The Shear of a New Page

the new year is sweeping the globe... already passing though our friends in japan, korea, beijing, australia, taiwan, hong kong, singapore... about seven hours from new york...

the new year is such a great metaphor, a dance of renewal, a cleansing... our Singapore poet provides a striking glimpse into our emerging from the jumble of the past into a newness:

whatever pop culture. whatever loose impressions and unshackled listlessness. contrition and what's worth it. but. faye wong and rain. afternoon stills of grey. the shear of a new page, and it's whiteness that stings or cleanses.

Ismene, Saturday, December 31, 2005

it has been a day of unshackled listlessness, and now the shear of a new page, torn from the advancing momentum of our relentless plummeting through the milky way... the future weaving in and out of galaxies and constellations that still glimmer even though they vanished eons ago...

New Year's, Black-Eye Peas, & Corned Beef

As New Year's Eve approaches, we gear up for what has been a tradition in our family: black-eyed peas and pork, along with corned beef and all the trimmings. This appears to be a mixture of southern celebrations and Irish traditions, and it is so special that we don't have this combination any other time of the year.

The trick is in the timing, as the food needs to be prepared very slowly so that it is ready to eat precisely at midnight. Having the black-eyed peas as the year turns insures good luck throughout the new year.

The black-eyed peas are soaked overnight. Pieces of pork with pork bone are added. The peas and pork are bought to a boil and then the heat is immediately reduced to the lowest flame possible. After about 45 minutes sliced onions are added and the dish is cooked vey slowly. It is usually ready in about two hours.

The corned beef is started at the same time, and is also cooked on a very low flame after first bringing the stew pot with water covering the corned beef to a boil. After about an hour, whole red potatoes, and whole carrots are added, and after about one-half hour, half a head of cabbage is placed on top of the corned beef. The pot is covered, brought to a boil, and then cooked on as low a flame as possible until the cabbage is tender.

This is not a stew. All the ingredients are removed and served on separate dishes. Serve with corn bread, plenty of butter, and mustard, of course. The combination of the cabbage and vegetables slowly cooked with the corned beef creates a wonderful taste.

This is how Dad prepared our New Year's Eve/New Year's celebration for decades, and we have kept the tradition alive. "Scuse me, I've gotta run to the store. I forgot the cabbage!

Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime

i am haunted by Beck's cover of "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime"/ the defining theme of The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind/ keeps playing over and over in my head/ i am so obsessed i am trying to reconstruct it with garageband to import to logic pro/ tricky/ jon brion is brilliant/ yet it is all so simple/ distortion is the essence of Eternal Sunshine/ forget the narrative device of erasing memory/ just a metaphor for how the mind works/ music flows in and out of distortions/ gives an older tintype feeling/ borrowing a photoshop type of filter converted to soundfiles/ a magical, surreal touch that places the visual narrative deep imside our spotless mind...

i've watched the film over and over and always find something new/ jim carrey & kate winslet create authentic characters that capture every nook and cranny of a relationship/ i first misheard the lyrics as "everybody's gotta love sometime"/ the music carried through the lyric, but if that had been correct, it would have been out of place and exceptionally pedestrian/ given the metaphor of the mind/ our ongoing extinction of memories/ the use of learn is a brilliant inspiration/ we are perpetually learning/ struggling and yearning/ and everybody's gotta learn sometime/ no matter what/ but through it all comes some awareness that Hemingway called "A Clean Well-lighted Room"/ that sanctuary, that eternal sunshine/ enduring unblemished at the center of our knowing...

An Elusive Illusion?

even when there's nothing, there's something/ spent most of the day reading, thinking, procrastinating/ some things must be done/ i purposely glide by without a glance/ the internet is a great diversion/ a bottomless pit/ google anything/ more than a million hits/ follow them all until your eyes begin to tear/ in my outer world the disarray asserts itself/ but there's order in following the links/ in reading the text/ in seeing the images/ in hearing the music/ in commentimg, selecting, learning, growing...

this new medium acquaints us beyond the usual dimensions/ we are merging with, creating a new reality/ extending beyond boundaries and restraints/ dangerous pursuits/ too much freedom/ awesome power/ fresh eloquence is called for/ an expressive elegance may seek an undisclosed ecology of media/ discovery is ripening in the gathering energy/ an elusive illusion to disillusion...

