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fact:
n; 1. every fact is an artifact of the theory/paradigm to which it
belongs/under which it is operational. to be suspicious of facts is to desire
to reveal the theories that project them. 2. factuality itself depends
for its continued existence on the existence of a non-totalitarian world. 3.
fact wins every war. failure: n; 1.
i love, this is all poetry has ever
been about. this is the heart of the entire tradition of the troubadours and of
true modern poets. it is the end towards which our entire life moves and
which we attempt so often to give expression. however, we are always turned
away. no matter what we do, no matter what we write it is only an approach
that in the end fails to gain us an audience with our beloved, our end. some
say that it is simply this approach which is all that is needed, that by
making this effort we have in a way succeeded. this is consolation for a
time, it allows one to continue; yet, there is no escaping the sad truth. we
are, at every word, turned away. we are, with every word, a failure. 2. there can only be two reasons for
poetic failure. either there is a failure in the craft or a failure in the subject
(or both). if one believes that everything is capable of allowing for
success in the poetic task, then one would attribute any failure to one of craft. such an outlook is
overwhelmingly popular in worn out by the weary
mouth on the
endless road to the
neighbor's house - J. Bobrowski. 5. moral failures always follow an
intellectual failure. the reverse is never true. 6. failure is a ringmaker. 7.
failure regresses into an identification with marginality. faith:
n; 1. the desire for certainty, for
a foundation, and therefore it is the desire to transcend itself and its own
possibility for existence. 2. a
commitment to live in an as though
world — an overtly metaphorical existence. 3. if one were to be
rewarded as a result of one’s faith (e.g. with a miracle), the miracle would
be proof of the presence of that in which one has faith. from that moment on
one would have no need of faith since one would know that the deity whose
existence was previously unknown (and unknowable) now existed without doubt.
even if the miraculous act kills the deity making the certain knowledge of
the once faithful an error, faith is still unnecessary. so, from the
perspective of the deity that demands faith, all acts of faith must go
unrewarded. from this it is not too difficult to understand the anguish of
Christ on the cross, his why hast thou forsaken me? fall:
n; 1. when you have made an effort
and fall, for those below in hell, for the tormented audience who can only
look up from their eternal seats, your ground
is their sky and your posture of collapse is a vision of weightlessness, a
miracle of sorts. 2. red leaves
are the wings of exhausted angels. 3. i look at the lines, the deep,
permanent lines in the palms of my hands. i feel these lines and i understand
that they testify to something, to a time prior to this, to another
existence. in this othertime i
am clinging to something and i have
been clinging to this something for a long time. perhaps all i have
been doing is holding on. and then i grow weak, and at last the
eternity i am clucthing slips from my grasp and i fall… into this
life. fallacy: n; 25 fallacies (not including the fallacy of
factualism or the fallacy of regarding a poem as a commodity. basically a
list for the interpretation of poems but can also provide insights for the
creation of poems and hindrances to their creation. ) (from Enemies of Poetry by W.B. Stanford) 1. False Inference: because one fact /
statement is true, a linked fact / statement is taken to be true (core of
historicism / factual readings). a common one for me to exploit, e.g. in the
appendix of short films. 2. Impropriety: that nothing improper can be intended or said in a
poem. But what is improper??? 3. Poetry-as-Painting: see short films 4. Character-as-Author: Evidence
is an investigation into this aspect in particular 5. Etymological Fallacy: fallacious
etymologies are a source of novel metaphors for myself e.g. chestnut =
chastisement-nut = tree of punishment. also one can include homonyms and
pseudo-homonyms. e.g. to leave is the past tense of to love. 6. Fallacies of Time: belief that time
in a performance should equal the actual time of the acts involved; or,
belief that anachronisms are errors. my short films are concerned with this
fallacy to a large degree, in particular with anachronisms. 7. Static Meaning: the meaning of
everything is in constant flux, so there can be no constant meaning. as well,
things are ultimately indeterminate and so cannot be ultimately defined but
can only be adopted as a convention (which is of course a historical event) 8. Always Clearly Intended Meaning: much
of my poetry is involved in creating ambiguities which challenge the reader
and expose the nature of language (which is the nature of our being in the
world). this fallacy also assumes a poet will know exactly what they mean…
