Walking Segre. December.

Walking Segre. December.

Told-you-so versions of

anthocyanin + my own guesswork

make demands I’m willing to meet

somewhere around halfway online.

Colors of winter weedpatch tangle

are in there somewhere, vying with

rivercurrents, a light breeze, enough

sunshine staining the canvas that

won’t work but has to be tried.

In memory (aided by photos) eye

struggles along the coat phrase of

earths, red wines, some whites even,

the swirl of branches stared at

from the rocky unpaved pathway. 

Schiller's "Mary Stuart" at the Teatre Lliure

Friedrich Schiller’s Mary Stuart as currently staged at the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona presents a minimalist confinement of the Scottish queen’s forced confrontation with her English counterpart. Acting opens behind iron prison bars on an otherwise bare stage with few other props than a writing desk. As events continue a few added suggestions are considered necessary and added sparingly—a handful of chairs replace the bars, invoking Elizabeth’s court, a large lantern is set swinging, crucially invoking the passage of time and the English queen’s famous indecisiveness about signing Mary’s death warrant. Or is the slowness of enlightenment being noted as well, a different view of history somehow held back by Machiavellian circles? In any case director Sergi Belbel places the audience on two sides of this simple jail, “casting” them as it were in one sense outside, in another, inside its bars.

The Catalan translation, not surprisingly, is briskly spoken. Also, in keeping with the play’s economy, the more than 17 actors called for in Schiller’s original are reduced to seven. The narrative of events leading up to the play’s immediate events then has to be set out as context by the actors that survive the cuts. This also reflects on one of the play’s historical concepts, “the people,” expressed (for example) in Elizabeth’s concern for public opinion. However from the outset we know one basic thing about the ending: Mary will be beheaded. That stark image offers some understanding of Schiller’s decision to fictionalize (among other things) the face to face meeting between the two monarchs. For while that meeting never took place, the two did exchange letters, offering some insight into their different psychological make up. Mock-up reinventions like Mary Stuart expand our understanding and expectations of the history involved. Perhaps the psychological feature is Schiller’s greatest gift to the play’s twenty-first century actors in business suits whose roles as advisors to the queen are so well performed. Bravo Lliure!

Information about the production is at http://www.teatrelliure.com/en/agenda/temporada-2015-2016/maria-estuard

Catalan Independence

Catalan Independence

Two of my main media sources on the Catalan independence process are the daily newspapers Ara and La Vanguardia. Both of these publications have online versions which I recommend. By way of example, a recent article in the “Debate” section of the former, by the economist Miquel Puig and titled “República i Repúblicans” (Ara 4.xi.2017, p. 33) suggests that “the Process” in Catalonia “has three enemies: impatience, violence, and disunity.” Process in this context, as most readers know, refers to the negotiations necessary to achieve Catalonia’s statehood. Note that independence is looked on here as process, that is, something not immediate, something already implying a good deal of patience and unity. However it is important to address that third “enemy,”  violence, for a good deal of ink flows daily in attempts to counter the fact that Catalan self-determination is (and has been for some thirty of forty years) a peaceful endeavor. An important reminder of this is the repeated affirmations by Catalan leaders regarding the common bonds between the different regions of the Spanish State and beyond. Given the amount of history involved, of course, it would take a good deal of space to explain these things in depth. The main point is that in addition to the historical ties to Spain, there are also—no surprise here—global bonds. Happily Wikipedia and Socialmedia (if I may write it like that) offer the interested reader ample takes on much of this history, both long past and very recent. Additionally “Linguistic sustainability for a multi-lingual humanity,” a paper by Albert Bastardas-Boada of the U. of Barcelona, may help understand wider contexts. Citing from the paper, “Just as sustainable development does not negate the development and the desire for material improvement of human societies but at one and the same time wants to maintain ecosystemic balance with nature, so linguistic sustainability accepts polyglottisation and intercommunication among groups and persons yet still calls for the continuity and full development of human linguistic groups.” And yes there is of course entanglement with well-known arguments on social engagement and poetry. I think these articles well worth the time. Professor Bastardas-Boadas’ bibliography is also good regarding further reading. The link: /https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236214159_Linguistic_Sustainability_for_a_Multilingual_Humanity/

Pond photos retouched

Second attempt.......