Such Incandescent Intelligence!

Having only recently discovered the world of blogging, I have been following links to blogs of such authenticity and intelligence that I am awed by the ideas bursting from these webbites. Onigiri writes of books, of teas, of foods, and cooking with such devotion, appreciation, and skill that you are captured by her intensity, her energy and insight. She describes blog addiction, and I am discovering that the pathway to such a habit is swift and unshakeable.

Who would have thought that knitters would be such a tight-knit group of bloggers, but a blogger like Yarn Harlot spins fascinating prose that illumines and inspires (read "The Trumpet Thing" 12/24/05) while clarifying dropped stitches and the quality of yarn.

Deadpoet's Cave is a resource for all bloggers; he brings ideas together in ways that your perception of the possibilities of the Internet is constantly magnified.

3 Zins Later has just begun blogging, but she is a natural talent whose open stance promises a world of wine fantasies transcending the wine evening to tales of friendships and love.

The Tragedienne's pictures on the Internet led me to her blog (which was the first blog I ever read) and to the blogs of her Singapore friends. Reading their blogs was like discovering a new world, the openness of sharing and an authentic delight in life. Among them is Ismene, who prose is pure poetry. Her imagery and use of language is astonishingly fresh and genuine. Her refreshing style inspired me to explore my own ideas through bloggimg.

Ice Cache is a poet of images. Don't be fooled by the modest number of images he has posted thus far. He has a magical eye and has posted in more private venues almost 30,000 images. He began to blog two weeks ago. and his work will be worth regular visits.

And today as I was reading through blogs, I came upon Wicked Rice, a blogger whose writing is explosively original, poetic, humorous, intuitive, disarming, and intensely aware. She takes blogging to a new realm, full of narrative and philosophical inquiry, naturally at home in the interactive, digital world inhabited by her blog. She uses del.icio.us for tagging and categorizing her entries, and it is worth exploring her writing through this special lens. (By the way, there are some features on her blog that do not work well in Safari, Explorer didn't fare much better. The best experience was with Firefox. Well worth the free download. Time to ween yourself from Microsoft.)

Time To Create

The week after Christmas always seems such a luxury of Time. I always overplan these few days and never achieve all I had hoped to do. I suppose I am only answeraable to myself during this time, but there are so many impediments that have accumulated over the months and now clamor for attention. Never have time for leisurely breakfasts...Now eggs over easy with sausage at Silver Spurs...then to Angelika to peoplewatch and maybe take in a film... need this break in the action...still plenty of time to create. Not really. Studio is a mess. New equipment and applications to install...but now I see how it fits together...even sitting in the lounge of the Angelika, I catch a subdued rhythm of energy dissipated by the holidays. Stop trying to control tbe time, just appreciate the disclosure of time as a gift of becoming...It is what it is. No more. no less, and it's been quite a ride.

Spur of the Moment

christmas waning/ gifts opened/ poppimg out to rockefeller center to see tree/ starving---take chance on restaurant/ probably won't be able to find a taxi/ miraculously cab appears just as we hit the street/ at rockefeller center in minutes/ in the concourse a large line of people waitimg at the rock center cafe/ go inside to inquire how long a wait/ how many in your party?... two/ we can seat two immediately/ ushered to a spectacular table where we can see the tree and skaters outside/ organic chicken and prime rib/ merlot and chardonnay/chocolate mousse and key lime pie/ a perfect moment unfolding as though it had been planned for months/ truth is this was an especially difficult time/ unorganized and grueling/ yet i'll remember this christmas because a special resonance has attached itself and enhances the evening, the ambience, the talk/ people around us all engaged in a special moment/merging with other memories of christmas/our passion persists and then fades in such priceless beauty...

