
	I am smoothed by it, perhaps
	less defined, sharp. But there
	was one scratch, one interruption:
	
	The orchid and the bee: a clarity
	I keep. Almost, in a way, the only
	thing I can say I have. How I think
	"Becoming". It is about this third,
	always this third space. The orchid
	is not the bee, the bee not the
	orchid, rather, they both become
	something else, something independently
	outside either one, but also always
	and necessarily in between (entre deux).

		Instantly I think of the performer
		and Beethoven, and that last time
		in Nick's class when we watched the
		buffoon trying to play the Hammerklavier.
		We laughed; he was a joker. How could
		this be so? What was so absurd? So I
		question what makes this possible and
		I return to the idea of the text.
		Is it that third space?

		What is it to be unplayable? Music
		that is so impossible seems a paradox.
		It can only be so through the divorce
	(And here I see Deluze, the Nuptual, the Conjugal)
		of the composer and performer. That was
		once so intimate a bond, so united. When
		I think of Mozart the improvizer, never
		daring to play one of his pieces twice,
		and I think of Czerny, Beethoven's
		intimate friend, trusted to premier his works,
	yes, there is a different kind of
	becoming here. It is very fleshy,
	very real. It is the kind of becoming
	that is to be both at once. But maybe
	we are not becoming here, we already
	are. And I will take this distinction
	to start. That to become there must be
	a necessary separation. The bee must
	be so radically different, so entirely
	alien to the orchid, that it may thus
	become.

		There must then be a kind of alienation;
		an initial making separate, a divorce.
		Is it Freud (froid), and that exit
		from the womb, that making of another?
		First I must call him a sexist for he
		doesn't ask of the mother. If this is
		fit, the mother must lose something to,
		must be alienated too. But it is not so
		linear, composer-performer. There was not
		first the one and the other, so that is out.

I was to talk of love, a kind
of alien I am. Sharee says that
I do not feel, or, I do not bear
my emotion. This makes a distance,
comes between us, does not allow us
to unite. I have always been this way
 I have never let myself become. Thus,
  a distance between me and my partners,
   or, they have never been my partners,
    or, they have always been Mine in the
     way they are not my Partners. Always
      accessory to my first, premier, primary
       subjectivity. So I have never Loved if
	I have never become.

	The Nuptual: what would it be to
	become. Within a third space? Is
	it the procreative? Is it the genetic
	fluid union of gametes? Maybe at some
	discredible froid level. No, GD says,
	"neither a union, nor a juxtapostion"
	"birth" he says, synthesis, AND
	necessarily unpredictable
	"another direction" Orthoganal

	Style, Language, Mastery,
		Who am I to think of but this hero?
	The double capture. The stammering.
		If I am to be correct, I must place these things - 
	s/l/m - outside of Beethoven, or let me call him Ludvig,
		and outside of our wiley performer, the professional,
		the Prof. Ludvig, the Prof, the each have their own
		ways of things. But they build together this thing
		that is Style. Language is that communication; it
		is the thing that enables the troisième entre deux.

The entre deux, it looks like lace
to me; it is ornate, domestic, woven.
It is those often delicate threads,
fragile, that tie us to one another.
It is Nihil and those beercan tabs,
the one I lost, and the one I pray
he still has, for without it there
is no hope.

		Beethoven, this hero that I am forced to be;
	       my telos, and I hate it. The heros journey,
	      he is the subject by which I am subject. He
	     is the master of a language I must know. But
	    to take him back, to call him Ludvig. The I say,
	   "Beethoven is no man!" Beethoven is language.
	  Elle est la langue; Il est l'homme. What of
	 language? To stammer? To stammer in one's own
	style. Deluze gives me this. To speak ones'
       language like a foreigner, to speak another's
      like a native. There is no difference, because
     the language is always foreign and native, it is
    the lace, the thread in between. And so French may be
   mine just as ông standing outside the paris opera house
  is me. The language is bà because she is the lace, she
 holds me across my generation as con. We are all one, we all
speak the same language with her. And ever do I stammer! I could
never get it right! Oh that disappointment when I see her each time
and she tries to speak to me and I don't understand. So then she stammers
in my language! But then it is hers! and then it is ours! and what is it then
to become! what is it? I know all that I don't know. I hate myself for learning
Beethoven but not knowing tiếng Việt. So what is that fantasy? when I imagine
myself, old, learning the sounds, trying to know the language I lost, the
threads that were cut. She has long passed. I am no longer con. I am
monseigneur, the prince. I stammer over the words and I become.
I do not become her, as her. As her body, as her now ashes.
I become her comme la langue. There is the wedding; I tie
the knot avec elle.

Between us, there is the
infinite distance. Across
I cast these lines
to hold, under
all the worlds
forces. also,
to make
beautiful

15.03.16.phony

Back again, again
this glorious hour
to think, to think
& write write write

Sharee read my work
(these little things)
this Saturday. It was
one of those nights we
sat and talked for
endless hours

I so admire her
capacity to say
anything about it.
How difficult this
writing must be to
enter.

What did she say?

I know how to think
in writing, through
writing. Yes that is
what is happening,
I supposed.

Something also,
about this filter,
a thing that comes
between. She was
referring to the
analytic mode,
the weaving
into other
thoughts.

I suppose this is
true. I do find it
easier to write
against, with-
in, amongst.

But these gestures,
these stories that
often open up and
close my writing,
it is they that
show my open
heart.

--

No matter
to it, to it!

How about this
Goddard fellow?

So thick a text!
Did I even read it
all? It was so much
and so cryptic, dense,
so unclear, or at least,
wanting for a purpose.

Something began to emerge.
It was a relationship with
technology. I suppose the
argument was that goddard
questions the camera, the
apparatus, the techno-box
the mechanism itself. Is
that it?

There was some sort of
lingering marxist inflection
something about the cinema as a
site of consumption, economy, which
I suppose is quite true. I remember
most recently, our director as
a critique of this very
element of cinema.

They certainly talk
a great deal about
money.

$$$

There! That was the theme.
Cash, dollars, fat salaries.
He spoke a lot about that
which is something I
never think at all
about. (checkin'
dat priviledge)

They put across this
cinema-as-economic-machine
vibe. Which I might understand
more if I had watched more of his
films.

I really couldn't put myself in this
reading. It kept me away. The characters
were so flaccid; they lacked a place to enter
It bored me, frustrated me. What even is
the context of these interviews. That
there exists a book "goddard on
goddard" makes me want to
vomit. And that oft
return to the
"Left"

As if!

Maybe marxism just isn't of my time.

Ah here I am.
And here I am not.
I can sense the filter.
Or at least, I can sense that
I am annoyed now. 

Where am I?
Where am I
in all of this.
How can I be in all of this?

goddard doesn't seem to
give me a place to be,
a space to dwell, an
invitation to enter.
Rather, I am left
to feel bad for
even watching
coming to the
cinema.

What is the point of that?
Am I in on the joke, the
irony, the guilty
consumer.

I am sick of this.
I don't even know what
it is. But he doesn't
inspire me to watch
that's for sure.

Maybe I can find something
of myself in that conversation
about technology. Maybe that will
give me somewhere to be.

....................


Ken ken ken ken ken
I missed his performance
this weekend. I would have
gone with Sharee but we just
blew the timing. Of course me;
I'm never on top of anything.
when was the last time
I was anywhere at the
right time? (early?)

We had that conversation
on a Wednesday, caught
in the stairwell at
Morrison (the music
building if you
don't know)

He says the same things
over and over again, but I
don't really mind. Is there
ever anything new?

Priviledging of the live experience.
That's his jam. I like it; it does
influnce me a great deal, or at
least causes me to question
the putting forth of any
musical objects. Though,
the work/event binary
is questionable as
well.

I don't think I understand at all
whatever goddard was trying to say.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Be sincere
return to an honest place
Write from an honest place and be
open.

I've been dreaming a lot
about being successful.
Economically, that is.
This is perhaps that
growing angst at the
coming closure of
my utopic recess.
That is to say
College.

I think about making music
Are they music objects?
Today I was imagining
a performance, like
a house show or a
small gig-house
and getting the
audience to
sing along.

Yesterday I though of
writing that piece for
Nate to play. The thing
on the piano, but also a
computer component that I
would write with that guy 
Jason I met at Sophie's b-day
party, though I lost my phone so I'll have to ask her for his number which may be weird because maybe she doesn't want to talk to me but she's very polite so I think she'll do a good job playing it off anyway

Then there's also making
that album with Andrei.
I fetishize that vinyl
record. I want to
truly write for
it, into it.
Work on it's
shape, its
length.

There is something about acknowledging
each different medium of communication.

