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.