Twisty Passages

A Text Adventure

[donavanhall]

splash state

Somewhere in the Archive (if you search for it, something I’m not going to bother to do right now : left as an exercise for you, the grad student who has for reasons of your own wandered into the Perilous Realm) I’ve written about the splash state.  I did not invent this term…

I resorted to a google search: “Splash State” is the title of a book of poems by Todd Colby published by The Song Cave.  I grabbed the following quote from the publisher’s web site:

The wonder and disappointment of every day in the city of love is Todd Colby’s subject. It amounts to a ‘splash state’, wherein everything gets shaken up, yet somehow miraculously finds its place. ‘The affection/ you show when things turn sour,/ and all the other complexities of now’ keep lovers alive to one another, ‘both sustainable and ecstatic.’ ‘We get older without noticing, another year has come and gone’. So, without our doing anything, time ennobles us and lightens the nature of love. Colby is a brilliant transcriber of these moments of time becoming themselves.

— John Ashbery

I’m quoting that mainly because I want to collect some words by John Ashbery into my [virtual arcades] project.

The way I use the term //splash state// (and this may have been how Todd Colby described it when I heard him talking with Michael Silverblatt years ago) is to describe that state achieved when writing (usually after an hour or two of sustained writing) when suddenly the words begin to gush out, they flow from my fingers into the keyboard and onto the screen and I know that as long as I keep moving my fingers the words will continue to come — in the splash state I am flying constantly forward.

[donavanhall]

When was the last time you went beyond yourself ?

When was the last time you went beyond yourself ? : Don’t let me impose on you.  When was the last time I went beyond myself ? What happened to our community festivals ? to carnival ? the fling of the mask-wearers ? Or do you go for the privatized forms of going beyond ? those capitalized entertainments ? We have become spectators of life, rather than participants : the old forms are approximated by stale, boring abstractions. / I can’t remember the last time I was on a seesaw.  When was the last time I saw a seesaw? :: Where have all the seesaws gone?

[donavanhall]

If communism is a good system that doesn’t work

If communism is a good system that doesn’t work : , and capitalism is a bad system that doesn’t work :: which would you choose?

[donavanhall]

If it had been a forbidden vegetable

If it had been a forbidden vegetable : — cauliflower (say) — evil might never have come into the world.

[donavanhall]

Why do I resist ?

Why do I resist ? : Pretend to be deaf ? No, I hear you… wait for it… / My partner is in the kitchen wielding a knife : dismembering, disemboweling—, WHACK ! ! [the blade flashing, down, slicing edge cutting through, coming to rest against the scored wood surface of the cutting board (am I developing late onset knife phobia ? can steel come alive ? the age of steel, when the inanimate becomes animate, a will of their own, I can hardly bear to grip a knife with shuddering : these are scary thoughts which have nothing to do with me, no hold over me) — what I see [with my ears and that inner vision which invades to become the object of my attention] is the severed finger, at the same time :: THE SCREAM, a spray of blood across the cutting board.  Amazing how quickly one can adapt to changing situations and dispense with dreams of a quiet evening in front of the fireplace reading a book.  / I know what to do.  I am calm, quick :: collect finger (still warm), store in snack-size ziplock bag + pack with/on ice : Here, wrap the stump with his rag + apply pressure, press hard.  I know it hurts.  No! : now dialing nine-one-one.

[donavanhall]

Why didn’t I start this years ago ?

Why didn’t I start this years ago ? : Cyclical time is represented sinusoidally as the peak and trough succession of beginning and quitting [leaving off=fall]. / Actually I could have resumed this months ago, but have been putting it off : re-beginning.  Playing the waiting game. / This is a test.  This only a test.  If this were an actual blog…

[donavanhall]

I will lose myself entirely in the labyrinth of my past

I will lose myself entirely in the labyrinth of my past. : I read feverishly… no (!) w/ great expectations and also a BIG what if ? What if ? the voice doesn’t speak to me. What if ? I pass the whole evening w/o experiencing that delightful little tickle that comes from the recognition of the delectable collectible thing.

[donavanhall]

The speed of literature

The speed of literature : My books follow digressive and double+sum paths.  The reader is encouraged to skiparound. : to weave a thread is to risk entanglement. / All proper reading is a question of speed.  Not to establish author-ities : one of the early titles for My Blog was slow work : as if reading could be work.  Writing too , the author must find the appropriate speed : if everyday, the author sits at his desk seeking speed [the splash state] then… I make no pronouns, no pre-scriptments.  When I start a new book, I shift gears.  The difficult part is learning when to apply the breaks.