But then I suppose there is this capitalist
tinge that underlies all of my creative directives.
When I thought about writing that song-website, I
considered "how am I going to make money off of
this?" before concluding that I really can't
or maybe that I don't want to, and will try
and get away with it for as long as I can.

But that thought!
I had that thought
I did!

It intruded!
There's no pure
ideas for me anymore,
everything blackened,
fucked, by that cashcash

It is a little impolite
that goddard talks about
money like that. Impolite
but that is because I come
from the place where I can
be so polite.

I remember Penelope from the
OCF (haven't seen her in two
weeks. I wouldn't know if
she'd texted me anyway
because of my damned
dead phone). She
mentioned money
so many times,
I lost count.

I felt so damned bad
that I didn't offer to
buy her coffee. I did ask
her out after all. I'm not 
a bloody feminist anyway, so 
what's the matter? Though I am
so embarassed, I try not to show
off my money either. But then what's
with these white shirts huh?
Oh there's no salvation!

goddard surely doesn't have to talk about
money. He could avoid it just like me. Sit
in this cozy middle-class bubble acting
like money doesn't define me one way
or the other. But he does, and it
is an intrusion, and it makes me
uncomfortable because I like to
avoid those thoughts.

There was a moment where the
author was writing about maoism
or something else; class struggle.
And I had the thought: I can't really
be a communist; I am so defined by my
class; I wouldn't give it up, live
on the streets like those bUmS
outside of cafe med.

When I go to the theaters
I don't think about how much
I'm paying. The only reason I
ask if I have to play to see the
shows at Heartz hall is because it's
such a damn hassle to find five bucks
to give to the box office server.

$

Honestly. Honestly.

I am not here right now

I doubt very much that I
can be open.

In the most private moments
with myself I am still lying,
still away from myself.

The art, the media,
I make these things to
put myself just a little
outside so I can see it.

Far from transparent
intermediary, these 
technologies work.

Skeptical I can be.
Maybe they don't
give me any true
self. Just an-
other way to
see it. 

I'm hiding these days.
I'm scared of myself.

The skin is so thick.

15.03.09.parenthese

my writing
my writing
always
improvisatory

I was so certain,
so certain, it was
coming from the self;
so certain that
this is me!
hey!

Assia Djebar writes how?
as a parenthesis? what could
that mean? how can I understand
such a distance from myself? or
is it a ruse! a joke, an illusion
by which she can remain safe, to
talk of one's self as if on were
talking of anybody else, as if
there were no self to reveal!

Andy Warhol plays the opposite trick.
He plays as if he speaks so freely of
himself, as if there weren't anything
to hide. What an illusion. "I give
you everything," he says, "vulgar,
embarassing. See for yourself I
have nothing to hide. I mustn't
be lying, for then why would I
show you this? I could make up
anything, can't you see?"
What is cool? Playing for
the camera even when it
there isn't one around.
The perpetrators of
cool are much safer
when someone is
watching. Then,
at least, they
don't seem so
insane.

So I write! And it is as dishonest
as Andy Warhol: for I write knowing,
just knowing, someone will read this.
That is why it is so easy to write this
for your class, co Minh-Ha, because I have
you; I can count on you. & my friends,
my friends, I show them this. It is,
perhaps, as Assia Djebar would say,
indecent. It is indecent to speak
even at all, especially with the
self at the center. I I | | what
a world I invent, and for whom?

I dreamed as I was walking here of
starting a magazine. I would start
it for back home, Washington, DC,
or even it would be based out of
Rockville, MD. How's that for a
center. My town: my embarassing
little suburb. Would I elevate
it then? Bring it to some im-
portance.

I need more parentheses in my
writing because (if what I
said is true) I can be
even more honest. I
can give more of
myself as I
play that
it is not
myself.

(((((((

A game:
Some players make up a melody.
One player makes up one melody.
	Just a lyrical line.

Next we mash it up,
force it into a box,
the parallel interupted whatever

The bass! Improvise that too &
then someone should write it all down.

The inner voices are the hardest,
most tedious. Can we make them weird?
That may be too much.

I like this kind of play.
Maybe more direction. Telos
	(Telos only exists in these
	 fictional parenthetic worlds)


))))(I want to tell a story)((((((((((

He came to college.
The girls the girls.
Never before had he
ruled the world
like that.

Of course there were
the boys, brothers,
stitched together
at the heart with
threads of gold
and blood.

The brothers were the base.
The girls sang the melody - or -
were sung, as it were once
power got involved.

To speak of love --
to speak love -----
That was imposible.

He had no words.
There never were
words. Whose words?
Love? Love was his
grandmother,
un/dying.
Devotion
beyond
gold.

Love was so immense.
It was so impossible.
No-one could ever meet

It was Olympian: Iove.
A god-given gift, and
he, no god, though he
thought so at times,
could never be so
arrogant as to
try and match
the divine.

Brothers: that was close.
A love against death, it
was: a love that preceded
Death.

Brothers: they were the heros.
Achilles as he battled the gods,
the river Scamander, son of
Poseidon. They fought, bled,
and ultimately --- they died.

Brother love is death.
Or we must kill each other.
It is not a life-giving love.
It is a death defying love
it too lives as an
impossibility, but
a very mortal one.

There was never any room
for the girls, though
they came; they were
let in for the
festival.

Always, though, they had
to leave before the night,
no matter how many days, or
months that sun took to set.

So the drama unfolded
girls to pass the time
brothers to slash away
at the rushing river.

Now, almost all has flown by.
Water finds its way; brothers,
they all die -- and so, too
does he close his eyes.

))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

15.03.06.doves

diScomfort: the academy.
I get further within it,
move inside  & I wonder
"where went honesty?"

Who has told the truth
lately? only if it
comes from the heart
is it true!

All these liars!
Charlatans! Players!
Or do I say, "there
is no truth; I am
the biggest charlatan
of them all: 
he who believes,
he who has deceived
even himself"?

I still pray
to the old god:
Greatness, that
masculine fiction.

I will not be
the king of monkeys!

If you worship me
I will hate you
because no-one who
lives on this Earth
is worth my feet!

"quote - unquote"

These scholars,
impotent, limp-
dicked. Where is
your music then?
how do you answer
to Beethoven?

My theory! Give me
William Carlos W.
Let a man break
into prose when he
just can't keep up
the illusion. But
if prose is your
Kingdom...

What said W.C.W.?
Prose is the finger
pointing to the moon;
Poetry will bring you
the whole goddamn moon &
I will settle for no less!

Nicholas Mathew's farce:
the dove flown to
center court at
Wimblydome.
people laugh,
shit their pants;
it's the funniest thing
in the world. But there
must be stakes! oh the
stakes! golden goblet!
sacred sippy-cup!

He's playing his whole
damn life for the sacred
sippy-cup, as if there
are all the stakes of
the world.

Well fuck him.

I say there is more truth
in that damn dove descending
upon that racist game than
there is truth in the whole
quote-unquote bloody world.

Let me be the dove &
Let me be the snipe&
Let me be the sniper
There's yours bloody dove

15.03.01.nihilabstractly

At last I was not successful.
Not successful at reaching any
truth about myself, any truth
about the world, if there
ever is any such thing.

Can I ever honestly reach into
myself? At this hour, so haggard
and caffinated, sitting in a damn
computer lab?

Well deeper into formalism!
no doubt it is the only way.
I know I am a fool, but does
this world have anything but
fools? Visible dancing
baffoons, and then
fools that suffer
silently. Oh,
why am I now
so romantic
and absurd.

----------

Back to my the author, Helene Cixous &
whatever she had to say about the Other,
and other curious things. Let me take it
all down, gather what came to me & let me
weave it weave it through myself and see
what bloody tapestry we'll have.

Cixous works towards a kind of 
poetic writing. It is skeptical
of theory, of ever thinking one
can hold a thing, in words, wholly.
Call it some kind of paradaox;
not the eternal Dao.

"Theory entails a discontinuity
a cut, which is altogether
the opposite of life"

Okay, I will ponder these things
bit by bit, element by element.
I will work in a line, even if
it is so unbecoming.

I do it here don't I?
Undermine my words, the
perpetual skeptic. What
would it even be, to say
"I've got it! the goddamn
definition. Quick write it
down."

But words all the same,
words all the same, because,
well, what else do I have? music
I suppose; poems. I have lost those
lately. I'm left with, what does Joseph
Stroud say? The heart breaks into prose.
It is what I am left with, now, no I am
not strong. I am very frail these days.

Let me be skeptical, in the way Cixous is,
of whom she calls "theoretician, that is to
say, as less woman" or less me, in the ways
that I am, that are dear to me. That to write
in such a sober style as is often asked of me
in such classes as Nick Mathew's, is to amputate
some of myself, remove, (I want to say castrate but
I'm being careful). I am searching in these very letters
for a style that lets me write all of me. Yes, I am naked here
laid bare, or at least I am trying. I want such a violation to be possible.

