gomringer's constellations...

of all poetic structures based upon the word, the constellation is the simplest. it disposes its groups of words as if they were clusters of stars.

the constellation is a system, it is also a playground with definite boundaries. the poet sets it all up. he designs the play-ground as a field-of-force & suggests its possible workings. the reader, the new reader, accepts it in the spirit of play, then plays with it.

with each constellation something new comes into the world. each constellation is a reality in itself & not a poem about some other thing.

the constellation is a challenge, it is also an invitation.

eugene gomringer, constellations, 1963 (translation by jerome rothenberg, 1967, something else press.)

et il n'y a pan ... (and there was pan...)

... and there was Pan. the poor boy alone. making music. breath blowing through the pipes. breath in the sky. air. survey. as if what is inside of his body, at rest in the sky. air. search. but this breath, this probe, floating, not empty. and there was Pan. making music. alone. only. and he wondered if music was really music, if there was no ear to listen. and there was Pan. open your eyes, his heart beating fast, rapidly, have balanced his song on the wind. search of his ears. reception. and where the butterfly is, as individual into a beautiful shade of purple, whose wings are like ears. where is the butterfly which seeks the song with the same kind of magnetic attraction of the search for the song butterfly. and there was Pan. making music. his. hers. song. search. beginning and created a sort of snowball high quality. a beautiful and tender. with its wings as ears, bending gently in the wind, like a large ball, almost like a room, perhaps as a trap, and has churned, whirled. continuous movement of song. he rolled the world and the sky, behind Pan, silence. feet planted on the wrong side of the earth. Pan. silence. still. forever. his singing a kind of floating satellite. search. and LO and here at a time, by the time the right time, perhaps, wings of this beautiful butterfly, ears or float, with its pardon fluttering beautiful wings graciousness in the heart songs, and she returns as if the nucleus of a multitude of flowers and music. and participates. and Pan attend. it silently. in the song. and the wind starts to move at its softness for him. and he, his butterfly net fallen long ago, yet his breath singing, Pan is in the silence. open their eyes skyward in the nostalgia that ultimately it is so gently with the wind in his hand and is on his ear and whispers the words that we can not hear, but words expresses where he waited for a very long ....

image, anonymous snapshot circa 1930, of a young boy dressed as pan.
text, written in english, translated into french via google, back to english via yahoo, back to french via google, back to english via google...

when butterflies grow wings...

here she stands on a rooftop, her costume complete, and surely red, as she climbs the stairs, her graceful pre-ascension, for at the top step, of course, she will fly. and like the great swallowtail butterfly, she will seek honey for sustenance, as well as music and words. on this day she has become. moving from one beautiful stage to another, looking as radiant against the sky as any star, the first of night, or the last before morning. and just after this photo was taken, she will fly, and her beautiful butterfly wings will carry her, across pages, landscapes, lakes, and perhaps even oceans. today she will find whatever it is that she wishes, and tomorrow whatever it is that she seeks, and this day, today, is certainly hers. one can't be certain of the direction she flies, nor her speed, or length of her flying... but just after this photo was taken, she majestically floated upwards in the soft hands of the wind, and a small piece of paper fell from her hands to land upon the surface of this rooftop. her fingerprints were found along its edges, and upon it was written a short text by the poet vesaas, in pencil... his words, a gift, perhaps contained a bit of magnetism, like a radio signal sending a beautiful song of longing, from far away... on the top of the paper it said simply "invitation" and these are the words that followed...

will you give me your hand in the moonlight,
you are leaves...
under open sky. over the yawning precipice.

like leaves,
you and i
trembling in the wind
and quickly gone.
come...

a 1920's photo of a butterfly.
poem: invitation, by tarjei vesaas,from land of hidden fires, 1953.

a blue butterfly and sad tuesday...

a postcard and envelope from a ham radio station operator from new zealand, posted to someone in chicago in 1938. these cards are called 'QSL' cards, and were sent as a confirmation that the two distant stations could hear each other's signal. most operators seemed to have posted the cards they received on their station walls, along with vast maps, as a way of visualizing the distant reach of their signals. you can see a nice collection of french ones online here. i don't collect these cards in general, although i have a few with real photos of amateur radio operators amidst all their gear in their tiny 'radio stations', usually a basement or corner of a bedroom.

anyone who frequents the blog will probably surmise my attraction to this one is related to the butterfly image (you can read a recent post on aby warburg's 'seelentierchen' a few weeks ago as a start...), and in particular i was attracted to the fact that this card not only contained a butterfly, but is also colored red and blue, a relationship to butterflies and color that i keep inside me.

i am guessing c.o. pepperell decided on the butterfly and birds motif as a metaphor for helping his radio signal fly through the air to distant lands, and indeed he seems to have gotten at least as far as chicago! i wonder what kind of sounds his birds and butterfly carried through the airwaves.