which is never the point really, the point being to always reach those
regions of unknowing. 9. Primitive Stupidity: this is a
fallacy which can be expressed at a
historical level or at the level of the individual. in the latter case there
is a belief that the poet will progress, that what is earlier is less than
what comes later. 10. Egoistic Fallacy: interpretation based
on projection which can have little if anything to do with the text in
question. 11. Ideal Conditions: there are necessary
contingencies which cannot be avoided in the creation of any art. i attempt
to explore this in Cipher and Poverty. 12. Hyperbole: exaggeration is a bad
thing. this is related to impropriety. 13. Numbers: taking numbers to be
mathematically precise. this is evident in poetry when an 'I' may be
mentioned and this is taken to be equivalent to one person when i may have
intended it to mean many people or even all people (this is related to the
fallacy of hyperbole). 14. Metre: if metre preserves time, if it
keeps it from collapsing, then an insistence on metre betrays an assumption
of the objectivity / transcendence of time (and perhaps then, history). metre
may also lead one to assume that the relationship of sense and sound is a
stylistic one, and that the relationship can be manipulated at will. 15. Never-only-once: if something occurs
once it is a sign that it was written by someone else. a fallacy that denies
the creative essence 16. Once-is-typical: one example
represents a universal rule or condition. such a fallacy in interpretation is
the most commonly used tool for a poet. the poet is particularly concerned
with the relationship, that region of union (metaphorized in the
form/existence of the poem) between the universal and the specific. 17. Stereotype: related to impropriety. a
belief that certain formal elements in a poem cannot be transgressed. 18. Autopsy Fallacy: any description
implies a direct personal knowledge. as well, the only writing which may be
attempted is that of which there is direct knowledge. i may never write about
the plague, i may never have any women say anything that might indicate original
thought etc. this fallacy is rampant today under the term appropriating. while it is true that
many voices have been appropriated, the answer lies in these voices speaking
not in denying other voices creative freedom. Evidence is one large
example of this fallacy (as well as character-as-author). I have anticipated
the criticisms of appropriation which will be made if this is ever read, for
example, how can a man ever write as a woman? firstly, only a man can pretend to write as a woman. secondly,
the distinctions of man and woman i believe are in question; certain times,
moments, i find myself acting as a woman whereas other times i act exactly
like a man. and then at other times i feel i act not like a woman and not
like a man but simply like a person. legally a man and a woman must be
precisely defined, this is because legal matters are matters of convenience.
poetry on the other hand is a matter of truth and the possibilities of truth.
19. Restrictive Form: regular structure
is a straight jacket. certain forms are straitjackets not because they are
form (there always must be some form (word, poem etc.)) but because the forms
represent something which has become reprehensible. i believe the world-view
of rhyming poetry and rigid metre lost its effectiveness to inform
reality. 20. Intentionality: the authors
intentions are insignificant. this is not entirely true. the work can of
course be taken as it is, which is all most people can be expected to do.
however, if one has access to an author's intentions, then the work becomes
larger (or smaller), and the work can be seen as a compromise/dialogue
between intentions and the actual text. 21. Affective Fallacy: one should not
base one's interpretation on the effects a work has on an audience. an audience
may be extremely dulled by never reading poetry. when confronted with poetry
they may react negatively, they will probably not react at all. such a
reaction says nothing about the poem, it only says that between the audience
and the poem there is a disparity. if one assumes the audience is brilliant,
then one could use the reaction to propose that the poem was unsuccessful in
stimulating their brilliance. on the other hand, if one assumes the audience
is incompetent, then one could propose that the poem failed to stimulate
their incompetence. still, in either case, it says nothing specifically about
the poem because, in the first case, the poem was either duller than the
audience or more brilliant than their brilliance whereas, in the second case,
the poem was either much more incompetent than the audience's incompetence or
was more brilliant. and to confuse things even more, a work may intentionally
invoke an inverse reaction from the audience and it may fail at this or
succeed, an so on and so on... 22. Documentary Fallacy: that any work is
a literal document of fact. also, there is a belief that the characters etc.