But is it ever possible?
Even in the most calculated
poetry have I gotten there? or
am I always safe.

I need to focus on what,
in this interview, comes to be
called "the interval space, the
between, the in-between, the entredeux."
This I interrogate as a special site of being.
I say, "I am there! I live there!" and dare I say,
"I am only there! outside of that entredeux, I  am
not! there is none of me!" Can I? Can I say that?
So I have challenged these worlds in which we
find Beethoven, Odysseus, so carefully made,
so sure of themselves, so defined. & then
we have a whole world of scholarship to
say "this is just how Beethoven was"
or "here! right here! Odysseus as
a real historical man lived!" &
so we build, so carefully the
illusion, that these Men
lived as Men, that they
were so surely them &
nobody else. The
atom, unity; let
us collect,
archive,
gather.

I am just as skeptical as Charming Nick
of the authors who say "oh we can know Beethoven
more, more, if we just look at his times, his Context!"
But maybe I am not a skeptic for the same reasons as the
Dear Englishman. Rather, those authors are merely doing the
same thing, only in new clothes; they invert the thing, try to
say they are doing anything but building that one man, polishing
that same old statue. 

Well, who am I? Am I not just writing about myself?
No, because who I am is also the world. That if I write
about the world, try and catch it wholly, it is just as
futile, as doomed to failure as if I tried to catch
myself, just as wholly. They are the same, as I
know the one I know the other, and equally so.

What words have I been turning over and over,
trying to set for voices to sing?

See yourself	see yourself within the world
See the world 	see the world into yourself
Name the world	name the world within yourself 
Name yourself	name yourself into the world 

I don't fool myself into thinking I am wise.
I only wonder why those words came to me, if
I can find any meaning in them now; maybe give
myself a reason to pick up the pen again.

I've gone off; back to Cixous lest I lose myself.

Those in the interview go on at length about
the Other, an important question no doubt.
The Other built into language, but in a
way unsatisfying. There is a way we are
wont to write the other, almost safely,
in our text, subtly. Surely I even do
it now; as I imagine who I am, I must
imagine who I am not. To do so I must
imagine whom an-Other is; I create.
Every time I use that letter, "I",
I am implying "not those Others."
Wow, wow, what a trap that is
set! They say this Cixous can
undermine, subvert this
continual reassertion
of this Other. But
she must do it in
narrative, or
some clever
way she has
found for
herself.

This is what the interlocutor calls
the continual "cutting into pieces of
I-me." In some paradoxical way, our author's
writing acknowledges so barely, lays so bare the
Other that it also so vulnerably asserts that individual.
This must be both the I-me of our author and the I-me of the reader.

I love, I love this word "entredeux!"
because it points to a kind of textile!
I have been playing with my metaphor of
weaving for some time. Won't this just be
a great addition! It is so delicate, a lace
that is placed between-two, it joins, but oh
so carefully, fragilly. It is to navigate an
inbetween and to know that it is vulnerable.
It is a rightly elevated, ornamented task &
it calls the inbetween space a name closer
to how it is. It tells us that this
joining is fragile, that it must
be cherished, that it must take
time. That it must be
worshiped. It is a
kind of worship:
the entredeux.
I love it.

Cixous places the entredeux
close to a death, bereavement.
It's so morbid! Why does she do
that! A loss of a being, a loss of
a part of my body, that is living in
the entredeux. Is that so? Maybe this
brings us to that suffering she speaks
of later. She says that suffering is in
a sense wherein life is most fully lived.
That there is a joy in it. Heh, reminds me
of Beethoven: "joy through suffering," poor
deaf bloke. But maybe, this way of knowing
the entredeux is a way of cherishing, of
truely worshiping the suffering and so,
as Cixous says, turning one's self
from the victim of suffering to
its subject. Embellishment
then starts to look like
a kind of literary task,
like a way of treating
a wound. So I am thus
evicted from myself
and I need to know
how to live, so I
write because it
is just simply
living. It is
to pass the
time, to be
locked in a
cell and to
stay sane:
singing.

I am suffering!
Yes, these days
perhaps more than
ever, I am suffering.
And I do not know how to
grieve. Natalia asked me to
talk about it. She says, "it's
kind of disturbing that you don't
talk about it." But how? How can I
find the words to place myself into
the world? I am so displaced, so lost.
That task of speaking, so familiar to me
as "here I am, I know it, let me tell you",
tranformed into mere sounds, the singing keep
sane, it so foreign. Cixous says "we do not know
how to suffer!" & surely that is true for me. No, I
do not know. Am I suffering now? I say so. In a small
way those words make it more true. But the immensity of
this loss, this loss of love truer than I've ever had. I
see these words as useless, cracked plastic. Sounds, shapes
on a page. How can they capture this loss! Death. Death. Death.
It is a death. Because there is no time; time has passed and there
can be no return. It is all lost because time has passed. I cannot
return. Repair is to go back in time.

I have lost an-Other,
most vivid, most real.
In that loss, was also
myself that I knew. It
was a self that I knew
as I was not this Other.
Now, who am I? Can I say
so surely I am not him?
It is not so easy; he
is just a memory now;
he lives in me. To
turn from so
vividly not
me to part
of me, so
wholly a
part of
me...


Loving - not knowing.
But now I can only love
what I know. What I do not
know is so immense, so enormous.
It is the infinity of all that will
pass in my absence. I only imagine it
as what I do know. I am trapped within
myself again & in that way I am not,
I am: a little less. 

Death? because I am afraid.
I fear the world that is beyond.
I fear the world that is without.
And here in these words I face Death.
I name it, I call it into being. It is
my death that lives here on this page.
Am I a little less afraid? I don't
know. 

I am changing &
what is the fear?
To know how much I
will be different &
how he will recognize
me just a little less
when we meet next.
There I see the 
change, the
loss. 

Yet,
as I write
I change. These
words change me, they
build some other, every time
I name myself "I" against whom
I may come to be, just a little more.


Does the suffering -
the story that I daren't
speak of but abstractly - point
to the theory, the idea? or does
the theory give me the excuse to craft
the story? This is the weaving (p. 28 heh)
this is the distance covered, across astral
planes, from the depths of the heart to the
foolish imagined expanses of the mind. 

Quick! A joke. These blobs of text:
they look so ugly to me now. Why do I
bother like this. A little distraction I
suppose, from the harshness of it all.

Here I am in the OCF.
Class is soon; can't be
late; and the kids, the
kids they want to print.
They must hate me.

Love is death: to be able
to die; to be willing to die;
to know the death will come.
To take it. To let it come.
And then it is to live.
I grieve because I
lived. Because I
grieved I can
say I lived.
And living
I know
death
will
come

15.03.01.nihil1

I can't say how long I was asleep for
perhaps only an hour and a half.
I know when I finally counted my way to 290,
the sun was starting to gloss the white walls of my room.
Looking at them now, it doesn't seem to hang much higher.

I awoke from the most fantastical dream,
one I hope to return to some day,
though, damn it, I've forgotten all the details.
I will have to make them up.
I do remember how it ended, however.
I was floating, above anything (maybe nothing)
in a sea of other bodies.
It was the culmination after a bunch of trials,
immense sufferings, that I (the protagonist)
had endured. There I was, amidst these souls.
They were joking, at someones expense, saying
"he doesn't know how to fall." This man, apparently,
couldn't fall, he just kept floating. & it was so
hilarious to my companions, just a few voices in an
endless sea of floating bodies, endless. They all
laid to face below, though we were so high above that
there was no below to see.
Why was it so foolish, that this man could not fall?
It seems like a blessing to me.
Are they the mob, shooting down the individual,
the blessed one, because they are jealous?
Or was he unable to fall because he was too afraid,
failing to let go, accept that falling is the way.
In any case, I joined in the laughter, now part of
this massive fabric of floating bodies. They turned
to me and asked what was so funny, what did I have
to laugh about? And, because I had just gone through
these trials, the most immense suffering and loss,
and then emerged into this new timeless reality
where everything was safe, where everybody was
perpetually falling; I laughed because I was not
alone, that my suffering should culminate in such
and absurd universe, unchanging world; I laughed.
Life was absurd. 

--------------------------------------------------------

So now I am awake,
having slept hardly at all,
after a week of intense labour
and then fatigue &

I'm back here.
There is time
to write.

Later I will have to write
again for co Minh-ha's class.
I suppose I should be prudent,
let this here be about that.
What a curse!
No time.

Rodrigo asked me when
I would write again.
It appears, only
when I have to.


-----------

We read an interview for co's class.
I cannot remember the names: Cixious?
All I have are the initials: H.C.

