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6.28.08
Dear Stephen,
The wind is hiding somewhere inside of me. Sure, the wind can be cut open like a jumping bean, and that would be interesting,
but I'm with you. I'll go on knowing that the trees do not have voices, and imagine their voices. And they are unique, and
I can hear them, and the hearing of them gives me something I cannot find by cutting open the wind. They can get loud, all
of them speaking up together, sounding yes; like white noise.
Further, separating the experience of hearing the voices of the trees from your ears and locating the happening of the
sound at the tree is less fun than remembering that the location of the sound for you is in your ears and that the sound you
hear is at a distance from the action, and that the quieter sounds between you and those chatty trees are present, if less
noticeable. It is different to say I hear the sound of the trees, rather than I hear the sound of the trees from this apartment
in which I am sitting comfortably in one of its rooms with something hot to drink in a white mug within arms distance and
a book open but sitting on my lap and with one arm of my reading glasses almost in my mouth, and with my eyes closed, and
with the cat on the counter in the kitchen looking at me (but I don't know that listening to the sound of the room which includes
the sounds of the tree-chorus I can see out my front window. This, I'll offer, is a more contemplative a space?
Breton: Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life & death, the
real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low, ceased to be perceived as contradictions.
Other things that came to the party without a costume: the heat of the oven in my kitchen, the future, the tension in
the ground, the desire of the dust on the ground to be set free on an adventure [to fly, to fly far from here and see how
the other dust lives.]
Are the people being attacked, or is the ground being set free? Taking a chance to grab its ambition of occupying its
vast "other", the sky. I think it is interesting, for the time being, to put aside the destruction and aftermath
and focus instead on the fact of nature's unemotional taking of our stuff, and the agents of that taking: the dust and the
water.
To imagine emotion in a spec of dust as it lives eternal, dependent on the will of nature (which strikes a tragic note
I think) is to draw a parallel to this line from W&P at the end: "Like we need to renounce our feeling of being still
on the earth to realize the truth of the earth's rotation, we need to renounce our feeling of absolute individual freedom
to realize the truth of our dependence."
(Also, it may be that the sea and dust storms are comfortable for us to appropriate and exploit because they usually only
destroy Stuff usually, and as far as natural disasters go, are relatively harmless to human life in the way we are looking
at them; dust storms and shore erosion.)
I think it's the dust that's happy to serve the wind as its party suit, and the wind is present at the party because it
cannot be otherwise.
Weird letter. Sorry about that. Have I already sent that Tolstoy quote?
Cheers.
Tyler
6/11/08
Dear Tyler,
The wind is present and on my mind today. The trees outside my apartment window have been dancing and singing thanks
to the wind, when it blows gently the trees sing sweetly, and when it picks up its pace the sound approaches white noise.
If one listens closely, each tree has it's own voice - I've decided to think of it this way.. I'm okay with the idea that
it may be silly to give voices to trees- and carries out a one sided conversation that requires an attentive listener to make
it so.
When I look at the pictures that you've sent, it seems to me that the wind is hiding somewhere inside of them. It seems
to me that the dust gave the wind a face, and these photographs represent the winds American face from 1930 to 1935. It is
not to be confused with another mask it has been known to wear- the one made of sand- this face was different and new to the
people of the great plains. While standing in front of the first giant cloud rolling across the great plains, towns called
the national weather service for help with defining what exactly was moving towards them. I guess from a distance it is hard
to tell that it was dust, but one would have had to have known that there was wind involved. Without the dust the wind would
have just been its invisible self at a party without a costume.
I look at the pictures that you have sent and I think of a drastic transformation of a landscape. Once a great open plain
with nothing to look at but the ground and the sky. When the storms began the earth took over the sky, and the open plain
took flight and collapsed around it's inhabitants. Before the storms one could have stood with eyes set on the horizon, now
one couldn't even see the friend standing a few feet away. I'm struck by the two landscapes - one of ground and sky, the
other some sort of collapsing subterranean burrow- existing in the same place a few minutes apart from each other.
Talk soon,
Stephen
6/2/08
Dear Stephen,
Tyler
5/4/08
Dear Stephen,
I write today with little more than a couple thoughts.
1. Is there something for us in being ruined?
2. Is there something for us in the tractor plow?
I do think there may be something for us in the plow. Could be the difference between the dust from Kansas making it to
New York or not on May 11, 1934 - and we both know the dust wanted to go. The dust of someone's field, or foundation, or mud-brick;
the particles of someone's parish church comparing their new situation to what the remember from before.
I like looking at the pictures of the dust clouds and trying to see what I can trick myself into seeing.
