It's interesting how many people here work across, or tunneling through,
disciplines, knowledge mashups, etc. If there were a word to characterize
the writing of wryting I'd probably use 'cranial.'
Then there are associative techniques as you and others describe, metaphor
cut loose, almost abandoned, in its power -
Alan
On Sun, 27 Aug 2006, Brent Bechtel wrote:
Dear Alan,
Use of Internet search engines (google, altavista, &ct.,) with an intentional
method of combining terms from disparate lexicons (e.g., medical, geological,
journalistic, ... /n/) to find obscure documents. It is very rare for one
paper to cross disciplinary boundaries in use of specialized language.
Specialized language -- to phrase this in a derogatory sense, jargon -- is
usually viewed in professions as the *property* of that profession and those
educated in it (much like a religious hierarchy, or any other social,
mass-movement construction.)
I enjoy finding documents that cross slang, medical, historic, mythological,
&ct., boundaries. However, this is very rare. Thus, I created a poetry based
on declaring a sort of dismantling of what I might call "ownership & the
right to use some types of language by the non-initiated."
It's enjoyable to create poems about enzymes, current flow, fibrosis, and so
on.
Liberating the use of language is beautiful.
I must also note that while I sometimes use a text filter (such as one of the
freely-available Markov text-generators) as a starting place, I do not use
the output from the text filters.
There are several methods which I employ. I will describe one: I stare at a
computer screen filled with nearly-random (first order Markov, for instance)
text. I allow myself to relax to the point where my mind and eyes begin
wandering, noticing words here and there, and continue waiting as my
imagination takes precedence. At this point, I will begin typing lines of
poetry, jumping mentally from subject to subject and considering untried ways
of describing experience; meaning, meaning, meaning, and also essence.
The odd part of this procedure is that my final poem usually owes nothing to
the munged text with which I began.
However, I find this enjoyable. One of my poems might seem like a cut-up to
some readers, etc., but ... ah, it isn't. In many ways, it tends toward a
form of pseudo-alchemy.
But this is only one of my procedures. There are others. After a while of
doing what I described above, I found it easy to work spontaneously from
thought alone.
Sincerely,
Brent
Alan Sondheim wrote:
This may be a bit absurd, but I'm fascinated by the variety and intelli-
gence of the pieces / texts / other posted to wryting, and I think it might
be worthwhile for people to describe both their techniques and goals? There
are so many discourses here! I find I can't reply to most things, but one
of the first impressions (which remains) is that of both disparate and
intertwined/related worlds. This is exciting, and it would probably be of
use and co-catalystic (?) to have a variety of approaches and discourses
described.
For myself, I've done this fairly often, both in terms of my psychological
state, and the specifics of writing/scanning/taping/etc. that to go any
further would be redunduntant -
- Alan
blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see
http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact [EMAIL PROTECTED], -
general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org
Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim"
blog at http://nikuko.blogspot.com - for URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see
http://www.asondheim.org/advert.txt - contact [EMAIL PROTECTED], -
general directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org
Trace at: http://tracearchive.ntu.ac.uk - search "Alan Sondheim"