H.C. spoke of many things, the words
floated, in a way, hard to theorize.
I imagine my fellows in the class will
be frustrated, that the text, at first,
refuses arguments, analysis. Or maybe not.

In her writing there is a perpetual subterfuge
of language, an undermining of the natural oppositions
within our words. For example, that suffering must be so
bad, must be this unfortunate event, that it is to be lamented.
She says no, that it can be made hilarious, that often it is the
most important thing to happen to a person. This is not to undermine
the suffering, to say that it is easy, rather, she makes the claim:
one becomes not the victim of suffering, but the subject & I think
this is important, that through the poetic act, the rewriting of
language, even the word that contains the most immense bad, the
word that lives on the extreme of opposition, can be turned
towards 'what it is,' 'what is life.' That in the moments
of the most suffering, we find hilarity, irony; I saw
this in my dream. My character was so wraught, taken
by the experiences earlier in the dream (those I now
can only recall in affect) & then he was deposited
in agonizing bliss, floating as an angel in heaven
where all those sufferings were left meaningless.
And what was there but to laugh? to release the
absurdity of it. Perhaps it is that I
misunderstand our theorist. This is
how I awoke today.

------------------

I fear that maybe Rodrigo won't enjoy this too much.
Could he even make it this far?
Oh, but what is it! It is
useless if I try and
write for him.

I need to write about Nihil.
It is a need, I must, because
there is something within me that
I have to come to understand. Even
more, there is a way that I am, that
only exists through him, in relation to
him & if I am to write about being, if I
am to try and understand all of the ways that
I am in the world, I must know this.

Rodrigo is already objecting,
but aren't you just writing about
you feelings. Something, some objection
that is not an objection. Well, listen, it is
all the same to me; feelings, theory, they all come
as one, and that is the point!

When Nihil and I were talking,
we would have these long conversations
in a style crafted by the mastery of years.
We could complete each other's thoughts; we used
the words 'you' and 'I' interchangeably. I would say
we really went on those mental journeys together, as one.

I described once the way our minds would resonate,
complete each other, as two waves, two wave functions,
calculated such that as soon as one crested, the other would
give, or the opposite. If you took the sum of these two functions,
they would, at each moment, approximate 1; but neither one was always
in control.

There is a way in which Nihil made me -- some power by which
I was able to understand who I was -- when he was around.
I look to the reading for this week, and I think of
the complex understanding of the 'other.'

Our author talks about this negation, this absence that is known
when we are confronted with the other; we are made to know
exactly how much we are not, exactly in what ways we are
not. I liked this very much. I wrote the thought in the
margin: we are, we be-come, only as we know the other.
Before we are named, before we meet the world, we are
everything, the whole immesity of it all. It is with
that name, it is as we meet the names of others,
that we find out what we are not. When we are
told what we are, we are being told, rather,
the things that we are not. These are the
same, yes, but the negation preceeds.

Is that helpful?
Do I come closer to
understanding what I
have lost in losing Nihil?

It feels like I have lost
some of myself. It feels as
if there is a part of me removed,
absent. But that isn't fair because
I cannot call him mine. So I like this
theory much better, because it lets me say
"I have not lost a part of me, rather I have
returned, in a small way, to that infinity with
which I was born." That in losing this dearest love,
I have come closer to that everything, that morbid
everything. I fight that everything, carve into
it, searching for the form of myself. & this
metaphor makes it seem like such a foolish
task, so useless. Of course it is to
where we all return, this struggle
for formation, formality, cannot
be one. it is only a delay,
this whole thing. But the
loss remains. Can I say
I am closer to death?
Or is this all so foolish
and self important?

I am suspicious
because now as I write,
I am not feeling. My body
is not moved, twisted, tumbled
within these words. I am sober,
above.

-------------------------------

I had many things I wanted to write,
but in this past week of torment
I have forgotten them all.

What is it to say
"I will write about it"?
Is it, "I will live this moment
later"? Now is not for living, it seems,
but later, there will always be more time.
But there is no more time. It is over today.
How frustrating, that I float, that I cannot
cherish any one moment. & even here, as I write,
I am always turning back, always trying to catch that
life I did not live. Those thoughts are not any more 
important than what I could catch now. Only, there
is the tragedy, that, once lost, they are gone
forever.

I am struck now by some image of a beach.
How do I remember this? It lives both
as a memory from childhood and with
suspicion as a dream, an impostor
that has come to assume reality.

It is evening; the sun is setting.
There is a greyness. I am in New York. 
With my father's family. My parents are
still together. My father's parents are too.
I see seagulls, was it the first time I saw them?
And later we went back and I took a bath.

15.02.23.nichols

Sometimes you must
write with a purpose.
It isn't so bad.

Co Minh-ha's class
is tomorrow & for it
I've read this chapter
from a book on documentary
by this writer, Bill Nichols

It really was a great read.
Bill Nichols is my knight,
he's got my back. For
some reason, my style
this thing I've been
cultivating, fits
so neatly into
what Nichols
champions.

Or this pomo thing
that, I suppose,
Frederick Jameson
is all about.
It looks like I'm
just about a
native son.

So how to begin?

Nichols constructs this
dialectic between
personal stories
(he calls them complex,
detail rich, textured) &
universal ideas
(which are sweeping
things get lost in them,
but also they are necessary)
(oh, I'll just grab the quotes!)

Let's start with this
Social Subjectivity
Nich puts us in a world between
The self, closed off, singular
against the community, built
being built.

So there are these seemingly
contradictory words or at least
combinations of words with a doubling
"popular memory" "political community"

We can package this paradoxical duality,
these phrases of the in-between, with
other ideas present in the text
"epistemology of the moment"

----------------------------------------

Well, howdy, how...
I finally looked up Donna Harraway's
metaphor of the cyborg, this monstrous
coalition of ideas, "affinities,"
a collition of truths, none
innocent. Situated
partial knowledges.

Yes, yes, this works for me.
It's funny how I've come this far &
I can give so little credit to these others.
For me, I was gifted this world, it was paved
so smooth. I don't even notice it. I came to be
like this so easily. It was safe enough for me
to write from (what I thought was) myself, to
centralize myself & now I've taken this new
turn, I will not place myself in the center
but this other thing, the inter/ inbetween

It is just so damn natural for me now.
I read Beethoven scholarship and it
seems so unreal, that people would
think to put their ideas out there
in such a way, that it would seem
useful, as tending toward the
Truth even!

-----------

I do not live in Nichols' world.
I have not seen what he calls these
'reflexive documentaries' from which
that for which he is advocating departs.
I do get a sense for what these performative
documentaries must be doing, that there is even
a questioning of what is truth, that documentary
is not a task of truth telling, rather, it is one
of truth making. Truth is this thing that is built
The author weaves it into being. I would say, that
there is an element of the against, of weaving
against, around, upon, in-between. So this
process lives in that inter/stice. Thus,
I do not bear a truth from myself, it
does not emmanate from my all knowing
author/ity. Instead, it is a thing
we build with each other. It comes
from trust, mutual affect/ion &
it is fleeting, held only
tenuously, even in just
that moment. Something
the timeliness of the
film handles quite
well.

-----
 
I'm quite happy to have come upon this theory.
It will be a nice warrior to use in my fight against
this oh so ordinary Beethoven scholarship I have been
contending with & that damn conservative music department!
How useful it is to have this authority to defer too. But
isn't that just a problem! that I am only so lucky, that
I may write in this way that I do and still be taken
seriously, come out of this with some authority.
I need to work out this idea of trust, team,
the community. It will be an important way
of re-looking at how we handle this ethos
business.

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

I'm not as lucid as usual right now.
Call it fragmentary if you like.
So I'll use the text as my
friend. What a great use
for a text, to help me
through my thoguhts
like this.

Right now, I'm looking at Nichol's
"discourses of sobriety."
He never really unpacks it, though
that is also a tenant of
this style, that big ideas, if they
exists at all, never
are spoken for as if they could be
understood fully.

But I'll take this idea,
see where it goes.
The sense that there is just one way
of presenting truth, of making
knowledge, and being as a knower:
this is something that I actively
contend with, everytime I write.
It is constricting, like a straight-
jacket. This is why I must work myself
into a trance, divine my words.
It constrains me so.

Nichols talks about "disciplinary forces"
that police the concept of what is real,
who has access to realism, history, Truth.
(I feel a bit like I'm outside the Matrix
though such an image does tend toward
condescension.)

Ahhhhh, this "tension between
perfomance and document." Isn't
that something happening here?
It is my continual contention
between me, Zach-who-is-writing &
a continual pointing outside of
myself, toward some other,
(referent, would he say?)

