Category Archives: Responses

Cristina Veiga Judar – Questions for a Live Writing

Cristina JudarCristina Veiga Judar, a writer from São Paulo, Brazil, was poet-in-residence in the Archive for one month in February – March 2015. Cristina’s first book, Lina, came out in 2009 and received the Cultural Action Grant in the Graphic Novel category, awarded by the State Secretary of Culture in São Paulo. In 2011, she published her second book, Vermelho, Vivo [Red, Live], which also received the Cultural Action Grant. Her latest book, Roteiros para uma vida curta [Scripts for a Short Life] received an honorable mention at the 2014 SESC Literary Awards. Cristina also writes Luminescências nas Pickups [Luminescence on Pickups,] a blog dedicated to fiction and is working on her first novel Oito do sete [Eight of seven].

Cristina’s residency was sponsored by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture and the British Council. For this project, she produced new writing for the Archive of the Now inspired by interviews with Londoners. Cristina’s texts are below, and links to the interviews with passersby are included with the relevant prose poem.

These texts were translated by Chanté Berry-Gordon, Katy Carroll and Davina Bharj.

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ELA FALA AZUL

(audio)

Conheci-a vermelha. Paloma Szenchin falava azul. Punha-se à frente da tela unicolor do smartphone. Mas eu a sabia vermelha como a sorte, vermelha como o sangue, quente de escorrer. Primeiro, meu interesse pelo nickname fajuto. Depois, pelo que nela era negro, assim como em mim. Somos ambos vietnamitas de origem e com as dores do mundo em cada nó de osso. Se eu fosse poeta, escreveria apenas sobre o que eu sofro. Por essa razão, não sou poeta. Meu sofrimento não é local, mas uma ondulação globalizada. De doer nos poros do mundo. Minhas células estão nas raízes da Terra. Então eu preciso de um amar só, de alguém como Paloma, nem que seja do outro lado de uma linha situada há 22 horas em um voo de avião. Eu tô tão desmembrado que faz dó. Eu tô tão desmembrado que faz doer. Eu tô desmoronado. Por isso, preciso de uma dona toda vermelha. Paloma é vermelha, mas fala azul e cabe em uma pessoa. Diferente de mim: o que importa é o que ela é. E topou me encontrar. Ela tem um papo lindo nas redes sociais. Depois de quatro dias de falas virtuais, nos veremos. Eu esperei um século pra que esses quatro dias passassem rápido. Passei perfume. Ela foi se arrumar. Eu desenhei com lápis um limite pro meu próprio corpo. Ela foi comprar um vestido. Ontem foi o ano novo chinês e pedi por nós. Também pedi que a minha dor não seja a dor da Terra, mas só a dor do meu umbigo. De lábios cremosos, Paloma disse que o meu papo é engraçado. O lip gloss, pink; Paloma, vermelha; sua fala, azul, no vestido que ela vai usar hoje à noite para o nosso primeiro encontro.

SHE SPEAKS BLUE

I knew her as red. Paloma Szenchin spoke blue. She put herself in front of the unicolor smartphone screen. But I knew red as luck, red as blood, hot and flowing. First, I was interested by the unusual nickname. Then, by what was black in her, as well as in me. We are both Vietnamese by origin and carry the pains of the world in every fibre of our being. If I were a poet, I would write only about my suffering. For this reason, I am not a poet. My suffering is not local, but rather a global wave. Pain in the pores of the world. My cells are rooted in the earth. So I only need one love, someone like Paloma, even if we are on different sides of a line, a 22 hour flight away. I’m so shamefully broken. I’m so broken it hurts. I have crumbled. Because of this, I need a lady who is completely red. Paloma is red, but speaks blue, all fitting into one person. Unlike me: what matters is what she is. And she stumbled across me. She chats beautifully on social networks. After four days of talking online, we are going to see each other. I waited for what felt like a century for these four days to pass quickly. I put on cologne. She was getting ready. I drew a limit for my own body in pencil. She was buying a dress. Yesterday was Chinese New Year and I wished for us. I also wished that my pain is not the Earth’s pain, but only the pain of my navel. With creamy lips, Paloma said that I talk funny. The lip gloss, pink; Paloma, red; her speech, blue, in the dress she will wear tonight for our first date.

 

ESPELHADA NAS MARÉS

(audio 1 and audio 2)

Das primeiras imagens formadas naquelas águas, a mais forte lembrança: fios de cabelo que quase se fizeram passar por algas marinhas, mas que eram mesmo fios: vermelhas ondulações não de sangue, mas de fidelidade às próprias raízes e de, à verdade, devoção. À mesma maneira, órgãos translúcidos formaram-se aos poucos: uma órbita ocular, depois duas, a tessitura de uma pele pálida: não da morte, mas da virgindade ali contida. Até que naquele mar de encosta brava e inconsciente, 25 anos depois, mulher inteira fosse feita – a oceânica, siamesa minha e ao mesmo tempo independente, ela emitia a linguagem das sereias-focas, mulheres travestidas de animal mitológico, do tipo que professa segredos seculares aos montes e de cor. Em casos de medo ou de questionamento, eu sempre recorria ao mar para acessar essa minha parcela dupla, a diva espelhada nas marés que tanto se parecia comigo, à qual apelidei com meu nome próprio: Laura. Era incrível, a dona da íris verdejante transformava os enganos dos meus dias em fatos memoráveis, tantos eram os significados por ela revelados entre minhas pausas e palavras. Até que no 27º ano levei a ela a notícia de um terceiro entre nós, indivíduo de minhas entranhas mas a mim parcialmente estranho, já que não havia sido feito com minhas sombras, muito menos com minhas palavras: ele era um substrato de nossa relação. Foi quando vi Laura chorar naquelas águas, na primeira vez em que deixei de enxergar sua forma física, em um movimento inverso rumo ao desaparecimento aquático, até que ela se resumisse a uma tremulação de idas e vindas na maré composta pelo sal de suas lágrimas mescladas ao sal do mar. Foi assim até que nada mais eu visse, embora ainda tentasse caçar na fluidez qualquer imagem identificável. Mas o dia desceu escuro e só me ofereceu torvelinhos sem luz. O mês desceu escuro. Os anos seguintes, igualmente. Hoje, no 35º ano, vivo com aquele terceiro que a fez chorar, fora o quarto, o quinto, até chegar a um décimo sexto filho. Todos expostos, em paredes opostas. Todos retratos de tinta antes líquida, condensada na reprodução de cada forma, de cada palavra-lenda entre a Laura oceânica e a Laura mundana. Os convites acabaram de ser enviados. A vernissage inaugural será na próxima terça-feira e eu mal posso esperar pela chegada desse momento. Adoraria que Laura estivesse aqui.

MIRRORED IN THE TIDES

From the first images formed in those waters, the strongest memory: strands of hair that could almost pass as seaweed, but they were indeed strands: red ripples, not of blood, but of loyalty to one’s roots, to truth, to devotion. In the same way, translucent bodies formed gradually: one eye socket, then two, then the fabric of pale skin: not pale from death, but rather from the virginity it contained within. From that sea, to the angry and unconscious cliff-face, 25 years later, a whole woman was made – the ocean, my Siamese twin, and yet at the same time independent, uttered the language of mermaid-seals, women disguised as mythological animals, the kind that profess ancient secrets off by heart to the mountains. In cases of fear or questioning, I always returned to the sea to access my other half, a diva mirrored in the tides, who so resembled me, who I called by my own name: Laura. It was amazing; the owner of the green iris turned the day’s mistakes into memorable facts, revealing so many meanings between my pauses and words. Until after the 27th year I told her that there was a third person between us, an individual cut from the same cloth as me, yet still slightly strange to me, since he hadn’t been made with my shadows, and much less so with my words: he was a substratum of our relationship. It was then that I saw Laura cry in those waters, it was the first time I stopped being able to see her physical form, she disappeared in a reverse movement, until she became a flicker of coming and goings in the tide consisting of the salt of her tears mixed with the salt of the sea. It was like that until I wasn’t able to see her anymore, although I still tried to hunt for any trace of an identifiable image of her in the fluidity. But the day became dark, and only offered me eddies without light. The month became dark. The following years as well. Today, after 35 years, I live with that third person that made her cry, I had my fourth, fifth, until I reached a sixteenth child. All displayed on opposite walls. All the portraits made from ink without liquid, condensed in the reproduction of every shape, of every legendary word between the oceanic Laura and the worldly Laura. The invitations have just been sent. The opening show will be next Tuesday and I can’t wait for its arrival. I would love for Laura to be here.

