What Isn't Aesthetic? And Other Ruminations

I'm going to write this even though it's doomed to failure, all the finites are veritable nothings compared the the Infinite. We might could even argue they're incommensurate meaning there is no common measure between them therefore it is impossible to compare. Perhaps this is the necessity of allegory, the purpose of an art and the perpetuator of irrationals in our overly-empirical society. None of this makes sense, it makes nonsense. I never blogged as an academic, I'm with Debord on spurning footnotes and sourcing, but I'll quit with the apophasis.

Coomaraswamy wrote a killer essay destroying modern conceptions of "aesthetics." Lets just look at the word, that's what he did. Lets accept this definition of aesthesis as "an unelaborated elementary awareness of stimulation." Essentially we're talking about a sensual activity. Some synonyms cited include "sensation," "perception," "visual perception," "olfactory sensation," etc. When we talk about an "aesthetic experience" we're talking about something that happens to our body from the outside, something that affects us, stimulates our senses.

With "perception" is where a sort of duality emerges. Perception we find defined as "the act or faculty of apprehending by means of the senses or of the mind." Here we're not limited to sensory input, we're caught in the infinitely regressive quagmire that is Intellect. An "apprehending of the mind." What, pray tell, is apprehended? Apprehend itself means in a sense "to perceive." We're getting a bit circular here, and then it just seems pointless, but traditional conceptions of Life, Time, etc. tend to be cyclic instead of linear anyways.

An aesthetic experience is, accordingly, first a stimulation of the body and then an apprehension of this stimulation by the mind. Now we get to the slipperyness that is "aesthetics" as a science of beauty. We're born into an endless stream of stimulations apprehended by the mind. In some sense the entirety of life is an "experience" of sensory stimuli "apprehended," or perhaps made-sense-of, by the mind, by processes of cognition, etc. At this point it may be advantageous to reference Huxley's discussion of "Doors of Perception."

What happens when you're born? You're overwhelmed by new sensory experiences your burgeoning mind must make some sense of. If your mind doesn't make any "sense" of them, you're not able to participate in the social structure and culture of the world. We learn as we grow to make distinctions (science) as to what is important and what isn't, what we ought pay "attention" to and what we may be just as well off disregarding. The process takes years. At first we're charmed and dissociated babies: all the surfaces, sounds, sights, all stimuli are dazzling and mysterious. Everything gets a touch, a sniff, a look and most times a taste. All the stimuli, all sensory input is examined, is "apprehended" and assessed. We live and breathe as miniature aestheticians.

As we grow, we amass some scientific tools. Science as a word comes from roots meaning "to separate" or "to divide." Perhaps because of our Will and drive, we make assessments and judgments about which bits of sensory input are most useful. Which are the tastes, sounds, sights, etc. that we must focus our "attention" or "apprehension" on as to be most effective in the world? Gets real close to questions of ethics and morality real quickly. What's an "effective" behavior? What is "useful"? Perhaps these are all just as pointless questions as that at the core of aesthetics: What is "beautiful?"

But we can't stop here. Lets jump to Kant's proposed "aesthetic attitude." We might define it as an "attitude of detached and disinterested, but engaged, contemplation." First of all, we'll note how silly it seems to posit an "attitude" that is aesthetic when the very substance of our Life Experience is aesthesis (sensory stimulation). In my humble opinion one would be hard-pressed to find someone roaming this real world without incurring sensory stimulation. But this is beside the point and there are some ways in which this concept can be applicable, and, yes, useful.

The artist performs a remarkably curious task of assigning an "aesthetic" value to an object. This "object" need not be a physical thing, but may also be a process, a lapse of time, a series of events, etc. The artist, the genius, "sees" this object in a certain way, approaches it with a curious "attitude." Now within the modern mindset, we look to these "administers," these "artists' for what to consider as an "art," what to consider an "aesthetic object" or experience. But in reality we each have innumerable aesthetic experiences every moment, what the artist does is merely assume an attitude.

Now we'll get to my proposed spectrum. What are we considering "aesthetically valuable"? At our birth, when the "doors" are open, all our sensory stimuli are treated with the same awe, the same sublimity with which we later treat art objects, aesthetic objects. We then are nurtured into a society in which, by necessity, we make judgments about what is important to view with this attitude of awe, and what isn't. The reality of it is that all these "objects" are all equally dazzling, all worthy of examination, all embodiments of beauty, etc. What I propose is an idea that an artist has more of their "doors" open, assumes an attitude receptive to the dazzle in all things, and this allows them to choose particularly effective exemplars of this sublimity.

It gets kind of close to being a little crazy, having a "split mind," or not being able to make distinctions between what is "valuable" or "useful" and what isn't. I've noted this with autistic children as well. In my view, the issue is a sort of inability to discern between what is socially important stimuli and what isn't. Whereas a cognitively normal person knows what sounds, what sensory input is most important for sociability with other humans, these children can't make the distinction. This manifests in a seeming ability to hear better than others or notice things that a typical person doesn't. In my view this isn't because they possess special sensory abilities, but because they lack what others have as far as discerning ability.

The genius sees the worth of all beyond the confines of human society. There is no distinction made between what is "important" for participation in the Logos and what is important on a scale beyond humanity. Whereas it is useful for us to note those stimuli which make us more effective persons in the social sphere, what is admirable in an artist or a person with curious thought is their ability to note those stimuli which, while they may not be socially useful in the conventional way, are encapsulations of an essential quality of a Universe that human beings are merely part and parcel of. We see at one point of this spectrum those who have concern merely with what is useful socially, and on the other extreme those dazzled by both applicable stimuli for humans, and stimuli that has nothing to do with us at all.

I know I've wandered on this one. I have no discipline. It's difficult to force myself to write things out, to get to the task. I feel like de Lubicz as I've written before. As much as I depend upon word analysis, philology for argument, words and symbols remain hopelessly inadequate. The Infinite cannot be captured in a finite and writing out more words to try and capture it with some hope of getting it "all" in is delusional. It demonstrates no knowledge of the meaning of Infinite, a word that means very clearly "not finished." A symbol is by nature finished, static, the Universe, this Life and Being are dynamic. There's a perpetual tension between the two that's been discussed by men and women across all culture and era. To suppose we are the only ones with an insight into this quandary is ridiculous. Keep loving, keep being, keep trying, it never ends.

On that note I'll close with a little Tagore paraphrased by a student years later. Often we are dazzled by that which is exotic, which we have no schema for, which we've never encountered. Often we are most receptive to that which is novel and new to our ears. We note this in music listening habits, artistic consumption trends and otherwise. People have a tremendous yearning for something "new" and "original" though the Bible is quick to tell us there is "nothing new under the Sun." The desire and drive remains. It's only difficult to have those fresh and curious eyes about those things which are most immediate to us, most local. To find a beauty and a worth in those things which we've learned to tune out is a true accomplishment. As Tagore has said, "I have spent a fortune traveling to distant shores and looked at lofty mountains and boundless oceans, yet I haven't found time to take a few steps from my house to look at a single dew drop on a single blade of grass."

Metrical Studies, Astrological Musics and Meanderings...

Lets talk about this chart for a little while since I haven't written in a while. I've been doing a lot of experiments with metrics in poetry, with prosody, and learning how to chart natural phrases. I'm planning a series of sonnets that may be in a sort of ghazal mode, as in they're going to approach themes of love and separation. Some of the things I've been thinking of as hallmarks or points of guidance for it are some of Berryman's Dream Songs (specifically for their use of recurrent characters), Borges' sonnets on some of his literary and other idols, and some Shakespeare. I never read any Shakespeare outside of school until recently and it only just started making sense. Sometimes I feel like the course I've followed for myself, my own sort of curriculum since 2006, has lent me a pretty solid yet amorphous foundation for further experiments.

But lets get back to this chart for a minute. I've also been learning a lot of geometry, I want to learn the calculus, especially its necessity. I'm a huge Borges fan, I read Borges learned Zeno's paradoxes from his father on a chess board. There are so many beautiful and romantic things about that image to me. Follow me long enough and you'll know two of my biggest idols are Borges and Duchamp. I'm imagining myself right now watching them play chess, something about the Ruy Lopez or a Spanish Opening. I tried for a long time to learn chess openings, some tactics and strategies, but I'm not into it enough to practice on a daily basis. Apparently I'm into writing and singing enough to practice those things, I tweet enough to aggravate the living shit out of most people and if you hung out with me I'm constantly either singing or playing Precorder...

