Like many, I feel as though a different part of my brain is accessed when i listen to music - because it is. poetry, music, fluid conversation resembles both. language has rhythm, if he who uses it is deft of word. when two people engage in a conversation that's meaningful there is a fluidity like no other and not just because of the words used in fact often in spite of them; unspoken undercurrents,flirtation in every sense of the term and in every sense of the speaker.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
getting to the heart of the matter
two conversations, in quick succession
the first longer, more disjointed, the second
with more purpose but with the all-important
grounding, basis of the first; context.
and following both the music and this,
this, is the ocean beneath, the cavern
and awakened is the heart and opened is
the can, worms, warts, all asunder.
laid bare in the most pleasing way,
the tumbling words of the naive poet
borne against the twinged light of age
filtered, dark soul to confused brow.
Monday 21 June 2010
Sunday 13 June 2010
'sall Relative Innit
I write my stuff elsewhere before posting it here (though these, my commentaries, I do write straight onto the blog - Fascinating I know) and I noticed I had written the poem below and not posted it. I tend to reel off words sometimes, which on the plus side means I have spurts of productivity and in a general sort of way I guess I'm fairly prolific - Don't really have a lot to compare myself to. Disadvantage is I'm often not sure it's any good. This is where you come in. I repeat what I've said to "you" individually: I really value your feedback/ critique, including "I think the penultimate line of stanza II is too long" or whatever - Seriously.
Anyway, I think this poem is somehow connected to A Shockingly Vivid Dream and the link is memory and the subconscious. Cassette tapes are becoming rapidly obsolete but most of you are as old or even older (OMG LOL) than me so will know what I mean when I refer to Autoplayback - It was written on a lot of tape recorders. In my unending fascination with the mindscape and self observation, it seems that one thing the mind does, one assumes since birth, is to simply record everything it encounters, everything it "sees". This in turn is why the eye is so interesting - It seems, to me and I imagine to those of us whose eyes work, to be the most manifest part of the brain, and is sort of the loading dock or the wide mouth (see my poem called "Eye"), through which the cerebellum (...) ingests information. Of course it's not just the eye, it's the other receptive senses too, especially the ear. The autoplayback seems to occur when the organism is at rest, hence when I half wake from deep sleep, I hear voices...! Don't worry, I'm not losing it (Be quiet Gerald, I'm telling them). It does sound like a long reel of tape though, being played back in (seemingly) no particular order.
Someone sent me the video of Jill Bolte Taylor, which I find quite amazing. Her voice is a bit monotonous but anyway:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
I've never had a stroke but I have felt weird and so could relate to some of the sensations she describes. When she describes feeling huge I could relate and of course we are potentially huge, I think. I think a physicist or neurologist could probably give you a formula for that, er, maybe - Something to do with gravity and relativity and depth perception. The metaphysical is pretty incredible, and poetic and mysterious. The notion that when we have experiences or traumas which are outside the normal realm we are granted another view of the world and ourselves is logical - One might even call it casting adrift from self. I recommend The Child in Time by Ian McEwan. In that book he manages to tie emotion and science together quite well, with a focus on time and our relationship with it.
First is the poem as I originally penned it, then follows another version, the Sir Fagpakit Edit. He comments:
'It occurred to me that you had deliberately made the lines longer to provide a sort of visual echo of the tape playing to the end ...'
- It wasn't deliberate, though I like the idea and image.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Autoplayback
we are sprats in a sea of molecules branching off an ocean of energy
and we have tools which enable us to take this ocean in, for if not
it would drown us as a black hole sucks in stars and gas and light.
the tools are the mind and this reflects the ocean and the tools are
the eyes and they are the mind's closest ally because not only do they see,
they allow us to tell as in distinguish and it, the small muscle called the eye,
has an esoteric counterpart inside the fortress, amidst the microcircuitry
and this is the situation room, where raw sense data is decrypted.
the mind's eye as we call it, sees, tells, is memory and Now all at once,
a Chinese alphabet, deep in character and complex in sheer number,
quantity of linear code shapes, calculating tickertape spewing intelligence
crossed with sensory perception, streaming beaming light-resembling energy.
Small being versus big being, I am on the train as opposed to I am;
whirring away left brain chatter, all about the non-Now, whirring were
Fusing will be, no time for am being, no time to do things now because
there's way too much that already occurred, to stow and box off
and too much to come, for which groundwork must be laid, categories
lined up; all about the boundaries, the sorting office, gone postal.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Autoplayback - Fag Edit
We are sprats in a sea of molecules
Branching off an ocean of energy
And we have tools which enable us
To take this ocean in, for if not
It would drown us as a black hole
Sucks in stars and gas and light.
