Category: Uncategorized

Monday May 18, 2020

We arrive at a digital labyrinth, without memory even of our name. “Your guess as good as mine,” says somebody to somebody. “Here, inside our walls,” begins an orator, “what exactly is taking place? An anamnesis? A catabasis? A war against psychic repression?” Audiences shift in their seats and begin to type.

Wednesday May 13, 2020

The baby falls asleep to Parliament Funkadelic, Spaceship Earth reimagined as the Mothership Connection. “Are you hip to Easter Island?” asks singer George Clinton late in the song. “The Bermuda Triangle? Well all right / Ain’t nothing but a party.” Time to live light years in the future, in a time-space proposed by Afrofuturists. “One Nation Under a Groove.” Re-constitute the social order and make it funky: “Feet don’t fail me now!” Out of fear of its wrath, I refrain from playing Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry & The Upsetters’s “War Ina Babylon,” opting instead to play Bob Marley & The Wailers’s beautiful “Redemption Song” as the baby wakes. Afterwards, we dance around, her in my arms, me on my feet, to Jorge Ben’s Africa Brasil — on which I discover to my surprise a song called “Hermes Trismegisto Escreveu.” Later, by myself, I climb to the room above the garage and bliss out to J Hamilton Isaacs’s Circumzenithal Arc.

Sunday May 10, 2020

As parents, we become, undergo metamorphosis, transform into the worlds of our children. Through our actions, we model better natures, better worlds. Hopes manifest, consciousness redoubles upon species-being — and upon waking, sees before its very eyes a better state. We change by projecting upon the mind’s eye dreams other than those programmed into us by History.

Friday May 8, 2020

I haven’t been much of a late-night DJ lately, speaking out across the airwaves, broadcasting via trance-script. Sarah and I have been hard at work. Time to relax, clink glasses, admire a mason jar filled with roses and azaleas picked from our garden. But work calls and the baby calls, placing demands upon our time. A student shares with me Allen Ginsberg’s plea to the Hell’s Angels, a piece the poet read at San Jose State College, asking the Angels not to violently disrupt a peace protest. Why did the Angels refuse Ginsberg’s plea? Was there a flaw in the poet’s telling of the difference between poetry and rhetoric? It’s the same difference Audre Lorde struggles to master in her poem “Power.” How does one ease the Other’s fears so as to prevent further violence? Gene Youngblood says leave the culture without leaving the country. Secede from the broadcast. Build the worlds that will be the destinations and destinies of those who walk away. Use these worlds for meditation and transform oneself. “You’re either leaving,” Gene notes, “or you’re not.” Invite alterity into one’s media universe. Gene calls the current era “The Build,” as we detach from the corporate-state broadcast into that which comes next.

Tuesday May 5, 2020

The baby and I read a trippy “opposites primer” version of Sense & Sensibility beside the window in the room above the garage. Afterwards I join a conversation on Gene Youngblood. Listen in, that is — and read along. Erik Davis leads the way through “Part Three: Toward Cosmic Consciousness” from Youngblood’s classic “post-McLuhan philosophical probe,” Expanded Cinema. Youngblood begins Part Three with a reference to Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier’s French mindbender The Morning of the Magicians. Mind of the observer transformed by science, he says, “We move now in sidereal time” (135). Meaning what, exactly? Time measured according to the stars rather than the sun? Youngblood replies with a quote from John Cage: “A measurement measures measuring means.” Time to venture into invisible worlds — the worlds of the electronic nervous system. Consciousness, omni-operative, pervades every atom, every molecule, right down to the quanta. Youngblood strikes me as a bit of an accelerationist. Worlds evolve, he suggests, rendering other worlds obsolete. Authors seed and cede ground to star children, human/plant/machine hybrids moved by a marriage of reason and intuition. In place of obsolescence I prefer cosmologies that support shared ongoing being.

Monday May 4, 2020

Sarah has had to hold the baby for much of the past few days as I work on the floors of the new house, preparing it for our move — and we’re isolated from our families due to the lockdown. Both of us find each other reunited each evening, busy boxing and bubble-wrapping items, though also finding moments of rest, relaxation, comfort, moments of peace and quiet, amid days filled otherwise. The physicality of each day appeals to me even as it pains me. The move is happening, though, and all is well.

Friday May 1, 2020

After a day of work — hauling, lifting, bending, cutting, holding, Zooming, careering — I catch my breath and then do it again. Days involve multiple scenes, multiple acts. I’m reminded at times of The Theatre and Its Double, a book before which I hesitate, filled with trepidation. Artaud troubles me. I let Susan Sontag usher me toward him years ago with her essay “Approaching Artaud.” I’m turned off, though, by the angst of it all. The hero I seek is a joyous wanderer — the one who forgoes despair.

Thursday April 30, 2020

Video-friends team up for a live performance via Zoom and Twitch. Double-click and one is there, listening and watching with others. I depart for a time, enter the phone zone for a talk with my mother. If it’s not one zone, it’s another. This morning, though, I stood in my yard, my eyes meeting the eyes of a deer.

Wednesday April 29, 2020

The new house is magnificent, majestic. I pulled up most of the carpets, I’ve removed much of the padding, I’m in the midst of removing staples and tack boards. A crew will help us sand and refinish the beautiful hardwood floors. Each day we transport boxes and objects as we begin our move. It’s work — we also plan to paint several rooms, plant a garden — but it’s coming along, the whole assembling before our eyes. And we’re working together. Baby gives loud, satisfied sigh.