I still haven't made it to the chart! This is a post about a nonchart, a nonmap and a nonplan. I been reading this terrific biography on Tagore and it has really touched me. I'm not one for, what seems to me, the forced sappiness of the Lin sect, but I'm all about sincerity in love in the mode of Hafez. I keep wondering about oppositions, the nature of the world in its dualism, how object and subject oppose and all the concomitant polemics. I think I read once about a "passive" oriental mindset, something opposed to the Nietzschean "superman," or active principle. I'd guess its like a Kinsey scale, there is no black nor white, there is merely a spectrum in between. But sometimes gradations and solid degrees are good tools, are good ways for us to frame an analysis.

Lets see how long he can avoid the chart.. I've also done some studies of chakra, though when I say I "study" it usually means about 6 hours or at most two days. I'm pretty keen sometimes, though. I did some drawings mapping out what I perceived as a concordance between 7 scale degrees and Western accepted 7 chakra positions. It made a lot of sense to me when I read it at the time, the seat of voice being 5th chakra, seat of melody in song being 5th degree. I'm working on a cosmology of sorts, ha. I'm always working especially by not working. Maybe I'll look into the etymology of work, Debord said "never work"? Reed wrote a song about Warhol, about Drella, and the lyric was "the most important thing is work." I guess that's why I find myself writing this today, weasel words and all.

Finally lets look at this chart! I promise! Vernal equinox was about 10 days ago, we see Sun a little past 10th degree Aries. Aries is the initator, the beginning of the cycle. Vernal point because it begins our Spring, Aries is associated with the head and with the sprouting of the seed. Here we see a conglomeration of luminaries. Mercurial intellect just turned around (retrograde) and initiates communications; expansive Jupiter sits mid-Aries opposed to Saturn, we get a fiery expanse; Sun soon conjoins Jupiter in this opposition, putting benefic, good luck, ego across from the scythe, Father and karmic ender Saturn. I wrote a little analysis once about the recent revolutions and how it's curious that Uranus (the Revoluter) is at Aries point for these events. Still we see Mars soon conjoining Uranus, so the conflict does not end soon, it stays martial.

Essentially the chart stays stressed. Pluto runs the T-square from 7 degrees Capricorn. Cardinal signs are shook by a series of squares. When Sun hits 8 or so degrees Cancer we'll get another flux of energies as it completes a Grand Cross. All of this is vague and awful. Astrology takes the truth of astronomy and grafts a traditional method of interpretation. We take the Moon's cycle and use it as an analogue for longer cycles. I feel a bit demoralized? The magic of my art is my vulnerability. I'll keep working through these metric studies and then the sonnet (song) cycle with the Buddha, with Ibn Arabi's Her, with all the love and heft of attachment/detachment will emerge. It's my malware, I assume the most innocuous form to infiltrate the system. Sorry I meander, stay lovely all. Especially those who don't read.

Illusory Subject and Object, Or Advaita: Non-Dualism

Many ideas about love and separation, many ideas about di-vision and duality in manifest Uni-verse and concomitant suffering. Perhaps we explore the meaning of Advaita, the re-semblance of separation demonstrated via musical consonance and dissonance, and many of the finite and thus finished signs an other has coined to mark static moments of existence. This will probably be exceedingly esoteric.

Been doing much study of musicality and manifold existence. Geometers map this world of forms in many ways. Korzybski has illumined distinction between map and territory for us exquisitely, but let us not assume he was the first. Essentially we suffer as result of di-vorce of Subject and Object. Some traditions agree on the illusory nature of this dis-tinction. In fact, the Upanishads exposit the essential equality of Subject and Object in their mantra "Tat Tvam Asi" meaning "That Art Thou."

The essential characteristic of the World is its mystery. Infinite means in-finite, unfinished, ever dynamic. All static representation of nonstatic existence is doomed by its very nature to failure. Only the unfinished is perfect. All expression, beit through glyph, image, act, even human life itself is doomed to finitude. Thus it suffers an impossibility of perfection. By their very nature all expressions of the Infinite (Absolute under any name) are assured inadequacy. Perhaps this is the Secret which a-muses mystics, quite literally ceases their thinking and sets them alaugh.

Advaita, as we mentioned earlier, is quite literally "non-duality." An essential aspect of tolerance, altruism, and love of fellow beings is recognition of similitude. All being and becoming are part and parcel of the One Song, widely known as Uni-verse, the singular Unity ever turning incapable of representation in static symbol. Much artistic practice since time immemorial, and especially, and quite curiously, in contemporary practice attempts to re-present this dynamism. The classic symbolism of the yin and yang we find here applicable. Another theme touched on repeatedly by Mowlānā is the coincidence of opposites.

Essentially all manifestation suffers this illusory duality. Conceptions of "good" have no hope of existence without concomitant "evil." The same is true of ideas of "right" and "wrong," "beautiful" and "ugly," and even "true" and "false." An acceptance, and perhaps prostration, submission, to the Uni-verse, the one song, a true tolerance of necessity must embrace all aspects of the Universum. The ugly is necessary for the existence of the beautiful, just as evil is necessary for the existence of good. Passive is necessary for the existence of active, favoring either principle sets one off balance and perhaps this is the meaning of the Buddha's "middle way."

We may explore, as I've mentioned, the patterns of manifold existence in many ways. Perhaps the most universal of these means of approach is that of music. A tonality is the establishment of a base unit and the dance of a music is quite literally differing relations in sequence about this Source. For example, a consonant re-lationship such as a fifth has a close relationship with the dynamic cycle of the tonic. This is represented by the ratio of 3:2 and we hear the ease of the interval and characterize it as consonant. The nature of music proceeds likewise in a similar fashion.

Other intervallic relationships we hear suffer a quite literal dis-integration of base consonance. Other ratios imperfect into dis-ease, so we find that a third suffers a 5:4 ratio, while a relationship we tend to hear as dissonant, a minor second, suffers further a 16:15. Perhaps this separation from Source is what gives differing musics their character. In consonance we hear the near-union of separated pitches, in dissonance we hear the agony of their separation. It was Rūmī and the other Persian expositors of ghazal who focused their art on themes of love and separation. In music itself we hear differing cycles in differing relationships, different degrees of separation.

Perhaps, indeed, the nature of a tonal music is an apt analogy for our intervallic re-lationship with the Divine, Brahman, the Universal Ground of All Being. Each and every one of us, all aspects and degrees of manifestation relate in some degree to the Absolute. Some have an apparent relation of ease and this is perhaps voiced, as in music, as a con-sonance. Some, however, have a relation of dis-ease, and this is voiced as a dis-sonance. While one we may judge as "pleasing" or "beautiful" and the other as "displeasing" or "ugly," both owe their re-lationship to Source, the Silence that underpins them, the Nothing that allows them. In this sense it may be valuable for us to recognize the debt owed Source for both ease and dis-ease. In fact, even the most dissonant of intervals (some explored by La Monte Young and others) must at some point re-meet the Source...

Beauty and truth are tremendous re-minders of the Unity from which we emerge. Theories of the Big Bang and the birth of our body's elemental building blocks in the stars are merely scientific re-presentations of our emergence from the Source, our di-vergence from primordial Unity. It is perhaps valuable for us to re-mind our selves and others, continually re-member the base, the tonic about which we dance, to which we relate. As the Tao Te Ching voiced: paths that may be taken are not the only paths, names that may be named are not eternal names. In this sense all paths and names become essentially identical, and each becomes a mode or tool for remembrance of God. All voicings are necessary, and their necessity is their beauty. I've decided I must love always, I must love all ways, and only hope a demonstration of this behavior benefits an other.

Authorship and Authority: Why I Didn't Write This

"I love you!" Who wrote that? Ought you claim it? With the proliferation of media that we've seen over the course of the last 20 years and beyond, intellectual property and authorship have become hot-button issues. Social media and the concomitant applications offer services that allow us to "Share" information that we've encountered on the web with others very easily. One of the most oft-used features of an operating system is copy-and-paste. While artists have always dealt with issues of borrowing and sourcing, technologies in the information age bring these issues to the forefront.

Problems of self and property have been touched on by philosophers, social critics and others since before history. It was renowned textual and conceptual artist Jenny Holzer who included as one of her truisms, "private property created crime." It was the infinitely influential Rousseau who once noted that "the first man who ... fenced in a piece of land [and] said "This is mine" ... was the true founder of civil society." Preaching about the faults of property and the "I," "me," and "mine" of society, however, is not the impetus of this essay.

