Vacancy

APPARENTLY , the entire recording doesn’t seem to come in the video. The full version is in the mail I sent Ms. Parrish (same with the environment sounds).

As I listened to “Thereness of a voice”, I struggled to understand what the poem was all about. For a moment I doubted my –whatever exists now- intelligence. Then I realized that it was not for them to explain to me the meaning of the poem, but for me to explain it to myself. It was my story to be written. Then I became aware of how loose ends in writings are important, they are in a way, a gift to the reader. They can feel liberated – as they have some control to paint the part of the canvas as they wanted, to enjoy this treat for their imagination. I gave my own meaning to the sound poem,  as I made a unique flaw for my hero and as I found a internal beauty for my heroine, I hope other readers find something of their own.

As I was reading the article about John Cage I learned a lot. I never would have thought that someone could be praised for doing nothing but listening to the piano’s silence. This relates to the idea that some people can say so much more by not saying it at all.  This got me thinking about the power of silence, how silence can mean so much. Sometimes the strongest words can lose meaning in front of silence. What is more beautiful than to be able to sit at ease with someone in silence without feeling an urge to speak? Or the silence of sleep, the peace it brings. The silence of early morning and late night. The silence of hands that feel and eyes that see. The silence of trust and understanding. The silence of hopes and dreams and igneous reality. For me, Silence is the security of knowing, silence has its own place in the hierarchy of sounds.

I explored the Kneeing Towers expert. Well the sound was very irregular to my ears, often being interrupted by an abrupt silence of a few seconds. Sometimes it was too high pitched and even dislikeable. The silence was frustrating for me, I am a person who needs flow, and who needs flare. But at the same time it was intriguing. It was refreshing to think about the artist who dared to anger the listener, who dared to challenge the listener and who even dared to make their ears hurt a little bit. Maybe he had his reasons, but I have mine to hold my place. While I was listening to this piece of music a thought occurred to me, I realized how …wearisome it is for a thought to be interrupted, how even writers need that flow in their writing to deliver their message across. Than another thought occurred to me: that we are so in tuned to the flowy and flary writing that we might not even notice the beauty of the thought that triggers our mind, we might just need to be annoyed to be appreciative.

Paul Scheerbart  is a present-day of Christian Morgenstern, Paul Scheerbart, born at Danzig in January 1863, he published in 1897 his book of success “Ich liebe dich! Ein eisenbahnroman” (I love you. Railway novel). He was famous for the “invention Of illogical images in a traditional linguistic structure”, for example the verse: “Les roses des roseaux dès longtemps dévorées”.Paul Scheerbart used the same stylistic technique in two subsequent novels: “Na Prost! Phantastischer Königsroman” (Well! Fantastic Royalnovel, Berlin, 1898) and “Immer mütig! ein phantaticher Nilpferderoinan” (Always courageous . A fantastic hippopotamic novel, Minden, 1902). He suggested that the technique was to create a sort of dramatic effect, taking into account that the books were in no way related – but style.

Created by the “mouth before the hand”, his poems start with the sound of a word and then proceed to identify the signal. The rhythm of the poems represent a “physiological emotion” inseparable from the idea. In his book “L’Arte dei Rumori” (“The art of noises”) (1913), Luigi Russolo, futurist, noted that “there exists in language a wealth of timbre that no orchestra possesses… nature has endowed the instrument of the human voice with unique timbre-sounds. … poets do not yet know how to derive from this inexhaustible source those expressive and emotive elements capable of giving their message a human resonance”.

Michael Peppe

Rock. Freedom.

  Girls, 3’56″, 1980, piano / vocal music

Pop. Girls.

  Ghost, 3’58″, 1980, piano / vocal music

Jazz. Suicide.

Of the 21 selections on his album (The Greatest Hits of Michael Peppe 1979-1982 ), 11 are music, 9 are language works, and only one is Behaviormusik on audiotape, which is the main body of the artist’s work. William Goldstein, the producer of the Album says,” The absence of Behaviormusik is hardly conspicuous, however,: the remaining cuts represent some of the best of Peppe’s musical and dramatic work it is possible to effectively capture on audiotape for the four years 1979-1982.”

Farfa (Vittorio Osvaldo Tommasini), the Italian national futurist, poetry record-man of the 1930’s. He, to my surprise, was crowned with an aluminum helmet in the cockpit of a small Caproni at a height of 1,000 meters in the sky. The Italian poet was referred to as a “cubic wardrobe of energy”. His poems had extraordinary mixture of “childish candor, massive ignorance, iridescent malice and volcanic fantasy, this “anomalous body” in the world of culture, virgin as crude and powerful as a force of nature. Apart from poetry, Farfa tried painting, sculpturing, graphics and collage, in works that he called “cartopitture”. Its fascination to me that Farfa was often by others referred to a truck. Exactly. Farfa, “cubic, full-chested, declaims like an internal combustion engine, his square face turned towards the ceiling-and his eyes closed by the force of short-sightedness”. After Farfa’s death, his friend Marinetti came up with a collection of two hundred and sixty-six poems by Farfa “Noi, miliardario della fantasia” (“We millionaires of fantasy”) (1933).

The poetry circuits are arousing the lively interest of the Italian literary world. Sport is entering triumphantly into poetry, enhancing its elasticity, its heroic leaps, its tireless dynamism. We have finally emerged from the mephitic atmosphere of libraries and museums, The muscular surge and the roar of engines impose new rhythmic laws and prepare us for the great aeropoetry. We can feel its vibrations in crowd which has assembled to listen, to discuss, to applaud, to scoff, but which is already learning by heart the spiralling Iyrical glorifications of Sant’Elia, architectures flying from the mouth of Farfa, poetry record-man of Milan, Tullio d’Albisola, poetry record-man of Turin, Krimer, poetry record-man of Rome, Fortunato Bellonzi, poetry record-man of Genoa, Emilio Sasso, poetry record-man of Florence, Burrasca, poetry record-man of Trieste, Bruno Sanzin, poetry record-man of Chiavari and Vianello, poetry record-man of Verona.

Farfa’s poetry is founded on “alliteration” and this is its “phonic dimension, rather than onomatopoeia which, unlike the other futurist authors, he disregards, just as he prefers free verse to free- word experiment”. His works were so inspirational that some were translated and put in the school textbooks of Japan. Farfa’s words, “often distorted, melt and dissolve into a single sonic mixture”.

After a tremendous applause at a gathering, the Futurist poet Farfa once said: “You will hear all manner of incredible things.”