in a work have no life or background outside of the work. this is true and
false. what is called character must be found in the work and should not be
brought to the work in interpretation. in other words, the work must do the
speaking. on the other hand, the work is connected to the world in various
complex ways and it is important to understand these links because this is
the basis for understanding the work at all. 23. Over-visualization: excessive
attention to physical implications of terms or phrases. my work is primarily
visual as i have great difficulty with aural comprehension. 24. Over-auralization: my bias as stated above
tends to make me mock sound affects when they occur at the expense of visual
imaginations. 25. Silent reading: as stated above, i
have difficulty with aural perception. i therefore write poems with the goal
of their never being able to be read out loud. i try to compose orchestral or
cinematic linguistic expressions. i have a great distrust for the value or
efficacy of any public gathering, any public listening. i feel all that is
expressed is expressed for the benefit of the event, of the gathering and not
for the benefit of the utterance itself. i value greatly the scenario of an
individual confronting a written piece of work. in order to achieve such a
confrontation it is up to the individual to make a space in her/his life in
which the confrontation can occur and in which the confrontation can occur
and exert its transformative effects on the person. it is the participation
of the individual in creating such a private space that is necessary for any
transformation to occur. the scenario of a public gathering (a public
listening) involves a detached and inert version of participation which is
merely an attending (and not disrupting), an allusion of efficacy, of
transformation. a public reading is no such thing. the only person reading is
the author. and this is not really reading so much as it is performing
(literally completely furnishing or
conveniencing / entertaining / making comfortable all who have gathered as opposed to disturbing,
changing, transforming them). falsehood: n; as childhood develops
naturally into adulthood, so it seems the achievement of adulthood is
falsehood. fame: n; to seek fame is to desire
to be discovered by those who are not searching for you. fantasy: n; 1. marketing, advertising, and all mediums (such as film for instance)
which offer images on a vast scale to the public sell a particular image and
therefore a product by linking an image with the possibility of attaining the
fantastic. However, the money is made on those who mistakenly adopt some
fanciful moment or scenario and attempt to adapt it to their life. They fail
of course. Dealing with fantasy in this way leads to neuroses and worse
conditions. The proper way of dealing with fantasy is by living your life and
from your own very real life you uncover or stumble upon fantastic incidents.
This is a journey into fantasy rather than a heavy handed submission of your
life to some fantasy which is far removed from yourself. 2. when an individual plays with fantasy they are in the realm of
art. when fantasy plays with an individual they are in the realm of madness. 3. the garden is the fantasy of the
house. the poem is the fantasy of the list. the lover is the fantasy of death
approaching. 4. the frailty of any fantasy can be discerned by noting
how many objects (texts, relics, etc.) and how many other people
(congregation, etc.) it requires for support. such supports are indicative of
inherent weaknesses. it follows from this that the fantasy that requires no
one and nothing tangible, in other words the fantasy that follows the path of
a complete renunciation of the world is unassailable. fart:
n; those who passionately decry the values of humanism and enlightenment
while being products of these traditions, while benefiting from and finding
the intellectual shelter in all those institutions and accretions of laudable
human achievements seep, or blast forth, from the anus of their cultural
body. and though from their perspective they are coherent, tangible beings,
they are in reality merely evidence of a complex and miraculous system which
is functioning appropriately. from the perspective of this cultural body they
are nothing more than an embarrassment, or an annoyance… yet always a
necessary by-product. and fortunately such effusions are easy to recognize
because they stink. fathom:
n; a feeling, an emotion, is a form of measurement. fear: n; 1. if security is walking home in total darkness, dogs barking
and bats flying above you while there is ahead of you just visible by the
light of the quarter moon another person walking in the same direction as you
are, then fear is rounding a bend and noticing that person has vanished. 2. the insistence on order is knotted
into the net of fear. for fear, the idealized catch, the inevitable
seduction, is submission. 3. fear