 

O PAI DE TODOS OS MALES

(audio)

Às vezes, sou pura, um anjo mesmo. Em outras, má, um demônio em formação. Repouso em uma cela toda branca que eu gostaria que fosse da cor do sangue que manipulo todos os dias da minha vida. Eu olho pro sangue todos os dias da minha vida, enquanto permaneço em absoluta brancura, mas não em silêncio. O sangue precisa de histórias, de prosa livre e interatividade. Provavelmente devido à sua natureza dinâmica, sua sanidade depende da boa palavra, daquilo que é bendito pela boca humana. Por essa razão, posso derrotar o corpo de alguém ou até mesmo salvá-lo apenas com o uso da oratória. Conforme meu humor do dia, é possível saber qual será a minha decisão, embora eu goste de pregar peças. Demônios em formação amam esse tipo de coisa e detestam a previsibilidade. Para testarmos o nosso poder, criamos charadas indecifráveis, bloqueamos vias que antes eram livres, promovemos confusão nas mentes crédulas. O sangue possui uma mente absolutamente crédula. Ele é influenciável. O sangue parece bobo, às vezes. Em tubos, cilindros ou artérias, ele sempre absorve. E, nesse trabalho de absorção inconsciente, dá vida a variadas doenças e males. Mesmo sem querer, o sangue é pai de todos os males. Por falar nisso, minha avó morreu de câncer. Minha mãe também. Por causa de todas as palavras más que tiveram de ouvir durante a vida. Dos ouvidos, para as células e glóbulos brancos e vermelhos, é um pulinho. Assim como para as plaquetas. E por aí vai, até alcançar todo o resto. Palavras no pós vida têm igual influência: afetam o sangue das fotos, o sangue das imagens da memória. Se boas, as fazem permanecer como inspiração. Se ruins, já sabe. Resulta naquele tipo de morto no qual nem gostamos de pensar ou de citar o nome em reuniões familiares. É isso aí Roger, gosto muito de você, então adotei essa fala muito próxima da neutralidade, algo que geralmente não faço, mas com parentes e amigos é diferente, por isso, tento influenciar o mínino possível. Tenha uma boa vida. [Tulipa finaliza a análise das amostras de sangue de Roger F. Hippley e as etiqueta. Parte para o exame da coleta de um outro paciente. Seu humor não é dos melhores e hoje ela se encontra particularmente imprevisível].

THE FATHER OF ALL ILLNESSES

Sometimes I am pure, an angel even. In other instances, I am evil, a demon in training. I rest on a completely white cell, I’d like it to be the colour of the blood that I handle every day of my life. I look at blood every day of my life, while I remain in absolute whiteness, but not in silence. Blood needs stories, free prose and interaction. Probably due to its dynamic nature, its health depends on good words, on that which is blessed by the human mouth. For this reason, I can destroy someone’s body or even save it, with only the use of speech. According to my mood of the day, it is possible to predict my decision, although I like to play tricks. Demons in training love this kind of thing and hate predictability. To test our power, we create indecipherable riddles, we block paths that were once free, and we promote confusion in gullible minds. Blood has an absolutely gullible mind. It is easily influenced. Blood seems silly at times. Inside tubes, cylinders or arteries, it always absorbs. And this work of unconscious absorption gives life to various diseases and illnesses. Even unintentionally, blood is the father of all illnesses. Speaking of this, my grandmother died of cancer. My mother too. Because of all the bad words that they had to hear throughout their lives. From the ears, to the white and red blood cells is a short trip. As it is to the platelets. And so on, until you reach the rest. Words have the same influence in the afterlife: they affect the blood which creates photos, the blood which creates images of the memory. If they are good, they are made to stay as inspiration. If they are bad, you already know. It results in that kind of death which we don’t like to think about, whose name we don’t mention at family gatherings. That’s it Roger, I like you a lot, so I adopted this speech very close to neutrality, something that I do not usually do, but with family and friends it is different, so I try not to influence the situation too much. Have a nice life. [Tulip ends the analysis of blood samples from Roger F. Hippley and labels it. She leaves to go and examine the samples of another patient. His humour is not the best and today it is particularly unpredictable].

 

UM CÉU DIFERENTE

(audio)

Um sol para pronta entrega. Ele chegou em uma caixa. Achei um despropósito um sol receber de presente um outro sol. Mesmo que tenha sido enviado com as melhores intenções. Eu já possuía meu próprio reinado. Meu firmamento e minha coroa. Que fosse ao menos uma lua fria. Um meteoro. Até um asteróide de causar estragos em crostas terráqueas. Mas nada, era sol mesmo, o danado. Não parava de queimar. Em um fogo de entranha daqueles impossíveis de apagar. Era pequeno ainda. Um sol criança. Arrogante, como só os sóis sabem ser. Eu nunca tive a notícia de que sóis poderiam ser rejeitados. Daí o aceitei. Temerosa do que fazer com tamanho calor. Poderia ser o meu fim. Ou o começo. Acreditei na segunda opção. Tornamo-nos, assim, dois sóis em um céu quieto, imagem presente em dez entre dez pesadelos da população encarcerada mundial – encarcerada, não carcerária, o que significa que donas de casa e homens de negócios podem fazer parte deste grupo. Para a humanidade, pode parecer que os astros siderais vivem em constante disputa de egos pela posição mais brilhante no céu, passível de evidenciar mesquinharias mundanas. Tudo bem que há uma certa petulância envolvida nisso tudo. Ainda não nasceu pessoa incapaz de se sentir diminuída diante de nós. Mas juro, não temos qualquer controle quanto à nossa monumentalidade. As coisas são assim porque já nasceram assim, muito antes de que o verbo fosse feito. Hoje, ambos convivemos em perfeita suspensão indiscreta. Em um contínuo carnaval dos trópicos. Numa dupla apoteose de primeira divisão. E explodimos a todo instante. A carbonizar e a propagar ironias universais. O buraco negro engolirá a todos nós um dia? Sinceramente, duvido, enquanto planejo, na minha própria carne, uma tempestade capaz de interferir no funcionamento dos eletrodomésticos da Terra. De fundir com o HD externo dos humanos. De paralisar pra sempre a cafeteira italiana de muita gente. Viveremos assim por centenas de milhares de anos, até que não haja no universo qualquer resquício do que tenha sido uma cafeteira italiana ou HD externo. Esse tempo marcará a chegada do nosso terceiro, a constituição de nosso tríptico. Será quando enviaremos, a um sol de confim de galáxia, uma caixa. Dentro dela, um presentinho.

A DIFFERENT SKY

A sun for prompt delivery. He arrived in a box. I thought it preposterous, a sun getting given another sun. Even if it had been sent with the best of intentions. I already had my own kingdom. My heavens and my crown. It could have at least been a cold moon. A meteor. Even an asteroid to wreak havoc on the Earth’s crusts. But nothing, it was the same sun, the damned. It didn’t stop burning. A fire whose entrails were impossible to put out. It was still small. A child sun. Arrogant, as only suns know how to be. I was never told that suns could be rejected. Hence I accepted him. Fearful of what to do with a heat of this size. It could be the end of me. Or the beginning. I believed the second option. We therefore became two suns in a quiet sky, an image present in ten out of ten of the world’s incarcerated population’s nightmares – incarcerated, not imprisoned, which means that housewives and businessmen can be part of this group. For humanity, it may seem that the egos of sidereal stars live in constant dispute for the brightest position in the sky, capable of showing mundane pettiness. It’s true that there is a certain petulance involved in all this. A person who is not yet born is incapable of feeling diminished before us. But I swear, we have no control over our monumentality. It is because we were born this way, long before Word was made. Today, we both live together in perfect, indiscreet balance. In a continuous carnival of the tropics. In a double apotheosis of the first division. And we could explode at any moment. Carbonise and spread universal ironies. Will the black hole swallow us all one day? Honestly, I doubt it, while planning in my own flesh at the same time, a storm capable of interfering with the Earth’s appliances. Melting myself with the human’s external hard drives. Paralysing forever many people’s Italian coffee machines. We will live like this for hundreds of thousands of years, until there isn’t a trace left of an Italian coffee machine or an external hard drive. This time will mark the arrival of our third, the establishment of our triptych. It will be then that we send, to a sun of the border of the galaxy, a box. Inside, a small gift.