The tools are the mind and this reflects the ocean
And the tools are the eyes and they are the mind's closest ally
Because not only do they see,
They allow us to tell as in distinguish
And it, the small muscle called the eye,
Has an esoteric counterpart inside the fortress
Amidst the microcircuitry
And this is the situation room
Where raw sense data is decrypted.
The mind's eye as we call it, sees, tells
Is memory and Now all at once,
A Chinese alphabet, deep in character
And complex in sheer number,
Quantity of linear code shapes
Calculating tickertape spewing intelligence
Crossed with sensory perception
Streaming beaming light-resembling energy.
Small being versus big being
I am on the train as opposed to I am;
Whirring away left brain chatter
All about the non-Now, whirring were
Fusing will be, no time for am being
No time to do things now because
There's way too much that already occurred
To stow and box off and too much to come
For which groundwork must be laid
Categories lined up; all about the boundaries
The sorting office, gone postal.
Anyway, I think this poem is somehow connected to A Shockingly Vivid Dream and the link is memory and the subconscious. Cassette tapes are becoming rapidly obsolete but most of you are as old or even older (OMG LOL) than me so will know what I mean when I refer to Autoplayback - It was written on a lot of tape recorders. In my unending fascination with the mindscape and self observation, it seems that one thing the mind does, one assumes since birth, is to simply record everything it encounters, everything it "sees". This in turn is why the eye is so interesting - It seems, to me and I imagine to those of us whose eyes work, to be the most manifest part of the brain, and is sort of the loading dock or the wide mouth (see my poem called "Eye"), through which the cerebellum (...) ingests information. Of course it's not just the eye, it's the other receptive senses too, especially the ear. The autoplayback seems to occur when the organism is at rest, hence when I half wake from deep sleep, I hear voices...! Don't worry, I'm not losing it (Be quiet Gerald, I'm telling them). It does sound like a long reel of tape though, being played back in (seemingly) no particular order.
Someone sent me the video of Jill Bolte Taylor, which I find quite amazing. Her voice is a bit monotonous but anyway:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
I've never had a stroke but I have felt weird and so could relate to some of the sensations she describes. When she describes feeling huge I could relate and of course we are potentially huge, I think. I think a physicist or neurologist could probably give you a formula for that, er, maybe - Something to do with gravity and relativity and depth perception. The metaphysical is pretty incredible, and poetic and mysterious. The notion that when we have experiences or traumas which are outside the normal realm we are granted another view of the world and ourselves is logical - One might even call it casting adrift from self. I recommend The Child in Time by Ian McEwan. In that book he manages to tie emotion and science together quite well, with a focus on time and our relationship with it.
First is the poem as I originally penned it, then follows another version, the Sir Fagpakit Edit. He comments:
'It occurred to me that you had deliberately made the lines longer to provide a sort of visual echo of the tape playing to the end ...'
- It wasn't deliberate, though I like the idea and image.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Autoplayback
we are sprats in a sea of molecules branching off an ocean of energy
and we have tools which enable us to take this ocean in, for if not
it would drown us as a black hole sucks in stars and gas and light.
the tools are the mind and this reflects the ocean and the tools are
the eyes and they are the mind's closest ally because not only do they see,
they allow us to tell as in distinguish and it, the small muscle called the eye,
has an esoteric counterpart inside the fortress, amidst the microcircuitry
and this is the situation room, where raw sense data is decrypted.
the mind's eye as we call it, sees, tells, is memory and Now all at once,
a Chinese alphabet, deep in character and complex in sheer number,
quantity of linear code shapes, calculating tickertape spewing intelligence
crossed with sensory perception, streaming beaming light-resembling energy.
Small being versus big being, I am on the train as opposed to I am;
whirring away left brain chatter, all about the non-Now, whirring were
Fusing will be, no time for am being, no time to do things now because
there's way too much that already occurred, to stow and box off
and too much to come, for which groundwork must be laid, categories
lined up; all about the boundaries, the sorting office, gone postal.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Autoplayback - Fag Edit
We are sprats in a sea of molecules
Branching off an ocean of energy
And we have tools which enable us
To take this ocean in, for if not
It would drown us as a black hole
Sucks in stars and gas and light.