I suppose that way out is to construct
an other world, a third world between
my inner world, to which you the reader
may only receive glimpses, and this outer
'true' world, that is anything but true,
but on some level it is something we have
found we can mostly agree upon.
This is the delicate third world, the
inter/stice, that fragile in-between &
It is magical!

You know that moment, about 15 minutes into
a Coltrane solo? It isnt easy, really, to
have the patience to get that far. Especially
because he doesn't really seem to be doing much
scales mostly, just playing over the changes.
It really takes a while. It's only because I
have the luxury of history that I trust him,
that I am willing to stay for such a time.
So he's doing this bullshit, mystic,
trancelike, a silly ritual. We're all
athiests by now; we don't believe in that!
But he proves you wrong. Just when you
might have given up hope, he get there.
What is that? it's somewhere, somewhere
special. I say it's the inbetween. He
conjures up this world, this space that
both he and I (for if it was just him I
wouldn't have anything to write) can enter.
Performative, performative, for sure.

--------------------------------------------- -

I don't know how much I can unpack Nichols.
It's funny. In a way, I think because I
agree with him so much, I don't really
think much of his argument. It passes
over me quite easily. If I was quite
opposed to whatever he was saying,
maybe I would be more attentive.
But I live it, and I am tending
toward living it more in all
my work. For now, I am so
completely unsatisfied
with any other way of
writing. I can turn
to Nichols when I
need someone to
have my back.
A warrior.
A common
cause.

15.02.21.newyear

Sorry
Spinning spinning spinning
into another
this time on cocaine

Why do we study music?
Why do I  study music?
Is it a kind of devotion,
a worship?

Natalia says
Habit is the 
first step 
towards worship

Well my habits aren't particularly good.

I was spinning out a metaphor earlier tonight.
I played with this guy, Cocaine Max.
He was a drummer.
I was a little to assertive with my discipline.

I wouldn't say I'm too disciplined.
In fact, my rhythm is shit.
So finally there's a drummer
in the peach here
to set some chords.
I weighed on him, definitley.

Eight Eight Five Eight

Third five is an eight
It's the same progression
four times, just the
third five is an eight

I just want to jam man
this just feels like homework

Hehe, I do my homework in a way that
doesn't feel like homework

So Cocaine broke &
We ended the night over a cigarette
Natalia is there the whole time but
very high
not to mention how hard it is to be
a woman in a musical space
not necessarily inviting!

I start the conversation about how
the idealists placed mind over body
Max said something earlier about
how he wished his body would just
disappear, that he could just be
a mind, without a body

Oh boy, classic white guy
It's in me too..


What you were saying
doesn't apply to music
You need a body

      The german idealists
  put the mind   over the body
 elevated form
worshiped form  

What even is a groove?

I thought about Beethoven
diligently copying out Bach fugues
he couldn't even hear
just that motion, the body

Did he connect to performers?
What was it to him if they
played music he couldn't hear?

 The two gods
Mind and Body
Worship

Prayer and the Habit
Beethoven copying each note
Music you can't hear

Hearing is the boundary between two worlds
Outside the body, against the body,
upon the skin.
See is maximus
Hear, touch, the membrane

Inside, world inside
Contradiction with sensing in
the fyvian way, fifian, classical

  Go inside,
taste, smell,
exchange, reciprocation
respiration
metamorphoses, digestion

Not yet have we reached the inner world
the kingdomn of mind, but we tour
circle around, through,
major thoroughfares

We can hardly make it,
almost impossible
Wessel came close
charted the capillaries,
smallest waterways
but to go beyond

I don't think you can navigate your way
from Mind to Body
It's definitely not in the petuitary gland
or the pinneal gland haha

Does Beethoven get to this, with
His two themes,
the two themes in the late style,
what was that Rumph opus (109?)
Counterpoint in Vivace,
then the line ascending to B gets
halted at A#
interrupted
by the Adagio
Sonata Form, a tribute, but
there's no rationality here
or a different kind

the Sonata Allegro
the polis, Athens,
glorious democracy

Two ideas, fused,
battled, beaten,
domination,
subjugation of the feminine,
Athenean concerns

This new Beethoven,
he's not looking to
merge these worlds

Some worlds cannot
unite; oil and water
mind and body?
Beethoven does not believe
the puzzle can be won

The god of form exposed
a magician, tricks,
Form cannot solve everything
no, reason cannot take
Beethoven out of his decaying body
decaying form

That membrane cannot be penetrated.
stimulated, vibrated, yes
diffusion, exchange, but
only so far, not all the way to
the mind.

Worship worship
prayer prayer
that one I wrote for Milnes

15.02.21.2

Why do we study music?
Why do we write about music?
	  write music?

I study Beethoven,
I read the analysis of his counterpoint &

I am jolted.
I race home from the cafe
taking a detour through moes
to pick up some manuscript paper &
Then hit my house to work out voices

Part writing, voice leading
So abstract, so of the mind
but it does move me
if only as a nerd

I don't write about Beethoven
to bring out some truth into the world
this is not my science
what use?

I engage with this text
the canon,
the scholarship,
for my own selfish satisfaction, but

to do it,
to be in this world,
I need others who have come here
made games here
I mimick their
dance
they
teach me to move on this earth &

when I write, for
myself and others
it is to keep record

to wear the path
make it easier
to move
----
--
'

Does ‎it go beyond?
I don't have a problem
with what Rumph writes
I rather enjoy it, actually.

He puts on, however,
that air of truthmaking
   he plays the detective
It's all rather unecessary.

===========================

I do have designs
for the whole thing.
I want to change people
move them, perhaps
into being
like me

Or, it's not all that
maybe, too, I seek
the validation,
the company

When Natalia, diligent
Natalia reads me
she'll point to
something, say
that's me!
Hey!

We resound,
move each other
make real, each other
bring into being each other
as against, in between,
I am a little
less alone

15.02.19

I just met with Bogart this morning.
I ran attrociously late. Perhaps,
because I stayed up so late last night
writing another one of these.

Maybe I do not need beer to write
like this, but what can I say?
I've just drank coffee now.
One drug for another.

Sitting in the OCF here.
I was hoping to see
her at the desk.
I think it's fair;
She herself even told me
what time and where to find her &

It's good anyway, to come here.
Ascetic in a way,
though still on the computer,
the publicity
keeps me focused lest embarrased.

I pulled up this weeks reading
on our dear friend Ludvig.
Some guy, a lesser Beethoven,
Rumph, is writing about the
contrapunctal style that
emerged in the "Late" period.

There is a play, Rumph makes,
between the 'dynamics of
sonata form' and the 
counterpoint.

I am drawn to make metaphors
(oh Nick, just beat me if
you think this is a sin)

The dynamism of the sonata:
it is didactic, proscriptive
(what do those words mean)
it reminds me of the
enlightenment effort to
control the world
wield it with
the mind.

Sonata form is rhetorical,
argumentative, sophistic/ated.
It places its terms forward
and then proceeds to
"work them out"
It is teleological, true, but
I believe counterpoint so is.
It's telos is one of force,
control, powerful conclusion.
It is coercive;
it's morality
imposes.
We are not free to
interpret the conclusion
make truth for ourselves.

Let me call this the
analytic style, put it
against counterpoint
as this very scientific
approact to truthmaking.

Counterpoint: I take it to be
a much more open, flexible
form of truth production.
Rumph likens it to the church:
sure. It is a text that is open.

Maybe Beethoven is himself
the diviner, then. He has
special access to the heavens.

Counterpoint is Baroque
it has this ornamental quality;
it inspires awe;
it lends itself
to interpretation as deified.

The way in which Sonata-form
is so didactical, so clear,
it is popular, charitable:
Democratic
It plays into a kind of
meritocratic liberal utopia.

Sure, sure, it was in the courts &
then the crusty salons but
what was democracy to these people
anyway? If Schiller loves Athens
it is not a love for the slaves.

Counterpoint moves away from this
democracy into an autocracy
monarchy.

We have Beethoven with
the divine right to rule.
He is our infallible pope (&
you see it in those 1930s
hermenutics of him.
if ever a god lived!)

Maybe we can call counterpoint
a kind of monopolization of
truth. I suppose, one can,
through grueling effort,
analyze, pull apart the
tune, but
to what
effect?
Then, then
one has to be
literate; such a task
is for the page & so on that
page we still have a monopoly or
oligarchy of interpreters, those with
the right to interpret truth, make it.

Can I so say that Sonata Form isn't like this?
Well, there is, within it, that one right answer.
It is the kind of thing "anyone" can access with
enough attention if the themes are clear enough.

Looking merely at the audible effect, well...
I have to listen to these late quartets and
sonatas to get the effect of the fugues but
I suspect that I cannot access their forms
in quite the same way.

