Attic (Exit Strategies V)

We kruipen stilaan naar het einde van de reeks videogedichten die ik maakte voor het chapbook 'Exit Strategies' van David Tomaloff.
We kruipen ook steeds dieper in de geest van de maker...
Deel vijf gaf mij de ondertitel van de volledige reeks 'Exit Strategies (a bloodletting)'

{V} Picture. Petition. Wrecking ball. A filament. LOOSE FALLING SNOW
DRIPPING AS STATIC, MY BALTIMORE, AND I AM AS IF I AM DAWN,
AWAKE. Tiny radio, my pocket, a form of oxygen apparatus here. Its every verse a
wandering, careening toward a suitable chorus. We get, in this way, what we deserve
most. We give what we are, in this way, of ourselves. Microphone. Reject. Car alarm. A
furnace. Some sort of perdition, some rules for the road. I tried. I tried again, and failed,
where I could not remove your picture from the wall. Its face took me down instead,
trembling me from basement to heavens. Where a crossing out of the minor. Where the
burning of middle initial. A team of ghost prayer horses. A bloodletting. A home.

Een stroom van beelden die (letterlijk) het hoofd doen overlopen. Vertwijfeling voert een strijd met teleurstelling, boosheid licht op de loer...

Enfin, 't is klaar...

Attic (Exit Strategies V)



Woorden en stem: David Tomaloff
Concept, camera, treats, muziek en montage: Swoon

Asylum (Exit Strategies IV)

Deel IV van het videopoem-chapbook 'Exit Strategies (a bloodletting)' van David Tomaloff en mezelf wordt losgelaten.

De vorige drie vonden eerder al hun weg. Alle zes samen zullen ze worden gepubliceerd op Atticus Review  en op ARTS VISUALS & POETRY (en daar zijn we blij mee)

{IV} I come apart when the authorities arrive, spread across the room like an ocean doing
the same. I am reaching behind me now. Every morning with them was cause for another
string of misdemeanors. I talked on the phone then. I drew pictures of women and men
doing their best to relate to one another, like lines drawing lines upon lines, over and over
again, insecure. Dinner was the time of day reserved for crows and me. We gambled
excuses in exchange for a minute more before turning out the light. It is well past dinner
now, and the light has been out for days. The rafters are humming; bullhorns, relentless;
the fields are dividing; they know me by this name: Penance. Vibrant lights scribble non
sequiturs across cracked plaster. I am all lungs in here. IF THIS IS A BATTLE HYMN,
I AM THE DRUM, THE WINTER, AND THE HAMMER WHICH BEATS THEM
FORWARD. The men in plainclothes finish cigarettes while we wait.

Enfin, 't is klaar...

Asylum (Exit Strategies IV)



Woorden & stem: David Tomaloff
Concept, camera, montage & muziek: Swoon
Dank: Arlekeno Anselmo

Swoonscapes op netlabel NSI

Onder de categorie plezant nieuws;

Netlabel NSI (Negative SoundInstitute) heeft me gevraagd of ik het zag zitten om de 'swoonscapes' die ik maakte bij mijn filmpjes 'uit te brengen' bij hun label.

Natuurlijk wel.

Samen met de mensen van NSI werd een selectie gemaakt van 12 tracks.
Titel van de plaat: Dark embrace with a paper voice

Je kan de plaat hier alvast beluisteren of downloaden terwijl je naar de bijbehorende filmpjes kijkt...

Enjoy!

SUBCUTANEOUS

Enkele maanden geleden kreeg ik een berichtje van Dan Godston (schrijver/muzikant)
'Of ik nog op zoek was naar gedichten voor 'Propolis'?

Dat project was al achter de rug, maar we bleven wat heen en weer schrijven over andere ideeën.
Hij stuurde op mijn vraag wat gedichten door met de sfeer van 'oude thrillers, film noir'...

Hij stuurde me 'Spread Out' 'Trash' en 'A sonnet for Edgar Allan Poe'

Trash
Perched on the outskirts of the periphery,
just outside the where of how,
you once noticed a crack, the craw, the claw,
the cusp of yesterday edging toward a moment ago.
Lips lost longing, lounging with the lunchbox open,
the aluminum foil unsnugged, sesame seeds & bits of crust
in the tiny foil crinklepockets that look like inverted
reflective mud dried up & cracked into patterns.
She said a serious joke that’s no hoax, not hokey.
What’s your position? I wish I knew. That’s my position.
Too little time for so much trash. Time off, down
time that can never be downed or sunk
like an empty tempus fugit battleship,
a fugitive monarch butterfly, not mockingbird or monarchy,
no mock-up or rehearsal, neither hearse nor umbilical cord
snipped for freezeform finesse. The moment migrates
from the here & now to the nevermore or sweet hereafter.
Bittersweet, not neat or ribbontied.
(published in The Smoking Poet)

