http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/ en Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:25:38 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/images/insignia/misc/rss.jpg http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/ http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4317-my-father-beige-world.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:16:57 GMT recently i was given a copy of journals that my father (who died in 2001 or 2002) kept from the mid 1970s through the early 90s. i had heard about them but hadn't seen them before.

as i've been reading through them, my head has been getting tweaked in odd ways, setting up strange resonances that i am not quite sure what to do with.
i wrote this earlier today and it really didn't help any of that. if anything, it made the resonances worse.

in 3-d i talk pretty directly about what's on my mind. when i write, it seems like there's always more than one layer and that sometimes the layer that's causing more of the turmoils is submerged, chattering through the details of the surface story, bending it around.

by the way, bernie is my father. by the time he started writing the journals, he had come to dislike that nickname. he preferred the french pronunciation of bernard. i'm not sure why he became bernie in the following. this has something to do with the resonances, i think, speaks to them.


anyway...here goes:



...




1. Bernie wanders a beige world and as his journals progress I know him less and less. What began as an account of the sentimental education of a boy from Massachusetts turns out to be a narrowing, a turning of attention away from the grain of experiences to a series of detached narratives which alternate between transitional moments in airports & vast landscapes, waitresses bartenders & odes to the sea, hotel after hotel reviewed according to a mini-bar arrangements & echoes of imaginary military campaigns. A trip to Tahiti is a series of airport misadventures, variations in weather, lunches & a chauffeured drive around a circular road through a series of partially glimpsed landscapes. The conclusion is that Tahiti is small.

By the time Tahiti is determined to be small, the narratives have assumed a static form: the Spectator sits in a car or at a table & observes settings always basically the same. People are stock characters who emerge and disappear, trailing behind them one of two or three types of anecdotes. Each deviation is transient so each is held in place by being catalogued. The narratives are then lists of such deviations from the monotony of a world in which everything is interchangeable with everything else.

It is difficult to determine why this is the case, whether it follows from the structure of spectatorship itself, in which one watches one’s own life as if it were a film and waits for these moments of deviation to provide entertainment, or if it follows from an immersion in a particular conception of writing tied to a particular genre. Military histories and biographies operate at a similar type of remove from the granular. I know he enjoyed reading both & I know he entertained the idea that these journals would be published. Perhaps a commitment to this type of sentences, and by extension to this conception of what kind of writing constitutes the literary, explains the exclusion of the granular and concurrent collapse of an account of being-in-the-world to a mode of telling that derives from models rooted in ex-post-facto reconstructions based on documentation and projection.

Or maybe it’s something else. Across these repetitions I watch the effects of a dynamic I recognize from myself: the relation between being a nomad & the assumption “real” life is Elsewhere waiting for you like a park you can visit. So you travel to Elsewhere only to find that no matter the elsewhere what you are looking for is not there. In that way every place becomes equivalent because every place is defined by what it lacks.

After confirming that once again this is the case, Bernie orders a gin tonic and begins to peruse the lunch menu.





2. The experiences of abandonment & death converge on that of something having been taken from you.

You repeat them twice: once inside relations to others & again in the patterns that shape your view of what it is to be in the world.

For a Spectator, the first can become visible but the second never will. Because of the detachment that is the precondition of spectatorship, the second repetition is pushed into the order of a world which is everywhere the same except for fleeting deviations & the catalogues you make that marks your passage. ]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4317-my-father-beige-world.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4311-3-d-writing.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:02:57 GMT ... The line that is moving across this surface has been twisted such that you only see the top. ...







The line that is moving across this surface has been twisted such that you only see the top.

The microclimate here the movements of the air, the play of light, the dimensions through which they circulate: all are predictable so long as you hover in a relation that does not approach the granular. And you are just entering this environment. You do not yet know.

I write along the sides of this surface which are turned away from you, which from my viewpoint is the front and the back, using characters which resolve into another sequence when encountered from your viewpoint.

I feel within this procedure a certain freedom. What I want to say is here but you cannot see it. It is influencing what you read, but you cannot know how.

You can turn this surface, but you will not see the substructures. The substructures perform their characteristics across considerable durations. And every time you are here is now. You, reading, remake the twist that was made for you. When you are not here, it gradually comes undone. This is the dynamic that underlay the machinery.

You can turn this surface, but you will not see the substructures.
But you do not need to see them. They leak into your reading.