Harvest

Harvest

Grapes in abundance—

slash strokes of blue-black,

red violet, hazed amber.

Pendulum heat keeps them

grouped in dusty air,

fall announced like an urge

to squeeze and press along

down cluster-assuaging rage.

Untitled (experimental repost from 20 July 2015)

Buncrana (2)

A view on the hillside,
then panoramas from the beach,
and back up to look out
from the hill to the river...

Heather. Not sure what the yellow flower is...

On the beach, a first attempt at the view out over the river...

Moving to the camera's right...

Back up on the hill and path

Buncrana

These raw images from our morning trip to Buncrana, Ireland on August 9 show some of the landscape we saw on our walk along the river path. In Donegal, Buncrana is on the Inishowen peninsula and the views are spectacular to say the least. A bit more orientation: The water is Lough Swilly, the town 23 kilometers northwest of Derry, 43 kilometers north of Letterkenny. A few raw notes follow the images ...

One thing that struck me about the water is the soft and constant sound of the waves,
like a whisper.

The photo's too dark, I know, and needs to be processed. But it gives a sense of the peninsular nature of the place--and the wildness perhaps.

Again---

The path itself ; )  More stuff to be added as things develop!

Toward abstraction...

Some recent photo ideas...

Springer

Springer

Back

to the flashlight beam

on live pink grass

out of tv range.

Baiting hands re-hook

a ticking weed stem—

wild electrics

at your flexile palm.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Garden of delights?

The Parking Shakespeare theatre company is currently staging a version in Catalan of The Two Gentlemen of Verona in Barcelona’s Parc de l’Estació del Nord. Soooo…. Saturday night we sat ourselves down in the amphitheatre of the park to enjoy a brilliantly outdoor-staged representation. A few of the features that traditionally delight in this comedy—considered by many the Bard’s first—include Shakespearean language play, of course, as well as a cross dressing lover; fast paced witty, often racy dialogue exchanges; Crab the dog; the curative features of the greenwood……. To tickle the funny bone in this version all of those traditional delights have been kept—but of course the text is in Catalan. A somewhat different delight in the adaptation involves speaking some of the dialogue in basic Italian (yes) and wait for it Catalanalian. Which is to say, well, they fake a kind of lingo mixture, making it all even funnier. This altering of Shakespearean language play to a Mediterranean koiné of sorts is appended to the more traditional features. Somehow it all manages to delight as it translates the playfulness of the original Elizabethan English. Crab the dog is both in and out of the action—now you see him, now you don’t, according to the staging.  All in all the play is highly recommendable, great comedy and an intelligent tribute to lyrical yet realistic early Shakespeare. Daily but for Wednesday. From 20 July to 6 August, 2017 at 7 p.m. Entrance free. Here is one useful link >>

http://www.parkingshakespeare.com/

Leaves

New meanderngs in Viladrau.......

fake news

On fake news and other matters

The current topic on the -empyre- soft-skinned space listserv is, perhaps unsurprisingly, “fake news.” As I’ve noted in the past, it’s free to join the listserv and of course to use the files, which are rich in thought about culture in general, but perhaps especially the arts. The arts in versions written, painted, filmed or otherwise (un)framed. Our impossible views of flux, of quiddity. What you see when you go here

 /http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ /

provides an extensive, perhaps I should say extendible view of what’s on offer.

Birthday emojis

Birthday emojis

Hide the top half of the clock.

The room still rang,

an outside mask jazz sax;

shoreline and wave....

Paint over a roughened area;

sunset, facial distortion; groves.

A striping or ticking falls briefly

across the screen. Ribands, con-

fetti, cake & bubbly.

Salud!