It has been drawn to my attention that there is a book being published collecting the tweets of some of those involved in the recent revolution in Egypt. Jraissati's article begins with an explication of authorship dilemmas in the digital age. She posits that "the dematerialization of cultural products is in the process of revolutionizing the notion of the “book.”" Not only is this "dematerialization" process changing ideas about what is or isn't a book, it is affecting conceptions of art across all media. Mainstream publishing and distribution is not the only avenue in which we may note changing ideas regarding intellectual property.

An examination of the terms "intellectual property" and "copyright" may now become appropriate. Intellectual property rights consist of laws in which "owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs." Intellectual property is slightly different from notions of copyright in that copyright protects not the ideas, but their expression. While we have each had the idea I've begun this discussion with, "I love you!," it seems absurd to claim an ownership of the idea or its expression.

It is curious that authorship shares much of an etymological basis with the word "authority." In the same sense in which we use the word "authority" to mean a certain degree of power over something, authorship as it relates to copyright and intellectual property grants an individual a certain power over an idea or expression. It is obvious how tenuous these distinctions become when we begin to consider some of the details of copyright law. Copyright grants an author rights over an "original work." While for some it may not be difficult to determine what is "original" and what isn't, considering the never-ending dynamism of language and thought may give us insight into what I consider the absurdity of "originality."

Jraissati's article states that "tweets are not copyrightable because they are too short." From this we may extrapolate that the components of a work, be they words, sounds, phrases, graphemes, lines, colors, etc., are not what is protected under law, but the composition of them all in tandem, a certain unity in their arrangement, is what is protected. Many artists in the past 100 years have toyed with ideas of replicas and reworkings. For example, Kenneth Goldsmith has completed tasks that include transcribing daily the New York Times newspaper, as well as writing out in excruciating detail the weather reports over a certain period of time.

Yet another, and perhaps more interesting, study was done by writer J. L. Borges regarding Don Quixote. Borges' "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," explores issues of authorship, authority and property by positing a writer who goes beyond just translating the classic work of Cervantes and eventually recreates the document word for word through a sort of immersion in the original author's atmosphere. I myself have created curious "poetry" regarding Borges, ideas of literary forgery and the accompanying concern with authorship and property.

Issues of identity, likeness and similitude have been explored extensively by philosophers since time immemorial. One of the best studies as regards works of art and their ontological replications may be found in Arthur Danto's "Transfiguration of the Commonplace." Danto begins his study, which presents his institutional theory of art, by positing a set of blue ties that are empirically nondifferentiable, but have different causal histories. One tie was painted blue by a child, one was used as a rag by an illustrious artist, etc. His study of artist/author intent and the concomitant acceptance or nonacceptance by an art community gives a different insight into issues of authorship.

Finally, I'll consider the concept of authority and authorship in a religious context. It is widely known that the prophets in Semitic religions did not make claim to what they preached. From Abraham to Muhammad, each of these figures explained that the knowledge and language they were disseminating was not their own but that of a Supreme Being. Maimonides has written extensively on these issues, influencing Spinoza and thus most of modernism. These people make no claim that what they were saying was theirs and had no concern for their "right" to keep their expression free from copying, distribution, or adaptation. We find an applicable term in the tradition of Hinduism with the word "avatar." This term means a "deliberate descent of a deity from heaven to earth." In traditional symbolism we may interpret this as a manifestation of Source in our terrestrial realm.

It is also interesting that in the digital age we use the word "avatar" as "a computer user's representation of himself/herself." In a sense we are participating in an analogous relationship to the traditional description of a descent of a deity. We as users become the Source of our identity and authorship while our avatars are our re-presentations in a different realm, that of the Internet-work. It seems we have come full circle. Our "avatars" are talismans or placeholders for ourselves as authors or seats of authority (power) over our content. We see across all social media platforms a connection between our online self-image and our content. Online content in social networks typically consists of a user's name or image directly next to their content. As mentioned previously, however, it is easy using appropriation techniques such as copy-and-paste to separate content from user.

We find yet another striking example of this separation of content from author, work from authority, with rap music and DJing. Bourriaud has done a great study of the use of appropriation in contemporary arts with his Post-Production. All across mainstream radio we hear popular musics that are not only built from the samples of prior musics, but relentlessly reference and borrow from each other. It is possible to hear not only the recurrence of a typical voice (Lil Wayne might appear in a series of songs on popular radio at any moment), but we hear the same phrasings borrowed. While a hit like "Fancy" may have its own "original" content, another song will shortly thereafter reappropriate the phrasing for its own ends.

Because of the technology and automatons we've constructed in our Enlightened modern society, we have access to a plethora of information with an ease never before seen in history. It is possible for me to appropriate information from millions of sources within minutes where in years past I would have had to travel distances to sources of collected information and then perform the menial task of copying by hand. Freedom of media and access to information are changing the world around us rapidly. We see this in the recent political developments in North Africa and the Middle East. Ideas of intellectual property and copyright are being challenged and blurred by such technologies as Twitter and others. What one considers as "mine" is changing. I yearn, like Rousseau, for the moment when none of us "claims" a thought or expression as original and we each realize the debt we owe to the silence, the nothing, the Source that allows us. Until then I demonstrate only love, and insist that I didn't write this!

Why Tao isn't a Minimalist and Poncho is kind of a Dadaist...

Here's a polemic on some of my poetic contemporaries and some younger fellow Millennials who use the Internet as a new vehicle for art and expression. I keep reading everywhere people talking about a "literary minimalism" that Tao Lin is a proponent of. Is this the same minimalism that Pound and Williams expounded? I just don't understand it, I don't think people understand what minimalism is? Is a minimalism "Less is more"?

Some of the discussions I've briefly perused on the subject of contemporary literary minimalism make a reference to the "most fundamental features" of a form. Other definitions I've quickly rounded up term a minimalism a use of the "fewest and barest essentials or elements" or a "style or technique that is characterized by extreme spareness and simplicity." Spare and sparse mean thin or meager, mean there is not a lot to it. While we may argue that Lin and others of this "school" embody sparse themes and employ a simple diction, I think the style is far from a return to the fundamentals of a form.

Lets examine this more closely. We may consider Lin, with most-illustrious Wikipedia, a "writer." A writer works with language, there are many forms which "writing" may take. Lin is known as a writer of poetry and prose, perhaps an occasional essay, etc. I'm feeling the crux of my argument shift. Now we may have to delve into what "form" means. What is the form of writing? What is writing? "Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols" We can use these ASCII characters as our textual symbols, we can appropriate a differing script, perhaps an abjad, etc. A writer works with the form of text and text is merely a set of symbols.

Now we'll return to minimalism. Were we a writer with a minimalist tendency, what would the "fewest and barest essentials" be? As we've established, a writer merely works with signs and symbols, arranges them in a formation conjuring a meaning (or non-meaning). We may debate at this point whether the "bare" essentials of the writing form are the characters, the words, the sentences, etc. or if they are the themes, emotive contents, evoked meanings. A keen reader may not see the slippery-ness of our essentials assertion. Could we not just as easily find a photographer, a sculptor, an architect, etc working with "themes, emotive contents, evoked meanings"? These are basic elements of art beyond merely writing or literary formalisms.

It would seem at this point, on basis of this argument, that the "most fundamental features," true minimalist formal elements, could not be related to semantics or anything involving meaning, as these elements are not exclusive to the writerly form. Therefore, a true minimalist writer would strip his or her language of superfluous characters and graphemes, of extraneous lines of text, etc. in order to draw attention to the fundamental components of the writing form. Many modernist writers have done this in a very formal way. Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" is a truly formal minimalist composition. Inspired by orientalism and the haiku form, he very literally reduced his form, text, to its most simple and fundamental elements.

Now we may approach the other side of our argument supposing some may retort Lin and others are not "minimalist writers" but "minimalist artists." If we qualify these individuals as artists instead of writers we may avoid the pitfalls of characterizing them as minimalists based on their thematics and semantics alone. An academically noted portion of minimalist music (a kin in art of writing) is repetition and iteration of figures. Early minimalist composers such as Steve Reich focused on the repetition of a single phrase and the changes perceived by a subject over the course of extreme reiteration. Lin and others of this supposed school may be classified loosely as minimalist artists under this criterion.