... ]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4311-3-d-writing.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4301-series-john-cage-sentences-excerpt.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:45:43 GMT an excerpt from: Composition in Retrospect by John Cage NONINTENTION (THE ACCEPTANCE OF SILENCE) LEADING TO NATURE; RENUNCIATION OF CONTROL; LET SOUNDS BE SOUNDS. EACH ACTIVITY IS CENTERED IN ITSELF, I.E., COMPOSITION, PERFORMANCE, AND LISTENING ARE DIFFERENT ACTIVITIES. (MUSIC IS)... an excerpt from:
Composition in Retrospect
by John Cage

NONINTENTION (THE ACCEPTANCE OF SILENCE) LEADING TO NATURE; RENUNCIATION OF CONTROL; LET SOUNDS BE SOUNDS.

EACH ACTIVITY IS CENTERED IN ITSELF, I.E., COMPOSITION, PERFORMANCE, AND LISTENING ARE DIFFERENT ACTIVITIES.

(MUSIC IS) INSTANTANEOUS AND UNPREDICTABLE; NOTHING IS ACCOMPLISHED BY WRITING, HEARING, OR PLAYING A PIECE OF MUSIC; OUR EARS ARE NOW IN EXCELLENT CONDITION.

A NEED FOR POETRY.

JOYCE: "COMEDY IS THE GREATEST OF ARTS BECAUSE THE JOY OF COMEDY IS FREEST FROM DESIRE AND LOATHING."

AFFIRMATION OF LIFE.

PURPOSEFUL PURPOSELESSNESS.

ART = IMITATION OF NATURE IN HER MANNER OF OPERATION.

COEXISTENCE OF DISSIMILARS; MULTIPLICITY; PLURALITY OF CENTERS; "SPLIT THE STICK, AND THERE IS JESUS."

ANONYMITY OR SELFLESSNESS OF WORK (I.E., NOT SELF-EXPRESSION).

A WORK SHOULD INCLUDE ITS ENVIRONMENT, IS ALWAYS EXPERIMENTAL (UNKNOWN IN ADVANCE).

FLUENT, PREGNANT, RELATED, OBSCURE (NATURE OF SOUND).

EMPTY MIND.

NO IDEAS OF ORDER.

NO BEGINNING, MIDDLE, OR END (PROCESS, NOT OBJECT).

UNIMPEDEDNESS AND INTERPENETRATION; NO CAUSE AND EFFECT.

INDETERMINACY.

OPPOSITES = PARTS OF ONENESS.

TO THICKEN THE PLOT (RAMAKRISHNA); HIS ANSWER TO THE QUESTION: WHY, IF GOD IS GOOD, IS THERE EVIL IN THE WORLD?

AVENTURE (NEWNESS) NECESSARY TO CREATIVE ACTION.

THE MIND IS DISCIPLINED (BODY TOO), THE HEART TURNS QUICKLY FROM FEAR TOWARDS LOVE (ECKHART).

ANYTHING CAN FOLLOW ANYTHING ELSE (PROVIDING NOTHING IS TAKEN AS THE BASIS).

INFLUENCE DERIVES FROM ONE S OWN WORK (NOT FROM OUTSIDE IT).

CHANCE OPERATIONS ARE A USEFUL MEANS; MOKSHA.

BEING LED BY A PERSON, NOT A BOOK; ARTHA.

LOVE.

RIGHT AND WRONG.

NON-MEASURED TIME.

PROCESS INSTEAD OF OBJECT.

AMERICA HAS A CLIMATE FOR EXPERIMENTATION.

WORLD IS ONE WORLD.

HISTORY IS THE STORY OF ORIGINAL ACTIONS.

MOVE FROM ZERO.

ALL AUDIBLE PHENOMENA = MATERIAL FOR MUSIC.

IMPOSSIBILITY OF ERRORLESS WORK.

SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTER (CREATION, PRESERVATION, DESTRUCTION, QUIESCENCE).

POSSIBILITY OF HELPING BY DOING NOTHING.

MUSIC IS NOT MUSIC UNTIL IT IS HEARD.

MUSIC AND DANCE TOGETHER (AND THEN OTHER TOGETHERS).

MEN ARE MEN; MOUNTAINS ARE MOUNTAINS BEFORE STUDYING ZEN. WHILE STUDYING ZEN, THINGS BECOME CONFUSED. AFTER STUDYING ZEN, MEN ARE MEN; MOUNTAINS ARE MOUNTAINS. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEFORE AND AFTER? NO DIFFERENCE. JUST THE FEET ARE A LITTLE OFF THE GROUND (SUZUKI).

IF STRUCTURE, RHYTHMIC STRUCTURE.

BOREDOM PLUS ATTENTION = BECOMING INTERESTED.