 

MENSAGEM NA GARRAFA

(audio)

Foi um mar que caiu sobre minha cabeça. Mais certo do que o céu que me cobria há duas décadas. Fugi, agora ondulante, então velejador. Distante, ao vento de um horizonte aberto. Abri mão da sensatez das linhas. Não seria mais filho-problema-sombra-despesa-não-programada-incômodo-genético-a-ser-desprogramado-em-colégio-católico. Passaria a ser onda partida – névoa – maresia – lenda – arrebentação – calmaria – escuridão das abissais.
Nessa minha nova condição, me dedicaria a atos que, se escritos, resultariam em grandes livros.

Engoliria garrafas com mensagens em papel para que alguém dentro de mim as lesse (em caso de necessidade). Nem peixe, nem homem, saltei, afundado e náufrago.

MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

It was a sea that fell on my head. More certain than the sky that covered me for two decades. I fleed, now a wave, then a sailor. Far away, on the wind of an open horizon. I gave up the wisdom of the lines. Would it not be more child-problem-shadow-expense-unscheduled-bother-genetic-to-be-deprogrammed-in-catholic-school. It would become a match of waves – fog – salty air – legend – surf – calm – the abysmal darkness.

In my new condition, I would devote myself to acts that, if written, would result in great books.

I would swallow bottles with messages on paper for someone inside me to read (if necessary). Neither fish nor man, I jumped, sunken and shipwrecked.

 

ESTE LADO PARA CIMA

(audio)

Estou farta de dar a minha carne para que fodam com ela.

Então dou origem a tufões e a crises sistêmicas de destruir porcelanas engavetadas. Porcelanas, engavetadas ou não, são frágeis, então todos querem preservá-las intactas. Fosse descoberta uma composição que as tornasse inquebráveis, perderiam imediatamente o seu valor. Meu maior prazer é fazer o possível para destruí-las. Não me contento em destruir a carne dos homens, quero mesmo é acabar com os seus caprichos. Essa é uma forma ainda mais completa e vil de arrasá-los. Todo homem anda pela rua como se tivesse um armário de porcelana dentro de si. Empilhados, os vasos de material leitoso e brilhante. Enfileirados, os pratos e baixelas recebidos como presente de casamento. Sopeiras que nunca guardaram calor. Leiteiras, xícaras. Uma vez, salvei uma nação inteira por causa de Ming Lee. Ela tornava-se brilhante sempre que tocava o piano. Ela tornava-se indestrutível. Aí residia o seu valor para mim. Aí residia a sua desvalorização para o mundo. As notas musicais que Lee produzia anularam minha fúria de dizimar um país inteiro e suas baixelas. Com sua indestrutibilidade não-reconhecida, Lee protegeu os guardadores de louças da nação. Com sua indestrutibilidade intocada, Lee garantiu alguns anos a mais aos homens sólidos de fragilidade ambulante.

THIS SIDE UP

I’m tired of giving my flesh so others can fuck with it.

So I bring about typhoons and systematic crises which destroy shelved china. China, shelved or not, is fragile, which means that everyone wants to keep it intact. If a composition was discovered to make it unbreakable, it would immediately lose its value. My greatest pleasure is to do everything possible to destroy it. I am not simply content to destroy the flesh of men, instead, what I really want is to destroy their caprices. This is a more thorough and wicked way to crush them. Every man walks down the street as if he had a cabinet of china inside him. Piled up, the pots of milky, shiny material. Lined up, plates and dishes received as wedding gifts. Soup bowls that have never held heat. Milk jugs, tea cups. Once I saved a whole nation because of Ming Lee. She shined when she played the piano. She became indestructible. For me, there lay her value. For the world, there lay her depreciation. The musical notes that Lee produced canceled out my fury to decimate an entire country and its china dishes. With her unnoticed indestructibility, Lee protected the nation’s crockery keepers. With her untouched indestructibility, Lee secured a few more years for the solid men of travelling fragility.

 

LOIRA, DIVIDIDA

(audio)

O som de ‘a’ prolongado da máquina de suspender as cortinas do palco é o som da autocomiseração. Embora também me faça lembrar dos coros vocais típicos da trilha de filmes de horror dos anos 70. Na adolescência eu estava perdida na cidade cinza, como uma britadeira no modo high speed, já que batia sempre em um mesmo ponto duro, a causar grandes estragos. Minha cabeça loira de cabelo meio longo, meio raspado, dizia tudo sobre o que era possível ou não encontrar em mim, uma norueguesa com cara de semi-modelo, não fossem as bochechas e as curvas divididas a me fazerem mulher-quadrada. Eu fui para o Brasil por dois anos, meu pai petroleiro me patrulhava, não me deixava ir à orla ou ao morro do alemão. Padeci horrores em sua mão carrasca e soberana. Até que, ao fim dos dois anos, decidi estudar drama. Não porque fosse exclusivamente dramática – um fio de gelo morno escorre em minhas veias, o que significa o mesmo que não ter sangue – mas devido ao apelo do palco, ä exposição inerente à arte, condição ideal para contrabalançar o recato forçado nas areias brasileiras – que ironia. Dei a volta a alguns mundos, chorei, sofri – ciente de que o extremo do meu sofrimento nórdico dá apenas uns 10% do sofrimento latino, mas, mesmo assim, sofri, à minha maneira aguada – voltei para a Noruega, parti pra Londres, me parti em pedaços, colei-os, virei um mix de quadrinhos, minha pele transformou-se em um mosaico de cobra coral, minha cabeça um jogo de xadrez sem a peça da torre. Escrevi sete peças para teatro, quatro delas encenadas, duas a contento, uma destruída pelas encenações ruins, outra ruim mesmo de encenar, fosse por Garbo ou Olivier. Tô em cartaz agora, não pelo meu corpo físico, mas pelo meu corpo construído na dramaturgia, um frankenstein kafkiano nas bênçãos de stanislavski. Pelo buraquinho da cortina ouço sons de teatro cheio, mas só vejo uma moça aqui perto e um rapaz na ponta esquerda da segunda fila. Tenho a impressão de ter ouvido a segunda campainha soar há uns cinco minutos.

BLOND, DIVIDED

The prolonged sound of ‘a’ from the machine which suspends the stage curtain is the sound of self-pity. Although it also reminds me of the vocal choirs typical of horror film soundtracks from the seventies. As a teenager, I was lost in the grey city, like a pneumatic drill in high-speed, always hitting the same hard spot, causing severe damage. My head of blonde hair, half of it long, half shaved, said everything about what was or wasn’t possible to find in me, a Norwegian with what would be a modelesque face, if it weren’t for the cheeks and dividing curves that make me a square -faced woman instead. I went to Brazil for two years, my father, who worked in oil, watched over me, he would not let me go to the waterfront or the German slum. I suffered horrors at his sovereign executioner’s hand. Until, two years later, I decided to study drama. Not because I was especially dramatic – a current of warm ice runs through my veins, which is the same as not having any blood at all – but because of the appeal of the stage, the exhibition inherent to art, the ideal condition to counteract the forced modesty in Brazilian sands – what an irony. I turned to some worlds, I cried, I suffered – aware that my Nordic suffering is equivalent only to about 10% of Latin suffering, but even so, I suffered, in my wishy-washy way – I returned to Norway, then I went to London, I set off in pieces, I stuck them together, I became a mix of little squares, my skin turned into a mosaic of coral snakeskin, my head a chess game without the rook. I wrote seven theatre pieces, four of them staged, but only two satisfactorily, one of the them destroyed by bad acting, the other was unsuitable for staging in the first place, even by Garbo or Olivier. I’m on stage right now, not in my physical body, but in my body constructed in dramaturgy, a Kafka-esque Frankenstein with Stanislavski’s blessings. Through the little hole in the curtain I can hear the sounds of a crowded theatre, but I can only see a nearby girl and a boy at the left end of the second row. I have a feeling that I heard the second bell sound about five minutes ago.

