Tag: writing

                                                        *

The most interesting task is to discover the shape of the now-moment. So it
becomes a matter of forms, more than a matter of structure.
What is the form of the present, and each succeeding present? Then, see
what-can-be-done with the form that is the real form of the here-now. Those here-nows
as the building blocks of some other structure. But the quality of the blocks
determines the possible ‘style’ of the overall structure.
Now, the form of ‘now’ can be determined only as I try to twist my body
(mental) until it FILLS somehow the moment, till it touches the borders of the
moment. The meaning then, cannot be in a superimposed fable, but is in the
modes found of being able to inhabit (fill the spaces of the present, and the
sequence of those modes. Meaning is-“how do you live in a space?” Spaces arise,
the way mutations are delivered’ upon the planet-and then life tries to inhabit
that new, mutant species. In the attempt to make an arisen space ‘habitable’ (a
species is also a ‘space’ for living)-meanings arise, such as “that plant is
poisonous.” I am concerned with such meanings. 

                                                          *

Meaning? Make an item (the play) that other items can allude to when they are
making an effort to crystallize their own meaning-to-themselves. The play doesn’t
allude to a real world, through having a ‘meaning’. Rather it is there to ‘give
meaning to’ anything else that wants to take meaning from it.
What we need are models for a ‘way-of-being-in-the-world’ that we’d like to
remember as a possibility. I’d like, myself, to be ‘tuned’ to the world in the way the
play I create is tuned. I establish the world of the play so that hopefully, I can turn
to it, and begin resonating to its rhythms. 

                                                          *

I generate a text, I make a composition out of what I ‘know’, that is to say-a
collection of ‘meanings’ carried around inside me. One meaning … in conflict
with another meaning. That means, of course, a continually shifting frame of
reference. That means of course … that there is no conclusion … no beginning,
middle and end … but, intermissions. Until I die, But then I won’t be able to
write about it. 

—Richard Foreman. “The Carrot and the Stick” (full text linked)

There is too much self in my writing…I do not want to be a windowless monad— my training and trainers opposed subjectivity strongly. I have struggled since the beginning to drive my thought out into the landscape of science and fact where other people converse logically and exchange judgements—but I go blind out there. So writing involves some dashing back and forth between that darkening landscape where facticity is strewn and a windowless room cleared of everything I do not know. It is the clearing that takes time. It is the clearing that is a mystery.

anne carson

from economy of the unlost, vii

[…] suddenly a mask falls, I say “flower” and, if I look, it’s the dead body of the flower – of all flowers – which appears. For words only signs embalming the absence of things. I write, I watch myself writing, and what do I see? I see myself in the process of replacing myself with another. Another who will bear my name, but will yet not be the one who, here and now, is writing: I. Besides, isn’t it language as a whole that is the Other with which all the I’s endeavour to identify themselves – all the I’s who write: I is Another.

To live. To write. To live looks again for To write so as to find itself at last before the mirror of revelation.What does it see? Exactly what each one can perceive by looking in his own eyes: night – black night. What I name is suppressed in the word that I name, and at every attempt looks like the centre of the eye, the centre which is a gaping hole. To change life, it was saying. Words can only naturalize life, give it an air of being alive in death. Words are that death agony which endures. No innocence. We are from the bad side. The order must be overturned. Revolution must be put into operation. Death must be changed. But how can we pass beyond the hereafter of our own end?

Then, we must again…experience the empty power of giving a meaning, again advance with naked face and unreservedly to what already names my absence, that is to say, my own name.

Bernard Noël from To Change Death?  (via mothwood)

Making an injury visible and public is usually the first step in remedying it, and political change often follows culture, as what was long tolerated is seen to be intolerable, or what was overlooked becomes obvious. Which means that every conflict is in part a battle over the story we tell, or who tells and who is heard.

Rebecca Solnit, from “Hope is an embrace of the unknown” (via theclassicsreader)
Source: theclassicsreader

I know unsolicited advice is obnoxious, so forgive me, but I think you show real promise and can’t help myself. Here it is: this tumblr shows you are a good art student. Let it show that you are a good artist.

I don’t post my writing on here because a lot of lit journals count self-publishing on blogs as a publication and it would preclude me from submitting. Although, tbf, I have something like 6,000 followers on here, which means that I would have a far larger audience than virtually any journal…so I am beginning to wonder what the point of holding off is. Aside from propping up an elitist  academia. 

Angel was Dead: what then remained? You may say that what remained was a simple and common object – a young woman in a bedroom with an inkpot. In other words, now that she had rid herself of falsehood, that young woman had only to be herself. Ah but what was herself? I mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I do not know…These were two of the adventures of my professional life. The first – killing the Angel in the House – I think I solved. She died. But the second, telling the truth about my experiences as a body, I do not think I solved. I doubt that any woman has solved it yet.

Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women”