is measured in faces and in inaction. 4. fear of death is an
irrational gate which opens onto the true ruin of a person’s being. fear
of death is void— its object is unknown and unknowable. the intensity and
certainty of the feeling is the familiar embrace of delusion and
incomprehension. 5. fear builds temples. feeling: n; the world whispers in your
ear: a secret. you respond, unavoidably, you ready yourself for what has been
disclosed. female: n; Fatima Mernissi says the
key difference between Muslim and Western (institutionalized) conceptions of
the female is that Muslim institutions recognize the male and female as being
expressions of a common power; Western institutions on the other hand regard
the female as being powerless with respect to men. what is interesting is
that in daily life, in everyday dealings with women i feel it is impossible
not to recognize their power. what the Western institutions achieve then is
that they provide convenient shelters for those men (and women) who do not
wish to experience (and consequently integrate and live with the experience
of) female power. fence: n; 1. a cage of partial understanding. 2. you know you have reached a fence, a limit, when you find
yourself ankle deep in refuse— when you have reached the place where the
accumulations of living, its entailments, its packaging, cannot pass beyond. fever: n; the fever should be
followed, not to find a source, not to divine an end, but because the fever wants to be followed. fiction: n; 1. history is fiction. the distant past is just as close to us as
is the recent past. It exists all in our minds and we live amongst the
effects of this process. but history itself, those moments gather together in
a great jumble in our heads. there are not degrees of fictitiousness. there
is only non-fiction and fiction. this jumbled crowd of history is the real,
the non-fictitious. It is the ordered 1973-1974-1975 that is the fiction. 2. the Burl Ives' are the
entertainers, the peripheral dancers in this ritual of life, of fiction. They
dance around the axis mundi, the shaman, the Beethoven, which is the
intensity, the fervor which drives the dancers. Such a thing, such an
intensity is what I wish to build my stories with. And if in fact one views
the axis mundi horizontally an interesting things appears. One might then see
me, or perhaps oneself, walking along it as though on a tightrope. Now if you
re-invert this image to the vertical plane the person on the tightrope is now
ascending or descending between two worlds. It is as though such a person is
a messenger between the two worlds which are connected/separated by the
umbilicus/axis mundi. 3. fiction
is a form of measurement, a measure of distance. a component of this distance
is time. 4. Any fictionalizing act
is a creation / imposition / recognition / affirmation of distance. 5. theory, criticism, historical
texts— these are the only works of fiction which matter today; they are the
only works capable of leading us into an audience with today's unbridgeable
distances. 6. if fiction is
distance it is the distance which presents itself as a consequence of living.
therefore, fiction is unavoidable. what differentiates the poet from everyone
else is that poet is not content with exploring this distance, the poet has
the enduring experience that all that has been traversed has been done with
the intention of reaching some unnameable place— that place is poetry. one could add that all failed
poems, all failed attempts to reach this end are acts of fiction, are relapses,
reposes into one's immediate surroundings. 7. “fiction was invented
precisely to give men the possibility of expressing themselves freely” –
Shestov. film: n; 1. a crutch, an affirmation of one's failure, of one's
degenerating ability. 2. no one is
real (of course) in a movie, nothing is real there (they are only real as
images). an actor/actress acts the same to all who view the movie. this is
not reality. in reality an actor/actress would be a person and would show
different faces and act differently to different people. in movies we watch
types or manifestations of the imagination in which we may or may not see the
same thing as our neighbor. to confuse this type of an interaction with
reality is to make a common and often unavoidable error which is what
accounts for the success of some movies. Fini: n; “in order to have children,
a humility nearly inconceivable in the modern world, a brutalized passivity
or a mad pretension...”. finitude: n; finitude may be the only evidence that we have been
created. the reason being that finitude seems like some form of universal
reparation— a final creative act from a creator suffering from an
overwhelming remorse for what it had done. flame: n; it has been suggested that
a writer of the depths should
realize that they may be only one of a handful of those willing to watch over the flame while humanity sleeps (Cixous).
