Kip Manley's Blog, page 22

No. 41: arms - legs - heaven (Opening)

the Table, long

No. 41: “ – arms - legs - heaven – ”

Running through your land. Ellen seeks a second chance at something irrevocable, and Gloria does something unforgivable.

the Table, long – the Underwear first – the Rest of them – the Filthy kitchen – eight & eight & eight Again – AGILE SAFFRON COLOR GLASS – Hands on a Bare hip – not Now – how to Get noticed – the Newis spread – Early, Dim, & Sodden – what She would have said – the Photos on the Mantel – under the Lights – no Small accomplishment – the Letters on the wall – her Question – trouble with the Truck – P. interrogationis

Things to keep in mind (The secret of large language models)

This is maybe a bit of an idiosyncratic view, but i’ve always understood the “point” of poetry to be in the demonstration that the image-arrangements or “argument” of the poem are already laying “in the language as such” in ways that are evidenced by their expressibility in rhyme and meter.

This is basically the old Emersonian point at the top of the page: a “poem” is when an argument is so much itself that it can simply appear, and take a metrical form as an indication of its always-already having been present in the language, but just not organized into a poem yet. What the poet does is notice the concatenation of the geometric “fact” of the poem’s possibility within a particular rhyme-and-meter space, and point that out. This is why I have always considered poetry to be a version of nonfiction: the poem is the words that are there where there is a pointer labeled “poem.”

—Alex Williams

Things to keep in mind (The secret of literature)

The mediocre, the false, the пошлость, can at least afford a mischievous but very healthy pleasure, as you stamp and groan through a second-rate book which has been awarded a prize. But the books you like must also be read with shudders and gasps. Let me submit the following practical suggestion: literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain—the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed; then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.

—Vladimir Nabokov

Things to keep in mind (The secret of glám dícenn)

At first glance, it seemed an absurd way to make traffic safer, and Mockus was ridiculed in the press for pursuing it. But gradually, by making fun of drivers and pedestrians who didn’t follow basic rules and celebrating those who did, the mimes managed to transform the entire traffic culture of the city, successfully infusing Bogotá’s streets with common sense—or, rather, a sense of the commons.

The construction of the urban environment, a duty usually reserved for engineers, architects, developers, and the like, became, under Mockus’ mayorship, the responsibility of all urban inhabitants. His programs for Bogotá viewed citizens as political beings who are always already participating in the construction of their city, either with their good or bad attitudes.

“The mayor’s genius,” suggests Raymond Fisman, “was in recognizing that writing harsher laws or hiring more gun-toting policemen would be futile when confronted with a law-breaking culture. Instead he enabled Bogotá’s citizens to make change themselves.” Or as Mockus himself explains it, “Knowledge empowers people. If people know the rules and are sensitized by art, humour, and creativity, they are much more likely to accept change.”

—Tomaz Capobianco

Things to keep in mind (The secret of the limits of glám dícenn)

Rushkoff’s aim is partly for the reader to see these billionaires and their projects as absurd, even silly. Again, I can see the attraction in such an approach. I have found it difficult to avoid snark and sarcasm in my own writing about some of these characters. But it strikes me in this instance as missing the mark. For one thing, while it may be that their most grandiose visions are highly unlikely to come to fruition, their point may not be to achieve their most ambitious ends but to take advantage of the opportunities created along the way—opportunities that involve further privatization, increased wealth disparities, and social exclusions of the kind we already see. The spectacle is part of the grift. It is no accident that organizations such as the Seasteading Institute incorporate their opponents’ ridicule into their sales pitches. When the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots (2019 – present) did an animated short mocking “exit” strategies such as bunker-prepping and seasteading, the Seasteading Institute referenced the ridicule in its promotional materials.

Of course they would: being dismissed as quirky delusionaries is central to the narrative that tech escapists like to tell about themselves as misunderstood dreamers and unappreciated geniuses. It is, moreover, a kind of sales pitch sleight of hand. They count on us being too busy staring agape, laughing at the absurdity of the vision or lamenting the betrayal of tech’s emancipatory possibilities, to notice the conventional stench of extraction, dispossession, and colonial sleaze wafting in the air.

—Raymond Craib

Things to keep in mind (The secret of unlicensed zones)

The houses, many of which were sitting empty for years, have become FREE SPACES that hold so much more than a roof over our heads. They are home to anarchist libraries, food distros, parties, film screenings, dinners, constantly re-arranging affinities, intimacies, and an endless tide of batshit ideas and inciteful possibilities. To live inside walls slated for demolition is to live outside of this world and against it. We are doing this because we want to. We believe in Nothing and we believe in Everything because “we” is undefined and always changing.

Squatting public housing helps us bridge divisions prescribed by society. Together, long-time unhoused residents and younger folks trying to build a freer city can understand our shared enemies, violent state forces seeking only to cleanse the neighborhood of its poorest and most non-compliant residents in attempt to squeeze the last drips of profit from stolen land while it still appears to belong to the crumbling empire. We are our neighbors, we protect ourselves, we protect each other.

Squat the world! Fuck private property, fuck landlords, and fuck the State!

—Anarchist Network of Ungovernable Squatters

Quatermuch

A bit earlier today I crossed the nine-thousand word mark on the first draft of no. 41, which means I’m roughly about halfway through, give or take, the way these things usually go, and but it’s two and a half months or so into the writing of it; I won’t jinx the enterprise by saying anything about speed or weight or momentum, let’s just keep on with the keeping on of it. The idea is to be done with the volume and the season this year, so I’ll be brief and to the point—but here, at least, have a cover reveal. —See y’all in a bit.

No. 40: dirty white noise (Closing)

The last chord floats from his strings, a brightness falling shimmering dissolve, and his fingers lift from the fretboard, the soundbox, but his arms remain curled about that big-bellied guitar, his head hung low, face obscured by a lone long lock dyed blue. There’s no applause, but the stillness all about him breaks as one by they lower hands, or lift them, look to their friend, their neighbor, to him there on the stool by the cold and empty hearth, the crowd of them in that big front room, lit only by dim lamps set in elaborately fronded sconces, and somewhere in the middle of them all she takes a deep and shivering breath, “Oh, my,” she says.

“White boys shouldn’t ought to play the blues,” murmurs the woman beside her, “always ends up something different when they’re done with it.”

“Now, Mother,” she says, but frowns as she looks to her, much too tall, head and shoulders draped in the hood of some loose, brief jacket of pale gold, or brassy silver, high black boots laced up past her knees, but her dark thighs bare between for anyone to see. “Forgive me,” she says, “I had thought – ”

“You keep doing that,” says the woman, not unkindly, moving away through the crowd, leaving her to herself, her long full navy skirt, prim pink sweater, hair neatly tucked in an up-do, folding her arms as the crowd, released, moves about. Up there by the hearth the guitarist speaks quietly with a short man all in black, his beard a whisper of curls to line his jaw.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispers, and casts about, the front door there, she sets out toward it, but her first step stumbles, something clatter-thump underfoot, and she kneels, skirt pooling, to take it up, a lone shoe, a loafer with a strap across the softly wrinkled vamp of it, and tucked there the winking copper of a penny.

“Is someone,” she says, looking up, but there is no one, everyone has gone, there’s just the stool there, by the hearth, and otherwise that big front room is empty.

No. 40: dirty white noise (Act IV)

a Half-dozen Dream-catchers – how He’ll do It – the Only Mortal here – already Unlocked – a Disagreement