 

DEVOTADO A ELA

(audio)

Em um quadro de Goya, encontrei Athena. Não porque eu olhasse para a cena projetada no canvas, mas porque dela eu fazia mesmo parte, eu estava do lado de dentro. A carne daquela obra de arte era minha: se não exclusivamente, também. Só uns traços de cinza, magenta, dourado, nos destacavam do fundo escuro. A presença de Athena era evidente como uma forma de consciência antes da ação, representada em um extrato de movimento, em uma pincelada. Partilhar com Athena um dos abismos de Goya é coisa que não se inventa nem se esquece. Partilhar com Athena um dos abismos de Goya é coisa capaz de mudar toda uma vida. É estar em um espaço sideral sem um nada de estrelas. É sobreviver na isenção dos astros que trazem ilusão. Foi desiludido que eu soube como me projetar no mundo. Convicto de como me manter sólido, impermeável, no escuro. Eu estava cansado de ouvir que só o que brilha é digno e superior. Em um ouro negro, capaz de ser visto por apenas certo tipo de olhos, cunhei minhas armas e minha arte. Naquele dia, desci até onde ninguém mais conseguiu. Mãos de dedos finos colocaram sobre minha cabeça um capacete de ébano frio, o que foi apreciado por ninguém.

DEVOTED TO HER

In one of Goya’s painting, I found Athena. Not because I was looking at the scene projected on a canvas, but because I was actually part of it, I was on the inside. The flesh of that piece of art was mine as well, if not exclusively. Only traces of grey, magenta, and gold stood out in the dark background. Athena’s presence was obvious like a form of consciousness before action, represented in a movement, in a brushstroke. Sharing one of Goya’s abysses with Athena is not something that is invented nor forgotten. Sharing one of Goya’s abysses with Athena is something that is able to change a lifetime. It is like being in outer space without any stars. It is surviving in the contempt of the stars that cause wishful thinking. I was disillusioned in thinking that I knew how to define myself in the world. Convinced I knew how to remain solid, waterproof, in the dark. I was tired of hearing that only what shines is worthy and higher. In a black gold, only able to be seen by a certain kind of eyes, I coined my guns and my art. That day, I went down to where no one else could. Fine-fingered hands placed a cold ebony helmet on my head, which wasn’t appreciated by anyone.

 

PRESERVADO

(audio)

Pela frequência laranja estava o meu escritório todo inundado. Em tal circunstância, eu não fazia nada além de olhar pro céu e calcular os melhores ângulos, diferenciando-me dos animais nessa minha necessidade particular. Eu havia me tornado um reservatório de sons e de histórias dos outros, incapaz de exalar as minhas próprias narrativas. Por isso me sentia amplo, inchado, tamanha era a retenção. A começar pela nostalgia, com a qual eu discordava, mas que não por isso deixava de me dominar. Um traço de família determinante era essa necessidade de emoldurar dias bons ao invés de criar novas satisfações. Esse era o meu modo extravagante de, na inexistência das palavras, descrever algo simples, de tornar certas tonalidades mais ricas pelo fato de dar a elas um direcionamento diferente. E aí, eu voltava a reter. Voltava a aceitar que um momento deveria ser preservado feito pickles em conserva. Especialmente um dia que já começava laranja: mais uma cena memorável do que instante vivido. Quanto melhores são nossas memórias, mais silenciosos nos tornamos. Ajustei as lentes da câmera, calado. Fez-se apenas um clique.

PRESERVED

My whole office was flooded by the orange frequency. In such a circumstance, I did nothing but look to heaven and calculate the best angles, differentiating myself from animals with this particular need. I had become a reservoir of sounds and stories of others, unable to emit my own narratives. Therefore I felt large, swollen, such was the retention. Starting with the nostalgia with which I disagreed, but which did not cease to dominate me. A key family trait was the need to frame good days instead of creating new satisfactions. That was my fancy way of, in the absence of words, describing something simple, to introduce more rich tones because they give a different direction. And there, I returned to remembering. I returned to accept that a moment should be preserved like pickles. Especially a day that had begun orange: another memorable scene instead of a live moment. The better our memories, the quieter we become. I adjusted the camera lens, silent. It only clicked once.

 

PIÑA COLADA

(Sobre a alma e os sons da autora)

Minha alma faz zzzzz. Não esse zzzzz onomatopeico considerado sinônimo de sono profundo, mas um tipo de zzzzz ancestral, um zzzzz que esteve presente na formação do universo, esse som adotado pela minha alma em algum momento é um zzzzz detentor de mistérios tão profundos que serão, para todo o sempre, desconhecidos. E se desconhecidos para todo o sempre, tanto faz se são mistérios mesmo ou pura lorota de quem apenas está interessada em impressionar as audiências. Um mistério fadado ao desconhecimento eterno é o mesmo que um mistério que nunca existiu. E se nunca existiu, não tem poder de coisa alguma, muito menos de mistério. Falando sério, minha alma agrega a si mesma esses zzzzzs todos só para ganhar certo destaque. Ninguém sabe disso, mas há uma competição silenciosa entre as almas, uma competição que não passa pela boca do homem. É amigo com amigo, lado a lado, sem imaginar que ao mesmo tempo pode haver uma disputa ferrenha entre suas almas, que, depois dos sons, adotam cores como outra forma de autopromoção e destaque. A minha por um tempo queria porque queria ser azul arroxeada – não em uma tonalidade suavezinha como hortênsia ou lavanda porque ela é um tanto quanto radical, era algo mais para um batom gótico e tinta de parede. Aí ela cansou, resolveu que agora é fúcsia. Desconfio que nem seja pela cor em si, mas pelo nome ‘fúcsia’ que sempre causa mais impacto do que, simplesmente, ‘amarelo’, ‘azul’, ‘verde’. Fúcsia estimula o imaginário, quem não conhece já se põe a imaginar que cor seria essa, é como se o fúcsia fosse o espectro de todas as cores, tem uma pluralidade aliada a uma força expressiva pungente que abala as estruturas das expectativas ‘arroz com feijão’. Conheço bem minha alma, é a cara dela optar por esse tipo de coisa que embaralha a cabeça dos outros. E se dá algum destaque em relação às inimigas, melhor ainda. Minha alma adora um palco. De qualquer forma e apesar de tudo ainda dou um crédito pra ela, que nada mais é do que um zzzzz rodopiante em uma pista feita de Pina Colada congelada, naquela típica tonalidade amarelinha do famoso drink.

PIÑA COLADA

(About the soul and sounds of the author)

My soul makes the sound zzzzz. Not that onomatopoeic zzzzz considered synonymous of deep sleep, but a kind of ancestral zzzzz, a zzzzz that was present at the formation of the universe, this sound adopted by my soul at some point is a zzzzz, holder of such deep mysteries that they will be, for all time, unknown. And if they are unknown for all time, whether they are mysteries or pure fiction, only interested in impressing the audience. A mystery doomed to eternal ignorance is the same as a mystery that never existed. And if it never existed, it has no power over anything, much less mystery. Talking seriously, my soul adds all these zzzzz’s to itself just to win certain prominence. No one knows this, but there is a silent competition between souls, a competition that does not pass through the mouth of man. Two friends, side by side, not realising that at the same time there may be a fierce dispute between their souls that, after the sounds, adopt colours as another form of self-promotion and eminence. For a while, my soul wanted to be purplish blue – not in a soft tone like hydrangea or lavender – because as radical as it is, it was better for a gothic lipstick and wall paint. Then it got tired, decided that now it is fuchsia. I suspect not solely for the colour itself, but for the name ‘fuchsia’ that always causes more impact than simply ‘yellow’, ‘blue’, ‘green’. Fuchsia stimulates the imagination, those who don’t know it already, start to imagine what colour it could be, it’s like fuchsia was the spectrum of all colours, it has a plurality combined with a poignant, expressive force that shakes the structures of bread-and-butter expectations. I know my soul well, it loves to opt for this kind of thing that scrambles the heads of others. And better still if it gives some importance to enemies. My soul loves a stage. In any case, and despite everything, I still give credit to it, which is nothing more than a swirling zzzzz on an ice rink made of frozen Piña Colada, with the typical light yellow colour of the famous drink.