An Essence Revealed

outside the window the empire state building glows red amd green/ an ornament of almost epic proportions/ there are presents to wrap/ all sorts of goodies to prepare/ strudel and raspberry and mint cookies/ candies and cider/ holly and ivy/ in the silent crisp air the tolling church bells harken to a past remembered/ terrace christmas lights twinkle across the garden/ such simplicity reveals a vivid essence of being alive...

Song of Silence

i am not afraid of silence, but i know many who are/ fleeing the silence as though it were some beast about to devour them/ a symptom of a deeper malady/ perhaps silence is the outer edge of chaos/ an icy crust that might shatter/ releasing annihilation and destruction/ engulfing all in disorder and aleatoric eruptions of nothingness...

keep the beat going/ the illusion of control/ chase the silence with our rhymes and riffs/ sounds bursting from speakers in cascading avalanches...

i love the silence/ it is a soothing emptiness/ neutral and vast/ waiting to be filled with imagination/ emerging from the shadows of emptiness/ advancing on the edge of reality disclosing itself/ all miracles are born of silence...

Winter Solstice and the Mystery of the Trees

passing so fast/ the days of christmas celebrate the winter solstice/ yet long ago the darkness seemed so agonizingly slow to yield its power/ at the center of the celebration there are trees/ their secret lay with the ancient druids/ the knowers of the wisdom of the oak/ dark and mysterious/ the tree as the universe extends into our world from an invisible realm/ lights and ornaments adorn the tree like stars and planets/ robert graves awakened us to the mystery of the trees and the origin of poetry/ a calendar of trees/ the birch tree for the month stretching from December 24th to January 20th/ birch means bright or shining/ guiding us through the endless night/ our christmas tree stands as a metaphor for the cosmos/ for the origin and destiny of life/ sittimg in the dark and looking at the miniature universe/ looking into the depths of the tree/ seeing the mystery of the darkness unrevealed/ a joyful and perpetual yearning for a renaissance of light and life...

Striking at the Heart of the City

New York City is once again like a war zone, and although we walk around and greet each other and commiserate over our shared hardships which extend way beyond our difficulties of moving through this metropolis, we all have a sense of the terrorist threat that is always lurking in the background since 9/11. The TWU has shown us where we are most vulnerable...something like a primer for terrorists. Want to bring the city to its knees? Cut off its life blood: take away its freedom of movement.

The subways lie like empty, twisted carcasses, an eerie silent pallor hanging the air. Businesses are dying. Many less fortunate are suddenly out of work and starving. This torturous thrust stifles larger businesses depending on this season, and despite our cheerful disguises, we are confronting an anguish of dismal holidays. There is a reason why it is illegal for public servants to strike against its constituency, and although the TWU seems to remember the eleven day strike in 1980 as a cakewalk, we are living in a different time and a different sensibility. TWU's action in a time of war is despicable. It puts new meaning to Pogo's declaration, "We have seen the enemy, and he is us!"

Some Are For You

Once in a while, making a new friend is like discovering someone you have always known. There is a deep connection that cuts through the normal defenses we erect as protection. This is not a frequent happening, and perhaps we have to maintain a certain openness for it to happen at all. When I encounter such people (although it is a rare and special event), it is more like seeing an old friend who has just returned from obscurity. There is a certain immediacy that leaps between us, a level of understanding that eliminates the need for explanations. Perhaps this is what the painter/mentor Robert Henri meant in The Art Spirit when he observed that "you see people on the street, some are for you, some are not." It is a source of fascination to me how this miracle of deep friendship actually occurs. And when you are separated from such friends, the next time you meet, you resume as though there was no interval of separation...time and distance have no impact on the intimacy of shared perception and understanding. Such friendships can take us to deeper levels of conscious awareness and awaken energies and ideas that take us beyond ourselves.

