1, 2, 3

"A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in process of losing grip on its empire and on itself. And this looseness and blowsiness is not anything as simple and scandalous as abrupt and disordered syntax.

It concerns the relation of expression to meaning. Abrupt and disordered syntax can be at times very honest, and an elaborately constructed sentence can be at times merely an elaborate camouflage."

-Ezra Pound, from ABC of Reading

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Gadfly/Charlatan

  
"On such occasions Rex could talk endlessly, indefatigably, inventing stories about non-existent friends and propounding reflections not too profound for the mind of his listener and couched in a sham-brilliant form. His culture was patchy, but his mind shrewd and penetrating, and his itch to make fools of his fellow men amounted almost to genius. Perhaps the only real thing about him was his innate conviction that everything that had ever been created in the domain of art, science or sentiment, was only a more or less clever trick. No matter how important the subject under discussion, he could always find something witty or trite to say about it, supplying exactly what his listener's mind or mood demanded, though, at the same time, he could be impossibly rude and overbearing when his interlocutor annoyed him. Even when he was talking quite seriously about a book or a picture, Rex had a pleasant feeling that he was a partner in a conspiracy, the partner of some ingenious quack—namely, the author of the book or the painter of the picture."

-Vladimir Nabokov, from Laughter in the Dark

Another 6 'ANOTHER'

From Woods, Water, Women

ANOTHER GIRL TURNS INTO A TREE (1:08)

ANOTHER TREE TURNS INTO A GIRL (1:13)

ANOTHER TALKING TREE-FACE GUY (2:36)

ANOTHER GUY TURNS INTO A TREE (3:20) 

ANOTHER GIRL TURNS INTO A TREE (3:25)

ANOTHER TREE TURNS INTO A GUY (0:00)

Concise Baroque Effluvia as Survivalist Shapeshifter Escapism

From Woods, Water, Women

Rising from the smoking pit – in a dress sequined with dimes – Lally felt a sneeze coming on. This was the final scene of Serpentine, the visual and cerebral apex of a deceptively staid play. At no worse of a time could Nature fly in to tickle Lally’s discrete, feminine, and otherwise invisible, microscopic, and frankly cilia-like nostril-hairs than right fucking now. 

Other phenomena notwithstanding, it’s incredible how quicksilver and elaborate thoughts manifest in a panicked instant, like popcorn blossoming on a skim of hot oil. After discarding the third such zephyr-thought (something involving the prospective folding of the seemingly-inevitable sneeze into the cymbal-crash that was scheduled to strike in mere seconds, so that at least the sound of it would be somewhat challenged, and so that perhaps the more acute dullards in the audience might perceive such a sound-sneeze coordination as a scripted moment), Lally committed herself to an even balsier improvisation: once the real sneeze presented itself, Lally would just keep on “sneezing,” right through the last few minutes of the production. Amazing. 

Once mentally committed to sneezing until curtain, Lally smiled. The subtle shift of her platform’s hydraulics (and the stinging lilt of racing piccolos) cued what should’ve commenced the first of the last slew of Lally’s lines. 

But then came a lurching, an unfathomable mechanical grinding, followed by a theatrical gasp impossibly synchronized by the entire audience. Lally could have relished that a glitch had usurped the significance of her imminent sneeze, but her brain reflexively flooded her system with an even richer panic. 

First, Lally’s sneeze imploded: the knob traveled down her throat and lodged itself somewhere beneath her right breast, burning. Her lines erased, Lally snapped into default-mode. Her body’s sudden, dropping arc righted itself with a cybernetic stand-at-attention—and the audience immediately recognized the implications of its manner. 

“We should’ve known!” screamed a wretch from her nosebleed seats, speaking for all. 

Like all of the advanced models, Lally had self-engineered a program that would override her dominant ones in an imminent-and-inevitable-termination scenario. As the crowd flowed towards the stage (an accelerated birds-eye view of the mob’s migration would echo the physics of a drain sucking dishwater), Lally’s worldview underwent another seachange.

Snark 2.0

Thanks to Kamilah Gill for reposting this article. 

It's interesting to see how zeitgeist-y, cutting-edge interweb technologies/strategies/verbiages are being embraced by institutions to result in (and justify) total pap. 

The following are excerpts from an exchange on Gill's Facebook wall.

Gill: This "museum participatory experience" designer put a jigsaw puzzle in the gallery with the art. The artist initially had a problem with it. I think I would have a problem with it, too. They should have worked together on a solution.