-----------00000000000000000000-------------------

I will as I move forward,
try and build this
contrast between
sonata form &
counterpoint
I will try and
develop stylistically
a literal example (metaphor) of
the one and then the other so as to
come to be able to see them, as I
understand them, on the page.
I will draw on those
themes of the
monopoly on
knowledge and
supposedly democratic
knowledge (of which I am quite keptical)

Perhaps I will be able to imagine these
two worlds Beethoven was inhabiting.

I am quite interested to see how a
contrapunctal style of writing looks
When I imagined it before, I do think
I believed it to be impossible, not a
task that language could accomplish.

But there must be some ways in which I do it,
weave themes in and out of each other, much
differently than if I exposed each one at a time.

So there. So there.
I'm sorry reader,
this was quite
didactic, dry,
probably not fun
for anybody here. But
if you made it this far
I thank you dearly.
..............
........
....
.


15.02.18

18.02.15 after midnight tho

Unlikely to get much writing in.
Santi is going to call soon.

I hung out with Natalia tonight for
the first time since we decided not
to be involved with each other...
(like that)

It was hard.
It seemed harder on her than
on me.
I've got distractions: that
cute girl at the desk
outside of the OCF.

N read my writing at
Cafe Med.

We met up at Sather Gate and
walked there together.
I saw the old Ellesworth crew,
Steven, Grayson, and Ryan
sitting just by the door.
It was a looming anxiety but
I couldn't break it to Natalia
though she knew anyway.
(I would keep glancing over to
catch Steven online shopping.
Addicted that guy is.)

phonecall----------------43:02

Looks like Santi discovered
his Swag, finally. 
It has so much to do with
fucking, that thing.

Something slight emerged in that
conversation: the inter.
He talked about this paragidm in
architecture - client first -
where the architect becomes the
most perfect craftsman for an idea.
Important, I think, in the way that
it is humbling. I sureley do not like
the superstar ("starchitect as
Penelope at the OCF called it")
way of treating space, projects, plans.

Yet, this client first approach still
reproduces much of the starchitect idea;
It is merely a concession, a ceeding of
power from the one party to the other.
It fails to really change the structure,
the architecture of the work.
Can you see? That what was claimed as a
rightful power of the architect before
is now given to the client, that
they are now asked to play this role.
Perhaps this does result in
difference, but that is
merely by accident, I think.

I can develop this thought better by
offering the alternative I gave Santi.
I'm taken to the concept of the
e·pis·to·lar·y
This is the metaphor I brought forth.
In writing the letter, who is at the center?
The sender, the addressee?
Of course it is neither, that
the letter lives in between.
This is the inter/.

So I take this metaphor into
the world of architecture &
actually I extract it further.
All of my writings, works,
take this form. I have assumed
the epistolary relationship.

Take this to be part of the Pronominal.
Perhaps not as my english pronouns
afford me to express (I, my, me
do not embed in them the relation to
the specific you), but
the Pronominal as I have woven it.

Let me remind you (my friendly readers,
Natalia are you there? Santi have you
finally come around to reading these?).
The way that pronouns work in Vietnamese
is my starting point: in this text and also
in my life, that is how I first learned to
know the world.
Pronouns are generally two directional.
In the way that I call Bà what I do,
I imply that she call me "con" &
take this out of the familial realm;
strangers I meet, grey women,
I call them, too, "Bà" &
so they call me "con".
This is the way in which the pronouncement
builds the relationship, puts it into the world.
That these expressions create an inbetween,
a space between. So when
I create this epistolary style,
I mean to say that my references to myself
understand you, they create you; that
my references to myself are only possible,
only capable of comprehension as you are,
as I imagine you to be.

So I look to this space of the inbetween, that
the center does not point to me or you, but
us together, and a specific us!

I suppose there are degrees of this,
there are the ways ‌in which I relate to those
distant readers, those far off professors
I plan to show this to in a few months,
those imagined readers, those that
I cannot now possibly imagine.

Back to Santi, the architect
(after I light this cigarette) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nihil criticized me before of
the way that I offer "advice"
to my friends; that theres is
an unsafeness, that
they too are not challenged to
criticize me &
this is true, that
I construct myself to be the
swagmaster, safe, infallible

I asked Natalia to give me
straight up criticism of my
previous entries into this &
I was quite worried.
Worried that it would impact my
style, that an increased consciousness
towards my technique would inhibit my work.
Maybe so. Why is it that I had to bust out this
stupid sierra nevada and this cigarette to
find the flow that allows me to write?

I did this again, when talking to Santi just now.
Last night, he found himself unable to
work on his project. He placed himself in
studio for, what?, nine hours? all for naugsht.
Diagnostic Zachary came to the rescue, that
I said it was the lack of stake, of real
rib-eye steak that was making his work impossible.
I did, to my credit, gesture to my own experience.
I have come to sit in this very style, this pensive,
self-centered, (inter/ centered?) style, and
be quite comfortable, feel quite safe, and free.

I find this way of relating to projects, of
placing them squarely in the inbetween
begets ease.

I look back to the days of Traveling Cadavers
(my highschool band, if you don't know) &
How very possible it was for me to write then.
I don't think I've ever been so prolific in my work.

This past semester was something close,
writing with Natalia and Rodrigo.
Some days it felt so impossibly easy,
unfair even.

There is a freedom that
comes from placeing works
between me and my friends.
If there is trouble,
I have a buddy who can save me.
We can rely on each other,
take care of each other.

I want to elevate this form of
thinking? being?
place it squarely in the front.
Even when I am working alone,
I am thinking of others, of
the inevitable other,
the unavoidable other.

I claim this for the Pronominal;
this is a fundamental characteristic.
In doing that, I suppose I am taking a stance;
I am advocating for the Pronomial as
a from of relating, understanding
one's self against the work.

Did I learn this from Ken (Ueno)(thày Ken)?
He does this thing in his composition classes;
He introduces us to the performers that
we are writing for. We know them!
We can ask them questions.
Telling, recently,
I went to a
performance,
"curated" by Ken.
Afterwards, Spencer &
I and Ken and the floutist,
all when to some bar in Soma. But
I think before then, after the show,
the guy opened up for questions &
I asked him, what is fun for you?
Was it so innocent a question?
People laughed at it.
There I go again,
Prince Myshkin.
I learned this
from Ken, this
way of relating,
a way of knowing,
coming to know those
around me, those in my
world. For me, as composer,
it really is the most fundamental of
questions. It is a very important factor that
guides what I want to write, what I choose to write into the world.
(If you want to know what he said: it was some delicate balance
between keeping things varied, hard, interesting,
worth the challenge, I suppose, was implied.)

------drum solo------

I'm losing it now, distracted, out of beer.
Next week I will have to present in Nick's class on
Beethoven, and counterpoint, and some guy's argument that
he is making a conservative gesture, that
counterpoint signifies the old, a kind of return to
the glorious christian rule over europe. 
What is he going to argue? that
by placing counterpoint against the classic symphonic forms,
Beethoven is imagining some utopic solution?
or maybe exploring some way of balancing
the old and the new?

Oh, I feel so disconnected from the task!
If only I could find a way to write myself into it.
I want to feel like it is mine.

15.02.17

Eating alone again.
It is so damn delicious.
Its tofu and spaghetti, pretty strange.
Tomatoes, garlic, ginger;
How have I gotten so damn good?
But that thing missing;
there's no body here to testify
except for me.

These lonely jazz tunes,
sailing voices, sliding
all over the place,
searching; I let them
fill my space up.

I leave the door open
hoping someone will
save me, break this
bubble that I'm in.

Ran into Rosella after class today.
It was the first Nile Project day;
perhaps I was too critical in class.
I wasn't the only one disappointed.

Delightful: she was in Rodrigo's
class with Juliette, last semester.
I came in for the final presentations
to play the guitar for Rodrigo,
have his back. But then
something beautiful.
In that extra time after class,
the margin, hanging, vulnerable
to being clipped off, pruned,
we came together to write a song.
I played the coach in that way
I've learned to do. 
Did she say it was the
best discussion section ever?
What an honor there!
It's these little testamonies that
allow me to believe in myself.
I can't take a paycheck, or at least
I haven't been looking for one;
Can't look to that;
Can't look to grants.
I live in those little moments of
assurance, gratitude.
This is just another way that
I am in between.
Something of me lives in the inter/stice.