Bruno's and the Holidays

bruno's bakery has been a fixture in greenwich village for decades/ a destination to meet friends/ have coffee/ indulge in pastries that taste even better than they look/ and while away the hours in idle and not-so-idle conversations/ stealing glances at celebrities and village types/ sitting there with rick and oksana with cappuccinos steaming while winter approaches with all the trappings of christmas cheer/ solving all the dilemmas of careers/ out of place musicals with improbable performers/ pop albums from a renowned opera star with a Sarah Bernhardt flair/ breaking through the inertia of songs trapped inside a computer/ the village is peppered with coffee houses/ the birthplace of coffeehouses long before starbucks franchised the idea to the world/ a last meeting of the year at our most familiar and comfortable hangout/ Bruno's somehow catches the essence of the holidays/ each person sitting here feels a certain ownership in this institution that endures like a long lasting friendship/ perhaps this endurance is how Bruno's underscores the casual and intense relationships that linger there/ ideas, feelings, and observations hang in the air like the steam floating up from the coffee cups and evaporating into the night...

Bloggin' Great

somewhere on a planet far away there is the perfect blogger bloggin' away/ not caring if anyone reads the blog/ this blogger blogs for the sake of blogging/ text flies off the fingers in lightning flashes/ no one knows who this blogger is/ and each day the blogger adds to the weight of world-wide blogs in decipherable increments/ on several occasions the meaning of life has been revealed/ but no one realized what lay hidden in such episodes/ no one took the blogger seriously because no one knew who the blogger was/ symbols of meaning collect as the sum total of the big blog/ new tablets of truth from binary sinai/ thou shalt have no other blogs before me/ truth separated from its source is meaningless...

Mute and Inglorious

I once edited a newspaper and was in charge of a weekly column where I could explore anything I found interesting. At the time it seemed like a brilliant, but intricate, opportunity: the column would be typed, then edited and proofread, then laid out for the printer on a "dummy," set on a linotype by a typographer, then these lead type slugs were locked into galleys, proofed again, loaded onto the printing press, and finally thousands of copies were printed and distributed to subscribers and the public. I remember that as I approached the first column, I was stymied as to what I should write about. The possibilities were so extensive that the whole process seemed overwhelming.

Decades have passed, and now the process has been streamlined. In minutes I can complete tasks that once would take days, and suddenly be published to a world-wide audience. Now it is not the process that is overwhelming, it is the enormity of the opportunity. It is the vast and vacant moment waiting for eloquence, waiting for inspiration, waiting for the words to emerge that somehow would answer the call of a free and vital press...

Yet, here I am, as mute and inglorious as in those original days when the thrill of the written word was captured in the smell of ink on newsprint.

Touching the Past

christmas past/ the long trips home/ christmas defined home and home defined christmas/ all the connections seemed so easy/ forged through years of knowing/ permanence seemed etched in the comfort of the familiar/ all the hopes checked and confirmed and recommitted with each passing year/ smiles through tears of such profound joy/ passion so deep you couldn't breathe/ and the music flowed so freely you thought it would never dry up/ the past so thick you can slice into memories for all the guests and still have such abundance...

The Genius of Mallarmé, Debussy, & Nijinsky Recreated by Tina Curran

Debussy's Prélude à l’aprés-midi d’un faune, inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé's poem has become one of the most celebrated dance masterpieces when in 1912 Nijinsky broke from the vocabulary and tradition of ballet to virtually establish a new language for dance. This fusion of the work of a great poet, a renowned composer, and charismatic choreographer and dancer, synthesizes the art forms into a single entity creating a masterwork that transcends time. Until recently it has been difficult to understand Nijinky's achievement since dance has been an ephemeral art depending upon memory to reconstruct works that often emerge as wholly new interpretations.

However, through careful study and research of dance scholars Ann Hutchinson Guest and Claudia Jeschke, Nijinsky's notes have been captured in Labanotation, and for the past few months Tina Curran has been meticulously using this score in recreating this masterpiece with dancers from Princeton's Department of Dance. It has become a labor of love for Tina and her dancers, and in a recent showing of the work in progress, it was clear that all artists involved felt an ownership in the destiny and evolution of this performance. In faithfully translating Nijinsky's work they are bringing forth a remote historical event as a vital artistic presence.

The lyrical flow of Nijinsky's new language must have astonished the audiences of the early twentieth century, and his perception to let the virtuosity of climactic moments emerge from the inner intensity of the dancers gives us a glimpse into the sensitive awareness and understanding of his genius.

