Sum (Exit Strategies VI)

Het zit er op.
Alle zes de gedichten van David Tomaloff zijn chapbook 'Exit Strategies' zijn voorzien van beeld en geluid.

Het was een werk van lange adem, maar een fantastische trip. We zijn blij met de resultaten en met de eenheid die de werken hebben gekregen (dankzij de lezingen en de muziek)

Sum (Exit Strategies VI) is de laatste wagon aan het treintje.


Ik zet het volledige videopoem-chapbook hier nog eens onder mekaar...














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

{VI} O SOLEMNLY STAY THIS, MY FILM PROJECTOR HEART. I WROTE

THAT SENTENCE FOR A FIRE ONCE. I built a fire from a forgotten friend. I drew

ghost water from a lover and took it to bed, a train. This is my machina, with its gears

softly turning beneath the rolling of a forest floor. When night appears again, we are both

friend plus enemy; the blood and the calm; menacing to some as Chinese New Year. Our

manual of snow misses a page the way I miss pulse, and dark, and the borrowing for the

sake of the borrowing alone. I covet this place, though I am summer’s end. I am love song,

the cross-fade, the badge, the brought in screaming. Wolves here know this as a baptism of

war. WE KISS WITH CLASHING TEETH BEFORE THE RAIN, AND I

FOLLOW YOU DOWN THE MOUNTAINSIDE, WE, BRINGING LIFE TO

WHERE THE FIRE HAD GONE BEFORE US. Stay close and don’t tell the lions

your name. DEVISE A METHOD FOR TURNING THE NUMBERS INTO SAND.

Inhale. A coming. Exhale. The ghosts.

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

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

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

Exit Strategies (a bloodletting), a videopoem chapbook

When David Tomaloff and I started working together last year, one of the first things I asked him was "What about a videopoem-chapbook? Hasn't been done I think. Let that idea sizzle and stew for a while..."

David's reply on that:
"One more quick thing for you to think about: You mentioned a chapbook and told me to think about it. I wanted to tell you I liked the idea. I have a chap on Gold Wake Press that came out in June. It came to mind immediately when you mentioned the idea. It's a series of 6 prose poems I think are begging for videos. Give it a read if you have time; I'd LOVE to have you consider making it into series."

I read 'Exit Strategies' and then I read them again, and again...
They were exactly what I had in mind. While working on 'PROOF' (a triptych) I also started preparing the work on 'Exit Strategies'.

One of the first things I wanted for this project was some 'theme music'. I wanted to make six different video's with the same feel or atmosphere and 'a theme' would be the mortar between the six.

Meanwhile David started reading and recording the poems.
Great readings and recordings, I might add. In the meantime I was working on images, footage for the whole concept.
I gave the six poems different 'working titles' to set a basic feel. In the end I decided to keep the titles (Entry, Wave, Drag, Asylum, Attic and Sum)

Between the different other projects we worked on, David kept on sending in recordings and I kept editing and filming the video's.

The work is done. I'm going to release all six, one by one, in the next weeks. After that they will be published as a complete series.

The first one in line is
 Exit Strategies I

{I} HOT KNIVES WILL MELT INTO THE EMPIRES OF FLESH ON THE
CONTINENTS OF THEIR SOFT, SUPPLE THROATS. You can stay up all night
burning powders in their names, but they will come for you all the same. The dawn, to
them, it does not exist. You are never alone in the being alone, and the wolves will open
up, show you the light if you let them. Let them, you will not. You will hold knives over
flame and count beats between the calls of crickets. Hold fast. Steady now, and breathe. A
circular motion. The turning of a screw. A radio going silent in the warehouse of a mind. A
temple. A refinery. A steelhead. A trap. The judge and the judged, both waiting for the
click.

'Entry (Exit Strategies I)'



Words & voice: David Tomaloff
Concept, camera, editing, music: Swoon
Thanks: Methedone Kitty (Sleep/Swim - Footage) & Arlekeno Anselmo