I showed Rosella what I wrote about Bà
from a few days ago &
She really got it;
she was really appreciative that
I could share like that.
Oh what a paradox, that
Writing from such a vulnerable place...
It is the only way I have access at all.
It is the only reason I have anything to say.
Yes, yes, it is hard. But
It is also very easy.
It was hard to come to let go.
It is an act of listening to ones self.
For some, perhaps, it is the hardest thing to do, but
me, so arrogant, so brazen; of course I love myself.
Look at me. Here I am. But
In that moment, I had to show her me.
I had to give something.
It was a way to show that it can be done.
I will not speak to anyone's experience but
my own. But in it, someone (you all) may come
to meet me there, find that they move with these
words. I need an audience after all &
There is Rosella.
It was her gift to me! reading that.

~~~~~~~~~~ more noodles ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How should I go about structuring this thought.
I put it pretty well on the roof of Kingman,
smoking a spliff with Haley. Lovely
She's always down to entertain my theories.

I take the surnominal
	   prenominal
	   pronominal to gesture towards
Different modes of being. Strangely,
There are rather literate modes of being.
Maybe not. Can I say, rather, that
the preeminent mode of communication
brings with it its dominant mode of being.
I'm thinking only that writing, the literate,
the page constructed Beethoven as such, as
surnominal object, name towards idea.
Bà's domestic world was taken over,
overshadowed, dominated.
What happened to me?
First I knew Vietnamese, that first
language of love, family, kinship &
It was lost, overrun by english, this
language in essence colonial, erasing &
Verbal english no less,
my mouth muscled into these few sounds,
these consonants; no diacritics needed.
As I came to write, as school became about
these words, this text, the language moved
into my hands, moved out of my heart, core &
Came to rest in my head, hands, eyes.
Beethoven, on the page? in the text.
The text that goes beyond any one ink;
The text that defeats its own manuscript.
Copyerrors, editions, revisions,
E flats in the double bass.

So I will play these three kinds of names
taking for each a champion:
Beethoven, Odysseus, Bà.
Of course they all fight alongside their
own small armies but they will lead.

Toward what?
Whither this theory of names

15.02.16

Just back from shopping with my dad.
We bought a table set from Ikea.
I was so embarrased to have bought it: $150. 
What for? embarrassed that my father will spend money to take care of me?
It's a delicate place, not to be ungrateful &
I definitely am taken care of.
Perhaps it is the way in which these small interchangable gifts,
these industrial gifts, produced on a mass scale,
become all that there is to be greatful for.

I told him I was seeing a therapist.
He reacted about as I would expect,
somewhat bewildered, I suppose,
that I cannot share with him.
It's a funny thing; when I went into Bogart's office,
I told him I was there to talk about sex, or
first I told him that I usually speak to my mother
about most of my concerns in life, but that
I have come to be unable to talk to her about sex.
Bogart, a white guy basically interchangable with dad,
said that was normal, it was not something that
most of us talk to our mothers about.

It really comes down to architecture.
In my house there are more bedrooms than there ever were people.
I have some distant memory of me, young,
coming up to my parents locked bedroom door.
I wasn't sure what was going on.
Was I distraught? confused?
I sometimes look back on that moment &
blame myself for my parents failed marriage, that
I was getting in the way, coming between.
Was it a failure really?
Is the only success to wait until one of you dies before the other?
How is that winning?
I would say that I turned out quite alright.
Am I the result of their successful partnership?
a success of their partnership?
I do succeed their partnership.

I am pulled away from my dad.
I don't trust him to know Family.
What is this skepticism?
I think I place within him all that I find in myself,
all that I distrust in myself regarding love and inter/.

----the beer already came; the cigarette now----

His father and his marriages, both ended in divorce.
I see marriage as absurd; it is this fantasy, that
I might ever be married.
I don't believe in forever like that.

I recently ended things with Natalia;
just another thing I never told my dad.
He never knew to begin with actually.
Why? It was so good, so perfect.
Was I scared? was I unwilling to commit.
I look at Spencer, so able to give himself.
He is such an available lover. 
Even I love him; I am not scared to love him.

That perfection I had with Natalia,
it pointed toward some infinity,
some terrifying infinity.

Ryan sent me an excerpt;
(Natalia pronounces "excert"
I can't really blame her;
receipt, receet, recipie)
David foster wallace:
He writes of the "we";
this holy union of the "I"+"You" &
this character, afraid,
unable to give himself up.

That word "pronounce:"
pronoun, pronounce.
Maybe there is something,
a sonic element.
That the pronominal is a condition of sound.
Sound is this fleeting pointer,
it decays, diffuses,
collides with what is around it &
In that collision it is annihilated.
Sound must be produced, spoken;
It must be brought to fore.
There is something missing
when I write "Ba" and not "Bà".
Her name, its meaning, comes from who said it.
The speaker, the speaking,
sound gives the meaning.
Pronounciation is so important.
"Ba" could mean father;
It could mean three.
All about the tones,
the pronounciation,
this is the pronominal.

Maybe there is a falsity when
I am unwilling to say to Natalia
"I love you".
I tell myself, I tell her, that
I feel it; it is in me;
you needn't hear it;
just know.
But the pronouncement,
the coming into the world that sound is,
it transforms, it moves the universe.
It is the very sounds I make,
not the words, not the signification, but
those vibrations in the air.
The pronominal lives in those vibrations,
so delicate, so very there, but
so fleeting and fragile.

Bà lives, not in me, but
outside of me, in these sounds.
It is when I speak her name,
really try to get it right,
that she comes alive for me.

Beethoven can live dead on a page,
ink, stain, corpse of letters.
His existence does not rely on me. But
In a paradox, though, it does,
In that way he is a musician.
He needs others, he needs that sound.
Music, our performative music,
needs the pronouncement.
I imagine that lonely deaf oaf,
writing his beautiful quartets,
but unable to put them into the world,
not in any other way but his ink.
Was it a kind of premature death?
a death of something before the body,
the corpse, the mind still moving,
but something gone.

//end flow

15.02.15.2

A quaint and hilarious break into chess.com.
Something so delightful about games with Tony.
I think I will leave my earlier rantings &
Try to come to this with a fresher approach.
To be in such an emotional hold is to be held.

Pronomina: let me look at what there is &
Holy fuck there was a lot. I can't even begin to know.
I left southern california very suddenly the last time I came to visit my family.
Bac Binh was there when I left, but Ba and Bac Hien were asleep.
I left them a note.
It said: "Ciao Ba, Ciao Hien, Em de hoc."
Maybe it is kind of cute how badly I fucked up.
Just now reading wikipedia on Vietnamese pronouns, I should have called myself con not em.
Em is between siblings, what I would call myself to my brother.

The other day I went to visit co Minh-ha in her office.
I am strangely forward in how I interact with people like that.
I feel very much like Prince Myshkin in these moments.
So I came and we talked.
It was so fun to see in what ways we relate.
After some kind of theorizing or small talking, I asked her to ask me questions!
Brazen perhaps but I felt it was the most honest thing I could do.
At first she asked me about my name,
I had been very intentional about writing my full name everywhere: Zachary Viet Pine.
I wanted her to know that we had this connection, that it was even why I chose to take the class.
What did she say: "does your name say something; half-half?" &
It didn't offend me at all; I wanted her to know!
We talked about our families; we both come from the north.
There was a migration to the south. 

I asked her about her music; or did she ask me what I studied?
We talked about that for a while, that she studied composition, then ethno.
She said she always accepts music majors into her classes.

Then she asked me how I heard about the class.
It was so fun to say this to her!
I was coy about it; Steven says I am good at being coy.
"I took this class in the architecture department.
It's a photography class.
We took these weekly photos.
It was taught by a guy named Jean-Paul." &
That smile on her face when I said it. 
Hehe I can't help but recall that moment fondly.
She said she would remember me to him.
I hope they talk about me.

Before I left, the last question I had to ask her; it was the question I came to ask.
"How should I call you?"
I suppose I could have looked it up.
I would have avoided the mistake of first asking if I should use Bac &
She said "co, co Minh-ha."
How great! what a connection.
It means so much to me now.
Even, can I say, her work feels like it is mine!
Her success feels like it is mine!
We share a world, our own special world &
Whatever I could come to achieve would be for her too, would be hers.
This inter/space, this world we make for ourselves, between each other.
Maybe it is the every day for her, so common place.
But for me, Zachary, it is so unique.
She is the only one, the only person not in my family I have this with.
Even my own mother is not "me" but "mom".

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

In thinking about Pronomina, I was reflecting on Ba.
There is this looming task, that at the end of this semester I will have to write about "Late Beethoven."
Lateness, oh dear; what is lateness to me?
My life is so new, so fresh.
But everytime I visit Ba I am confronted with Lateness; there is a coming to an end.
Am I terrible for saying to? thinking so?
I sit there with no words to say and holding her hand &
All I can think of is how much I must cherish this moment.
There is a speciality to every second, a rarity.
Maybe it is a sin to write that into Beethoven, but why not?
Beethoven is mine! and I can do with it what I want.
If it gives me something, some meaning to read it this way, than fuck all who say I can't.

Lateness has coded in it this imminent loss, this inevitable coming to an end.