The dancers for this Princeton end-of-year showing were Meilinda Huang, BethAnn Ingrassia, Natasha Kalimada, Jeremy Olsen, Jillian Olsen, Julie Rubinger, Jennie Scholick, Elizabeth Schwall, and Mariah Steele. The full performance is slated for the McCarter Theatre Center in February.

Fragile Fireflies of Imagination

the awesome wonder of this new medium/ paperless and flickering like electronic fireflies conspiring to emulate filaments of imagination/ fragile and fleeting/ the faint glow of monitors reflected on our faces/ a growing presence of intelligence/ with life dangling at the ends of links/ real lives pulsing as centers of consciousness/ the genius of the species disclosed in brilliant flashes/ the immense mediocrity echoing in images, sounds, and text/ all colliding in an incredible delible awareness deciphering meaning from the expansion of ourselves revealed/ suddenly time seems allied to our ongoing discovery of an otherness defining us from moment to moment/ tears and laughter/ wisdom and insight/ foolishness and fantasies/ the virtual world displacing the material illusions diverting us from the destiny of an infinite progression of becoming...

lightning bugs blinking their binary code, clusters of imagination gathering here and there, too many to bottle them up/ reality is an electronic wavering/ disappearing and appearing like millions of fireflies in an arkansas meadow on a summer evening....

Facing this Winter of Discontent

having worked through so many ideas/ i find myself grappling on the edge of discontent/ a vast silence generated through the conspiracy of distractions and routine demands that I cannot escape/ my energy dissipated through the multiple intrusions of moments without meaning/ how do we stumble upon such ordinary paths?/ yet i find companions who inspire me to go beyond myself/ to seek some symphony that lingers in the silence/ to stroke the tones to some new melody/ to touch the pulse concealing embedded rhythms of a new energy...

the winter came so soon...too soon/ enduring the bitter cold demands so much...too much/ can such delicate soundings survive the onslaught of the relentless wind of winter?/ somewhere i hear the music of myself struggling to break through the icy surface/ i search for pathways across this opaque tundra/ blinded by the snow, i wander in the vast white nothingness/ a mere speck on this bleak desolate snowscape...

phaedrus listens/ phaedrus watches/ phaedrus knows the path but cannot intercede/ he sees the struggling gestures/ hears the halting attempts to break the silence/ and pauses in anticipation...

The Sound Poet

Lauren Weinger is an extraordinary poet of sound/ her imagination shapes sound in epic proportions as she creates site specific works in collaboration with choreographers, dancers, and videographers/ she derives the sounds from each site and transforms them into metaphors and similes/ sound collages shaped by the environment that serves as the container of a new music/ such soundings redfine the parameters of musical meaning /making poetry/ lauren is a magical shaman fusing with the sounds emanating from the site/ discovering and disclosing inner rhythms of the existential reality of the physical world her music will inhabit...

My work is site motivated, the vocabulary changes in response to the constraints and material of a given place. The memory of sounds no longer heard and ‘the ability of recorded sound to evoke memory and 'bring back' places that no longer exist. ...based on processed acoustic sounds gathered at the site, or of the object being portrayed. In performance and installation I diffuse and layer sounds using three dimensional multiple channel and speaker projection extending in some cases to forty speakers through spaces up to a quarter mile long and sixty feet high.

hearing recordings of her work is like viewing postcard prints of huge museum tapestries/ her music is the sound in the moment/ in the special world of the work/ giving it immediacy/ validating its origin and authentic being...

A Fine Madness

no two realities are identical/ thus phaedrus declared the fundamental tenet of his madness/ departing radically from the scientific model of one true reality/ science as the new dogma and religion has declared that there is one reality and that one true/ a fine madness suggests that there are infinite realities all intersecting/ physics finds eleven dimensions/ phaedrus finds limitless dimensions/ all media and educated people know the scientific model to be correct and yet our personal experience confirms phaedrus/ yet phaedrus admits there is one truth that slices through the myriad multiplicities/ that truth is TIME but it is a time that we do not comprehend except in the moment/ time as history is nonexistent/ time as infinity is obscure confusion/ the only truth is the presence of NOW / multiplied by infinite reflections of consciousness/ and sometimes we intersect in that delightful awareness/ we are detained and entertained by such collisions making us aware of being...