[donavanhall]

My second childhood is proving to be theoretical

My second childhood is proving to be theoretical : which is to say that I am entering my second childhood, not the one of my “I” / I am entering+rewriting my second childhood as a way of returning to the eternal Middle Ages of youth, that endless summer of adolescent graal quests. Here [and not just on this blog] I have crossed that symmetric point in which the spiral castle is <behind|before> me.

[donavanhall]

I protest my own action

I protest my own action : of writing this blog again / a continuation, but in a different mode. / “A friend” said : you might have something to say about X. / Haven’t I proved — an “I” who has proved with careless abandon by writing [across multiple posts] <such words> on the virtual telegraph roll for 16 years !! : ? :: that I might have something to say about X and Y and Z ??

[donavanhall]

No, I’m sorry, I don’t have a social marketing plan

No, I’m sorry, I don’t have a social marketing plan :  F.U. capitalism / my persona isn’t for sale, no, I don’t want to be retweeted for being a purveyor of the new and secret humor.

[donavanhall]

My partner says I’m obsessive

My partner says I’m obsessive : This is not an official diagnosis of a qualified psychoanalyst.  “I” say+write this so you don’t misunderstand me : “I” am NOT O-C and “I” am NOT making fun of a serious affliction, but “my partner” makes no such distinctions [speaking privately] : not suspecting that his|her|their <humorous> quip will end up the subject of today’s blog post. / I haven’t confessed to him|her|they [all preferred pronouns] about resuming. / Still there’s something to the accusation+clinical observation :: I avoid writing anything here [on this blog] b/c of the responsibility [cross-eyed bear] I feel of presenting you (my imagined reader) with an image… as if you needed one to assist you with… to draw + bait your eye [“I”].  My compulsion is born of a feature : downstream this text flows into the social networking abyss into the great maw of Twitter which links back to <this space of my [autofictif] literature> and couples the blurb+title with a dummy image :: the artlessness of that placeholder offends my highly developed [read: obsessive] aesthetic sense. / Why can’t the algorithm substitute a beautiful image of a trout?  Even a fictional one !

[donavanhall]

Maybe I have something to say

Maybe I have something to say : I… I say+write “I” though there’s no reason to think that “I” has anything to do with <The Author and Me> IRL… / … have not been writing this blog because — and this is my excuse (!) : ? — that : “I” have been writing novels… for the last ten years !! / Novels in which the protagonist|M.C.|narrator writes a blog.  This is a lie, of course.

[donavanhall]

Visit Original Link

I don’t take photographs b/c once taken, the danger is the image will replace+become my memory of the thing.

[donavanhall]

Today, I’m resuming

Today, I’m resuming : always being brought back to the point of failure : again I’m writing <good|bad : habit> this blog.  Why?  for a trivial reason, something I read in a book, a line in a footnote no less / how easily I’m influenced / <a reed blowing in the wind> / Today, I am continuing after a long hiatus… Why?  I don’t know.  Perhaps, if I knew, I wouldn’t bother.

[donavanhall]

Study to be quiet

The gospel needs no defense against the speech of Zarathustra or against the missives of Queen Elizabeth’s learned tutor.  Instead of speaking, we should learn the art of silence.  Consider the lilies of the field.  Consider the birds of the air.  Consider the fish of the sea, Viator.  For lily, the bird, and the fish all know how to be quiet.  

If your rulers tell you, “The post-capitalist future in which you will be free is a state of mind,” then the lilies of the field will teach you.  If they say to you, “It isn’t realistic,” then the birds of the air will teach you.  If they say to you, “It will arise from the sea like the great god Cthulhu,” then the fish will teach you.  The post-capitalist future is inside you and outside you.  When you come to know this for yourselves, then you will expand the sphere of everyday life untouchable by capital through cultural production that enriches the common wealth (rather than the privately held wealth of the one percent).  You will understand that we are all comrades.  If you refuse to learn, then you will live in poverty, and you are poverty. [from The Gospel of Thomas according to Mark]  

St. Orpheus sings to us that the lilies, the birds, and the fish all know that the Way is older than all of us.  If the learned tutor of Queen Elizabeth warns us against what is written in the Book, let us examine what is that we ourselves have said about the Book.  If Zarathustra comes down from the mountain to speak, what harm will come if we sit patiently and listen?

