Text originally published by Harmonium Press. Sounds and images made for a performance at the Emerald Tablet last spring.
On Multiple Orgasms
what green comes slow
comes gold comes easy
up the stairs finds
a painting in the room
where he sleeps
sings the last two
lines of a pyramid
picasso’s hands pulled
ripe into the air
Almost a year old!! Finally digging this up.
Thesis Reading from April 18th 2014 complete with awkward thank yous and a bad ass introduction poem by Dustin Senovic
I like how the recording looks like a PBS after school special
This is exciting!! Projections from my thesis project paired with a warped and tweaked live recording of a reading I did last tuesday with Maggie Philipsborn at the Alexiteric Tea Clinic in Oakland!! Maggie was playing the hang and halo, I was reading. I love the idea of this being another way to access the poems in Listening Hour (a book length project of poems I am working on). To me, this combination of moving image/color/and sound are where the poems live/come from/shape shift into.
It’s been a minute.
Let the experiments/process continue.
Going to post some projects I have floating around that need homes.
It feels nice to have them all in one place.
This is what I’ve been up to:)
These were mostly made to teach myself how to use recording devices and sound editing programs. But I feel very strongly about the second piece. I used an avatar voice engine to translate several poems I wrote about the annunciation into arabic. What a crazy story that needs to be re-told! Real talk! The next step to this project will involve feeding the translations back into the engine using another language, eventually looping back to english to see how the story/sounds change over time. I like thinking of the trillions of layers of translation that saturate nearly every story/myth humans hold onto. Every single word/image we hold sacred/attach meaning/believe to be true is just a translation of another word/image. This spiral baffles me. Even sound and color are translated!! It makes me crazy to think about.
I’m really digging ghost collaborations. I like the idea of collaborating with artists whenever and however you like, even without them knowing. This makes me feel like the lines between the dream worlds and waking worlds are thin, malleable, accessible. The art created in this strange, generative sphere, echo this in-between realm, the half dream. The dream dream. I like thinking about this so much. For this project, I used an incredible, non narrative book of photography by Phil Elvrum as a backdrop for my writing. I wanted to insert something very personal, and narrative into the images, a version of a story. I cut up lyrics from the entire album, CLEAR MOON, to construct my own, personal poem, one that feels eerie and honest. My dream was for the ghosts in my writing to connect to the ghosts in each image.
These stills are from a live video project I did a few weeks ago to culminate this version of the collaboration. The images were projected, and I improvised flipping the pages, finding the “right place” for the text. There was also a sound component. Waves and walking through the redwoods and beaches of the pacific northwest.
Here is a video from Sweet Ghost’s release party at the Rickshaw Stop. “When Angel Island Caught on Fire”, and portions of “Bury My Heart” were captured by Last Wave Film.
On July 25th, my new chapbook, Sweet Ghost, was officially released. WOW. The release date culminated with a reading and magic showcase of some of my favorite musicians/human beings. The evening also marked the release of Annie Girl and The Flight’s new self titled album. Annie Girl is making some of the most honest, important, heart charged music that there is, it would be smart to listen.
For the last year or so, I’ve been collecting images and sounds that I’ve felt best communicate the heart of the poems in Sweet Ghost. Four years ago, I was gifted a tin box of 8mm film strips that my mother and father shot in the ’70s. Most of the footage is of our family. Birthdays, Christmas, playing in the yard. I was 0-3 years old during the production of these films. The color, grain, and strange rituals documented, woke up a series of literal and metaphorical ghosts/memories for me. By weaving the images of these film strips with images and sounds that I have created, I tried to construct an alter, a spell, a re-creation of memories real or imagined.
The video here is a portion of what I projected/used as a backdrop/sound collage for the inaugural reading of Sweet Ghost.
I flew into Boston last week, and thought Axl Rose was sitting three rows ahead of me. I immediately imagined writing an entire book of poems about (for) him, and also wondered if he was still alive. I came up with a few titles: The Ghost of Axl Rose, Living with Axl, Axl on an Airplane, and my favorite, Contemplations of Guns and of Roses.
I really hope I follow through with this project.
Here are the first few poems.
1.
Sweet Child of Mine
You are bloated
and smell like Dexedrine
Why aren’t you sitting
in first class?
2.
Welcome to the Jungle
Your album art
made me feel
complicated
3.
Patience
You can’t find your belt
and we’ve run out
of leave in conditioner again.
Your Grammy is missing
4.
Paradise City
None of the girls
wear bras.
And the boys
read books
and take you to the movies.
Everyone is fucking
And everyone feels free
There are no mice in the house,
not ever.
A couple weeks ago, I purchased a flex-a-tone. I love it so much, and vow to record weird sound poems with it, forever. Three strange wind chimes/bells also surfaced in the house. They are from France, and are rocking my world. This is a video poem, showcasing these new awesome sounds. The images are from the living room, the text is the last line to a poem, “To Leo, on his Lunch Break,” which is featured in my forthcoming chapbook, Brave, Wicked Sailboat. “To Leo…” is a separate poem, having little contextually to do with this video. I like to think of the two pieces flowing into each other. The last line of “To Leo…” becoming the first line of this new poem. A sort of call and response.
To Leo, on his Lunch Break
Old man, in your powder blue suit,
I adore you. Eat your eggs
and think about the Dodgers.
Save your orange for last
and watch the trains go by.
You have a book about birds
your name’s Leo.
Let me think about you
at the ocean. Let me think about you
with an old friend,
with a lightning bug,
with a woman wearing panty hose
and red hair.
Let me call the woman Helen.
Come here Helen.
Tell me not to be so sad,
to see you eating alone.
This is a diner, remind me.
People eat alone here.
Everyone is alone, even you.
And aren’t you a little happy?
Don’t you know someone
who can make you twist and glow?
Cat Bones in the Flower Beds 