 

RITUAL LÁCTEO

Michal Pudelka pictureQuatro jatos de leite desciam do céu em sentido vertical para depois desenharem um ângulo exato de 90 graus e escorrerem pelo carpete pardo, ainda no auge de sua brancura e cremosidade. Eu podia ver cada jato distinto passar por debaixo da minha cama feito os veios de um rio sob uma ponte, embora me mantivesse 100% sonhadora, olhos escuros de tão fechados. Quatro segredos brancos eram as pernas das mocinhas gazelas que trocavam beijinhos sob a minha cama com metade do corpitcho para fora (a parte mais sugestiva exposta). Digo sugestiva porque o que se via eram suas microssaias, as meias sete oitavos na previsível altura das coxas e os sapatos brancos de noiva ou enfermeira, não fossem os saltos altíssimos. No patamar de cima, meu vestido verde não tão curto era uma espécie de céu pros quatro segredos de leite – aquilo que, para mentes mais simples, é chamado de quatro pernas – debaixo da minha cama. Muitas vezes, na linha do horizonte mar e céu se confundem, o mar pode ser verde ou azul, então, se pensarmos em uma quebra dos limites previsíveis entre coisa de cima e coisa de baixo, tudo bem se o céu for verde, nem que seja por um tempo determinado, só para cumprir uma determinada função estética – o que, de fato, aconteceu. Daí que eu, em osso e carne, era a representação de um sonho em forma de cabeça, tronco e membros, envolvido por um céu desejado. Minha boca carmim entreaberta fazia a vez de um portal, exalava no ar, em formato de balões de HQ, os segredos de pitonisas em transe antes de eu descer e me juntar à cremosidade láctea das meninas, que, para meu espanto, estavam resumidas a dois pares de pernas entrelaçadas, embora eu ouvisse claramente o som dos beijinhos trocados entre elas naquele escuro dominante sob a ponte fria. Ainda me lembro de ter ficado estarrecida naquela noite em festa, quando uma garota com duas tranças longas e grossas nos cabelos, nua da cintura para cima, pediu que eu pusesse minha língua pra fora, sobre a qual posicionou, solenemente, um quadradinho solúvel em saliva doce e quente.

(texto baseado em uma foto do artista eslovaco baseado em Londres Michal Pudelka)

MILKY RITUAL

Four milk jets came down vertically from the sky, and then made an exact 90 degree angle, running down the brown carpet, still at the height of their whiteness and creaminess. I could see each distinct jet pass under my bed like the seams of a river under a bridge, despite being 100% sure of the fact that I was dreaming, my dark eyes closed tight. Four white secrets which were the legs of gazelle girls who exchanged kisses under my bed, with half their bodies exposed (the most suggestive part). I say suggestive, because what you were able to see was their miniskirts, their thigh-high socks and their white shoes, which were similar to those of a bride or a nurse – not sky-high heels. On the upper level, my not-so-short green dress was a kind of heaven for those four milk secrets – which, to simpler minds, might be called four legs – under my bed. Often, at the line of the horizon, the sea and sky merge, the sea can be green or blue, and so, if we think about a break in the supposed limits of the things above and the things below, it’s okay for the sky to be green, if only for a while, if only to meet a certain aesthetic function – which, in fact, happened. That is why I, in flesh and bone, was the representation of a head-shaped dream, torso and limbs, surrounded by a desired sky. My open, crimson mouth was a portal of sorts, exhaling into the air, in the shape of speech bubbles, the secrets of a pythoness in a trance, before I went down and joined the milky creaminess of the girls, who, to my astonishment, were reduced to two pairs of intertwined legs, although I clearly heard the sound of kisses being exchanged between them in that dominant dark under the cold bridge. I still remember being terrified during that night of celebration, when a girl with two long, thick plaits, naked from the waist up, asked me to put my tongue out, on which she solemnly positioned, a small, soluble square of hot, sweet saliva. (Text based on a photo by the Slovak artist, Michal Pudelka, who lives in London)

 

O CAMALEÃO

Comprei sapatos brancos para me sentir um pouco David Bowie. Todo mundo já quis se sentir um pouco Bowie um dia. Embora, nesse caso, não dê para ser pouco – tem que ser completo. Na vitrina da Oxford Street, encontrei, à venda, meu caminho para a androginia estelar, levado pra casa em uma caixa retangular de papelão. Eu já havia comprado um terno azul e feito com que meus cabelos parecessem fogo de chama alta. Rebelde eu já era faz tempo, então faltavam apenas alguns cigarros finos e perfis meticulosamente refletidos em espelhos. Pra ser Bowie, você precisa ser bom de perfil. Senão, nem adianta tentar. Pra mirar o firmamento primeiro, depois fechar os olhos e sustentar um sol sustenido com a decência de um Bowie não dá pra ser qualquer um. Tem que ter uma estrela guia, um belo salto plataforma, uma sombra jade muito bem aplicada nas pálpebras, já que um olho de cada cor ninguém vai conseguir ter mesmo. Enxergar o mundo em duas cores faz total diferença em relação à criação artística de quem quer que seja. É um avançado exercício de estética favorecido pela biologia. Intervenção da mãe natureza nas leis da genética que beneficiam alguns poucos humanos e gatos. Coisa tão grandiosa que, já no Egito Antigo, conferiam aos híbridos de gato e humano o status de deidade, como Bastet. O que nos dias atuais estaria bem próximo à figura do herói. Em suma, eu queria ser Bowie. Apenas por uma vida.

THE CHAMELEON

I bought white shoes to feel a little like David Bowie. Everyone has wanted to feel a little like Bowie once. But in this case, you can’t just do a little – it has to be full-blown. In the shop window on Oxford Street, I found, for sale, my way to stellar androgyny, taken home in a rectangular cardboard box. I had already bought a blue suit and styled my hair to look like a flaming fire. I have been a rebel for a long time, so the only things missing were a few thin cigarettes and profiles meticulously reflected in mirrors. To be Bowie, you need to have a good profile. Otherwise, don’t even bother. First, point to the sky, then close your eyes and hold a sharp note to the standard that only Bowie can reach. You have to have a guiding star, a beautiful wedged heel, a jade green shadow very well applied to the eyelids, with eyes of different colour that only Bowie has. Seeing the world in two colours makes all the difference in relation to artistic creation by anyone. It is an advanced exercise aesthetically favoured by biology. Mother Nature’s intervention in the laws of genetics that benefit a few humans and cats. A thing so great that, in ancient Egypt, the human cat hybrids were bestowed with deity status, like Bastet. Which today would be right next to the image of a hero. In short, I wanted to be Bowie. If only for a lifetime.

 

PALAVRAS DE UM IRLANDÊS PERDIDO NO METRÔ DE LONDRES

Só pode ter uma visão realista da vida aquele tem à frente dos olhos um horizonte de curvas e arrebentação.
Minhas mãos são grossas por causa do mar, da construção civil e do tanto que sou irlandês.
A Irlanda é uma terra de santos e de estudiosos. Não sou nem uma coisa nem outra, mas irlandês como ninguém.
Não gosto de silêncio, o que sempre me fez puxar papo com quem estivesse o meu lado,
fosse ele pecador ou deus. Por isso, sempre carrego comigo um crucifixo e uma lata de cerveja.

WORDS OF AN IRISHMAN LOST ON THE LONDON UNDERGROUND

You can only have a realistic view of life when ahead of your eyes lies a horizon of curves and waves.
My hands are thick because of the sea, because of my work in construction, and also because I am Irish.
Ireland is a land of saints and scholars. I am neither one nor the other, but I am Irish like no other.
I do not like silence, which always made me strike up a conversation with whoever was by my side, whether a sinner or a god. For this reason, I always carry a crucifix and a can of beer with me.