Tyler
4/16/08
Tyler,
Nature Moving Into Designed Space
When I look at at the sea I do not see arches to lay beneath, I do not see such places. Standing on the cliffs of Hallsands
we looked down on the ruins of a town. A place where people built there homes in an effort to stop time, but the sea moved
off the edge of its stage and into the land of its audience, where it wandered their rooms washing over the objects and memories
associated with them. Does the sea need a home? Is it wandering, homeless, swelling in hopes of finding a new corner to
inhabit, or does it just want to create new space in which it can move into?
Ruins:
Quoting Georg Simmel's " The Ruin" at length here.
" ...The ruin of a building, however, means that where the work of art is dying, other forces and forms, those of
nature, have grown; and that out of what art still lives in the ruin and what of nature already lives in it, there has emerged
a new whole, a characteristic unity. To be sure, from the standpoint of that purpose which the spirit has embodied in palace
and church, castle and hall, aqueduct and memorial column the form in which they appear when decayed is a meaningless incident.
Yet a new meaning seizes on this incident, comprehending it and its spiritual form in a unity which is no longer grounded
in human purposiveness but in that depth where human purposiveness and the working of non-concious natural forces grow from
their common root."
".... it is the fascination of the ruin that here the work of man appears to us entirely as a product of nature.
The same forces which give a mountain its shape through weathering, erosion, faulting, and the growth of vegetation, here
do their work on old walls. Even the charm of alpine forms- which are after all, for the most part, clumsy, accidental, artistically
insipid- rests on the felt counterplay of two cosmic tendencies: volcanic eruptions or gradual stratification have built
the mountain upward; rain and snow, weathering and landslides, chemical dissolution, and the effect of gradually intruding
vegetation have sawed apart and hollowed out the upper ledge, have cast downward parts of what had been raised up, thus giving
the contour its form. In this form, we feel the vitality of those opposing tendencies, and- instinctively sensing these antitheses
in ourselves- we notice, beyond everything merely formal and aesthetic, the significance of the configuration in whose serene
unity they have their synthesis."
Moving out to sea:
" All Joshua and I wanted was to be left alone with ourselves. Any other thing did not exist, had never existed.
You do not ask a tamed seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that's all, and
it is as simple as a ray of sunshine, as normal as the blue of the sky." (Moitessier)
"Were the world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could forever reach new distances and discover sights
more sweet and strange than any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise in the voyage. But in pursuit
of those far mysteries we dream of, or in tormented chase of that demon phantom that , some time or other, swims before all
human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed."
(Melville)
Step
4/7/08
Stephen,
I just watched Abbie Hoffman make Gefilte fish.
My cheeks are still puffy from wisdom teeth removal. From the removal of my wisdom teeth. I've had lots of ice cream,
and very little else.
I watched Deep Water, and a quote from Moitessier that was well used went something like this: "I would look at the
pictures of my children and my eyes would get blurry... and so I knew I loved them still." It's like science, but way
better. (Deep Water is at my apartment in the change dish by the bathroom if you want to pick it up.)
The elevator in the hotel I'm staying at here had a plaque that told me it was an elevator that was used in 1993's film,
True Lies. An Arnold vehicle. Stacie and I stayed here last summer and were woken from an afternoon nap by gunfire. We looked
out the window and saw a bank surrounded by a SWAT team and many police officers, the glass of the bank bullet-ridden. They
were all shooting. Then we saw the cameras. In the morning, the glass was fixed and there were no bullet shells.
Nature is after us. It's intruding, reminding us of it, of its power, while we try to develop our way away from it and
into designed space. Looking at old churches, being in some old churches in the UK, I'm usually struck by the rustic fit of
the building to the body. Comfort seems somewhat secondary to the fact of the building, that there could be a building. And
today, we build with a growing contradiction between permanence and an ignored but certain temporary perfect-fit.
Looking at the sea allows a gloss to come to my eyes. Looking at the sea lets me look in me in ways I cannot when I look
at the bookshelf, or the kitchen table.
LA loves you. It told me so.
Tyler
4/1/08
Tyler,
Starting again here in Chicago. Wanted to put together a small list of a few things that might, over the next few weeks,
give us points to enter into or depart from where we are at at this point.
Some things I would like to think about, watch, do:
The way the sea shapes things in its own image. A worn rock that is tossed up on the shore by the sea is in some way
it's reflection.
Solaris: I would like to go back and watch this Tarkovsky film. The presence of the ocean covered planet, it's affect
on the crew, and the dealings with the crews inner life all make me think in some round about way about the line in our text
thus far where we speak of looking at the horizon not to see something, or perhaps something it saw, but something inside
us.