Must the Will to Motion always give way to the Will to Conclusion?

Perhaps there is a way in which beginning and ending are always linked.
I am quite happy resting in paradoxes in this way.

I look to Ba as this spirit of the language.


420420420420420420420420420420420420420420420420
4204204204204204204204200420420420420420420420420
4204204204204204204204200420420420420420420420420
4204204204204204204204200420420420420420420420420
420420420420420420420420

I point to a way in which language is of the body.
There is some way in which my words are an act of physicality.
When I speak co Minh-ha's name, there is some force of...
	I have to pull the sounds out
	I have to inflect each word with a pitch
	I become a singing instrument
     &  It is my physicality that resonates
	      my shape
My body is moved into being, moved in its being.
In that ghost of Vietnamese that lives within me, what am I?
It lives as these shapes, these distant memories, dreams.
I hold them in my form, not as words, knowings..
I do not know this world, Vietnamese.
I inhabit it, though.

---

How do I feel about the lateness in Ba's years?
I can see in her form something.
Do I think she is ready? Ready?
There is something in lateness about readiness, preparedness.
It is a preparedness for nothing, for the absense of something.
There is an imminence for the coming absence. 

So what is it I feel I will be losing, offering up.
Oh dear Ba, she holds the family together.
Her name possesses us all. 
It holds us across generations.

The only name given by all generations.
She holds a pronominal centrality.
My brother and my cousins are mine by virtue of Ba; that we all call her Ba.
My mother and her siblings likewise, Me.

Our togetherness is owned in her &
It is true, owned in the memory of her.
So we see something that lives beyond the body.
The pronominal as an extension of the Prenominal.
I don't even know her name!!
She is but Ba to me, and even to my father! who knows her through me; he gives her name through me.
Merely her name, that name I don't know, does not work to hold together.
It does not connect me to my cousins, even my father.
But her proname, that kinship strength.
It represents a being &
what is that being in lateness?

Lateness is in a way a condition of the body.
It is worn in the body.
But the proname is not of the body.
The proname is between bodies.

Lateness is given through the proname; it is transported to me.
This transport is by virtue of the proname.
When I see oldness around me, it is static.
The old man on the street (appelled) is static for me.
He is old always as I know him.
He is not late for there is only an imagined early, or maybe I don't even imagine it.
If I am careless, he is all he is now.
Those cafe med regulars, static tableau.
They are merely prenames to me, the float, Johns.

But Ba was always Ba, even before I came into her world.
Her name pro/ceeded me. 
Ba because she made me.

<<33<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3

In lateness is there a coming to the proname? a returning?
Does lateness make the proname meaningful?
What of those eternal beings?
Take me to the mythic gods of greece or even the many names of Allah.
Are these pronominal relationships?
I think of the grey-eyed Athena.
How many other names did she have?
She was not in a pronominal relationship with any mortal.
There was no proname for her, because such a relationship is bidirectional (not necessarily bijective).
Occasionally a hero, Odysseus perhaps, would come into naming &
He would thus be the subject of heroic stories in that very naming.
Odysseus: a prenominal character.

When I play with these creatures, they are so malleable.
I can tell any stories about them I wish.
Mythos is such a plastic world, it can move.
Any bard so adept can change the course of the tale, write the new mythology.
I can make these characters my own.

Who was that playwrite who found a trick to save Helen's virtue?
They did it with Mary.
Write into the world a story otherwise impossible.
There certainly is a power to these prenominal stories.
Maybe they are of all stories; all stories are of this kind.

What stories are there of Ba?
All I can remember, Ong was in prison, political prison.
I don't know if it was the French.
I think it was some Vietnamese political party.
Five years he was in prison &
Ba, did she have children?
    Those first two boys?
She was forced to live in a shack? or
Some small structure on the property.
Treated like a dog did mom say?
Poorly taken care of I'm sure.
I don't think she ever forgave that family for that, Ong's family.
Maybe she did not have to.
Mom's grandmother; she did have two but I only know one.
It must have been Ong's mother right?
That was the woman! &
Poor Ba had to live with her.
Mom said her grandmother and her would fan each other. or
Maybe just mom fanned her.
That is the only image I see.

How strange that mom's memories have come to me.
Do we do this? put our memories into each other.
Remembering things together like this.

These are not epic stories, tall tales.
They are simple records to families, of being together.
They are not morally directed.
They do not build into the world an ethics. Or
At least not such a platitudinal one.
It is an ethics of the each other.
The Odyssey is a story of hospitality.
It writes into the world the divine code between kings. but
These stories, they write me into the world.
Where Ba is placed, I am too.
There is that way in which we are one, Ba and I &
It is no bijective because they too place my brother into the world.
My cousins and I come to visit this distant land in the North.
I don't think even my mother has ever been there. But
She is there in these stories of Ba.

The mythic story, the prenominal story places the man.
They make the man in his world: some guy, Odie.
These kinship stories, these pronominal stories, they place me!
I come into the world, because we are one, Ba and I: one family.

In her lateness, Ba's names separate out.
Her prename moves into this world of tales, of fictions.
They would become stories for the news paper, biographies.
If only Ba was so heroic.
(	I envy those people who copy the stories of their families.
	They elevate these humble folk to the heroes of the wine dark sea.	
	Ba and I speak no common language.
	This task is not one I can do.
	Instead I will remember Ba on the same day everyone else remembers Ba.
	We will burn the same incense at the same temple.			)
Her prename can be found in the census section of the library.
(	I think it's in that hallway right when you enter Main Stacks from Moffitt.
	Oh the filthy things that library has seen me do!			)
If new stories are invented, they will be added on, as history.
They will be new clothes for a corpse.
They will be jesus made up on the cross for the cameras.
But her proname, it will live.
It will live in me, at least as long as I live.
It does not leave this world, it remains.
But without the body, without the material, where does it live?
Not even in these books, these census books.
There they do not write Ba.
Her proname lives on in me, us, the bearers of that.
Those stories are merely testaments to her name.
Odysseus is his Odyssey.
Those stories merely point to Ba.
I point to Ba.

15.02.15

I sit now in Tony's room to ponder my theoretical question. 
What was it again that I began to write; the pronominal, on Pronomina.
There is something about dignity going on, outside the theory itself, if there can ever be such a place.
There is some experience I seek to elevate, some part of me.

The last time I used that word, dignity, was in Nick Mathew's class.
Actually it was just now in Tony's room as we were talking about something.
We were talking about making a videogame, a videogame that put our worlds on display.
I contrasted Dignity with the Exotic.
We joked about a metatheory that might be necessary even before I can write what I want to write now.
Wouldn't that just be unfair though, if I had to do that?

So I said something about how I want to write from my experience, elevate my world to this level.
It is a Beethovinian (see: surnominal) level that I want to engage in &
Before you say something about being colonized and selling out or something, just allow it.
This is a hard world to navigate and these things of prestige are very complex.
I don't quite have a strong way to handle them now.

Just earlier even I was talking to Eileen.
We were talking about the future, a very late college thing to do &
I mentioned being a music teacher for young children and how I was put off by it.
For some reason, I can't help but feel that I am condecending to do this.
There is an immature relationship with Dignity hidden in there.

But about my theory: the Pronominal; I want to put my world on the dignified stage.
I want to make a space that I have priviledge access to, that makes me and people like me special.
This takes me back to Nick's class.
Why did I say it?
He said something so offensive, so politically incorrect that all of my friends scoff in its retelling.
I have repeated it so many times that I can't even quote it properly.
It was someting about the state of scholarship, on being a scholar &
He talked of how, as scholars, we reproduce the system of values of our institution.
He said it so plainly, as if it was of no consequence.
It was useless to say anything but I did anyway; in that room he is the despot &
That is where I used this word Dignity.
I said "there is something I need to assert, my dignity, in doing this scholarship."
That week we just read Schiller; what he says about women! can you believe it?
Did we discuss it in class? But tangentially.
What of the dignity of those women in that class?
Could they even have said anything if they wanted to under the reign of that despot?

For me it is not quite the same, but it is almost so.
I think of the japanese; one hundred thousand singing the 9th symphony.
What a bow to colonial power; sucking the bloody dick of the far west.
I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.
When I taught piano to that kid, that club I was in, saturated with these Engineers.
Good Asian kids on track to getting that good job.
They still practice the violin.
This club is just a resume padder.

If I write about Beethoven, try and make a contribution to 200 years of deification, where is my dignity?
How can I just assimilate into this theoretical practice?
How can I just take it?
But I can't leave it either, just go along my way, act like nothing is happening.
I need to burn the whole building down.
I need to do something irreverent, blasphemous.
I need to spit in the face of german idealist jesus.
After me, they will know who to answer to.


hf7y --- ZVP --- 2013