 

An Interview with Salome Voegelin

Salomé Voegelin is an artist and writer engaged in listening and hearing as a socio-political practice of sound. She is the author of Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art (Continuum, 2010). Other recent writings include a chapter in the The Multisensory Museum Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space (Alta Mira Press, 2014), ‘Ethics of Listening’ in the Journal of Sonic Studies 2 (2012), and ‘Listening to the Stars’ in What Matters Now? (What Can’t You Hear?) (Noch Publishing, 2013). Her essay ‘Sonic Possible Worlds’ is part of the Sound Arts issue of Leonardo Music Journal 23 (December 2013), and her second book Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound will be published by Bloomsbury in June 2014. Voegelin is a Reader in Sound Arts at the London College of Communication, UAL. She has a PhD from Goldsmiths College, London University.

This interview was conducted by Lawrence Uziell-Hamilton in the anechoic chamber at UCL.

Listen to Salome’s recordings for the Archive here.

Salome Voegelin

How did it feel performing your work in the anechoic chamber?

SV: It was really interesting, because when you come in, your first impression is not only that it’s an anechoic chamber but also that it’s quite a small room, and reading or talking to somebody in this intimate, airtight space, puts a very particular stress on how you read. Also knowing that there was a certain time limit affected my reading. So it was these pressures or limitations that I felt first and then settling in I started to really like the sound, the dryness of the sound – it wasn’t John Cage’s hyperbole about the nervous system that I could hear, it was much more simply a sense of airlessness and lack of space and the clippedness of sounds in extreme dryness that you don’t get anywhere else – it was very particular. And I think it made me read very particularly – I hope not too monotonously – but it certainly affects how one performs any writing, and I think it adds a layer of acute self-consciousness.

anechoic chamber

In that sense, does your sonic environment always influence your performance to some extent, and in what ways do different, louder environments affect you?

SV: I haven’t performed my own work very often. I write and then perform it in the editing process to myself. I read aloud to myself and that is a very important part of my editing process. But I’ve only recently really started to make the performance of my work more central to my practice, and performing my work I also start to write differently. I’ve noticed on a few occasions, at things like PolyPly, where I’ve been invited to read certain things aloud, that that creates a challenge to write something to be read aloud. So it’s like a cycle, where one process triggers another, and I find that extremely challenging and exciting. I found today very stimulating, because, well, firstly it is a privilege, obviously, to have your own work recorded, but also because you placed me in a very particular environment, within this anechoic chamber, for a very specific moment of time. This specificity made me rethink what the words I normally put on a page mean, and how they come from sounds, because my words come from [listening to] sound, so the way they are re-sounded in a public or shared space is, at this moment, a very interesting process for me.

Do you think of yourself as a poet? I know you’ve performed at events like PolyPly, and perhaps share some similarities in outlook with contemporary sound poets, so how do you find yourself relating to the world of poetry?

SV: I am intrigued by poetry, my current favourite is Edith Södergran, a Swedish-Finnish-Russian poet from the beginning of the twentieth century, but I’ve never thought of myself as a poet. I think of myself as a composer and writer, but I suppose you put those two things together and you compose words, and to an extent I think you become a poet. I think I’ve moved more into poetry since having opportunities to perform readings and taking my texts to spaces, so time-frames and rhythms become part of my writing. I do like more theoretical approaches to poetry too. For example I’m very fond of Julia Kristeva’s idea of a revolution in poetic language. The idea, not of poetry but of the poetic, I think, has always been in my composition and sonic practice as well as in my written practice, as an anarchic, as a phenomenological, experiential element. And although I have never described myself as a poet I like the processes and concepts of poetry to be within my work.

An extensive focus on sound in aesthetic practice is often considered inherently avant-garde or experimental. This seems to be particularly the case with poetry, thinking of Dada sound poets like Hugo Ball to contemporary figures in the Archive of the now like Caroline Bergvall or Holly Pester. Why do you think this is, given the very traditional understanding of poetry as an aural practice?

SV: What I’ve found in my own practice of working with sound and words is that we would probably be much happier if we accepted that 90% of the time we don’t understand each other and then there are these moments of coincidence, these exceptions when we do understand each other, and would try to work backwards:. starting with poetry, starting with what one may call experimental but what I would maybe rather call experiential, phenomenological, rather than semiotic words. Then people like the poets you mention, for example, would move more into the mainstream, not in a populist sense, but in the sense that we would have an access to them through our own sense of the inaccessibility of language, its misunderstandings. But I think this sort of engagement gets pushed to the side as something difficult, hence the terms avant-garde and experimental. I think there is something inherently difficult about poetry, particularly spoken poetry, something that people find icky. And I use the word ‘icky’ quite decidedly, because I think it’s almost bodily, using this daily material of words to rephrase them, reframe them, un-frame them, de-frame them, and then deform them, or reform them into something formless and difficult to grab hold of. I think people actually find it very uncomfortable and maybe that’s where its got something in common with what might be called experimental music – I would rather call it sound art – people’s self-consciousness is so great that they begin to feel physically uncomfortable and push works away and think ‘oh that’s avant-garde’.

The Archive of the Now is a database specifically for recordings of poetry. What do you think can be gained from the fact that this encourages close listening, as opposed to close reading?

SV: I think it’s really important, because when you listen to the Archive of the Now, you listen to somebody else’s voice, and these voices, these breaths, these mouths and tongues go straight into your ear, and obviously that can amplify the discomfort we might feel with these often nonsensical words. Whereas with poetry that’s written down, there is a visual distance, a detachment possible. There is a gap where you can feel not quite so physically and bodily involved. So I think its very exciting that it is recorded, it also means that the time we have to record, becomes the time of the listener also, and we start to share something; we start to share the same anxieties around time and bodies, and co-listening and listening alone. I think to throw people into the experience and make them listen and engage in the demands of the spoken, the sonic and the temporal is really very important.

Perhaps counter to that last question, then, I’m interested in the way you translate very ephemeral, subjective experiences of listening into writing. What happens in this process, and do you think anything is lost through it?

SV: What is lost, and what I would say is never there in my writing, is the moment of my listening, because listening is inherently ephemeral and passing. I think that is its strength, and is the intrigue of sound. Even if technologically repeatable, it is not experientially repeatable: every listening is this new moment, this new aesthetic moment of engagement, and this is exactly what I find so particular. There can’t even be the pretence of looking at it again, it is always looking at it anew, so the refrain becomes not again and again, but anew and anew. To write about sound might seem to pretend a holding on to, a framing or a stoppage, but it isn’t, because, while I appreciate that my moment of listening is gone, it opens up other moments of hearing: for the readers to hear their environments at the moment of reading, and to expand that consciousness to other moments, and so to experience the world in terms of temporary moments of listening. This sonic sensibility of course has to meet language, because otherwise it becomes very solipsistic. If we just said ‘listen to the moment’ in a meditative way, that can be interesting, but I am not solipsistic enough to feel satisfied by this. Instead I’m interested in creating points of access, portals, which we produce in language, and through which we can at least try to find moments of coincidence for exchange and communication.

Can you say more about the idea behind your ‘Soundwords’ blog?

SV: I started Soundwords after I’d finished Listening to Noise and Silence. Writing a book has its own temporal demands, it takes quite a long time to go through all the processes until it lives and can be read by other people. What fascinated me about writing a blog was that it was instantaneous; that I could have a sonic experience, and could try to grapple with words to make it tangible, accessible for other people, or rather to make their own moments of listening accessible to themselves. There was a seeming instantaneity about it, and the ease between my hearing and writing and your reading and listening is what fascinated me. I am still writing this blog now, four years on, maybe not as religiously and often as I’d like it to but it’s still a real moment of engagement because I also immediately imagine other listeners when I write, so it seems very reciprocal.

Listening to Noise and Silence

I get the feeling reading your book Listening to Noise and Silence that your phenomenological approach is often accessed in an unorthodox way, through a creative and poetic descriptive psychology. How do you feel your theoretical work relates to your creative practice?