Looking at the sea from land
Looking at the sea while in the sea.
Looking at the sea while returning to land.
Stephen
12/6/07
Dear Stephen,
I write today with thoughts on our activities of today: a visit to two cathedrals, and a visit to Blackpool.
There were radiators at each church. We found the little seats Matthew had told us about difficult to find. Being the
noon hour ceremonies were in progress during each visit. At the first we saw the start of the mass, and it started suddenly,
with a sudden rush of attendees arriving just in time. During the visit to The Priory we were there for the middle, the Vicor
well into the ceremony.
But at the second, it was being held in a little ancillary area off the main space of worship. I could only see the Vicor
and could see none of those gathered for worship. I could only hear the voices, and I counted 4. Those gathered delivered
their bits in a way I'm not quite used to hearing people talk: relying on the presence of the other voices of the gathering,
a very stripped down intonation lending a relatively serious tone, the words awkward and memorized, the call and response
a little performance of thousands of years, the history in the walls resonating with the vibrations of the Vicor's baritone.
There was a bowl of water near the door of The Priory. I expected it to be holy water, but it was not. There was a laminated
sign printed from a computer that said something like:
[paraphrased from memory]
Look at the water in this bowl.
Water is interesting isn't it?
It holds the shape of it's container.
Scoop some up in your hand. Watch it.
What can you see in the water when you look hard?
Close your eyes and feel the water in your hand.
Imagine what it is you would like to have the water wash out of you.
Release the water, let it fall back into the bowl and watch the drops hit the surface of the water in the bowl.
What can you see?
What is left?
On to Blackpool. Parking the car in a lot by Mr. Balls' Shoo Shop we proceeded straight to the prom and the south pier.
It was daylight still, and the illuminations had not yet lit. We walked along the prom in the day-dark of overcast England.
There were signs, there were lights, there were trolley tracks. The beach here is deep. They had trucked in sand they were
moving about with heavy machinery. No one was really around. We walked north from the south pier along the prom until we reached
the tower, and then we walked around the building at the base of the tower to see if we could go to the top. We couldn't,
it was closed, but the signs promised us the Tower Lounge was a rockus good time out, the advertising noting how perfect the
environ is for Hens, Stags, and Bunny Girls. Another lounge advertised a "naughty glass dance floor", yet another
advertised, "Party Animals Needed to drink large amounts of alcohol whilst dancing very badly, only serious partiers
need inquire."
We forged on along the rows of shops to the Winter Garden, also closed. Someone made a joke about the organ. The first
Wurlitzer installed in England. Venturing back out to the prom, and through the arcade in an attempt at walking out the pier,
we were stopped by a locked gate in a little glass enclosed room between the arcade and pier proper. Remember the sparrows?
The sound of birds was almost deafening. The sounds of the birds were almost deafening, and they came from all sides.
The birds were sort of swarming the room, like the Hitchcock film, only not attacking, just swarming. It looked like playing,
and the birds further off looked like a massive hyper-active blob, always changing. Like a ballet of a dust storm: particles
behaving erratically, violently changing course, movements seemingly at random. But if you took it in as a whole, instead
of focusing on one bit, it was a graceful and amore-fus arial dance of community - and it looked like fun.
Leaving, after Alice stroked the raindeer, it started to rain. We couldn't find the motorway. We took a small two lane
road all the way back to Lancaster, the A6. We followed all the right signs, but the M6 proved allusive. You tried to nap,
despite Alice's driving, and I operated the windshield de-fogging controls. I watched the rainwater on the car, on the windshield,
and thought about the state of Blackpool while chatting with Alice. I watched the raindrops hit the windshield and be wiped
off by the wipers and thought about the bowl of water in The Priory.
Tyler
12/5/07
Tyler,
We went for separate walks today. I believe we walked off in opposite directions, at least that's how I imagined it.
I walked towards Hoad Hill where the Sir John Barrow monument towers over Ulverston, I thought that this would be a good
place to look into the distance from, seeing it was the highest point I could see. I wasn't really interested in the monument,
more in being on top of a hill. With my back to the bay, and the town of Ulverston I started my way up the hill. It's a
funny thing walking up a hill, especially a steep one, the frame of vision is so focused on the ground immediately in front
and under the feet, that one forgets the height they are slowly achieving. It took some time for me to look to my back, and
when I did I was shocked by how far off and below me everythingwas , I wasn't anticipating such a rapid shift shift in scale.