the interesting thing about collecting objects that for the most part were kept as part of a person's personal life, is the notations and details within which one begins to detect an intimate moment in another person's life. on the envelope that pepperell sent to chicago, he wrote the words "sad tuesday, august 2, 1938". i googled this date and other than the first experiment using a yellow baseball in a major league baseball game, i could find nothing else of note. unless pepperell was a fantatical baseball purist and hated the idea of a yellow ball instead of a white one, i would imagine something in pepperell's personal life must've happened around that time.

it's strange to relate all this back to warburg, who at times told his troubles to butterflies. i can imagine an amateur radio operator in chicago receiving this envelope with a butterfly inside, and the words "sad tuesday" written on the envelope being a bit confused. like warburg's seelentierchen, pepperell's butterfly and birds must've also been the recipients of shared sadness, and similarly then flew away. the image and the object are keepers of someone's pain and sadness; a butterfly and an envelope, both containing echoes yet unable to speak. they are only listeners, and unlike radio stations with strong signals, they broadcast only a small a bit of solace in their silence, as if the station has gone off the air, and it's weakened signal a tiny stream of quiet static.

because today is also tuesday, i send good thoughts to c.o.pepperell in the hopes that the sadness of that tuesday 70 years ago didn't last too long, and didn't hit too hard; and that a certain small happiness was found perhaps, on wednesday, or thursday morning the latest...

aby warburg's little soul animals...

"he practices a cult with the moths and butterflies that fly into his room at night. he speaks to them for hours. he calls them his little soul animals [seelentierchen] and tells them about his suffering..."

"the most beautiful butterfly i have ever pinned down suddenly bursts through the glass and dances mockingly upwards into the blue air... now i should catch it again, but i am not equipped for this kind of locomotion. or to be exact, i should like to, but my intellectual training does not permit me to do so... i should like, at the approach of our lightfooted girl, joyfully to whirl away with her, but such soaring movements are not for me."

two quotes from aby warburg and the image in motion, by phillipe-alain michaud, the first from aby's time in bellevue due to melancholic depresion circa 1920 and probably an account of a doctor; the second from a letter by warburg. photo of 'seelentierchen neuchatel' from my iphone.

when books are like butterflies...

some images of one of the sound installations i presented in kortrijk belgium for the happy new ears festival, which opened a few days ago. the piece was installed in the old beguinage in the center of town on the second floor of the st. anne's hall, and is titled 'when books are like butterflies'. it was loosely inspired by georges rodenbach's book bruges-la-morte, not so much the story, as the atmosphere of the text. i began by notating every sound in the book as well as every color in sequence, and then used the lists to generate a sound work, a text work, and a set of images. the text and images appear in the form of dust jackets, which frame the speakers playing a 13 minute audio piece through 15 speakers (and the images are mostly from the backgrounds of some of the old music photos i typically run on airforms). rather than create an illustration of the text or a work that conceptually fits cleanly into a single resolve related to the text, the piece presents numerous paths through the same information, allowing the sounds in the book to manifest themselves in different forms (i.e. as sound, text, and image). my main interest is in creating a space of intimate wandering, where one has to get close to the books not only to read and see, but to begin to approach the activity of listening with the same intimate response to reading and looking at small things. even though they are birthed from the same source, the text sound and images do not inform each other as much as they offer different paths of experience.

these aerial oars of magical colors...

"...we are no longer astonished at the activity shown by some butterflies, such as the sphinx, when they rifle the flowers of our gardens. they flit from one to the other with the speed of an arrow, and like the hummingbirds, they hang motionless before the corolla, plunging their long tongues to the bottom in order to sip the nectar, whilst their wings are agitated by movements which the eye cannot follow!

the delicacy of these aerial oars is no less remarkable than their movements.

however gently we take hold of the wing of a butterfly, our fingers never leave it without having some particles adhering, which seem only fine dust, the source of the magnificent coloring of the insect. but when this dust is submitted to microscopic examination, the observer is surprised to see that each of these grains represents a little flattened plate, lengthened out and of a delicate and complicated structure, which reflects the most magical colors. one of its extremities is generally toothed more or less deeply, whilst the other displays only a little pedicle, by which each imperceptible scale is attached to the transparent membrane of the wing."

image and text from the universe; or, the wonders of creation. the infinitely great and the infinitely little, by f.a. pouchet, 1883. the image is captioned: scales from the wings of different butterflies, seen with the microscope.

butterflies and honey...

two from emmett williams seminal anthology of concrete poetry, published by something else press, 1967

when butterflies are...

composition 1960, #5

turn a butterfly (or any number of butterflies) loose in the performance area.

when the composition is over, be sure to allow the butterfly to fly away outside.

the composition may be of any length, but if an unlimited amount of time is available, the doors and windows may be opened before the butterfly is turned loose and the composition may be considered finished when the butterfly flies away.

la monte young, tulane drama review 1965.
image: childhood drawing (and premonition).