The tools are the mind and this reflects the ocean
And the tools are the eyes and they are the mind's closest ally
Because not only do they see,
They allow us to tell as in distinguish
And it, the small muscle called the eye,
Has an esoteric counterpart inside the fortress
Amidst the microcircuitry
And this is the situation room
Where raw sense data is decrypted.
The mind's eye as we call it, sees, tells
Is memory and Now all at once,
A Chinese alphabet, deep in character
And complex in sheer number,
Quantity of linear code shapes
Calculating tickertape spewing intelligence
Crossed with sensory perception
Streaming beaming light-resembling energy.
Small being versus big being
I am on the train as opposed to I am;
Whirring away left brain chatter
All about the non-Now, whirring were
Fusing will be, no time for am being
No time to do things now because
There's way too much that already occurred
To stow and box off and too much to come
For which groundwork must be laid
Categories lined up; all about the boundaries
The sorting office, gone postal.
Tuesday 8 June 2010
Shockingly Vivid Comment...
... from Amanda:
That's cool, man. Keep 'em coming. I know what you mean about the delightfully endless tangential journeys through wikipedia.
That's cool, man. Keep 'em coming. I know what you mean about the delightfully endless tangential journeys through wikipedia.
Saturday 5 June 2010
The Very Bowels of Creation
It's amazing what the weird mix of red wine and slightly out of date ice cream can create. i was awoken from a dream by the sound of a voice. i awoke suddenly, i heard the voice so clearly. there was someone else in the dream with me, someone i know. was the voice supposed to belong to this person? does it matter? only me there, in reality.
how digestion affects the extent and intensity to which we dream has interested me for a while, because, as happened in the last hour or so, sometimes my own dreams are so vivid and i know it's because there is rumbling going on below. i was fascinated to learn from the genius stephen fry on the show called QI, that we have a "second brain" in our gut. further research revealed its slightly more opaque anatomical name: the enteric nervous system. it can function independently of the main brain (you know, the one inbetween the ears - yeah, cheers) and this, apart from being fascinating, holds poetic humour and mystique for me; funny to think of all the emotion that gets connoted with guts, both in cliched phrasing e.g. i think he's got the guts to go for it etc, as well as the fact that medically, so many of the symptoms of emotional angst are traced to the gut region.
neurology is endlessly interesting to me and again there is poetry in the medical terminology. we really have a sympathetic nervous system, for example. i find much poetry in scientific register, to my delight. much of the lexicon of the following poem is from my beloved wikipedia, which fans out as does the malapropping mental lexicon. i could get lost for days, drifting on a sea of wiki. there is copy here from text on gear systems, speech generating technology, even a little seismology i think - i was obsessed with geography and my ward lock's pictorial atlas as a child and distinctly remember the cut-in-half world, the inner and outer core, the earth's crust. a certain tv character i like uttered a phrase i like: "spinning iron amorphous core of the earth". i am probably mis quoting but hey, poetic license and all that. he was being dramatic (no, really?) but his phrase seems to have seeped into my conscience, like the thingies through the intestinal cheesecloth in my poem. i now think "spinning iron amorphous core of the earth" is a real thing, which i don't think it is.
from all my ferreting around on wiki, i would most highly recommend the entry on the steam digester, also known as papin's digester - amusing and very interesting, as, i think, is the way i happened across it. i was visualising pressure cookers, my mother would often use one, which somehow connected to what i reckon must go on down there in the gut. so that led me to papin and his bone crushing exploding steam digester. cool.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a shockingly vivid dream
the various meaning of wake up
conscience clear as a bell
its voice as green as the grass
the mind-eye clockworks, playbacks
all that has been ingested
scooped, funnelled, spirited
by the soft intestinal muscle
relayed by the second brain
all unison, all a well-oiled machine,
all pith and obliviously self-aware,
bent on task, click-click go the pistons
in slots, doing the dirty work of
playback, rinse-through, spin cycle:
each cog sympathetic, each cog a
reflector of the past, the glow
lessening, increasing, fading,
soul to conscience to nerve ending
sleepers, railway junctures, spotters
sympathetic nervous system
algorhythmic homing pigeon
narrow-gauge gear-mesh idler
raw torque, loose wheels, oiled cogs
loose talk spouts forth
the voice seems to be the driver
transmitting rotational motion
mirroring what is executed in real time,
physical display the puppet, a virtual device,
the sealed vessel, organs in dermis
fat extraction, internal reaction, rendering;
the miners are busy at work,
casting bone to brittle, releasing steam
allowing liquid to be hotter, amorphous,
spinning, disordered molecules, melt,
to be found in the bowels, the core,
drawing in of all, the funnel; irrestible.