An insistence on over-erudition, the repetition of simple sentence patterns and excessive over-detailing may be viewed as an extension of the minimalist aesthetic of repetition and the consequent monotony. While this may support themes of "spareness and simplicity," as we've noted in previous definition of minimalism, these are not the "barest elements" of the form. Themes continually explored in Lin and his mimes' works are those of alienation and separation from others in a real, physical and personal way via superfluous technology. These themes are easily noted by preponderance of "low" diction, gChat conversations turned into literary "material," and insistence in the narrative of mentioning the technological apparatus in various ways. The style reminds me of machine language, it's dry and unfeeling in it's feeling and journalistic in its totality.

There is much art of all epoch and era that falls into this category. Some have noted the oriental tendencies of some of these so-called neo-Dadaists, but touching on themes of alienation via technology, the emptiness of life and its concomitant suffering are no hallmarks of a "new" style. These are themes touched on by great artists of all epochs, from those depicting the Buddha through the centuries, to Eliot's "Wasteland," to the Futurist's fascist celebration of the violence of machinery. In other words, classifying a writer as a "minimalist" because of the themes he or she purports would be yet another slippery slope.

I'll end this with a few words on the gross mischaracterization of writers like Poncho Peligroso and Steve Roggenbuck as "neo-Dadaists." More a scourge on and polemic against nearly-a-century-old Dadaism than a criticism of said poets, Dixon's complaint unfairly characterizes Dada as merely a revived "primitivism." While Dada certainly embraces low culture, everyday language, simple dialect and nonsense sound, the gist of the movement was a destruction of the status-quo of institutions. Be they social, political, academic or artistic, Dada challenged and attempted to destroy the standards and accepted notions of these institutions.

The anti-art experiments proposed by Duchamp, Ball, Tzara and other Dadaists were not merely grasps at low culture for a grasp's sake. Dixon's base criticism of the mundane, monotonous and repetitive works of these "neo-Dadaists" is that the "self comes in the way." These writers most certainly fill their works with seemingly endless lists of detailed and superfluous information. The true paragons of Dada, however, were producers of artifacts that challenged the accepted notions of the art institution. Whether it be Duchamp's "Fountain" or Rauschenberg's "Portrait of Iris Clert", these works' main impetus was the questioning of the standards of the artworld.

Additionally, terming these writers neo-Dadaist is a fallacy because, in fact, Rauschenberg and others were already deemed neo-Dada half a century ago. Many artists have followed in the footsteps of early modernists in the field of Dada. While many Dadaists proclaimed their "art" was no art at all, this does not mean their dialogue and work doesn't interact with the institution. Dixon's claim that Dadaism "isn't art" is outrageous in its audacity and falsity. The thinkers and doers who participated in the movement and its offshoots quite obviously recognized their products and projects as art. This is evidenced in their intentional polemic with recognized art personalities and ideas. The artists themselves, Hugo Ball in particular, recognized their work as "an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in." In this way, Roggenbuck and Peligroso's works are in the spirit of Dada, and this polemic against them demonstrates their Dadaism.

Criticism of this "neo-Dadaist" Internet poetry as full of "self" is also a bit ludicrous. Dixon herself is the author of appetitive, self-concerned poems. Concern with the minutiae of "me," "I" and "my" is not just a tendency of "neo-Dadaists," but a tendency of nearly all poets and artists. We speak about our bodies, our thoughts, our desires, our needs, our feelings, our emotions, our perceptions, etc. Much of the greatest Dada arts, as I've said, spoke not of a person but of the art institution. Many of the techniques used to promote Peligroso and Roggenbuck's works are exactly that, critiques of the established poetic institution. Criticism and dismissal by editors, writers, academics and other players in the institutional game are exactly the purview of Dadaism and the reasoning for Peligroso's call for a freeing of language.

I think I've meandered enough in this one, wandered helplessly from theme to theme without a hope of backbone. But essentially my point is this: Lin isn't a "minimalist," he's a writer; Peligroso and Roggenbuck don't write "neo-Dadaist" poetry, they just write regular old appetitive poetry about being emotive and having desires. What is Dada about their endeavors isn't their content, its their insistence on challenging traditional poetic norms, including vernaculars of now in their works, and refusing to bend their creative output to what is accepted by editors, academes or otherwise. In the end, however, I won't shirk from the argument like Peligroso has in saying he "did not mean that all language everywhere was poetry." When you can tell me once and for all what "poetry" is, better yet "art," and without exclusion of a myriad of counter-examples, get back to me. Until then, I float amum a none with an infinitely tolerant aesthetic attitude.

On Post-Internet Poetics...

So there are a bunch of fun people writing poetry in unique and creative ways nowadays. Or perhaps I ought say they are "finding" poetry or "publishing" poetry in unique ways, or more generally thinking of poesy differently. The Internet has democratized media along all fronts and we see the repercussions of this age of free information in most places we look. The current unrest in North Africa and the Middle East is a result of free information and access to media. The downfall of the recording industry in the past ten years has as its root the democratization of media. Any fool with a network connection can publish any information, any media. The media may be text (poetry!), sound, video, etc. Many have written about the consequences of free media effectively. I'll just touch on a few of the people I find most interesting and some projects and aspects of projects I find compelling.

I've done quite a bit of my own work on the fringes of poesy over the past few years. This has included theft of text from all sources: advertising language, web source code, dialogue and speech, SMS, social network text, etc. The act of writing post-Duchamp and post-Kenneth Goldsmith may be more accurately termed a "framing" or a choice. We're surrounded by language, by information. Much of our contemporary existence is "curating" our sources of information. We perform daily many an artistic or poetic task: we choose where to place our "gaze," we select information to "share," we place it in a new "frame" and associate it with our selves. Much of the trick of poesy or art is directing this gaze to something previously neglected, or encouraging an "aesthetic attitude" be taken toward an object never before taken as such. There are quite a few young artists doing just those things!

First of all, I'll talk about the 2011 poet laureate Poncho Peligroso. "Laureate" comes from laurel and is like a crown. In modern praxis it's a distinction bestowed by a polity, by a government, by an institution upon an individual. Like the title "president" or "pastor," the title, the crown, the distinction has no meaning with out the institution. The Laureate's task in the U.S. is to bring more awareness to the writing and reading of poetry. Now, Poncho isn't really the recognized Poet Laureate (or is he?). He and fellow writer Steve Roggenbuck have devised a gag that muddles with the authority and relevance of a laureate title. By utilizing a technique called "Google bombing", they've harnessed the algorithm that ranks pages in Google searches and are now directing 2011 poet laureate traffic to Poncho's site.

Just like Mubarak and autocrats in the Middle East aren't able to control the media their constituents have access to in a post-Wikileaks, post-Internet world, institutions have less of an influence on who we as a people see as "artists" or "poets." Danto's institutional theory, having been so defined, is becoming obsolete. By harnessing new-media tools, artists and agitators are able to create false and misleading information that undermines the authority of institutions. No longer do governments, polities, academic institutions, critics and literary magazines get to decide who the poets are and who they aren't. New media tools allow artists, allow anyone to publish content and share expressions and information with the world.

Not only are the titles and accolades associated with institutions being challenged, but the traditional avenues and forums for poesy are being altered. Just as Fluxus and Conceptual artists placed an influence on the performative aspect of the work, its situation in space and time, 21st century poets have expanded far beyond the page and the chapbook. Poets and artists like Jenny Holzer and Robert Barry use words in unique ways both in and outside gallery space. This brings an aspect of involvement with the environment and encourages a sort of participation by the audience and viewer. Writers like Steve Roggenbuck tend to take their minimalist text projects and put them in living environments. A short poem printed out and placed in a chair lift, on a locked door or held in any other place alters the traditional context of poesy. These artists bring the word beyond the page and back into the social sphere where it can become more immediately effective.

Not only is the poetry forced into new and exciting contexts, but the distinction between what is formally poetry and what isn't is blurred. Many of these poets continually find text presented and "frame" it as poetry, or make a concerted effort to view what is traditionally considered just speech as art. They "frame" a YouTube comment, a thread on a social network, a product review or an advertisement. Roggenbuck keeps a running blog of what he considers INTERNET POETRY. In a world with increasing levels of technology and machinery, the "dialogue" we have with our tools becomes a curious means by which to analyze our connection with our artifacts. In the interest of better service, software applications and social media tend to ask us as users for bits of information, or to tell us strange and interesting things while we operate our profiles. This artificial dialogue is an inspiration to a whole wave of Millennial writers and post-Internet artists.