He cannot keep silent and wait; this perhaps explains why the moment never comes for him at all.  He cannot keep silent; this perhaps explains why he did not notice the moment when it came for him.

SØREN KIERKEGAARD, “Look at the birds; the lily” p. 25

Consider the lilies of the field.  From them we learn to be silent, from them we learn to listen.  This is the message of Piscator to Viator: study to be quiet.

There is an art to remaining silent.  The power of speech is not license to babble incessantly, chattering and repeating what one hears imperfectly (uncritically adopting prescribed ticker-tape thoughts with which to fashion paper chains).  The one who has not learned first to be silent should not say what it is that has been said.  Reason (rationality) makes chatterboxes of us all, always demanding a response.  How does the writer remain silent?  What is the silence of writing?  Monsieur Blanchot?  You have your hand up?  No?  Yes, it’s better that way, isn’t it?

Why is it that we feel we must speak?  Do we already know?  Do we really know?  Queen Elizabeth’s learned tutor [see Black Renaissance pp. 253-259] has said something to which we feel moved by a vague discomfort to respond, to make some defense.  In not remaining silent, what do we wish to defend?  To impose some correction? To reverse the negation of some point of dogma?  Do we know?  How far are we willing to go in this offensive defense?  Is the ford worth dying for? [the Prose Lancelot]  Perhaps the wandering knight of the cart is just minding his own business, lost in his own thoughts, and so accomplishes for us (on our behalf) the silence that we are unable to grant.  It is this unexpected silence that prompts our attack.  The knight, dazed and confused, now doused in the water of the ford regards us with bemused bewilderment.  Where did you come from? asks the wandering knight?  Didn’t you see the “No Trespassing” sign? we say (incredulous).  (It has taken nearly two thousand years of dogmatic exposition to build a fortress whose foundations are crumbling around us.  The foundations have been shaken.  Shall we attack the barbarians at the gate or imagine a new world in which fortresses and walls are unnecessary?)

In the statement of our defense we create a counter-image which is merely the negative of that which has provoked our reflexive action, our breaking of that non-silent chorus of voices drawing up scripts from which we recite catechisms.  It is better that we turn away from this strange mirror and ask what created this distortion in the first place?  Is the mirror tarnished or does it reflect back an image that we cannot see because it is the shape of our own face?  If we accept the invitation of silence, we are able to distinguish two courses of action: (1) to smash the mirror, or (2) to launder our dirty robes.  Silence favors the latter.

[donavanhall]

The Project will consist of four principal dimensions

I selected the term “dimensions” as a descriptor of the four (little “p”) projects that make up the whole of the Project without any conscious reference to (or memory of) Roubaud’s discussion of dimensions in Bifurcation E of branch 2 (of le grand incendie de Londres), “The Prose of Childhood”.  Since the original Novel took the form of a quartet of books and the idea for how to organize that quartet came from Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet where three of the books correspond to the three spatial dimensions (or axes) and the fourth book to the time dimension (or axis), when I began to conceive of how to organize or structure the Project I wanted to preserve that connection, not just my own Novel or to Durrell’s set of novels, but to the theory of relativity (since Physics is principal element or recurring theme in my writings and functions in much the same way Mathematics does in Roubaud’s work).  The Novel consisted of four volumes.  How then did I arrive at a total of sixteen volumes for the Project?  (The historical account is scattered throughout the pages of these books and can be assembled by the interested reader since I have no intention of repeating myself here.  What I want to preserve here is a new justification assigned ex post facto after the (re)discovery of the eight dimensions and the process of doubling referred to by Roubaud in “The Prose of Childhood”.)  I’ll quote Roubaud [p. 475 & 476 of Jeff Fort’s translation of The Loop]: “In the tradition of the Arts of Memory, at least one author, from the fifteenth century, Lodovico da Pirano, seems to have had a similar intuition, organizing his mnemonic space according to eight dimensions associated in pairs along their respective axes, each of which is illuminated at both ends by a sun. [...] I’ll add too that in each of these eight dimensions, inner space is doubled, folding back upon itself by means of its own reversibility.”  While Roubaud makes no explicit reference to (the implied) sixteen dimensions, I’ll assert that each of the sixteen books of the Project corresponds to the eight dimensions plus the doubling of inner space.  So for each book there is both an inside and an outside, an interior and an exterior. (The term book is being used here not to refer to a physical unit of text, but a conceptual one associated with a particular dimension.)