SV: Maybe if I just quickly go through the first part of your question about the sort of psychological, phenomenological approach. I think as much as I feel that as an artist I can play with what composition is, and I can play with what poetry is – as I said previously, I’m an artist who sometimes does poetry, and who sometimes does different things. In the same way, there is a certain freedom for me to do philosophy, and use phenomenology, among other philosophical methods, in a slightly unorthodox way, maybe in an upside down way, in a useful way for me. And I think you’re quite right to point out that mine is a sort of psychological phenomenology, hence also my preference for Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose phenomenology relates to psychology, rather than for example, Husserl, whose phenomenology was influenced by mathematics, a mathematical sense and rationality of perception, whereas for Merleau-Ponty there is nonsense, there is sensate sense, there is doubt and the uncontrollable, and I feel that really gives me the tools to write about sound. And here I come to the second part of your question about how my writing relates to my practice. My creative practice is a compositional practice, in that I compose sound works on my own and in collaboration, and I also see writing as part of this practice. And having these theoretical approaches that are, for me, open enough, but have a certain ground, I feel I can use them to be in communication without stifling the material expression of my work. Because there is of course a desire to communicate the heard, and so for me phenomenology, and, more recently logic has been very useful to theorise without arresting the process of making work.

Talking about logic, your forthcoming book is an approach to sound through the concept of possible worlds and set theory. Could you maybe explain what led you to this, and how it may be affecting your creative output?

SV: Yes, my next book is called Sonic Possible Worlds: Hearing the Continuum of Sound, and if I can plug it here, it’s going to come out in June this year (2014). My last book, Listening to Noise and Silence, ends with a chapter called Now that is all about the constant ‘now’ of sound, and about where this sonic now meets memory in present perception. And somehow, the whole book, it seems to me now, reflecting on it after its publication, is somehow about accessing an other layer of the world – the world built by Tarkovsky’s refrain and evoked through a Bergsonian sense of memory in sound. We listen out for sounds of cars, of loudspeakers, of announcements and of language, because obviously these sounds are vital signifiers, related to our daily lives and survival. But there are other signifiers, relationships and materialities, at least potentially accessible through a sonic sensibility, that could provide a whole other sense of the world. And that led me to use the idea of possible worlds in my next book, and sparked my intrigue with possible world theory. Within that philosophy there are some unorthodox characters, like David K. Lewis, for whom every world that is possible is an actual world for somebody. That sort of thought really comes together with my idea that, more often than not, we misunderstand each other and only in moments of coincidence do we understand each other that I mentioned earlier. Since your world is your actual world because it is possible for you, and there are some aspects of your world that are completely impossible for me, completely inaccessible to me and do not hold up for me. In turn there are some worlds that are possible for me only, like the way my actual world is possible for me because it’s accessible to me and I inhabit it. Lewis talks about how inhabiting the world is what makes it real to you, and of course, he still says so as a logician, where its not about the “really” real world, but about the world of language and thought. But through marrying his radical realist conception of possible worlds with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological lifeworlds, I come to possible lifeworlds and of course, I had already talked of sonic lifeworlds, and now they become sonic possible lifeworlds, and this opened up new possibilities about how we inhabit the soundscape, and how it becomes possible as an actuality and thus how other worlds, as other possibilities of this world, become accessible through sound also.

So on the one hand there is an aesthetic dialogue to be had about artworks and how we can access them through possible world theory married with phenomenology, but there are also real political and social implications in a conceptual sonic possible lifeworld. It makes accessible, as in thinkable, all the works, languages, people, cultures and traditions that are excluded from or at the margins of our so called ‘actual’ world, representing at best an inferior possibility. A sonic sensibility provides different access to those possibilities that we even sometimes declare as impossibilities, and that remain inaudible not because they do not sound but because for ideological, social or political or even aesthetic reasons we cannot hear them and thus we grant them no actuality. In this sense  listening and sound, conceptual and actual, become tools to access the as yet inaudible, the possible impossible, to make the sounding but unheard take part in the configuration of actual reality.

Sonic Possible Worlds

User Responses

I really like these pages, and have been using them with admiration. That was probably obvious.
Andrew Zurcher, 21 October 2006

This is just amazing. I think it’s an absolutely wonderful site. Congratulations. I feel anyone would find it a treat to look at and listen to. It makes me want to buy an ipod or something so I can listen to poems on the bus.
Rowan Boyson, 21 October 2006

great news and looks good. have announced at http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/blog & as you’ll see added this to our EPC portals & also now feature on EPC home page: http://epc.buffalo.edu/
Charles Bernstein, 20 Oct 2006

Congratulations on this development. You have worked extremely hard on this, and it looks to be a major asset to us all.
Peter Middleton, 20 Oct 2006

The site looks (and sounds) excellent. I’ll add links to the main & sound pages on Third Factory. Congrats & thanks for making it happen!
Steve Evans, 20 Oct 2006

Feel completely liberated by this. What a gift.
Amy Pollard, 20 Oct 2006

what a great ‘resource’. good on you.
John Kinsella, 20 Oct 2006

The Archive is already a remarkable achievement and is clearly going to become a resource of central and critical importance. I’ll be very glad to be a part of the conversation around its further development.
Chris Goode, 24 Oct 2006

Congratulations on getting the site up and running, quite a spread of people although some odd omissions surprised me. I found the site very well presented and organised but could have done with texts to go with the readings. Most intrigued to see Michael Haslam in the nude. Reitha Pattison seems like a brilliant poet to me.
John Muckle, 24 October 2006

Congratulations for a great site! I have promoted it at my site (www.leevilehto.net) and will surely follow it with great interest.
Leevi Lehto

I first heard “What is Action” on my Ipod while riding my bike a few hundred feet from the Pacific Ocean – it was awesome.
Rich

So far I’ve found this site to be the best site for modern English poetry on the Web…
Greg Penfold

I spent three hours enjoying this website and the poetry readings this Sunday morning. It was a delight and I am very grateful that it exists. I particularly enjoyed Iphigenia, Caroline Bergvall and Tom Lowenstein – and Peter Riley on the Delphic oracle and the Attorney General was outstanding too. I have downloaded these texts to mini-diskTM and have replayed some after a afternoon’s work. Many thanks.

If you could persuade Tom Lowenstein to give more readings – and do the second half of La Tempesta – that would be wonderful. This is an invaluable site that I stumbled across: the poetry is outstanding. I already have several of the texts in print form but hearing them is a joy. Living and working in Glasgow means that i don’t get many oportunities to hear the poets I admire. The archive of the now is exactly what is needed.

Power to your digitals!
Stuart Mitchell

 

Ron Silliman’s Blog

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=archive+of+the+now

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Archive of the Now is, on day one, the most significant new site for poetry I’ve seen in well over a year. It is a perfect complement to the Archive of the Then, Andrew Motion’s slick gathering of so much that is kitsch, the Bathos of Britain into which he & his colleagues have dropped a few token gems to dress the dross, with its megalomaniacal “world’s premier online collection” claim on its home page. Mostly it’s a shill for hawking some old CDs, containing only two-thirds the number of poets available for free already, and in much greater depth, at PENNsound.. In unmistakable contrast with Motion’s slickness, Archive of the Now simply seems intent on becoming an online and print repository of recordings, printed texts and manuscripts, focusing on innovative contemporary poetry being written or performed in Britain.

What a breath of fresh air! And what resources already in place. The Archive already has in place some materials on the following 44 poets:

For someone who has been complaining, as have I, that I have some difficulty hearing the work of many British authors, this site is a patent & blunt challenge to me to put up or shut up. If I want (need) to listen, it’s right here. In fact, I shall. Roy Fisher’s poems here have already sent me out to find the one lone bookshop in Chester County that had a copy of his collected poems, The Long and the Short of It, but I’ve done so & thus I’m diving in.

Is the site perfect? Hardly, but this appears to be mostly because it’s just getting under way. It has, as of this week, 44 poets in contrast with the Archive of the Then’s 133 & PENNsound’s 196.. So the obvious immediate need at Archive of the Now is for more authors. Some of the obvious enough omissions at present include Thomas A. Clark, Lee Harwood, Drew Milne, Tom Pickard, J.H. Prynne, Tom Raworth – Raworth, in fact, can be found on Motion’s site, which is selling a CD of him reading.