While social and political institutions have always recognized the import of art as a tool for controlling a populace and influencing behaviors, democratization of media allows even the least powerful and least funded of persons to manipulate messages in such a way that undermines hierarchical authority. Publishers are no longer the only ones who can publish. A book pressed by Random House is just as "published" as a status update on a social network. There is scarcely a distinction to be made between printed material and immaterial Internet content. In many ways we live in a post-media world where the medium is no longer the message. Because of the proliferation of media perhaps we are seeing the message's emancipation; its emancipation from the institution, from medium and perhaps, finally, from authority itself...

More Astrological Musics...

I'm in such a weird mood, let's try and figure it out friends! Reading charts is so fun, look at all these luminaries situated. When it is noon a luminary (Sun!) is situated at its apex/zenith in the sky. I haven't found good information about what the horizon points are as far as degrees goes, like how much of the sky is typically visible from most latitudes, but I will continue researching until I figure this one out! Either way, tonight we will be able to see Jupiter setting in the West following this Sun. Some astrologers and astronomers call this a heliacal setting. Heliacal just means "pertaining to the Sun."

As you'd presume, the Sun is the primary luminary in our Solar System. Some, including most luminous Nick Anthony Fiorenza, prefer terming the system "Soul-ar." Astrology is a divinatory art, an art of interpretation that uses traditional archetypes to frame behaviors, trends, attitudes, etc. A year, a cycle we are all familiar with (ha!), is just one full Sun cycle, simply enough. A fun thing about astrology is that we can observe some of the cyclic tendencies of our Solar System in a myriad of ways. A warm summer and a cool winter (Northern Hemisphere) is just the tip of this iceberg. Western astrology, which is oriented to tropical zodiac, gleans much of its traditional symbolism from portions of the year. We are all familiar with these portions!

First of all, Spring is the active beginning of the year! We're approaching Spring right now in the Northern Hemisphere and quite obviously. I woke up sneezing all day about three days ago. Pollen drifts in the air, the lawns and sides of roadways get a rich green, clover sprouts superfluously, etc. A fun part of naked-eye astronomy is that throughout the year we may observe the Sun's meetings (synods) with different luminaries. This is most apparent with lunar cycles. A meeting (synod) between Sun and Moon is what we've termed a New Moon. We don't see this happen, but we see the waning crescent drift lower than horizon into the Sun, then we see the waxing crescent of a new cycle emerge. This is the meaning of a heliacal setting and rising.

This situation we see the Sun progressing across the sign of Pisces. Pisces is the last sign of the tropical cycle, the last sign of Winter before Spring officially beings with the vernal equinox. All symbolisms you can think of connoting the end of a cycle apply with Pisces. Pisces is typified by dissolution, dissolve, loosening, illusion, etc. Pisces is the ender of the cycle, the preparatory phase for the birth and growth that is Aries and Spring. Tonight we may observe just after sunset the greater benefic Jupiter in early degrees of Aries. Jupiter in this situation may be interpreted as a generous, jovial, expansive feeling manifesting. As plants and animals spring (Spring) back to life and come alive as the year begins, Jupiter's energies are enlivened at this point of the zodiac.

As the Sun progresses Jupiter will dip into the Sun, this is termed the heliacal setting. A synod then occurs out of our view and then Jupiter experiences his heliacal rising. The Sun conjoins all superior orbiting planets once a year in this fashion and in this manner creates its own cycles with each of these luminaries. We may also observe at this time an opposition between Jupiter and Saturn. This opposition has been in effect for much of the last few years in various degrees of perfection/imperfection. Saturn's retrograde period (until June) and Jupiter's progression are perfecting this opposition at the moment. We find the self (Aries) expanding and manifesting, traveling, celebrating, while the other (Libra) endures pruning, discipline and restriction. All this under the auspices of underworld ruler Pluto who sits in the cardinal earth sign Capricorn.

I think I'm going to be doing more chart interpretation in the future as a way to practice my own reading skills, build more familiarity with cycles, symbols and archetypes, and get more comfortable with writing. If you're interested in me looking at your chart, shoot me a line at heylight@gmail.com or on Twitter @toastbeard. Astrology is a lot of fun because you can be creative with the interpretation but the data you base interpretation off of is real and empirical. Having a knowledge of the mechanics of the Solar System is a great tool for orientation (quite literally) and also a great analogue for those who study musics and follow general trends in world and personal histories. Stay awesome everyone and remember always/all ways to love!

Of Late...

Last few weeks have been quite a bit of busy! Just last Thursday Toast Beards did a gig at the Maison in New Orleans with our friends Never Ever & the Family Band and City Zoo. I had read Inayat Khan's "Mysticism of Sound and Music" and I was never quite the same. There are sections about the "Power of the Word" and other concomitant New Age concepts that for whatever reason affected me. A poesy beyond the page means a poesy of life, a poesy of full being and becoming. All your language, your expression is a re-presentation of your principles and must be viewed as such by any responsible artist. So I've been crafting songs likewise! One is called "Always Having a Good Time" because when we have a gig and play a song I would like for all to be having a good time! And guess what? It works.

Besides the gigery and blossoming (though on a small scale) success of Toast Beards, I've been working on a few other ideas. A friend of mine has access to some art space in the New Orleans area and I'm planning on abusing networked connections to this institutional apparatus... And as a true crazy I'm compelled by pattern. Are you familiar with a Vedic square? I'd presume you are as it is basically a multiplication table reduced to digital roots. All this means is that once the products in the table exceed one digit, they are simplified into one digit representations. A 10 becomes a 1, a 12 becomes a 3 by a process very similar to that used in numerology. The purpose of crafting squares of these sorts is to see the regularity in the pattern of multiplication (inverted division/divination?).

The minimal research I've performed informs me that many a designer and architect has used these patterns as the basis of a symbolism. The Muslims whoso feared representations of the Prophet or the Absolute were forced into symmetric and elaborately patterned representations by doctrine. The ineffable, the unsayable, the unmappable, the unlimited, the Infinite is incapable of true representation (though its presentation is quite obvious). Many traditional architects of sacred images be they mandala, thangka, chapel design or likewise have employed a Vedic square pattern in their designs. So I've been fashioning these simple number squares and superimposing different designs. The magic is that there are a myriad of patterns within the system and any set of aspects can be highlighted as the basis of a design. It may be difficult for me to explain this in language. I've done some studies already but don't have a digital camera. I'm getting a friend to take some images for me and doing a series of studies before I do more formal works.

I am full of ideas which assault the art-space, the artworlds, I am playing an artgame. Once the true power of word, of art is realized by the practitioner, it can't help but become politicized and philosophized. We see the doctrinal content in all artifact, there is no behavior that does not demonstrate a "way." An artist is not truly realized until self-concern is obliterated, a slavish stylistic posturing is abandoned and true purposive motion begins. The motion may be realized through any medium: the motion of language vocalized, the motion of a dance, the motion of a music, the motion of a static or dynamic image... I plan to realize with great purpose a principled motion, a motion of love, a motion of true import beyond art movement or style. A poem architected without ornament, plain function, meaning through use. I'll work out the self and art essay with some points to be made on advertising language, ideology, anonymity in the artworld and the artgame soon. I may even talk about the 2011 poet laureate Poncho Peligroso... But at the moment I will continue research. Love!

Brief Musings on Astrological Situation

This is what the Solar System looks like now from our perspective, geocentric. Many luminaries in a bundle in Aquarius which is airy, communicative, sign of social organizations, groupings, media. Sun recently conjoined Mars, Mars the martial lesser malefic, noted as god of war and a stressor. Conjunctions are mixtures of energies, synods, meetings of archetypes. Sun the grand center, soul-ar source, in a natal chart perhaps the over-arching 'ego', the cohesive Leo/leader/autocrat of the defined personality. Mixed energies with angry, active Mars means a focus of aggression, activity, fiery things. In Aquarius manifests in groups, especially democratic/autocratic conflicts like Egypt, government is polar in an Aquarian/Leo way, Leo being the One leader, Aquarius being Many.

T-Square caused by outer planets Pluto, Saturn and Uranus still there but not as focused or pinched. However, Saturn is now retrograde (going backward from our perspective) until June so the square she forms with Pluto perfects again. Saturn, greater malefic in a stressful aspect (square, 90-degrees) with Pluto has been noted by some as manifest in oil spill, earth shakes and the like. Saturn rules Capricorn, the cardinal Earth sign which Pluto is now in. Pluto is related to Hades, the underworld and undercurrents, esoterica and the occult. Some say Pluto signifies the inevitability of change and painful transformation. Pluto has been running this T-Square for the last few years, its cycle is the longest of the luminaries on these charts. Jupiter has aspected it stressfully this past year, joining Uranus near early degrees of Aries Point (first degree of Aries, equinoctial).