Robot poetics

This month’s theme on the Empyre listserv is Robot Poetics. The terms have been taken very widely with context being obviously germane to the issues. As one would expect there is quite a lot on robot poetics and on robots and on poetics on the internet. The artificial neural networks (ANNs) that keep the internet running smoothly (mostly, in my humble opinion) and their similarities/differences with the human brain are immediately of some interest to poetry. But then it isn’t only brain that is involved in robotics. Movement comes in, somatics, visual and aural perception…. Are humans (ever) robots? Would it be preferable to answer yes? Then again, what does poem mean? As a neophyte in robot studies I’ll limit my post to this. I believe the Empyre-l discussion offers a lot both as introduction and continuation. It’s free to follow the listserv. One example of what the current discussion deals on dreaming is by Ben Bogart (scroll down for video):

http://www.ekran.org/ben/wp/2017/watching-blade-runner-2016/

World Poetry Day 2017

World Poetry Day, yes.

Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry” has often been a source of inspiration. Thinking today about contemporary poems, and about the context and support offered by the internet, I paused over this section:

[Poets’] language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things, and perpetuates their apprehension, until the words which represent them, become through time signs for portions or classes of thoughts instead of pictures of integral thoughts; and then if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associations which have become thus disorganized, language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse […]. In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word the good which exists in the relation, subsisting first between existence and perception, and secondly between perception and expression. Every original language near to its source is in itself the chaos of a cyclic poem: the copiousness of lexicography and the distinctions of grammar are the works of a later age, and are merely the catalogue and the form of the creations of Poetry.

Whatever your activity, your “poetry,” may it bring you happiness!

to take a walk but when you feel to turn one way to turn another

to take a walk but when you feel to turn one way to turn another

because it’s people with a fish on their head

cries of gulls reach of stellar explosions

oh they can be yes

i could name a street yes of course i could name several

albuquerque kalamazoo on the other hand alphabetical

sorry could i just squeeze through thanks

ever imagine you had wings then meet someone who skydives

(soft as you can play here) absolutely

and hey it’s home you know

kit and caboodle drive

in decision

in decision

again the clock in the flower

some petals are missing

rage stolen like sap

what it is is the many flowers

like a river possibly

transmission fluid

all the same one is aware that

as one might say one’s view

and similar turns

which one

Trumpism. Rules. Roles

Trumpism. Rules. Roles.

Everybody has their own America, and they have pieces of fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see.  —Andy Warhol

The “rash and erratic president”—as a recent Washington Post article termed Donald Trump (1)—has continued to cause consternation on the world stage. But the basic tactic of this new administration is simple: to create smokescreens on important governance issues by a constant and chaotic crisismongering. Evoked much of the time, on a pragmatic level, are the worst features of things like cold wars and “détente”—not to mention xenophobia. The Trumpist’s ratcheting up of dystopian worldviews also brings to mind Wittgenstein’s notion of language games. Wittgenstein viewed speech acts as involving conversation based on “moves.” What people say, in other words, sets up a kind of competition.

Language games also involve the well known difference between denotation and connotation, as well as the possibility of falsification and legitimation. And then there are levels of games and types of games. As Jean-François Lyotard stated, “In the ordinary use of discourse, for example, in a discussion between two friends, the interlocutors use any available ammunition, changing games from one utterance to the next: questions, requests, assertions, and narratives are launched pell-mell into battle. The war is not without rules, but the rules allow and encourage the greatest possible flexibility of utterance” (2).   We would seem to be in the presence during some of these games of what Trump is fond of terming “fake news,” although it isn’t always certain just who is faking what. Consider, for that matter, revisions regarding Silicon Valley and “the Deep State” (3). And yes, even in an age of globalism, Wikileaks, and e-democracy.

Hopefully Lyotard’s militaristic metaphors serve as pragmatic reminders of what underlies discourse per se on a sociological level—magnified obviously on the geopolitical stage. “An institution differs from a conversation,” Lyotard (p. 17) also notes. Unfortunately the Trump administration doesn’t seem to recognize this.

Notes: (1) Robert Costa and Ashley Parker, “For 14 days Trump kept his No. 2 in the dark. What does that mean for Pence?” WP 15 February 2017.

(2) Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester UP, 1984 [1979], p. 17.

(3) As in Mike Lofgren. “Anatomy of the Deep State” <http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/>