such watchers need help. not because they are tired (they are tireless) but
because they want to start fresh fires. flight: n; in order to attempt to fly
one requires something very high (either something found or something
self-erected) from which one can leap. fool: n; the crowd (in French) forest: n; living leaves a trail of
bread crumbs so it can find its way back home. writing follows the crumbs
until it finds the trail broken, disturbed, until it finds the crumbs have been
eaten. homecoming exists only as an unattainable ideal. living persists as
exile. an exile affirmed by the frustration of writing. forgive: v; i will never forgive you,
you who turn my long stemmed roses into swords. forgotten: adj; all talk and no action
makes jack like everyone else. form: n; the relationship of number to form (geometry) is
that of time to space. number is temporal (a temporal limitation) and
a-spatial; form is spatial (a spatial limitation) and a-temporal. formalism: n; an act of desperation. (cipher and poverty is an example of
this). forsaken: adj; the word forsaken has fallen out of
popular usage. i can see no reason for this except that its truth may be
banal and so general and obvious as to be meaningless. fortunate: adj; some people think that it
is a sad fact that they cannot see
themselves in the representations they find on television, or in movies.
however, that a person cannot be represented by such a base and talentless
medium cannot be other than a fortunate state of affairs. found:
v; isolation is a natural state for a creative personality. such a person
does not want to find a long-term companion as much as they want to found
one. a creative act of this degree, one which negotiates futiliy and miracle
is a necessary fiction, an ideal that at the very least provides a stable
shelter for a future. foundation: n; 1. the social and
economic factors that make one's art possible must be examined. any simple
justifications must be considered suspect. such contextualization of a work
is a desire to experience the work in its full complexity and complicity
(with the/its world) and at the same time is a resistance to any aesthetic
responses which consider the work to be autonomous, isolated, trivial, and
therefore powerless to effect change in any way. 2. i see a poet who
is up to its neck in the world. what is keeping the poet’s head above the
world, what is keeping the poet from succumbing and submerging forever? is it
some superhuman strength or endurance? no. the poet is only standing on an
undersea mountain of bodies— the bodies of those who could not and would not
understand that the world wants nothing to do with them, that the world is
against them and eventually will overcome them and pull them under. this
is the poet’s foundation. and so, it would not be an exaggeration to say that
the poet may function as a beacon, or as a memorial. 3. one can be
certain that opinions and beliefs of convenience have no truth-value. fractal: adj; 1.
in the field of language (as mode of being) there exists: language faculty | particular
manifestation | statement | increase word | in morpheme | magnification phoneme | language faculty q in other
words, the deeper and more specific one probes into the particulars of
language, you always come back to the language itself. every word rings with
the language of which it is a part, a manifestation, a container. and so too,
every language faculty rings with the language (being) of which it is a part,
a manifestation, a container. 2.
an event of fractalization arises in the analysis of the (ontological)
account of creation in the gospel of st. john. the structure outlined is as
follows: beginning (within which exists) | the Word / the same (unity [of being]) / God (all are identical / synonymous) and within this
there exists | the light (of men) and an opposing to darkness this duality is
separated by a peculiar rift of incomprehension.
the darkness does not comprehend the
light, does not hold it, but the same is not
stated for the light (with respect to the darkness). | from the light, the Word was made (flesh). In other words, within the Word there exists not only a
duality but the world of the Many. and then, from a representative of the
Many there is created (or re-created) the Word (or the totality / unity).