I could keep interpreting this all day really but look at this chart of the system from a heliocentric point of view, with Sun at center.

This chart shows the stressors more clearly. Pluto at the top squares both Saturn and Venus in Libra and Uranus and Jupiter near Aries point. It's a cardinal T-Square cause those signs are 'cardinals' or hinges, they're the first sings of the seasons and have 'cardinal' characteristics like being harbingers of a new mode, season, and being in that regard active (Cancer is cardinal, first summer sign). Also we note quite clearly Earth's opposition to Mars, Earth being in autocratic Leo and Mars (the angry red one) being in democratic Aquarius. Opposition places the Sun between these two luminaries and draws distinction between them, like the disconnected between a tritone and a tonic, notes in definite dissonance because they both attempt to exert their independence, autonomy.

These are just a few of my astrological musics on the current situation and in the future I plan on doing a little more interpretation. I, as I've said, was never formally trained and work continually to better my understanding of the symbology, associated archetypes, astronomical geometry, and art of interpretation. Much love always!

Some Thoughts on Bourriaud

I've recently read through Bourriaud's "Relational Aesthetics" and thought I'd jot down here some thoughts. I've already put down a few things on his emphasis on the "interstice" and the relation to Marxist terminology. I've had a lot of ideas in the last few years about making art effective, how it operates in the social sphere, and its political and moral responsibility. Many of these ideas I think may have had their basis in reading of the Traditionalists. When studying Coomaraswamy's work on traditional art and aesthetics, I was struck by the idea, perhaps platonic, of art as a "tool for contemplation." Much of the religious work that he focused his commentaries on was quite literally used as a tool by a social institution for dissemination and reinforcement of ideas.

A friend of mine did a lot of work on thangka or Buddhist mandala painting and I've been able to share quite a few of my ideas with her. I'd guess that before there was such an apparatus of mass media allowing us so easily to share text, images and otherwise, the potency of an image had an entirely different import. There was no endless stream of information that each individual could bathe in, the seats of power, whether they were religious, political, whatever, had control of the types of images purveyed and their symbolic content. In my view, a lot of the process and program of modernism has done damage to our understanding of the base symbolism in much traditional art. Art's use in the church, in the temple, in the public forum was always bound with its efficacy. Even scripture, something we tend to not look at aesthetically, is an artistic document. It's literature, poetry which demonstrates a doctrine, a way of being. This is much of Bourriaud's argument.

The "interstice" is an interval, a space between things, a vacuum, a gap. Bourriaud draws attention to the contemporary artistic practice of creating interactive environments or modeling new "life possibilities" as opposed to creating dry, stagnant artifacts. Much of this development can be traced to the early 20th-century avant-garde including the work of Klee, Kandinsky, Picabia and Duchamp. But this frame for art history, while useful, is somewhat of an over-generalization. In reality works of art, as mentioned above, have always been tools for demonstrations of "life possibilities." An idea I've borrowed from Borges is the concept of a philosophical doctrine, that paragon of "nonfiction," as itself a fiction. Spinoza's Ethics is a combination of glyphs, a system of logic that demonstrates a way of being. It is difficult to distinguish it in this way from much art, from a lengthy Dostoevsky novel to a 50-cent song; each demonstrates a mode of being, a set of behaviors and actions in the world. Which some may be rigorously defended as a fool-proof logic, each effects the world in basically the same way.

I had a tremendous revelation in this vein about the work of Yoko Ono and John Lennon in the 60s. I thought quite a bit about the program of the Fluxists and Situationalists, their emphasis on the script and the happening, and the latter's emphasis on political and social import. Taking an idea from Cage that or Duchamp that your hearing or seeing is part of the artistic process, the consequences become apparent. A piece is not just a static artifact hung on a wall, it affects people's thought processes, their future behaviors and their overall outlook. Having an intense awareness of the effects of a work gives an artist tremendous power. This is why I was struck by the supreme beauty and simplicity of Lennon's 70s work. The majesty of it, to me, extends far beyond the popular art sphere and has yet to receive its rightful lauding. To promote a simple message of peace and love that is participatory and inclusive is, in my view, the highest artistic achievement. They together built a tremendous understanding of their effect on the world and applied a strong set of principles toward an admirable political and moral object.

I'll end this here, I presume, as I feel I've run out of things to say for the time being. But expect in the future more ruminations on different things I've read, astrological interpretations, and other creative ideas. I've got a lot to say it seems...

The Birth of @toastbeard

Who is @toastbeard the writer/poet? I've lived my entire life pretty creatively, they had me doing cover artwork for my 2nd grade yearbook, making Mardi Gras floats in the 4th grade, etc. My mother is fond of some of the pictures I did before I was in school, some experiments of a young mind involving framing and context. I had done a crayon drawing of a sabre-toothed tiger which was really just a cross section of his mouth open with one tooth and the savanna behind. I'm continually worried by the sense I get writing this blog that it is only about me. There I go again with another sentence construction pivoted about an "I" and you don't have to wait very long for the "me" and "my." But then again, if I create so many things I've got to promote them, I've got to get them out there and tell people about them, I've got to talk about myself.

In high school I dabbled in quite a few different visual arts. I did paintings, still-lifes, some sculptural work, mixed media, etc. Once we did an assignment where we found an image, broke it into composite squares, separated the squares, reproduced/represented the squares individually and then finally reassembled them for a final product. I remember people chose images of tigers, landscapes and the like. I wanted to do a map of the mid-west, the teacher at the time said it would be "too easy." I said it would be "too interesting." I convinced him, and if you follow any of my recent short-form work there is an intense focus on maps, systems, etc. I'm continually mining the implications of Korzybski's "map is not the territory" statement. In fact, I've written about things that are similar to that on here already, as Magritte's images bring up this discrepancy between signifier and signified.

But the real story of the writing and musical @toastbeard doesn't begin until after high school. In spring of 2001, the year I graduated, I began a regular blog. I'd never really kept a journal regularly before but I had a history of writing letters and doing other short writing projects. But nothing on a regular scale. The May 2001 beginning of my livejournal, in hindsight, seems a momentous occasion. But only hindsight is 20/20. I began writing there on a regular basis, perhaps weekly, etc. Over the next four or five years it began to blossom, the content got more and more fractured and stream-of-conscious, the structures became less prose and more poetic. Also in this time period I began playing the guitar and writing music. This process went for four or five years and then Katrina hit.

We were lucky where I've lived as regards the storm. I am just far enough west to have not been affected by flooding in the New Orleans area from Katrina and just far enough east to not have had terrible effects from the storm following, Rita. All of this strikes me as terribly boring at the moment but I'll trudge on... Around this time I had worked in several bands: No Good Flies was a punk/ska band whose main itinerary was basically helping us learn to play our instruments. We had a lot of fun playing a few local gigs and goofing off together, it was a great way to get acquainted with the local punk and young-person scene. Afterward some of the same friends and I had started a dance band by the name the Fashion, which soon changed names to Oh No Explosion. We did a lot of dancey material in the vein of the Rapture, Le Tigre, Blonde Redhead and the like. We even had a girl singing for us for a while and that was a lot of fun.

But as all things must, that band passed. Eventually I was in a trio with my friends Chase and Jeff called Raise High the Roof Beam! I started writing songs for this band, probably wrote around 4 or 5 and we'd play them at some house parties and possibly played a proper gig or two. But by about 2005, the other guys in the band went off to college and things dissolved. So I shortened the band name to Raise High and took a Dylan trajectory. From 2005-2007 I wrote about three dozen acoustic songs with flowery Dylan lyrics and some twee romance on the ultra-quiet side akin to Iron & Wine and Bright Eyes. I played quite a few gigs in the New Orleans area, some in Luling and some in Baton Rouge. It was a great experience because it allowed me to get a good grasp of chord theory and the structure of songs. I was a long-haired hippie who would smoke up a little and write two songs in a whirlwind. It was tremendous practice, but all things must end...

At the beginning of 2007 is when the more contemporary @toastbeard emerged. I had moved back to Bayou Gauche, where I've grown up right outside of New Orleans, and a transformation began. The spring of 2007 alone saw the birth of me as a semi-formal poet and the birth of what was to become Toast Beards. There was, of course, the requisite relationship drama and other personal strife that sometimes sparks creative outputs. I spent the spring of 2007 teaching myself formal poetics. I read through the old English texts I still had from my days in the Communication department at UNO. I read through all the poetry collections I had lying around. I would read daily from these surveys of mostly modern poetry and then right afterward go and write. These early poems are collected in this folio. The first months I wrote quite prolifically (as if I don't still do that now...), but when I look back now I feel a bit embarrassed by them. But who isn't embarrassed by their own art from years ago? It's a map of a territory that is dynamic, always amorphous and essentially infinite. The "map" is the verse trying to replicate some of the music of that life, the "territory" remains ineffable.