One moment concentrating on the task, and the detail of the ground under my feet and then the next looking out over the expanding
bay and the tiny houses. I looked out across the bay, hoping that I might catch sight of Morecambe, and the ferris wheel,
but I didn't see either and I figured that the ferris wheel was probably gone anyway. I came to thinking about how during
the summer when I was standing in front of it, looking out towards the bay it framed a portion of the sky, and how now that
framing was gone, I chose this as an absence to focus on and wrote:
The ferris wheel came in the summer time and went away during the autumn. Sometimes during the winter when it was gone
I would stand on the hillside and look out over the bay for a trace of where it used to be. At times I thought I could see
the giant circle in the sky, slowly rotating round with clouds moving through it. I thought about how it would be back next
year in a different location, marking off another piece of sky.
I continued up the hill with the ferris wheel in my head. When I reached the top I was struck by a sudden gust of wind,
and had to lean into it's force. The wind cupped my ears, I couldn't hear anything other than a static like noise rushing
in and out of my ear channels, I felt totally enveloped in invisibility. The sun came out for a few minutes, it's soft light
moving through the clouds and touching the rolling hillside pastures in front of me. There was a slowness to everything here,
everything I was looking out over in the pasture, it seemed to me like it was a place of remembering, where as when I looked
down into the town the pace quickened, it seemed like there was some sort of crazed collective movement towards forgetting.
I made my way down through the hills, along the dirt road, past the people walking there dogs, past the park benches,
past the stone walls, past the sheep with their hinds dyed red and blue, and back into the town where my steps became faster
as I looked up at the clock tower and realized that I was running late and that my walk had gone on a bit too long.
Stephen
12/4/07
Dear Stephen,
Today, we listened to a 10 second loop of the ocean until you said it was driving you nuts. Today, we poored paper water
out of our cupped hands and onto the ground while pressed against the wall. Today, we decided to cut the surf with our feet,
and the surf is paper, and I'm full of dirt, and you're on my shoulder. Maybe I have the record player, that's to be decided.
One thing is for sure, one thing we cannot dispute: the record store did not open.
Tonight, it's raining. I've taken a number of photos of tonight's rain on the Lanternhouse. We had a Laurel and Hardy
day, the museum, the Stan Laurel pub, and their film in the little theater.
But, tonight: it's raining. It's raining tonight. I have a bed not yet slept in, a scotch spilt next to it, and soon my
head will be on the pillow, and the scotch won't be remembered by anyone but this letter and tomorrows headache.
I think we should tread ground. We should walk and cut a swath. Of paper. Of paper, we should cut a swath with our feet.
And in so doing, again and again, we should represent the earth and carrying and repetition and obligation.
This is my bed:
And this is the rain:
And this is a photo of a page of Anne Carson's book: Decreation.
It's about sighing, and suggests that if you do not sigh, you do not really know. That if you don't sigh you aren't attaching
yourself to IT. Or at least that's how chose to read it.
I started reading an Errol Morris article, or series of blogs, called "What came first, the chicken or the egg"
while laying on the couch today. I turned to it after Sebald's On The History Of Natural Destruction wasn't was I wanted after
a solid 20 minute nap this afternoon. Thusfar it concerns a couple of Roger Fenton photos, and while those photos are of the
same stuff - with the difference being whether there are Russian canon balls from the Crimean war ON or OFF the road- the
article attacks a Sontag statement and pursues the statement's annotated origin. The general assumption seems to be that the
first photo is the one with canon balls everywhere but on the road, and that Fenton placed some canon balls on the road for
the second photo. How else could they get there? And then this is the lesson: assumptions, especially assumed distrust of
the thing beget pessimistic views of the thing. There are other experts, who pulling together information from a few sources,
dispute that the order was first ON then OFF but in fact say that as the war was ongoing there were British soldiers collecting
and re-using the canon shot at them by the Russians, and there are newpaper accounts of sway backed horses carrying collected
canon shot. So, then a more trusting assumption could be that the canon balls were there in the first photo, and then collected
by soldiers who were commandeering the easiest balls - those on the road - before the second.
Is what is assumed always the way? No! So we should remember that. We should remember that the way things are best represented
onstage are not as flatly themselves remade for the stage, but instead as something for the audience to encounter as if it
were isolated for them in the world, or something like that.
tyler
12/3/07
tyler
I feel like this letter might just be me pointing at stuff, but here it goes.
On November 7th 2007 a 72 year old bird watcher was out on an outlet pipe looking out at a mud-lark. Apparently he was focusing
to much on the bird and fell off the pipe lading in a pool of mud, much like quicksand, in which he became stuck and had to
be rescued from. A picture of the incident is located above on the left.