Roubaud’s Project is also a memory project.  Each of his prose moments (emerging from a brief period of meditation) recounts or describes a memory-image.  The intent is not explicitly autobiographical, but practical inasmuch as anyone who is engaging in the investigation/exploration of memory (and its arts) must work upon (in) their own memory.  No apologies are required since the memory-image is not intended to reveal anything other than itself for the purposes of the experiment.  Roubaud’s intention in recording the memory-image as a prose moment is to affect a loss.  Once the memory-image becomes a prose moment, from then on, what is remembered is the prose moment, not the original memory-image.  (Roubaud makes this explicit in his interview with Marcella Durand printed in issue 108 of BOMB Magazine, 2009.)

Even before 1 November 2004, the day I mark as the beginning of the composition of the Novel, I had already been writing the novel.  [Blanchot: in order to write, one must already be writing.]  I recall…  sometime in 1998 or 1999, I flew to Albuquerque to attend a symposium organized at Sandia National Lab.  After spending all day at the lab with my host (a kindly late-career scientist eager to recruit proteges and help them advance their own careers), I returned to my hotel room.  I had nothing that I had to do that evening — I was completely free.  I could do anything I wanted.  So I opened my laptop and began writing.  In a couple of hours I had written five or six pages of a novel narrated by “Adam” about his college days and his troubled relations with his girlfriend “Melanie.”  I don’t know if any of this text still exists, I may have discarded it (I hope so!), but I’d begun (again, for that wasn’t the first time) to transform my memories into instances of fictional prose.  Never did it occur to me that I was writing over my memory.  I’d always assumed that a memory would always be there and could be accessed as many times as one wanted, but I hadn’t taken sufficient precautions to protect myself.  Naively, I knew that I needed to write from my experience, but I also knew that I needed to make stuff up since my intention was to write a novel and not a memoir.  Thus I began inventing new memories about my past.  I expanded on and enlarged the space of memory.  I animated the pictions into movies (images + sound + other invented sensory data) which I notated with words.  To disguise myself, I forced “Adam” to invert the situations I thrust him into.  I made him do the opposite of what I had done in real life (sometimes only just to see what might have happened).  I don’t know when I arrived at the realization that I’d been tampering seriously with my memory, perhaps it was in 2009 when I (temporarily) stopped writing as a result of an episode titled “The Gaze of Orpheus.”  It was the occasion of this glance over my shoulder just at the moment I should have stepped out of the gates of Hades that I understood that my blundering had come at a cost.

One more note about my theft (and translation) of Roubaud’s terminology concerning branches: I’ve resisted referring to the sixteen books of my Project as branches since I didn’t wish to limit each of the books to a single branch.  I’ve always assumed that the sixteen “books” could be divided into many physical volumes (of no set number).  For example, the original volume of the Project bore the title In the Labyrinth of Forking Paths.  Since this volume was intended to be short (not one of the fat books whose number is limited to sixteen), I referred to the volume as a “little tome”, but this was not wholly satisfactory since tome suggests a physical weight that these slim volumes did not (would not) have.  I could have adopted slim volume as the appropriate term (and I may yet do so), but now I’m inclined to think of these smaller (time limited) projects (projects within projects, fractals?) as branches.  After the composition of the first branch (Labyrinth), I immediately began composing the second branch which had a less satisfying but more descriptive title: The Weimar Republic.  Almost immediately (within the first week of my having begun writing the second branch) I planned (and began writing moments for) two other branches: Marginalia on Kerouac and Confessions of an Extemporizing Theologian (the latter concerned more or less with the theological speculations of Philip K. Dick).  To summarize: my use of branches refers to planned reading projects.  Each branch is associated with a curated reading list.  Most recently I organized another branch around a slim volume by another author, The Occult Features of Anarchism by Erica Lagalisse [PM Press].  There are two reasons why I decided to organize a branch including Lagalisse’s book: (1) a large number of the sources Lagalisse drew from to write her 117 page book are already in my rather extensive personal library, and (2) she makes no reference whatsoever to Philip K. Dick or Robert Anton Wilson even though devoted a number of pages to a discussion of the Illuminati, and since I’m something of an expert on Wilson (meaning I’ve read a book), I thought I should expand on Lagalisse’s project with my own contributions.  I have not yet assigned a title to this branch concerning studies of the occult and the Illuminati, but I quite like the sound of “occult origins of…”  If you have any suggestions, send them via tweet to @theangler.