The next two years, as I said, saw the flowering of that poetic idea. I went through a course of work, I did early metric verse in a style of Frost or Shakespeare but less formalized. A lot of it was driven by vocal rhythm with a preponderance of imagery. I have a distaste for a lot of it because it is entirely sentimental, sometimes self-concerned, and at base desiring. In truth, I struggle with these same themes to this day and the remnants of that struggle can be found in my "self" poetic cycles and other concerns with the "nothing" and annihilation. But enough self-analysis, the folio contains all the work and the work speaks for itself.

As I already mentioned, this time period also saw the birth of Toast Beards, but under much different guises. I had been writing and singing solo style acoustic for a while and had my own repertoire of songs. Continuing my Dylan trajectory (ha!), when I moved back I ditched the acoustic format and started a legit rock-n-roll band. I became acquainted with a few local guys who were a drummer and bassist respectively and we started to just jam together. We'd play a lot of the material I already knew cover-wise, which included some Steppenwolf, Steve Miller, Pink Floyd, and a lot of other very obvious AOR stuff. There was also a focus on improvisation and blues. This band began under the name Tiny Purple Fishes (a Cream reference) and it's MySpace presence still survives.

The band remained amorphous for much of the next three or so years and transformed in many different directions. Chase, my friend from the very beginning that played bass in Raise High the Roof Beam, was away at college in Savannah but would occasionally return for holidays. On these sessions we would also jam. I had begun helping my close friend Blake to learn to play guitar. He had an electric by his house and I'd drop by a lot to hang out. He likes to tell the story that this dumb-ass dude (me) would come by and play his guitar and he had the revelation, "Well, if this dude can do that, I can." Our friendship grew and eventually he, too, became a part of the band as a second guitar player. One of the sessions with Chase was done in a day or two during a holiday. It consisted of myself on rhythm and vocals, Chase on drums, and Blake on lead guitars. We ran through as many cover tunes as I could remember and I would just give Blake the heads-up on what the key was. None of it was rehearsed, all of it was free, and I sang through a bass amplifier. You can hear those sessions here.

We recorded a plethora of albums in a lo-fi way at the garage where we had set up shop. In fact, I'm unsure as to even the amount of recorded output we got down but my guess is in excess of 5 full albums. But that doesn't mean the quality of the material was top notch, much of it was very poor. This is why, later, I collected some of the highlights and put them together as "Greatest Hits" collections. You can find those here and here. In addition to all this lo-fi creative output, Chase and I did a two day improvisational project we titled Hurricane, Bruh!, which was a conceptual experiment about the experience of a hurricane. That can be found here. In my humble opinion, this is some of the most experimental and successful work I was ever involved with. It's basically a collection, collage of different sounds. There are mash-ups of Son House, Sabbath, Lil Wayne, Lean on Me, bossa-nova, Franki Valli, old yodeling songs, and others. There is a lot of improvisational instrumental stuff going on and we used a curious cassette recorder that gave it a strange tape-aesthetic.

Perhaps now we get to something approaching the present. After all these different formulations of basically the same musical and poetic idea, I've come to a pseudo-mature stage. Toast Beards exists and has played many gigs for many crowds. We've been known to rock the pants of off the 40-year-old crowd with some of our blistering and unhinged versions of Clapton songs, old blues, and early rock-n-roll. We cut our teeth on Chuck Berry, we've done some Barrett Strong and we really do sound like Hendrix a lot of the time. We've recently put the focus on writing our own material and that is the goal for 2011, to get more of that out. You can hear some of our new output here. Whatever you do, however, don't think it's ALL we do. Because we're completely unpredictable. We've done Kanye tunes live with a full band arrangement. We've done reimagingings of Yin-Yang Twins whodat songs. We've done Kelly Clarkson. Sometimes we're a country band. Sometimes we're a noise band and sometimes we do raga. Sometimes I play drums and sometimes I play bass. Whatever you think we are (map) is not who we are (territory).

As far as poetic output goes, I do most of my things in a very short-format on Twitter @toastbeard. I've tried to start collecting cycles from my output on there as I tend to work as a serialist. Many of the ideas I have, or the themes I approach, are revisited. These may include meditations on nothing (no thing), the self, love poems to an indefinite Her, occult imagery of pyramids and other esoterica, mixtures of forgeries and mathematical metaphor in the vein of Borges, and other things I cannot think of now. I also, obviously, have a deep interest in astrology and traditional symbolism, especially as it regards religious tradition. Follow the feed and make up your own mind. Even I cannot make an adequate map for the territory that is me.

I feel a bit over-indulgent for writing this out, but I've fussed with myself enough over the last few years about self-criticism. I feel I've done enough work, enough research, and created enough product to make an effort to show it to people. In my experience, it seems that many respond to the things I've been involved with or produced well, so I feel less guilt and indulgence sharing them. But speaking about myself is something that always troubles me. I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into my creative life, the things I've done in the past, and some of my thought processes as regards promotion, creative development and the like. You are all lovely and I do none of this for me. All of this is for you. Much love always.

The de Lubicz Perspicuity Dilemma

Reading some Bourriaud lately, his "Relational Aesthetics." It's really good and seems to jive a lot with many of the things I've studied in my life. Trying to keep a focus on this long-form blog so please excuse my meandering. At times it is difficult for me to keep a focus or some of the word associations I make mid-sentence send me on tirades into different areas without warning. Sometimes I don't even catch myself doing it. Many times I feel like de Lubicz.

de Lubicz wrote "The Temple of Man," which is a multi-volume treatise on the architecture of the Luxor temple in Egypt. Also included are many of his theories about the intellective culture of the ancient Egyptians, their manner of encoding knowledge into their buildings, and other aspects of their language and thought. de Lubicz, according to my understanding, was at first under the influence of the Theosophists (who also influenced Guénon, another of my idols). Then he did a lot of reading of esoterica, I believe with a focus on alchemy. I read his "A Study of Numbers" at the beginning of '10 and just read through his short version of the temple. If you follow any of my thought online via Twitter (@toastbeard), you'll note the recent emphasis on architection.

But the reason I've brought up de Lubicz is a concern I have, more so recently, of knowing what I want to say and not quite being able to say it clearly. From my readings of de Lubicz I tend to get the same feeling. This is a man with a tremendous depth and breadth of knowledge of world religion, esoterica, alchemical processes, sacred geometry and symbolism. Sometimes, however, when he attempts to communicate this knowledge he gets caught in a sort of esoteric cheese-ball's game of using Capitalization and other blanket terms that render some of his meanings meaningless. I always try to put an emphasis on being clear and distinct in my writing, in my conceptions and in everything I share. I have tremendous respect, more so recently and building more and more every day, for people who can communicate simply and effectively. I think much of this is demonstrated by my sometimes-obsession with Bieber. But my interest is more on the side of "how does he get that many eyeballs? What is he doing that seems so universal?"

Now there will be quite a few of you out there quick to pounce on my Belieber-ness with some explanation of how he's just a puppet of the mass-marketed music industry apparatus or some-such. This I verily realize and if you're seriously mounting that criticism toward me then you don't have much of an understanding of where I come from or what I've been up to for the last ten years. Not that you really should. Perhaps I'll mention some of it now.

First of all, I've been writing, chiefly blogging, since around 2001. I began my first livejournal in May of that year and started out just keeping a journal. I'll spare you many of the details as I've come to believe that much of the magic of an art is what is left out, the ambiguity. I seriously began poesy there somewhere around 2006 and I've since collected much of the things I've felt were conceived formally in this folio. I'm also a practicing musician. Chances are if you are here you already know about Toast Beards. If you don't, hear us here. I have plenty ideas constantly about the import of art in the social sphere and the impact of massively popular musics. I've been, as I mentioned, reading Bourriaud's art theory lately and have been filled with a plethora of ideas.