On the right is the bird that he was looking at. The magpie lark or "mud lark" is a medium sized
australian bird. I guess they are found in England because this man was looking at one in Liverpool. That would make it
a visitor. The magpie lark is an extremely adaptable bird, who's only requirement is that there be some sort of soft ground
to find food in, like mud which unlike humans, it has developed legs and feet to walk on. I think the most interesting thing
that I've found about the bird is that it is oneof only 200-odd species that sing in duet with it's partner. Each partner
sings about one note per second, but a half second apart, so to human ears it sounds like one bird. The partners sing in duet
to guard there territory, and it is said that duet singing usually creates a greater or more vigorous response from neighboring
Magpie larks.
I wonder what it was like for the man, to be immersed in his close up from afar vision of the bird, a vision of lightness
and flight, and the suddenly to find him self immersed in a world of mud up to his waist, a world where movement is restricted,
in fact where movement just gets you more stuck or more grounded. Two extremes in a matter of seconds. I like this image of
a bird watcher dreaming of flight while he is stuck in a pool of mud.
A few brief things:
After reading the part of your letter where you talk about the moment just before the dust storm, I couldn't help but
start to think about the ruins at Pompeii, where during the excavation they found formations of bodies responding to the eruption
of Mt. Vesuvius.
I've also been thinking about the Duchamp Man Ray collaboration titled "Dust Breeding" where
Duchamp let dust collect and settle undisturbed on his studio floor, and later Man Ray took photographs of it.
Here's the photo:
Here's something that I found written about the photograph:
"Dust Breeding acts as a snapshot forever capturing the momentary accumulation of dust in the sieves on the glass."
Sheets appropriately terms the piece "a landscape of dust bunnies."
I have more to write but perhaps I'll sit on it, and wait until next time.
Stephen
12/2/07
Dear Stephen,
Thanks for the letter this morning. And for the drawing I saw later in the day. I think we both have heads full of dust
storm right now. I think we both are feeling stormy. I think we are both feeling stormy and dust storms and maybe a little
turned around. Or maybe just I am. I am wanting desperately to find my footing in this. I think this is how I often feel at
this point in the process, but it is still gripping.
I have mostly questions today, as I may have given away with the above. Mainly: what I'm seeing, what I want to make,
is a performance of all the churches and buildings that have been destroyed evoked in a dust cloud over 1930's Kansas. I want
to imagine the origins of the dust in the dust cloud to be the churches and houses whose stone has become sand again. And
it's a moment: the cloud is about here, we've all stopped our cars in a moment of escape only to realize that escape is impossible;
that our reality will be to feel buried, or be buried, by some undescribable cloud of earth that is moving quickly towards
us. But just now, before it's on us, it's a feeling of awe before doom. A feeling of knowing now, like never before, what
the earth (nature) is capable of, and knowing our place in it surely and resolutely and horribly and finally.
How can we make a performance of the moment all the buildings that have ever been destroyed, ever, attack a few people
in Kansas. How can we make a performance of destruction getting more destruction. How can we make a performance that points
to everything humans have left in the ground. A penny, or a coffee can with a note, or 1000 people born without power. Is
the earth remembering - or a mute system sucking in our pathos.
There was a pub here. People came here, drank, made merry. They met friends, discussed their futures, their past, and
made jokes about how their day had gone. They had many drinks, laughs, and misunderstandings... making up with sloppy hugs,
red faces, and not speaking of it again.
There was a church here. People came to the church throughout the week, especially on Sundays, and felt together. They
felt each other in the pews, or standing, or kneeling, and felt together. They felt together for coffee, in praise of the
sermon, song, or message. They felt together.
Your letter gave me the image of a ferris wheel being overcome. There is the Arena Fun Fair, and that's where the music
is coming from. It is night. The kids are playing at the edge of light. They're in white dresses, and tiny suits with bow
ties. More than a few may have a blue stain somewhere on the front of their clothes, from a frozen treat had earlier. It's
beautiful. And it will all be sand. And that sand will bury something.
Why did the monkey fall out of the tree. Because it was dead.
12/1/07
Tyler,
Something:
At the heart of this dust storm there is a memory. A good memory. It's there in the midst of everything, sunk in a dried
and cracked corn field. Perhaps it's a memory of water, maybe of the sea, or seaside. It's of the sand and the sea and where
to two come together, and the pier that wades out from the shore- line in the night, the moons light glistening on the water
making the sea look like a television screen with the 3AM dead air static that comes during our sleep. There is some sweet
music floating in the air, all the while, mollusks cling to the piers legs as it sways back and forth with the force of the
successive wave crashes. Or perhaps it's more like vapor when the water rises to meet the cloud of dirt soaking it, giving
it weight bringing it back down under our feet, out of the air and away from our lungs, washing it from our dirt crusted faces,
forming little craters in the dry earth. There is a memory of water, its liquid and changing, it's deep down under ground
buried, waiting to be excavated or re-imagined brought to the surface in some new form. I remember being there by the sea
looking for the water, where was the water? I came to the sea and had to imagine the water.