Spread Out
…on nights only when they must. – Divik Ramesh

because the ground was just turned over
and dirt clods in the furrows were getting wet
and heavy, because the sun was going down,

because the wind picked up, because the grass
waved iridescent green in the afternoon light,
because the field spread out, because walnut

& poplar trees bordered the field, because giant
sprinklers were watering the crop, because
ghosts moved in & triggered memories

A Sonnet for Edgar Allan Poe"When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image…"  from "The Mask of the Red Death"

Despair is scattered bleeding on the moon.
Contagion novel figure will create.
The massy hammers hung on halls with hate,
And chandeliers will eat a gaunt buffoon.
Opprobrium tints fire-light maroon,
Grotesque green smoke caresses arms of fate
In castles glaring turns to devastate.
A thousand precincts carpet lapses soon,
Phantasms emanated ghastly vows
Whose seven chambers dream laughter’s hue,
And murmer westerly the clock bizarre.
The rushing movement jests, not knowing how.
Indulge the bells that reach new presence blue,
Incessant maddened purloined dagger scar.
(published in Sonneteering, Chicago: Beard of Bees, 2010)

Oorspronkelijk wilde ik 3 verschillende video's (alle drie met beelden uit oude horrorfilms) geflankeerd door 'sfeerbeelden' van mezelf.
Zijn lezingen stuurde me echter in de richting van 1 video met drie gedichten (zoals ik eerder 'Dreaming in Red' maakte voor 3 Howie Good gedichten)



Een track die de sfeer (unheimlich) bepaalde en beelden uit een totaal verkeerde 'opvoedingsfilm' over kinderlokkers maakte het plaatje compleet.
Enfin, 't is klaar...

SUBCUTANEOUS



Woorden en stem: Dan Godston
Concept, camera, montage en muziek: Swoon
Footage: "The Child Molester" (The safety Highway Foundation, Herbert J. Leder)

Drag (Exit Strategies III)

Nummer drie in de duistere reeks videogedichten op basis van het chapbook 'Exit Strategies' van David Tomaloff.
Halfweg en we worden er niet vrolijker op.


{III} I dream in killer question marks because there is a war outside. I’ll stand in the rain

to burn myself clean because I blister in the sun. City brakes squeal from thin-wearing pads, and the cabs continue on, all rickety and mean. I’m holding hands with saints in orange corridors, built from dead husks of abandoned subway cars. Their names are alive in aged hues on the walls, and they are bleeding into the cracks that have begun to form in the parietes of my heart. I’m sorry I haven’t written in a while. I’m sorry about the

anonymous picture postcards. I forget. I tore a note into my arm to remember. It healed, and I soon again forgot. The buildings are silver bullies in the daylight, hulking graveyards by night. Please send a flare, a map, or a compass. Send me a slingshot, or a prayer. I carry the old photographs, but what can be burned is sacrificed for heat when the giants falter to the dusk. The salt in the air is burning at our mouths. THE SEA IS RAVENOUS WITH REVENGE. There is a flood on the horizon tonight, and the guards have begun to desert their towers. THE WATER HAS REVEALED US IN WAYS WE COULD NEVER HAVE IMAGINED.

De donkere trip trekt zich traag op gang, kruipend door struikgewas lijkt het. Op zoek naar licht dat zich niet laat vangen, herinneringen (beelden van 'Entry (Exit strategies I)' schieten er doorheen) dringen zich op.

enfin, 't is klaar...

Drag (Exit Strategies III)



Woorden en stem: David Tomaloff
Concept, camera, montage en muziek: Swoon

Channeling Gertrude (Tom Konyves)

Qarrtsiluni is al eerder een bron gebleken voor intrigerende poëzie of sterke lezingen.
Eind vorige maand was er de Qarrtsiluni Podcast van Tom Konyves.
De man is een beetje een pioneer van het videogedicht (en de 'uitvinder' van de benaming 'videopoetry')

Channeling Gertrude dan;
Tom had (in het artikel op Qarrtsiluni) zelf het volgende te vertellen over het schrijven van 'Channeling Gertrude'.

"An unusual experience prompted the writing of this poem — hearing the voice of someone we have never met. For me, it was the voice of Gertrude Stein. I managed to capture only one brief statement: ‘make a name for yourself.’ What followed was a torrent of words that astonished me; it was like being caught up in a whirlwind. Almost faster than I could record them, repeated phrases — with minute modifications — swirled through my mind and onto the page. When it was done, it was as if the words had been written by another. I then truly understood Rimbaud’s famous phrase, ‘Je est un autre.’”