PRINCIPLE UNDERLYING ALL OF THE 50LUTIONS = QUESTION WE ASK.

ACTIVITY, NOT COMMUNICATION.

THE NINE PERMANENT EMOTIONS (THE HEROIC, THE MIRTHFUL, THE WONDROUS, THE EROTIC; TRANQUILLITY; SORROW, FEAR, ANGER, THE ODIOUS).

THE PRACTICALITY OF CHANGING SOCIETY DERIVES FROM THE POSSIBILITY OF CHANGING THE MIND.

THE GIVER OF GIFTS (RETURNING TO THE VILLAGE HAVING EXPERIENCED NO-MINDEDNESS).

STUDYING BEING INTERRUPTED.

NOTHING-IN-BETWEEN.

OBJECT IS FACT NOT SYMBOL (NO IDEAS).

POETRY IS HAVING NOTHING TO SAY AND SAYING IT; WE POSSESS NOTHING.

UNCERTAINTY OF FUTURE.

NOISES (UNDERDOG); CHANGING MUSIC AND SOCIETY.

NOT WORKING = KNOWING. WORKING = NOT KNOWING.

DISTRUST OF EFFECTIVENESS OF EDUCATION.

HCE

IT IS, IS CAUSE FOR JOY.

EARTH HAS NO ESCAPE FROM HEAVEN (ECKHART). ]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4301-series-john-cage-sentences-excerpt.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4289-ant-permutation.html Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:32:05 GMT Image: http://www.chemoton.org/63.JPG ]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4289-ant-permutation.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4278-triangle-end-earth.html Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:52:19 GMT Climbing along the side of a soft sand and stone cliff hundreds of feet above jagged rocks and water I push my body against a surface. The path I followed into a fold in space disappeared once I crossed the initial curvature. I am looking down for a foothold: between my legs configurations of... Climbing along the side of a soft sand and stone cliff hundreds of feet above jagged rocks and water I push my body against a surface. The path I followed into a fold in space disappeared once I crossed the initial curvature.

I am looking down for a foothold: between my legs configurations of water and stone a hundred feet below. I am afraid of heights. I do not understand what I am doing here amongst these waves of enervated nausea.

I look to one side then the other looking for a foothold. Behind I see one but there is no space to adjust my position. Return is excluded. Ahead I see a slight protrusion and am moving my foot across the gap toward it.

Above networks of thick-stemmed green plants emerge from cracks in the rock. The stems are hollow and strangely fragile: when my fingers break through they are covered in slime.

There is a crumbling beneath my weight, a separation of fragments, the performance of trajectories of bouncing and shattering down and down.

Ahead I see a slight protrusion. Shifting one foot across I grab for a cluster of thick green stem creeping green. It comes out of the rock like Larry Fine's hair. My fingers go through the stem, are covered in slime.

The problem of contrary motion: shock at the disappearance of a sense of balance which propels you backward is countered by an urge to push yourself forward against the surface. Hanging in between thinking stops.





I write this while sitting at the edge of a triangle of concrete that juts out into the void. A pentagram was been drawn onto its surface. Around there are traces of fires. At the center of the pentagram is a mound of feces. My destination. Beyond the azure and pink of the sky. Below a lighthouse drifts up and down connected to the land by a string.



I do not know how long I have been here. Night is coming: I need to go back. I have no idea how. ]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4278-triangle-end-earth.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4273-neural-adventure.html Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:48:06 GMT Day 1. One missed greatly the fat rolling globular clouds. For want of better remedy we sucked pebbles which stimulated salivation and allayed the thirst to a certain extent but with the high fever which brought about fearful exhaustion and severe aches and the unpleasant, abundant electricity in... Day 1. One missed greatly the fat rolling globular clouds. For want of better remedy we sucked pebbles which stimulated salivation and allayed the thirst to a certain extent but with the high fever which brought about fearful exhaustion and severe aches and the unpleasant, abundant electricity in the air caused by the intense dryness which has a most peculiar effect on one's skin and there was an extraordinary family resemblance in nearly all the heads one saw.


Day 2. One missed greatly the fat rolling globular clouds. The electricity with which the air of the desert is absolutely saturated is gradually absorbed by the human body and stored as in an accumulator. On touching the barrel of a rifle or any other good conductor of electricity one would discharge an electric spark of some length. By rubbing one's woolen blankets with one's hands one could always generate sufficient electricity to produce a spark; and as for the cats if one touched them they always gave out a good many sparks. At night if one caressed them there was quite a luminous greenish glow under one's fingers as they came into contact with the hair. There was an extraordinary family resemblance in nearly all the heads one saw.