Like the Electronic Poetry Center, the British Electronic Poetry Center, Ubuweb, the Academy of American Poets, Modern American Poetry, PENNsound, & even Motion’s slickness, Archive of the Now is part of the new encyclopedic impulse on the web itself, poetry-specific offshoots of the same impulses that lie behind Wikipedia and Google. Further, zines & reading series themselves are beginning to understand the value of same, for example Jacket, How2 & MiPoesias. We stand at the cusp of a period in which an enormous number of resources for the enjoyment & study of poetry over the past century, especially the last half century, are about to explode exponentially. Indeed, we are rapidly approaching the moment when some smart person is going to start pulling together an index of such resources, thus noting, for example, sites concerning Allen Ginsberg (often with sound files) on

Not to mention Ginsberg’s own home site. Just multiply that level of detail for each of the 10,000-plus English language poets now publishing – not to mention those who, like Ginsberg, have come & gone before – and you begin to get a sense of simply the scale of what is out there already. And what should be out there (and will be, soon enough).

Thus, to Andrea Brady, who appears to have done the bulk of the work in getting Archive of the Now up & running, we can only say welcome & huzzah. May the project live long & prosper.

Archive of the Here: Listening to Liverpool

On 15th August 2013, I went up to Liverpool to record five poets based in or originating from the north-west for the Archive of the Now. The Other Room: Experimental Poetry in Manchester reading series has an extensive audio-visual archive on its homepage, bearing witness to the prolific and creative trans-generational poetry scenes centred on Manchester and Liverpool. We recorded in the University of Liverpool School of Music‘s production studios – a first for all of us except for first reader, Fiona Curran, an experienced sound designer.

What struck me, from the other side of the glass, was the weirdness of listening as a live audience in the now of the recording studio, and simultaneously as time traveller from the future audience – you – to which the recordings were aimed. Adding to the sense of science-fictonal doubledness were the sonographic indicators projected on the wall in the image below: I could only see them on the sound engineer’s screen (for a hand-drawn illustration of early visualisation for vocal dynamics, see Norman McLaren’s amazing animation Pen Point Percussion). Even when readers employed vocal dynamics, the black Rorschach that indicated sound volume and pitch wavered close to the centre of the spectrum.

You can listen to the recordings in the order that they were made to get a sense of the flow of words through the day:

Fiona Curran

Richard Barrett

Sandeep Parmar

Sarah Crewe

Tom Jenks

Below, you can also read my chronological account from outside the booth, and two accounts from inside the booth (and outside the studio) by Sarah Crewe and Richard Barrett. What they both note is the significance of the location of the booth in the north-west, its relation, despite the thick sound-proofed walls and pass-card locked doors, to the city around it. I found myself very conscious of locational and psychogeographical references when listening to the readings.

For example, to the ambiguity of the riverine and financial Banks that coalesce in Fiona Curran’s poem, or to the dizzying sense of words being sent from a known place into an unknown future in the ‘Postcards Series‘, where the materialities of St. Ives, Arran and Rome were layered by the presentness of Fiona’s voice in Liverpool right now (then), with the black box of the studio as the white rectangle of the postcard. Three Stories about My Mother had a different kind of address and containedness of form. “It has to be read as a oneness,” Fiona said on re-reading the second story, “The Coat,” which zeroes in on a specific incident in time and space, but works its ramifications through three generations. That oneness is a keynote of Fiona’s work: its intensity, its sense of spatial as well as sonic volume.

Are You Here?

Richard Barrett’s work had a hereness – “the heart as A-Z page torn” in Fragment – but also a nowness, whether in references to Megan Fox or the contemporary post-crisis ConDemNation city in The Rushes: a psychoeconomy of queues, debts, headlines, rather than a psychogeography. “That clock is fast, isn’t it,” notes Hard Shoulder 8 – but not as fast as Richard, whose sonograph bunched and crowded and piled with the incredible density of postmodernity and its thought/language processes. “the sponsored event / against the blog post” proposes Rushes 15, measuring linguistic change. There’s a mercurial energy in this reading that both keeps time with, and calls time on, the ever-faster clock of “progress.”

In contrast to Fiona’s shifting accent and Richard’s Mancunian intonantion, Sandeep Parmar’s North American torque connected Liverpool to its Atlantic and imperial history. Vivienne with Household Goods awakens this connection, speaking of “an unctuous industrialist” in relation to a “slave girl, cinder girl / girl of a different color,” and Dido, the African queen. Like Fiona choosing her Postcard Series, Sandeep chose to read three from her series after Ovid’s Heroides, the male poet’s letters from abandoned women to their perfidious lovers, written while he himself was in exile on the Black Sea: Tartarus, Imbracia, and Ephyre. Like Archive for a Daughter, these poems are about the lonely necessity of relational location, insisting on the interconnection of there and here, even where that connection is one of conquest, colonialism, and/or exile.

Sarah Crewe, as she notes below, is the home poet: psychogeographer of a city where “Wendy James stalks witchhunt graffiti.” Redoubling the doubling of performance – or perhaps creatively managing that sense of doubling – Sarah read eight poems in her flick persona. flick’s sense of embedded embodiment in Liverpool – wavertree, the necropolis and newsham park – peeled back the black walls so the city rushed in like flick’s horses. The city transforms into discourse: “horses speak in snapshot” and Ulrike Meinhof debates “action vs. discourse / spit vs. swallow” (Nightshade). Red politics thread through Sarah’s selections, whether in the name of a female Jesus – Irina – or Clara Zetkin, who “write[s] in the language of sisterhood / adhesive … cleavage as class division,” or  the defiant final series about Meinhof. This defiance spikes high on the sonograph.

Tall Tom Jenks requires Michael, the sound technician, to adjust the mike for the first time that day, but is softly and slowly spoken. “My ink’s favourite emotion is melancholy,” he anatomises in Anatomy of Melancholy, 5. His chosen readings all build by repetition: melancholy figures as a mode of critical apprehension, of rewriting (not only Burton’s book, but his own work), of reviewing one’s ideas, that again adds to that sense of double-listening. It is melancholy to imagine that the day of readings is nearly over, and also – somehow – to imagine them as recorded for the future, as if they are disappearing into themselves in the moment of recording, as if I have been displaced by the microphone and the computer. At one point in Items, he says “null” as if  he too has become a computer, one that’s just made a system error. “Don’t write anything that could hurt your future career,” he warns, then cheers us up with 99 Names for Small Dogs, a melancomic tour-de-force of a peculiar Englishness.

Flicksville, by Sarah Crewe

Sarah Crewe: “I want to say how important it was to my own praxis to record in Liverpool, given that the bulk of my psychogeographic work is based on home turf. I felt able to record in my own voice and not have to worry about how it would translate, because I was speaking with that sense of place. I also wanted the recording to have the energy of the new (especially with it being Archive of the Now!) so for that reason, the bulk of my choices workwise were recent poems.

I was surprised by how much energy went into recording, and i really enjoyed that aspect of it. I felt able to deliver the poems just as though I was giving a reading. It made me realise that my performance is a far more physical entity than I thought. What struck me was the richness and diversity of poets present, in both content and sound. Several textures and layers occurring that i can’t wait to listen to myself on the website.”

*

Richard Barrett: “Poem choice for me was about wanting to try and show some of the range of what I do: an excerpt from a long sequence which deals with, at least in part, the 2008 economic crisis; a poem addressing Megan Fox; a couple of love poems; and, finally, a long-ish poem which, besides all else that I hope it does, acts as a statement of where my poetics currently are. I also wanted to present the work chronologically – just to try and give a sense of my poetic development and the interconnectedness of what I do and am interested in.

On the day of recording I got the train over from Manchester – arriving early as I wanted to walk from Lime Street to the University and I wasn’t sure how long that would take as I wasn’t sure of the way. As it happened I ended up with a bit of time to kill so had a walk round the University’s grounds and sat for a while in a beautiful park just near the music department. When I arrived at the recording studio it took me quite a few minutes to orientate myself to studio etiquette; I mean, I initially wondered if any noise we made in the room where we were might be picked up on the recordings. I remember stepping outside to cough.

After my reading I was, as I always am after a reading of any length, drained. Plans were made for a visit to the pub later but after a lovely lunch in a nearby café my tiredness triumphed and I returned to Manchester. I was very proud to be asked to contribute to the Archive, and am very pleased with my recordings which have now been uploaded. It also feels important to me that the current thriving north-west scene has been recognised and acknowledged in the recordings that took place that day.”