Artists in Soho

Hosted by the distinguished artist, Angiola Churchill/ assisted by her able apprentice Daniel, a remembrance of time past in a Soho gathering that almost seemed like Christmas dinner/ elegantly planned by Ms. Churchill with wine by the artist/philosopher David Ecker/ a small party in Soho in the artist's loft where her work resonated with such an elegant presence/ installation being prepared for Naples in Spring/ a quiet disclosing of works in progress discerning and earnest/ strong statements of a highly original sensibility/...a time past that brought Ecker, a noted phenomeologist and artist who has been responsible for inspiring the rescuing of living traditions in the arts (ISALTA) that were on the verge of extinction, Sandro Dernini, the spiritual force behind Plexus who has managed to stage elaborate collaborations, exhibitions and conferences that connect the arts and life in extraordinary combinations for more than twenty years, and the Wyzard who has quietly engaged the issues and ideas through his own personal quest/ the work of this tiny group is noted that for a moment they came together in mutual endeavors, ranging from reconciliations, well-being, and dematerialization, to navigations through distant and remote cultures, globally explosive but cut off from a sense of history/ institutional history is mute and inglorious, having neglected the origins of its extraordinary claims about global culture/ Wyzard and others authored the web-pioneering Navigating Global Cultures at a time when the world was just becoming aware of what it meant to be wired and wireless/ no matter where Dernini goes he tilts at windmills, a knight errant who sees the true substance of what it means to exist in time and space/ he knows the politics of art and persuasion with instinctive accuracy/ he can cunningly entice leaders, scientists, culture critics and artists into discussions that are always on the brink of discovery/ he fascinates us into creative ideas, weaving a spell that enlists our energies and resources/ somehow he must persuade us to look beyond ourselves and the commonplace/ touch reality with a sensitive gaze that looks backward and forward even as the present is sculpted out of the debris of the past/ awakening slumbering masterworks and inventions of a marvelous vision...

Beautiful Snow for the Moment

Surprised by the snow storm that suddenly painted New York City a soft chiffon-like white/ hot coffee and roll from Moxa/ watching the snow with big wet flakes blanket the morning in quietness/even the machines clearing the snow sound muffled and distant/ coffee shops and businesses tucked away from the street seem sleepy and slow to open/ somehow this morning snowstorm, although almost paralyzing the metropolitan area, seems private/ something to be shared intimately/ these trivial moments often dwindle to extinction unless we take some special notice of them...

Eating Art --- Right in the Old Plexus!

Gone from my consciousness for ten years, suddenly Sandro Dernini lit up the Torch Club by what seemed to be a sudden materialization, an apparition as startling as the ghost of Hamlet/ Sandro Dernini whom I had described to some friends just a day earlier as writing the most provocative dissertation of modern times in which he takes his cue from Derrida and writes the entire analysis in the margins/Sandro had been absent from my mind for almost a decade/yet here he was erupting in the room like a volcano/ripples of enthusiasm spilling from table to table as suddenly all the exploitations and adventures of Plexus came flooding back into the reality of the moment...

Greying and smiling/yet full of the mischief that energized artists, philosophers, engineers, dancers, musicians, composers, students, professors, executives into happenings, conferences, art shows, exhibitions, and extravaganzas/ Sandro Dernini, the italian philosopher and scientist once again raised the banner for Eating Art---a movement now matured, and in his hand, poised like a bible, a sacred tablet of Plexus, he held the advanced proof of his new book, Eating Art/ chronicling the adventures of Plexus over the past two decades/ all the old players swept up in the torrents of memories and happenings along with the new generations somewhat stunned and awed by the loquacious and gracious italian impresario/only Sandro could convert a basic human survival need such as eating into art/his magical powers led us like pied piper along the routes of Plexus parades and voyages/navigating the globe like Columbus/making us digest the reality of all the atrocities and astonishing discoveries as the miracle of being human/and humans are meant to devour art with the voracious appetite of a people starved by the mundane and commonplace...