Day 3. One missed greatly the fat rolling globular clouds. There was so much electricity in the air that it gave quite an unpleasant feeling, and had a curious effect upon one's skin. The cats on coming in contact with the woolen blankets discharged sparks all over and sparks also snapped from one's fingers on touching anything that was a good conductor of electricity. There was an extraordinary family resemblance in nearly all the heads one saw.


Day 4. One missed greatly the fat rolling globular clouds. Having gone some twelve miles more we stopped at four in the afternoon in a bitterly penetrating cold wind which seemed to have a most uncomfortable effect upon one's nervous system. Whether it was that the intense dryness caused an excess of electricity or what, I do not know, but one ached all over in a frightful manner and experienced the same tendon-contracting feeling as when exposed to an electric current. There was an extraordinary family resemblance in nearly all the heads one saw.


Day 5. One missed greatly the fat rolling globular clouds. We left again in the middle of the night at 3 a.m. and a great effort it was to get out of one's warm blankets and scramble on the camel aching as I was all over and with the indescribable exhaustion that fever of the desert brings on. Luckily, with the rising of the moon the wind had somewhat abated but the electricity in the air was as unpleasant as it was extraordinary. One was absolutely saturated with it and discharged sparks from one's finger-tips when one touched anything that was a good conductor. There was an extraordinary family resemblance in nearly all the heads one saw. ]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4273-neural-adventure.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4266-neural-landscape-2.html Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:11:54 GMT With my red partridge heart descending I am shot through with ship-to-shore voices of lonely men at sea who say here I am here I am into the twist and howl of static every transmission less a location than a desire to be looked for, each voice tipped and reconfigured by other elements from the... With my red partridge heart descending I am shot through with ship-to-shore voices of lonely men at sea who say here I am here I am into the twist and howl of static every transmission less a location than a desire to be looked for, each voice tipped and reconfigured by other elements from the expanding fields of electronic debris that radiate outward from the earth, rings of advertisements sitcoms and news updates trailing involvements interiors and times that vibrate through machineries of gravity fields and asteroids





and I descending with my red partridge heart. ]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4266-neural-landscape-2.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4259-bright-sunlight-battle-scene.html Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:28:49 GMT Image: http://www.copper.org/resources/properties/microstructure/images/D3_035h.JPG ]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4259-bright-sunlight-battle-scene.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4252-new-maybe-series.html Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:25:01 GMT

Across a neural landscape a field strewn with rocks and intersections of frequencies in a white jumpsuit I am walking sent into the ionospheric mirror-space & bounced back to the site of the transmitter breaking into black hairs that define constellations of gaps.

In the flourescent blue morning my hands glow. ]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4252-new-maybe-series.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4245-green.html Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:42:51 GMT Image: http://biochemistry.hs.columbia.edu/research/images/mn_4.jpg ]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4245-green.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4243-mnemosyne-sequence.html Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:27:01 GMT Image: http://cgc.rncan.gc.ca/mindep/photolib/vms/windycraggy/images/fig78.jpg Image: http://www.e-goldprospecting.com/assets/images/a_micro202.jpg Image: http://cgc.rncan.gc.ca/mindep/photolib/vms/windycraggy/images/fig82.jpg





]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4243-mnemosyne-sequence.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4242-3-landscapes-mnemnosyne.html Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:06:22 GMT Image: http://www.clui.org/clui_4_1/ondisplay/birdfoot/birdfoot_map_17_lores.jpg Image: http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=joap.049.0250.jpg Image: http://journalofvision.org/9/5/25/images/fig08.gif




]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4242-3-landscapes-mnemnosyne.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4223-2-surfaces-mnemosyne.html Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:13:18 GMT Image: http://cgc.rncan.gc.ca/mindep/photolib/vms/windycraggy/images/fig81.jpg Image: http://cgc.rncan.gc.ca/mindep/photolib/vms/windycraggy/images/fig71.jpg


]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4223-2-surfaces-mnemosyne.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4216-waveform.html Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:00:24 GMT Image: http://www.freeimageslive.com/galleries/backdrops/fractals/pics/waveform_fractal.jpg ]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4216-waveform.html http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4208-3-surfaces-mnemosyne.html Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:35:54 GMT Image: http://www.industrialheating.com/IH/2004/10/Files/Images/113662.jpg What enables me to communicate my longing to touch you is what stands in the way of it.






What enables me to communicate my longing to touch you is what stands in the way of it.





]]> roachboy http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/blogs/roachboy/4208-3-surfaces-mnemosyne.html