Ik was bijna onmiddellijk weg van de tekst en de lezing. Er gaat een dromerige kwaliteit van uit, zonder 'zweverig' te worden. Integendeel, de tekst heeft een geweldige drive.

Channeling Gertrude
Everyone hears voices.
The voice I heard that night was the voice she used to write the names she used in writing.

“make a name for yourself”

what if the name makes the sound of a smoke alarm when it makes us listen up to the sound, it makes us rush toward the sound like a long lost one, one who has been lost to us without a sound, now there is a sound of one who may have been lost only to us, not without a name, but a name whose sound makes someone stand up and turn to us rushing toward them like a long lost someone whose name is the same

now what if the name is the same as someone else who has not been lost to us, but with us all the while and he or she is the same one whose face is so familiar that we would recognize them no matter where they were, he or she, and even if they came up behind us in a sudden wind whose touch was not immediately familiar but whose face was as familiar as could be

and if the sound of the name is recognized by someone who hears the name and suddenly the wind dies and the sound of the name is clear to us but not to someone who still hears the wind rushing to meet them at the train station

who has not recognized the sound of the name he or she hears at the train station, can the sound be recognized to make someone turn into the wind and still hear clearly, the name whose sound is the same as when they left and were lost to us who will always recognize the name and the sound of the wind rushing toward the train station

and the more we hear the sound of the name the more we begin to recognize that it is the same name we have always heard from a distance and it continued to sound in our ears as if we had always heard the name, no not a sudden wind, would make us turn toward the voice who said the name because it was familiar

or if it was so familiar that the name was the same as so many other names whose sound, like the wind in a train station, where the sound of names and places and time and faces are many, so many

now they say that you can’t go home again because it is not the same home you left when you were lost to someone in a place and time we recognize when we hear someone speak about this or that place or time and it is always the past where it is all so familiar and even if it is not we don’t have to be so careful about what we do

if the name is familiar and we recognize the sound as someone who has left us for far away where the past is unfamiliar and the sound is not one we recognize but one whose sound makes the sound of a whistle, we turn to face the direction of the sound and if he or she is different from the one who is lost to us, we turn and return to the home where he or she is sitting on the steps and smiling

De volledige lezing van Tom kan je beluisteren of downloaden op Qarrtsiluni.

Na verschillende lezingen en beluisteringen van 'Channeling Gertrude' heb ik mijn stoute schoenen aangetrokken en heb ik Tom gevraagd of ik 'iets mocht doen' met de tekst en de lezing.
Ik mocht.
Joepie.

Klank.
Al bij de eerste beluistering van de podcast moest ik zelf denken aan een track van enkele maanden geleden:


Voor de beelden heb ik opnames gebruikt van reflecties op het raam van een trein in een tunnel vermengd met een 'exerpt' van gerecycleerde beelden uit een video die ik anderhalf jaar geleden al had gemaakt.
Dat (opnieuw gemonteerde) exerpt staat in een loop die steeds altijd herhaald wordt naar het einde toe. Als een 'stream of consciousness' in beelden...

Enfin, 't is klaar.

Channeling Gertrude



Woorden en stem: Tom Konyves
Concept, camera, montage en muziek: Swoon
Dank aan Arlekeno Anselmo en Qarrtsiluni

Wave (Exit Strategies II)

Kort en krachtig (want reeds uitvoerig beschreven hier en hier)

Deel 2 van het videopoem-chapbook 'Exit Strategies (A bloodletting)' op basis van 'Exit Strategies' door David Tomaloff.

Exit strategies II

{II} Maybe the trees will take us for granted. Maybe they already have. Maybe we will
grow up to do the same, you and I. Or maybe we will dive into the lake, together, and
never come up. Maybe the summer will forget our names. Maybe it already has. Maybe
we will lose ourselves in the fall and do the same, you and I. Or maybe we will splinter
across the canyon, together, and become a fine dust. I already blame the Staghorn Cholla.
I already blame the wild Vesper Sparrows. The saints of Phoenix have come here calling
for us again. I am radiant with things I will never understand, and you, you are charged
with the same. We are always, and always the same, you and I. We are drawing now
nearer to the edge of the forest. Maybe the wolves will forget what they have seen here. Or
maybe they will use it against us. Maybe we will return with our weapons, together, and
do the same, you and I. Maybe we will become the bullets that splinter apart their bones in
the names of men. WE WILL REMOVE THE ONCE SHARP TEETH, YOU AND I,
AND LEAVE OUR FORMER NAMES AS VESTIGES IN THEIR PLACE.

Wave (Exit Strategies II)



Woorden en stem: David Tomaloff
Camera: Lauren Lightbody (uit haar  'Frightened Pigs') & Swoon
Concept, montage, muziek: Swoon