Deepening Darkness

Today the cold cut through my coat/the wind chill was almost devastating/winter asserting its presence/a threatening presence of days growing shorter/winter solstice like the menace of endless night/no wonder we built stonehenge watch towers to monitor the delinquent sun/no wonder torches filled the air with a flicker of hope against an immense darkness/no wonder we found despair in the lessening light as earth's shadow enveloped us in superstition and ignorance/no wonder we wept for the death of the day that might never be restored/we watched and waited in awe as the sun froze on the distant horizon before slipping into oblivion...

Alone in an unforgiving universe/the perpetual emptiness of night engulfs the day and tumbles into the blackholes swirling to devour all light/the crushing darkness beckoning like a demonic maelstrom/ collapsing upon itself so that the light surrenders to such density that nothing can escape/all disappears unto the deepness of the darkness/the sun pauses in a final moment/a blinding blush before relinquishing its hold and disappearing behind the curve of the approaching night...

Worlds Apart

deep in the abyss of myself, i read the sunny world of ismene/bare feet in grass/words spilling across the page like bubbling champagne/insights deepening/her "textured childhood etched like a birthmark" /pausing in an arc of time like a still portrait/suspended in the beauty of awareness/ i touch her page with my eyes and images explode in my mind like shooting stars/her garden a cyberspace paradise of sunlit memories and new worlds waiting...

and in the silent and yawning past, phaedrus beckons/his madness matching mine/the darkness gapes like a new dimension where perceptions become echoes rippling over the landscape like lost phantoms/ familiar forms and futures fade/ receding and evaporating in the midst of mystery/in the mist of illusion/miles loom ahead full of emptiness and self destruction...

visions dancing between these worlds with music born of spontaneity/rescuing the silence with festive celebration/time stands still/we are on the verge of change/caught in the infinite pause of now...

Internet2 and the Arts

In a discussion with a performamce artist who recently created and performed an interactive Internet2 production with a site in another country, we agreed that such events reveal that I2 is a new performance medium. Simply put, Internet2 is a broadband Internet highway that permits streaming back and forth of multiple video and audio channels (although I understand I2 originally referred to a consortium of institutions). I had become involved in I2 interactive productions since 2001. Such performances can include dancers, musicians, poets, composers, choreographers, and other performers, a well as videographers, graphic and video designers, sound designers, multiple camera operators, lighting designers, Internet engineers and technical support personnel. Both locations performed in experimental or conventional theatres before live audiences. Both productions used multiple projection screens in which processed materials were combined with live images and sound to create a multimedia experience that was unique ro each location, and yet, each production was inclusive of the other and the two creative works formed a whole whose fabric was the resonance of the electronic exchanges and live interaction enveloped in the latency created by the distance collaboration. Even though the dual location production was highly structured by the use of scenes and transitions, at the heart of the performance was improvisation. The immediacy and spontaneity present from the live interactive responses of artists separated by thousands of miles can be exhilerating and energizing, giving rise to wonderful ideas born of the moment.

We both agreed that coordinating multimedia and structure at different sites calls for new ideas in narrative and a new vocabulary to define this new medium. We also agreed that this language should emerge from the active engagement and interaction of creative artists working with this dynamic new medium. Marshall McLuhan in Understanding Media helped us understand that each new medium undergoes a period in which it digests the content of previous media before it finds its own idiosyncratic characteristics.

But we need new performance spaces/studios in which the new technologies are integral to the production facilities, where the conventional computer screens and consoles are transparent so that the focus is on the interactive immediacy more than on the technology, for ultimately it is the texture of the artwork/medium itself that can push the envelope of technology as this promising new venue discovers its own unique characteristics and identity.

photos by Chianan Yen

First Snow

from my window, i can just make out the left-side of the Arch at Washington Square Park/this morning awoke to see the first snow of this winter season/ a light dusting/ enough to get the snow machines out/ starting to feel like the holidays/ still much to do, but christmas is creeping nearer/faces are red from the chill/ puffs of frosty breath punctuate the morning air/ few are out on the street/ snow makes everything quieter/ it's different though/ not like other years/ not as though christmas is coming round again/ it is more linear/ this christmas and no other/ many friends and family have disappeared/ new people appear/ memories invade, floating like tangible balloons/ i am no longer in the cycles of the years/ it is as though i have slipped out of orbit and am rushing into remote space/ i've never been here before/ first snow to remind me that each moment, each event inhabits its own reality/ nothing repeats/ breaking through the illusion i am afraid/comforted by the unknown...

