One of my many problems as a would-be culturateur is biting off more than I can chew. Today, for instance, I needed something for this entry. My laziness struck first, telling me to just use the graphic immediately below:

It’s from Mark Sutherand’s Sonotexts, a 2-DVD set he recently sent me–with a copy of Julian Cowley’s user’s guide to sound poetry from Wire.  As soon as I saw what Mark had sent me, I went into one of my yowie-fits, perceiving it, as I wrote Mark, as a sort of class in sound poetry, something I’d been wanting to come to terms with for years.  I had visions of taking a fifteen-minute class in the subject based on Mark’s package–something I’ve followed through on for four or five days now, except my requirement isn’t fifteen minutes daily of immersion, just a significant immersion that might last only a few minutes–like the amount of time it took me to read the text and above and study the graphics.

I had a second yowie-fit concerning my use of the above here, which I suddenly saw as the first step in a Great Adventure, Bob Grumman’s Quest to Assimilate Audio-Texual Art.  (Not “sound poetry” because I had already realized my subject would cover more than sound poetry.)   I would write a book here, one Major Thought per daily entry that would not just describe my attempt to learn about sound poetry and advance the World’s understanding of  the whole range of audio-textual art, but expose the World to my theory of aesthetics–down to its Knowlecular foundation.  All while working on three or four other not insignificant projects daily.  But I was not wholly unrealistic: my aim was “merely” a good rough draft, not a perfect final draft.

Well, maybe I’ll keep going for more than a few days.  Perhaps I’ll even write something of value.  For .  .  . ?   One of the reasons I probably won’t get far is my belief, strengthening daily–if not hourly–that there are not more than a dozen people in the world able to follow me at this time, nor will there ever be, so I’ll be wasting my time.   Yes, I do recognize that the reason for this may not be how advanced my thoughts are but how badly expressed and/or obtuse they are.   No matter, I myself will enjoy writing about my adventure, and having it to write about may be enough to keep me in it until I’ve actually accomplished my main aim, an understanding of audio-textual at that makes sense to me.

Ergo, here’s lesson one, which an enlargement of the text above from the booklet that comes with Mark’s set will facilitate:

Its words, of course, are Mark’s.

Student Assignment: two words or more concerning “Sound Poem for Emile Berliner”–prior to listening to it.   Not much to say except for taxonomical remarks unsurprising to anyone who knows me.  First off, since there can be nothing in the composition anyone will be able to recognize as verbal, as far as I can now see, I would term it “linguiconceptual music,” “linguiconceptual” being my term for asemic textual matter in an artwork that conceptuphorically (or provides a concept that metaphorically) adds appreciably to the work’s aesthetic effect.  I will say more about this after hearing the composition.  Right now I don’t see how its textual content can be evident without a listener’s simply being told that it is there.Unless the tracing is exhibited as the composition is being played, as it seems to me it ought to be, and maybe is!  The tracing IS a visual poem, albeit a simple one that serves the work as a whole as its caption.

No, it’s more than that–the textual music is metaphorically its voice, which makes it an integral part of the composition that is secondarily a caption for it.

So much for lesson 1.  (I think I passed.)

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