Revisiting Kenneth Goldsmith / Project in Text Mutations

In class, I remember we were told to "read until we couldn't stand it anymore."

Kenneth Goldsmith is a conceptual writer whose preferred method is transcription. He has transcribed weather reports, newspapers, magazines, and every word he has said for a week. For him, the process of transcription is fascinating, and it is of no consequence that the result of his work is not "original" or creative.

"In the same vein, as I said before, I don't expect you to even read my books cover to cover. It's for that reason I like the idea that you can know each of my books in one sentence. For instance, there's the book of every word I spoke for a week unedited. Or the book of every move my body made over the course of a day, a process so dry and tedious that I had to get drunk halfway though the day in order to make it to the end. Or my most recent book, Day, in which I retyped a day's copy of the New York Times and published it as a 900 page book. Now you know what I do without ever having to have read a word of it."

--"Being Boring"

At its best, it seems transcription functions as a method of extremely close reading, benefitting only the person doing it. After having transcribed a full one day issue of the New York Times, Goldsmith asserts that you've never really read the paper. Does this initially strike you as self-indulgent? Do you unconsciously assume a writer should write in order to impart edifying truth to readers?

I'm sure Goldsmith's projects initially strike most as absurd, pointless, and ridiculous, but I think he has a valid point about the close reading, which gets me thinking about transcription as spiritual practice. If someone transcribes their holy scriptures, or favorite meditations, I don't doubt it would help things sink in somewhat better than merely reading them.

Part of the point is that you have to stick to what the text says, without mutating it at all. (This makes me think of the void preceding creation in the book of Genesis.) Trying this exercise would be a good starting counterpoint for my next project, which will involve texts that mutate as cells do. Imagine, if you will, a "cell" made out of letters, words, and word fragments that interact with each other as parts of a cell do. Or maybe I should focus on the behaviors of DNA, in its replications and mutations. This may involve some study of cell biology and maybe evolutionary biology... and if I were to build a complex organism out of my "text cells," it would require me to also learn code so I could write a computer program to keep track of it all. I might use the creation story in Genesis loosely, as a structure to guide my efforts, or at least as a text to return to when all these ideas start to feel like they don't make sense.

I don't plan to learn code anytime soon, since I think my time is much better spent reading, writing, learning languages, drinking coffee, and learning how to produce art. So if I found a computer programmer who wanted to collaborate, I'd be able to build these "text organisms," and then everything the organisms do would be a new poem at every moment. That sounds ridiculous, but it's true: every time their cells moved, there would be a new formation of text.

New Project Ideas

For a long time I've found it really hard to focus on writing-- hence, the lack of recent / regular posts here. I do have a new project idea, but I can't wrap my mind around it without refreshing myself on some basic biology concepts. I need to figure out a unit of poetry that can be like a "cell" and have these cells interact with each other, sort of the way real cells do. I'm particularly interested in the processes of mutation and replication, and how I'd depict these visually / poetically. I don't know to what extent this would involve photography-- likely it would have a lot less than my first project did.

Meanwhile, you're welcome to look through my archives and cringe at my old class exercises, but I'm sure you have better things to do.

Book Edits and "Howl"

Recently I had started working on a new poem/image, but it doesn't fit with the others in the book. It will become part of my poetic / artistic statement for my grad school applications, because it is even more highly abstract than all the other images I'd done. It's about the crossroads between identity and language, and the image features a barbed wire fence. Upon closer inspection, the viewer discovers that one of the barbs is, in fact, a discarded insect exoskeleton curved in deference toward the sky. Right now, the sky in the image bears the words "identity intercepts language."

It needs work, but it has the potential to express my statement of intent in a way that words alone cannot. I can't think of a better way to emphasize my commitment to interdisciplinary art and writing.

The planned edits are as follows, and will be done by tomorrow:

• Adding a bibliography
• Adding a colophon
• Changing the order of pages
• Rendering the quotations in scanned images of my handwriting, rather than erroneously double-embedded italic text that caused the black dots / missing text print error.
• Maybe adding another Susan Howe quote. She is the main influence on the work.
• On a whim, I may throw in a scanned image of handwritten Greek, as a little counterpoint to the Westminster Hebrew computer code thing.
• Edit or delete the poetry on the final page, and/or move it to a different part of the book.