My First Audio Blog

yes, O ye of little faith, i called this test audio blog in from my mobil phone/ now Blogging has found its voice(well maybe not this blogger...since i have a way to go to develop an audio blogging style)/ look out world/ the possibilities are staggering/ clearly a different modality/ after finally getting through the mechanics of connecting my mobile to the server i found myself mute and inarticulate.../it's actually very simple/just call the server and give it your phone number and pin and your in.../ in this case the medium is the message...there is virtually no content in my spoken blog!.../the audio blogger sets up the blog on your page/writes all the code automatically/all you do is publish (and add comments if you like)...

Gilmore Girls and Dostoevsky

Sometimes it is just the empty space, the empty page, the silent interval, coaxing something from the nothingness...sometimes it is just the words...making connections...what is it about Ismene that sparks my imagination?/...it is the energy of an innocence making words that bend to the moment...it is her love of her choy/the honest aching after a run/ the friends that snicker and chide on the tagboard/the company she keeps/ her imagery, metaphors, and poetry leaping through her blogs like elegant gazelles/ the sensibility that evens the field for the gilmore girls, dostoevsky, vanity fair, tolstoy, vogue, count basie, architecture, chet baker, and the shins/ delighting in the moment, the food, gelato and sushi.../ her friends and friends of her friends/ life running full throttle and piling upon itself/ falling in a heap and laughing at yourself/ somehow measuring the world as a playground to be savored before we awake to something else.../a candid and unpretentious style like I am reading John Updike in Singaporean drag...

Rick and Schubert's Winterreise

Ulrich Hartung and Winterreise ...somewhere in a remarkable past... the years collapse and the remote years are vividly alive..was it 1977...1978...? There in Loewe Theatre Rick united with Schubert and Müller, and for an instant there was an intense presence of the poet and composer, but with Rick as the Wanderer, the lover whose love has been squandered and not returned...the bitterness and sadness...oppressively sorrowful...

Rick became the wanderer in that moment, somehow his own pain emerged in the evolution of the character singing of his utter, absolute despair forming the foundation of an inner reality, and his voice and demeanor were now the saddened wanderer on a winter's journey...a "celebration" of isolation and desolation... his immersion in the moment transcended the words and music and became the complex character depicted in the poems of Müller whose spirit and substance is captured in one of Schubert's most eloquent musical expressions.

Rick's performance transcended the singer of a song cycle Winterreise...it transformed the audience...so that the audience was the Wanderer...the audience was stepping through the terrain of winter lurking in the shadows like death...frozen footsteps across the snow where there is nothing left to hope for... This is the essence of the Romantic sensibility, the remote and unrequited passion, misunderstood, and alone forever...

Yet in that moment of Rick's disclosure of this monumental masterwork, I was caught up in the sheer beauty and majesty of such eloquent perception and execution...the delightful anguish of it all! Even now, I can hear/feel this performance as one of those passionate moments that live forever.

As the years go by, and Rick and I sit in Bruno's with our cafe lattes, one might think that this performance has receded into the nothingness of a distant past. Yet as we speak I can still see in those eyes, the spirit of the wanderer still engaged in a long winter's journey, and somewhere the performance still echoes and resounds through the catacombs of remembrance.

Listening Through the Echoing Ethernet

the flood of images distracts me as a bewildering maze that overwhelms/ flashing across the eyes attempting to focus on the forward field in front of me/ two eyes meant to zone in on the object/ isolate and destroy...

sounds collide as crashing collages in a continuous web/ an atmosphere of decibels of varying densities/ ears sensing all directions with surround sound encouraging cacophony as the most delicious, exquisite harmony/ vibrating strings resonating eleven dimensions of melody/ encompass and embrace...

No wonder music is the stuff that dreams are made of...