Here's something else:
The drawing is waiting to be scanned, so see the drawing that I'll pull out of my notebook sometime tomorrow.
And one more thing:
I think we should make a sort of blanket that could be rolled out to cover the floor of the playing area. The top of the
blanket can have lots of tiny holes in it, and the bottom would be solid.. or without holes, in the middle there would be
dirt, and when we fell on it our walked stomped etc... dirt would fly into the air. I imagine a sequence where the movement
becomes more forceful, with greater impact on the ground, a dig/excavation dance or something, and essentially we create a
dust storm with our movement. Now I'm thinking of Pig Pen from peanuts, but I don't think he really fits, I have to go get
him out of my head now, sometimes I wish I had a more serious brain.
See you,
Stephen
11/20/07
Dear Stephen,
It's raining tonight. The earth is getting wet. In Chicago. I've decided it's ok for me to write things I think are only
pretty sometimes.
This morning I met my car outside my house to go to work, and it had a flat tire. I, being a newish car owner, called
the "tire repair" emergency service... which wasn't emergency like or repair-ish.
I'll skip the rest, and say that I spent over two hours in my car, and was quite satisfied with the experience. I had
the book I'm reading, Tree of Smoke, and read for most of the time. I also had a print of the personal statement I had written
for grad school applications, a print of the version my folks had marked up during their breakfast this morning, scanned,
and then emailed to me. I was excited to read it, and reveled in being able to hear my parents conversation over it in the
difference of their handwriting... mostly because knowing people well enough to imagine their voice with some detail through
their handwriting is pretty sweet stuff.
Anyway, I enjoyed the time. Viewed it as a gift I did, and in so doing realized (as we have previously discussed) the
car is a nice place to sit for awhile. I had my book, the radio was at my finger tips, my morning coffee in the cup holder,
a really big tree was just outside my door's window, and a steady stream of passersby passed by. I read for an hour or so,
and then guiltlessly stared out the window for another hour. It was lovely. I didn't get tired. Anything I wanted was at my
fingertips. Ok, not really... but as close as one gets at any one time. Maybe cars will get so small that someday grocery
stores and bars will be riffing on drive-ins. It was a thought that amused me, but like fiction is amusing.
Let's go to Lancaster, let's go to Lancaster and perform a show we know is good. Let's hope Simon and Steph are as good
and on it as they seem.
Cheers. You think the Water Witch will let us make a star hat there? I'd order a cheese plate.
T yler
11/11/07
Dear Tyler,
enclosed is a picture.
Stephen
| The Spirit of Manifest Destiny, John Gast |
|
8/10/07
Dear Stephen,
I'm enclosing a picture, upside down on purpose.
Salute,
Tyler
8/8/07
Stephen,
I found this Ted Kooser poem today:
January 17
Dark and Still at 5:30a
some mornings, very early, I put on
my dead father's brown corduroy robe,
more than twenty years old, its lining torn,
the sleeves a little too long for me,
and walk through the house
with my father, groping our way
through the chilly, darkened rooms,
not wanting to waken our wives with a light,
and feeling on our outstretched fingers,
despite the familiar order of each room,
despite the warmth of women sleeping near,
the breath of emptiness.
And finally, I wanted to again mention the something from the Zizek book. About how in 1930's Russia, there started to
appear statues of the New Man placed on top of flat office buildings. A worker, strapping, strong, able bodied. They started
putting this statue on top of most new buildings, buildings people lived or worked in. As time went on the statue, relative
to the building, got bigger and bigger which had the effect of making the building beneath it more and more like a mere pedestal
for the New Man. The statue celebrating the common man becoming more and more majestic; slowly crushing the space where the
actual workers worked and lived. The perfect analogue of how the state was using the fantasy of the common man to oppress,
somewhat literally, the common man.
Cheers,
Tyler
PS: Also, I wanted to bring up this drawing again:
8/7/07
Dear Stephen,
I insist on very little, but I'm going to insist on this: WE have to finish Sebald before we leave because it's knocking
my socks off. I just checked the last batches of pages and couldn't find a paragraph break. I'm absolutely thrilled with how
it goes.
Tomorrow, I've decided to make a case for some Ted Kooser poems. I think that some poetry will really clean up our act,
make us presentable, some good credibility. Poet Laureate too, from Nebraska.