He brings up the term "interstice" and I think this is a vestige of Marx terminology. I haven't read much Marx, hardly any really, but I do have a copy of "Capital" lying around that I will get to when the time seems appropriate. The interstice is the space between things, the space between people, the space between subject and object, the "medium" we may say between the seer and the seen. As we can see from its prefix, it is related to interval, which in music is the word for the space between pitches, not a pitch itself. Intervals are what give music its character, in India they have a term called rasa which means "flavor". Intervals have different associated and connoted ethos. Much of this we can approximate by Western conceptions of major or minor key. A major key, for example, has a "happy" intonation, seems bouncy and pleasing. This is because it is composed of a grouping (a seven-note set, heptatonic/diatonic) of intervals with close relationships. By close relationships I only mean that the ratios between the pitches are made of relatively small whole numbers.

See what I mean about digressions? It is very difficult for me to stay on topic, on point, without falling into another digression based on some whim. Apparently there are so many things I'd like to say that I get distracted by the last thing I've verbalized. This is perhaps why Twitter has become such a valuable tool for my writing process. I am able to use it as a mobile desk, a place to leave ideas I would like to revisit in the future. Also a place where I can quickly jot down ideas via telephone and then revise or reimagine them later. Still I end up in a confused jumble of jargon. Thanks to everyone who makes an attempt to sift through whatever goofy terminology I've chosen to employ on whatever day. As I mentioned before, I'm trying to keep it simple and to be clear and concise. I admire Descartes' "clearly and distinctly" too much and feel that effective art is so effective because of its simplicity and base clarity. I work daily to translate whatever knowledge I may have into terms palatable by the highest number of people. Perhaps someday in the not-so-distant future I will realize this ambition of writing understandably for a large audience. Until then I return to silence. Much love always.

A Layman's Defense of Astrology

First of all, I'm just a dude. I'm in no way trained in astrology, I haven't studied with anyone who practices professionally, and I don't profess to read charts. Secondly, what I will defend here is not the three sentence blurb near the funnies in the newspaper nor the typical ambiguous and vague interpretations you'll find on many a blog. That said, I've spent quite a few years trying my very best to figure the bases of these interpretations and attempting to demystify a lot of the garbage I've found on the Internet and elsewhere. Many of these so called soft-sciences suffer the ails of subjectivity, and that causes the proliferation of many misconceptions and outright false ideas. In the past few days there have been some articles (Your Zodiac Sign May Have Changed, New Zodiac sign dates: Don't switch your horoscope yet) that have professed a set of "new" zodiac dates. The misconceptions they've inspired are what has inspired me to write this out.

The typical view of astrology may very well be as a set of superstitions or an irrational and false hoo-ha. Many are justified in this view for a myriad of reasons. Typically a horoscope makes a few vague pronouncements that might jog the memory of the reader and seem superficially to jive with some of the recent events in their lives. The ambiguity of good horoscope writing isn't really that far off from the vagaries of good poetry or fiction writing, these things leave gaps for the individual to fill in themselves and that is a lot of the fun. However, to dismiss astrology as a nonscience and a set of practices with no basis in reality and only an interest in profit is both uninformed and irresponsible. Many of the greatest promulgators of modern astronomy and science built their ideas and systems on the discoveries of ancient astrologers. In fact, before the modern era there was scarcely a distinction to be made between the two disciplines.

Unbeknownst to many, there are a tremendous amount of systems, words, and bases of understanding that we rely upon daily that have their basis in astrological observation. In fact, our entire conception of time, the division of our days into hours, the division of our year into months, the division of our months into weeks all have a basis in astrological consideration. The word "month" shares a root with the word "moon." A very simple consideration of the very apparent moon cycle shows the correlation between the near-30-day lunar cycle and our typical month. The division of the year into 12 months is basically a division into 12 lunar periods, or 12 complete lunar cycles. The relations don't stop there. The naming of the days of our week are also derived from this astrological/astronomical consideration. Now, without the modern aids of calendars, digital clocks and the like, it is easy to see why human beings needed to depend upon something as regular as a moon cycle to make predictions about future events. This does not just mean a personal "love forecast." Before modern amenities of weather forecasting and our intensive understanding of the solar cycle, the symbology of the cycles of luminaries are all we had to orient ourselves in time.

Beyond the obvious calendric considerations involved with cycles of luminaries, there are obvious effects of celestial bodies on our planet. The sun's cycle around the zodiac is what defines our seasons and, very literally, allows the cyclic reproduction of animals and vegetation that we depend upon. The effects of the sun's cycle and its relation to the Earth's situation are what make it chilly in the northern hemisphere right now. The correlates don't stop there. The 30-day lunar cycle has quite empirical effects on the Earth. The gravitational pull of this body defines our tides, and if this isn't enough evidence for you to be convinced that a luminary has a tangible effect on life "below," then just look at the numerous plants and animals that tune themselves to the lunar cycle.

Here is the point where we make an extrapolation. While we may not individually feel the gravitational pull of the moon, there are observable changes in the environment around us that demonstrate its effects. The moon is merely one in a system of several, and many much, much larger, luminaries that have very measurable gravitational and resonant effects on our planet and everything that resides upon it. Each of the luminaries that astrology typically concerns itself with (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and sometimes others), goes through a cycle analogous to that of the moon. Each has a synod, or meeting, from our perspective with the Sun (we call this New Moon in the lunar cycle); each has a period of opposition (we call this Full Moon); and each goes through all the infinitesimal stages between in their cycles. At no point is the gravitational or harmonic effects of these planets "turned off" or not applied to our planet. They are ALWAYS effecting us in a dynamic way.

Much of the issue I've taken with the recent articles proclaiming a "new" set of zodiac dates is just that claim of novelty. There are many different schools of astrology, or systems used as a basis for interpreting the positions of the planets. What many fail to note is that, though most horoscopes are interpretations riddled with vagaries, these interpretations are based on the actual positions of the planets. When an astrologer pulls your natal chart and does a reading, they are looking at the scientific, astronomical position of luminaries at the moment of your birth. These facts are just as solid as the pounds and ounces the doctor records on your birth certificate and have a similar import. What astrologers do is study the positions, situations of planets in their cycles and how they relate to a certain time. When a lunar cycle reaches Full Moon, there is the popular feeling that energies are heightened, that behaviors may seem exaggerated. In fact, the words "lunatic" and "lunacy" are quite obviously derived from Luna, or moon. Astrologers apply this popular wisdom to cycles that are less practical on human terms, but are by no means less telling.

The "new" zodiacal dates these articles attempt to propose are really not new at all. Their argument is that our Western astrological systems are not aligned with the constellations themselves, but when these articles proclaim "new" dates, they are merely making a distinction between astrological systems. The basis of the Western astrological system is tropical. This means that the system we are all typically familiar with is set or calibrated according to the seasons. In this system, for example, the first degree of Aries begins the first day of spring, or the day of the vernal equinox. In the same manner summer begins on the summer solstice, or the first degree of Cancer, and so on. Over 2,000 years ago the Greeks, and then Ptolemy shortly afterward, made a conscious decision to define the signs of the zodiac (each a 30-degree section of the 360-degree circle of our orbit) based on the equinoxes. This is different from the sidereal astrological system which holds fast to the actual positions of the constellations. Because of a phenomenon termed the precession of the equinoxes, the actual position of the constellations moves one degree every 72 years. About 2,500 years ago, the constellations as we now define them were aligned exactly with the vernal points. Due to precession this alignment is no longer true and this is the source of the discrepancy between tropical and sidereal systems. This discrepancy of systems is what these articles report, not a literal "new" set of dates.

As I said in the beginning, I have no formal training in any of this. I didn't go to school for astronomy, I haven't studied with any professionals and I've rarely used even a telescope. But the reverence I have for my ancestors and the great women and men of the past forces me personally to respect their views and positions. A dismissal of years of tradition from the very people who allowed my existence via procreation seems both irresponsible and at base disrespectful. While there are many faults in the popular conception of astrology and many out there who use its discontinuity as a basis for profit, there are many aspects of our contemporary lives that find a precedent in astrological/astronomical consideration. In my view, an unfortunate repercussion of the at-heart sincere desire of the Enlightenment is a too-soon dismissal of traditional ideas. An emphasis on building your own understanding via observation and research is a great quality, but I try to be sure not to dismiss all previous ideas so easily. We each owe our existence to all previous generations in a myriad of ways, and the assumption that we, now, in the mere fraction of a lifetime we've been thus far afforded, have substantially better ideas about how to interpret the cosmos seems entirely vain. A practice of humility in the face of the other has been passed down since time immemorial. We in the modern age must remind ourselves that this humility must not only apply to the present, but extend equally into the future and the past. Thanks for listening and much love always.