this is the process of fractalization. this process is analogous to that of a
lexicon which contains a multitude of words any one of which implies within
itself the entire lexicon of which it is a part. the lexicon falls out of
every word while at the same time every word is in the lexicon (and so on,
and so on...). 3. you must always
separate the desire to do something
from the desire to desire to do
something. the former condition leads to action, the latter leads only to
inertia and frustration. France:
n; 1. in french, hunger rhymes
with bread; as well, no one is anyone and anyone is no one. 2. he sounds ill. frankenstein: n; the golem + Jacob Frank
(father of Big Brother) + Psalm 139
+ messianism + transgression (unrestrained power) + creation
(Adam/Genesis/homunculus) + language + prophecy (knowledge). freedom: n; 1. the (re)pose of necessity. 2. liberty is not measured in statues. 3. there are parallels between free market ideology and the
french revolution. when freedom becomes actualized, when it rises from its
usual mode of an unrealizable limit to action into a corporeal form tyranny
and oppression rise alongside it. this freedom that is being actualized
demands a total lack of dissent. nothing can obstruct this instance of freedom, anything that
does resist must be eradicated since it is, ontologically speaking, against this freedom. this requirement
for a complete lack of dissent is the only thing that keeps oppression alive.
totalizing liberties seem unable to keep from emptying themselves into
tyranny. 4. in Greek etymology freedom derives from the phrase i go as i wish, a metaphor in which
human action is identified with / equivalent to human desire. in other words,
if i do what i truly wish to do i am free; if i hold back, if my desire is
ambiguous, lazy... i am not free. 5.
freedom seems to be the last thing people actually want, considering how
enthusiastically they bind themselves to ridiculously irrelevant situations
and responsibilities. 6. it is
often forgotten that freedom is always made possible by and in relation to
some limitation. absolute freedom
is a meaningless term— i am not free
to fly, and there is no reason i should be. the dialectic of free will versus
determinism often is expressed as a contest of absolute positions whereas
such is never the case. for freedom to exist, there must be limitations.
limitations have no moral value. a limitation, when speaking of free will and
determinism is always a limitation of possibilities
of becoming. biological life would be an example of such a limitation of
becoming, as would a mineral, or a proton etc. 7. i had no choice,
or we had no choice— i hear this and i realize that corpses can speak.
8. “the idea of freedom makes me a member of an intelligible world” –
Kant. Freud:
n; Freudian descriptions of the world are stated as though they are entities,
causative entities. that an overbearing father can have an effect on its
child’s existence is indisputable (just as every father, even an absent
father can have an effect on its child). however, Freudian descriptions of
the domestic situation can have no effects on a child. that is, unless the
child experiences its world as a Freudian discourse! refuse the discourse and
its power dissipates, like a shadow that has been mistaken for a witch. fruit: n; from the perspective of a
tree its fruit is a burden. frustration: n; 1. frustration
traces its circles with infinitely small steps. 2. frustration is the tone reality uses when
it wants to teach. fulcrum: n; Carl Becker said that “without
a fulcrum upon which to rest their lever they cannot move the inert and
resistant world of men and things as they are.” an artist, a poet, must
choose its fulcrum, must recognize its fulcrum. dread is the common name of the transcendent object that allows
me generate a force. fun:
n; there is fun in funerals. future: n ; 1. it shouldn't be surprising when predictions of the future come true since, as human imaginations, they already exist, already can be comprehended. the future is something entirely different; it is not anything technological at all. what is future is an incomprehensible and unending psychological duress. 2. the common representation of a prognosticator as someone who is blind is very appropriate. and i doubt it is intended to be taken other than as a literal fact. 3. a fantasy whose use is to support a present impotence, failure, irresponsibility. 4. i have always offered the future my bed. this is because i knew it would never come. 5. the future is never up to the challenge of tomorrow. and so… it retreats. 6. the future, in the form of hope, finds refuge in every collectivity, even in as little as two people. however, this future, in the form of hope, cannot breathe in a single person; and so, if such a future remains in an isolated person it will always be as a corpse. 7. in acting we believe the future to be a mythical kingdom which we may even set out to discover but which we would never want to discover. the future does not include me, i is my undoing— and so, in order to have the courage to undertake even the simplest action the future, our future, cannot exist in any real sense. |