the virtualness of the device may interrupt,
thus synthethised speech, during pressing
and during draining, may suffer leakage,
may eddy and stray, filtering through membrane
through cheesecloth and so does generated voice
come through loud and clear and white and pure
and the voice is the conscience and the voice is
heard and the chords, vocal, empathetic, resound
in such arresting union that oneness is and
genera-tor is indistinguishable from genera-ted
and the lid is lifted, buffeted up, skylighted;
hatch is unbatoned, revealing all that activity.
how digestion affects the extent and intensity to which we dream has interested me for a while, because, as happened in the last hour or so, sometimes my own dreams are so vivid and i know it's because there is rumbling going on below. i was fascinated to learn from the genius stephen fry on the show called QI, that we have a "second brain" in our gut. further research revealed its slightly more opaque anatomical name: the enteric nervous system. it can function independently of the main brain (you know, the one inbetween the ears - yeah, cheers) and this, apart from being fascinating, holds poetic humour and mystique for me; funny to think of all the emotion that gets connoted with guts, both in cliched phrasing e.g. i think he's got the guts to go for it etc, as well as the fact that medically, so many of the symptoms of emotional angst are traced to the gut region.
neurology is endlessly interesting to me and again there is poetry in the medical terminology. we really have a sympathetic nervous system, for example. i find much poetry in scientific register, to my delight. much of the lexicon of the following poem is from my beloved wikipedia, which fans out as does the malapropping mental lexicon. i could get lost for days, drifting on a sea of wiki. there is copy here from text on gear systems, speech generating technology, even a little seismology i think - i was obsessed with geography and my ward lock's pictorial atlas as a child and distinctly remember the cut-in-half world, the inner and outer core, the earth's crust. a certain tv character i like uttered a phrase i like: "spinning iron amorphous core of the earth". i am probably mis quoting but hey, poetic license and all that. he was being dramatic (no, really?) but his phrase seems to have seeped into my conscience, like the thingies through the intestinal cheesecloth in my poem. i now think "spinning iron amorphous core of the earth" is a real thing, which i don't think it is.
from all my ferreting around on wiki, i would most highly recommend the entry on the steam digester, also known as papin's digester - amusing and very interesting, as, i think, is the way i happened across it. i was visualising pressure cookers, my mother would often use one, which somehow connected to what i reckon must go on down there in the gut. so that led me to papin and his bone crushing exploding steam digester. cool.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a shockingly vivid dream
the various meaning of wake up
conscience clear as a bell
its voice as green as the grass
the mind-eye clockworks, playbacks
all that has been ingested
scooped, funnelled, spirited
by the soft intestinal muscle
relayed by the second brain
all unison, all a well-oiled machine,
all pith and obliviously self-aware,
bent on task, click-click go the pistons
in slots, doing the dirty work of
playback, rinse-through, spin cycle:
each cog sympathetic, each cog a
reflector of the past, the glow
lessening, increasing, fading,
soul to conscience to nerve ending
sleepers, railway junctures, spotters
sympathetic nervous system
algorhythmic homing pigeon
narrow-gauge gear-mesh idler
raw torque, loose wheels, oiled cogs
loose talk spouts forth
the voice seems to be the driver
transmitting rotational motion
mirroring what is executed in real time,
physical display the puppet, a virtual device,
the sealed vessel, organs in dermis
fat extraction, internal reaction, rendering;
the miners are busy at work,
casting bone to brittle, releasing steam
allowing liquid to be hotter, amorphous,
spinning, disordered molecules, melt,
to be found in the bowels, the core,
drawing in of all, the funnel; irrestible.
the virtualness of the device may interrupt,
thus synthethised speech, during pressing
and during draining, may suffer leakage,
may eddy and stray, filtering through membrane
through cheesecloth and so does generated voice
come through loud and clear and white and pure
and the voice is the conscience and the voice is
heard and the chords, vocal, empathetic, resound
in such arresting union that oneness is and
genera-tor is indistinguishable from genera-ted
and the lid is lifted, buffeted up, skylighted;
hatch is unbatoned, revealing all that activity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)