Which reminds me: the Dust Bowl. I started out looking at the Library of Congress' WPA photo collection, and I came across
a few great things.
1. photo of buried wagon and house
2. Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Cure picture
3. Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Cure editorial
Later, looking for first hand accounts of dust storms I found the same library's collection of WPA sound recordings. There
are some absolutely remarkable recordings of folks, good folks, talking about a number of things.
1. why they moved to California
2. what a dust storm looked like in the dust bowl
3. why they moved to Oklahoma
4. why they left Oklahoma for California
I'm going to keep listening, cause I think there's a gem in there.
Cheers, again and again,
Tyler
8/6/07
Dear Stephen,
True it was difficult getting through only half of Twain's What Is Man. Funny because it seems very un-Twain like... usually
he would crack jokes about needing to include facts and lessons out of plot necessity, and if he'd had his druthers he'd with
lack of learning.
It doesn't seem edited. There is no editor listed, and the book was published only recently without a forward, introduction,
or the usual marks of thought. Maybe someone bought up the rights to some strange bits and pieces and sought to publish them
for simply the sake of publishing them.
Anyway - I can go on about nothing sometimes. An excerpt you picked out: "And so on and so on, picture after picture,
incident after incident, a drifting panorama of ever changing, ever dissolving views manufactured by my mind without any help
from me - why it would take me two hours to merely name the multitude of things my mind tallied off and photographed in any
fifteen minute stretch ... let alone to describe them to you."
Is it possible to make a show in which one of us is always doing some sort of sinking? Physically sinking, or sinking
in words, or sinking in mood... in some way something/someone always sinking? Your fake horse with segmented legs idea is
funny, slowly segments removed, but we also need a drowning of text, or a text of someone drowning... perhaps a more dramatic,
mourning version of the Twain excerpt above?
Cheers, lots,
Tyler
August, 07
Dear Tyler,
Morecambe Bay walk:
The sea, until she nears her limits, is a simple thing, repeating herself wave by wave. But you cannot approach the simplest
things in nature with out a great many formalities, the thickest things without a bit of thinning out. This - and also because
he resents
their oppressive immensity - is why man rushes to the edges or intersections of the great things he wishes to define.
For reason, plunged in the bosom of uniformity, gets perilously tossed about and run into short supply: a mind in search of
concepts must, to begin with, lay in a stock of appearances. (Opening Stanza to Seashores by Francis Ponge)
The hills in the distance, hold a distance that is revealed only when we move towards them. We keep moving towards them and
the view seems unchanging, the proportions still what they were an hour ago, the same look as the look from over there. Maybe
it's just that I can't remember what it looked like from over there. I was expecting water, water like the sea, but it's far
away, out beyond our field of sight. The only water we encounter are the rivers that rush out to meet the sea and the small
pools that are marked by sticks to remind us that the sand is not so kind, it could steal your shoe, or hold onto your leg
for a
while, just long enough for the tide to rise high to meet you, and reveal that it wasn't that far away after
all, it was always there on the other side of what you can see.
I'm struck by the thought that we are walking over hundreds of years worth of sinking items. Horses, buggies, bits and
pieces of boats, motorcycles, walking sticks, trees branches, soda cans, sea shells, but mostly I'm thinking about all of
the letters tossed out to the bay when a passing mail train was tipped over by the great gale of February 27th 1903. All
of those lost correspondences under our feet, the incredible news, the maps to important places, the mundane description of
a day, notes to fathers,
mothers, sisters, brothers, lovers. All of these voices swallowed up by a unique mixture of sand and water, or perhaps
they were brought out to sea by the retreating tide, only to be coughed up again on some distant shore, the words no more
than ink washes on torn paper. I imagine these letters were never replicated in a second attempt - a days worth of mail lost
, and lots of, didn't you get my letter?
Stephen
8/5/07
Dear Stephen,
We've walked the Morecambe Bay today with Alan Sledmore. He was a jolly man with a 4 wheeler and two slim walking sticks.
He didn't speak loudly, didn't speak clearly, but was obviously aware of his responsibility and didn't take it lightly.
I think the back of your leg's, the part just below the knee where your rolled up pant stopped down to your sock line,
are more red than mine. Next time we'll know better.
I want to remember what we were talking about on the sand. About the disorientation of having no near geographical feature
against which to judge one's movement. It makes me remember that I never think much of walking anywhere in Chicago because
it's straight and flat, whereas anywhere hilly or with more necessary maneuvers than Louie, Roy, and Dead Ahead multiplies
my sense of how long or hard a journey will be. This is different than the bay or the salt flats; where the complete lack
of ANYTHING makes all distances seem absolutely small. Wherever you're going, it's usually the only thing in sight - and because
it can be seen, it seems within reach. LIKE A MIRAGE Alice noted, but different because instead of setting up the illusion
of something desired; it BETRAYS the truth of the matter.