The prose sections get shorter toward the end, but I've decided not to try adding anything to them. Things are explained more explicitly at the beginning, and then everything rests in implications toward the end, particularly as the "Birdman subplot" develops.

Someone told me, following the poetry reading, that I sounded "a little preachy." I am unsure what exactly he was referring to. Was it the declarative / explanatory tone I used in the beginning, where I think I lead the reader a little bit more, or the way that I talk about God, or a combination of the two? Well, the microphone at a reading is, and should be, a pulpit from which the passionate poet strongly declares whatever they believe. The last thing it should be is noncommittal and boring. If I read it better, I probably would have sounded more preachy.

I could certainly learn a few things from the recent reading of Allen Ginsberg's Howl, which occurred at Circle Cinema on Friday, December 10th. It was a spectacular first encounter with the poem, better than the reading within the film. As much as possible, a reader should become a conduit for what they are reading, and must read truthfully and passionately.

"Holy Tulsa," indeed.

First Reading / Upcoming Revisions

My first reading from A Meditation on the Misplaced occurred on Friday, November 12 at Living Arts in Tulsa, as part of the Oklahoma Avant Garde Poetry Reading.

It's probably kind of surprising that such a thing even exists. Nobody would think we have art here, but we do. Walking around the Brady and Blue Dome Districts, I passed by about eight art studios, and I was really surprised.

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In other news, my goal is to revise the book by December 10th, when I imagine the semester must be ending for those in school. The revisions will be minor, fixing some formatting errors on italicized text by replacing them with scanned images of that text in my handwriting, as well as moving one page from the end toward the beginning. If I feel like it, I'll add some more writing in the end as well.

Ideas for New Projects

My digital camera doesn't work anymore, so I will rely more on the scanner for now, and develop a few rolls of film.

I have a bunch of Polaroids that didn't fit into the final version of A Meditation on the Misplaced, so I'll have to do something with those. I'm picturing small, handmade books, or at least ones that feature a lot of scanned in handwriting, doodles, and "marginalia." (See, I'm still obsessed with Susan Howe.)

Resurrect an old textbook and try to inject some life into it, and/or let its concepts inform my writing.

Write about the poetics of blending / merging in a way that (sort of) makes sense.

I can see relationships between many different things that interest me, and I want to express them, but sometimes it is overwhelming, and I don't know where exactly to go next. I think I'll let my mind take a stroll through Paul Auster's worlds of urban alienation for a while, and if my identity remains intact when I emerge, we'll see what happens :)

print error + new project concept

I made the PDF download free, and the book is now $20, to take advantage of a free shipping offer on Lulu. However, there are some black dots that show up in place of some italicized text, so I'm telling everyone not to buy it until I fix the file and clear up this error. Until then, please download and read it! (As far as I know, the PDF file displays all the text and no black dots.) I think it looks better on the computer screen anyway, because that's the way I've looked at it for two years! :)

My next project is to write poetry that mimics the actions of cells, especially mutation. That's all I know so far, because I haven't studied biology since about ninth grade. So I ordered an old biology textbook to help me start this new project.

I might publish a more extended version of A Meditation on the Misplaced later on. As I flipped through it tonight, I wished I'd made it longer. I think part of me still wants it to be as long as Howe's The Midnight- a good 170 pages instead of my meager 30.

My first book is available!

A Meditation on the Misplaced is now available for purchase here, on lulu.com.

The paper copy is $18.00 and the file download is $5.00. I almost can't believe I have the gall to charge money for my work. But I've been working on it for two years, and I don't expect people beyond my friends, family, and a couple of professors to want it.

Mostly, I'm happy to be done, and I'm finally proud of something I've accomplished! It is a senior project in the truest sense of the phrase, pulling together everything I learned in college, and especially showcasing everything I most loved.

One of my friends, who was an art history major, said it was worth the extra year and a half it took me to finish it. Although much more of that time was spent in procrastination / paralyzed fear than I care to admit, I don't think I could have produced this work last year. So maybe it is okay that it took so long. :)

I guess I finally have to admit that I'm a writer!