I was able to keep my wits about my spatial whereabouts on the sand a bit, but the Big Wheel (Ferris wheel) threw me.
I've never been on one like the one we rode today, with that whacky spin the car like it's hanging on a stripper pole thing
while it's already moving on the wheel bit.
The Arena Fun Fair in Morecambe is really enchanting. To picture what it was, how glorious it once was, and imagine a
night there, some special night, a variety show... a comedian, a little kid doing something cute, a singer or three. A warm
night by the beach in the summer, everyone in town is there, a special entertainer is up from Manchester, the adults are having
drinks while the kids are chasing each other around just outside the brightness of the lights. I wonder if this is a place
or imagined event we could use?
I just hung my laundry outside and it's gotten all sandy in the washer.
Tyler
8/2/07
Tyler,
Since we have been here in Lancaster, I have felt a sensation that I usually feel when I'm in new and unfamiliar places.
It comes to me early in the morning, it is as if there is a weight upon my chest, or something is pressing into me. I know
perhaps it is simply because I am in a new place, and I'm itching to get out of
bed and start the day. That aside, it is something about time passing, and it has become physical here, like I said, as
if something were pressing into me, and the only way to stop the sensation is to get up and move about the morning. This morning
with this feeling upon me, I found myself half awake wandering around the streets of Lancaster looking for a specific coffee
shop that I swore was by the bus station. I walked up the hill where Cromwell set his cannons, and down through the pasture
where the sheep were laying on the ground sleeping, then worked my way down along the canal, until I was forced up into the
streets because of the pedestrian walkway ending. I got to the bus station easily, but the coffee shop was no where to be
found. I self consciously looked at the map, started walking and proceeded to unintentionally walk in a big circle until I
was at the bus station a second time. The frustration of walking in a circle was added to by the fact that a group of people
had been standing outside waiting for a bus,
and had witnessed me walk up the same road and pass the bus station twice, all this with my trusty map in hand.... This
time, intent on at least not arriving at the bus station again, I set out to find the coffee shop. Eventually, I made a
correct turn somewhere, saw the Kings Arms Hotel, and it was then that I remembered the correct location of the coffee shop.
I made my way to the shop,
bought some coffee, walked back past the canal where the ducks were sounding out the morning , and the sheep were slowly
waking in the pasture, standing up to get back to the task of trimming the green. I arrived at the house, it was still quiet,
I sat at the kitchen table and went back to Calvino's essay Exactitude and read:
A naked silence and a most profound quiet will fill the immensity of space. So this marvelous and frightening mystery
of universal existence, before being declared or understood, will fade away and be lost.
Stephen
Here's what my walk sort of
looked like---------------------->
8/2/07
Dear Stephen,
I can only write a few things. I'm not feeling as confident as I normally do, there's something about me - or being here
- that makes me feel like a freshman again. Something I'd rather not remember. But, I'm a trooper. I am. I'll come around.
I'm excited to try and hang each other from the foot next week. A short list of the first things it makes come to mind:
1. A person in a trap
2. meat
3. paratrooper
4. prisoner
5. etc
That's about right, yeah?
Everyone here says, "isn"t it", after every statement of opinion or fact. It seems like the upward lilt
of how I make a statement. Both serve the same purpose, asking for affirmation, and both are equally as habitual, but it makes
me wish I didn't ask a question with every statement.
I've been thinking more about the disorientation of being upside down. Is there a way to make an audience upside down?
Seems to me there are only two pragmatic (English/American) answers to that question:
1. No, but you could make the performance upside down
2. No, but you could make the audience empathize with someone who is upside down (this is to less affect, but could be
mined perhaps.)
I want someone to crash through the ceiling and land on the floor and be immobile for a little while. Naturally, I think
this is a beginning, but again we have the problem of how to make more physical action - how to activate the space in a way
that wakes the audience out of the dream we've induced. And yes, we do need to wake them, lest they lose trust in our delivery
of their dreams.
I've found a picture of a farm after a Dust Bowl storm. Dallas, South Dakota. Not a typo, it's real, Dallas SOUTH DAKOTA.
It's like the sands, it's like what we've already talked about a bit: the earth taking things, or the earth preserving things.
The dust bowl era has been called, in book titles none-the-less, the worst hard time. Is it a fantasy that the Dust Bowl crowned
an era that could already have won the prize?
I've too much more to say. I'll sign off for now.
Tyler
letters from 2004
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