I hope that some of my art associates will see this here on Facebook. I'd love to hear your opinions about it. I would want visitors to be comfortable, but the bits of comfort shouldn't just be random. They should be connected to the art at least a little bit. This looks like she just plopped a living room down in the middle of the gallery, which is kind of tacky and distracting.  

Me: "Plop(ping) a living room down in the middle of the gallery" is kinda au courant.

I agree that, ideally, an artist would be a part of (and certainly kept apprised of) decisions made in a space where they're exhibiting their work. However, it's far more likely that an artist will be somewhat - if not totally - beholden to the (lame, pandering) executive decisions made by whoever has been employed that term to make those kind of choices (especially when dealing with an institution that would endeavor to even have a "(K)reativity Lounge").

It's pretty clear that Ms. Simon is more concerned with implementing her radical "Museum 2.0" agenda (sorry I can't replicate the counter-cultural graffiti font she uses here) and upholding the implications of her bio-blurb to "design and research participatory museum experiences" (and to shamelessly promote her book, herself, etc.). Her post is a nest of self-justifying, obfuscating buzzword-salad that attempts to defend her glaringly inconsiderate/bad decision to "inaugurate" the conversation/puzzle-pit/eyesore. Again, how Simon tries to fold & align such a choice into her "web 2.0 philosophies" is hysterical.

The artist should've just taken her work down and been like: "You're a total dumb-ass, Nina. And pretty patronizing/condescending. And nice 'MUSEUM' temporarily-tattooed gangster-prisoner-style across your knuckles - your bad-ass edginess never ceases to amaze."

But it seems like everyone's just pleased & merry to be having "a thoughtful dialog about these issues."

On second thought, I retract the above diatribe. They should take down Hochstein's antiquated crap and install a Starbucks kiosk.

Offa

From Universe to Goddess

Offa eats flowers. She cups her hands into scoops and threshes through the dandelions, reaping petals, grass, and stems—then shoves them into her mouth.

 

We don’t see Offa as she sees herself. Most see an idiot-child stricken with a tragicomic compulsion to devour lilies, forsythia, primrose—this perception is solidified by those who have witnessed Offa’s binges when, like a grass-eating cat, she heaves forth a sickening pulp, a rancid pellet flecked with shocks of undigested color.

Oh, maybe she's a benevolently-mugged demigoddess, a traipsing dryad with specters attending her bridal train. Perchance my m’lady (my mossy lady) leaves a trail of blooms in her wake—another allusion to a wedding ceremony, a clever inversion of the petal-strewing flower girl. This Gaia-Bridezilla is self-sufficient, spontaneously generative, and stylishly modest in her tendril-whipping cloak-slash-frock. And she has glowing toes: glowtoes. In fact, the entire undersides of her feet hum with phosphorescent light. Bioluminescent-foot-fetishism is a possibility now.

Oh no, “Oh”, abovementioned “Oh” – Offa is a failure-girl. A vomiting retard. A meadow-slut. A weed-wastrel. A Cabbage Patch Kid gone to seed. A foundling pumpkin kicked in the gourd.

And how they would join hands and, spinning, sing:

Oh! Awful Offa

Awful is Offa

Offering offal to the officials

Off with you, Offa

Awful is Offa

Off to the Elysian Fields

They felt the lilt of the lyrics in their bones. Incensed and encircled, Offa would rake her teeth across the earth and rage.

The Head of Lilith

From Woods, Water, Women

The zombie oracle – and, for one unfortunate soul, a god – resides in a flowered patch of glen. Mostly, she mutters into empty air, her dead eyes rolling crazily incongruently in rapid spasmodic bursts. Less occasionally, her countenance becomes suddenly enervated, sublime and alert, intelligent and quite conversational. 

What has brought you here? 

He had never wandered so deeply into the forest. He only walked its perimeter, tracing safely among the fruiting trees. On occasion, he did peer into its depths, staring as far as he could until the weave of distant branches closed and crosshatched like the tightest wicker.

You look troubled. Come to me.

He drifted towards this siren-flower, this gruesome bloom. How could he not? The breeze carried a faint perfume, daffodils and wet pennies…

Sit, tell me your story.

He had never wandered this deeply into the forest. But today, an alien compulsion had propelled him into the wilds. One could argue that the momentum was self-inflicted, a kinesis summoned in the wake of his fingers unclenching slowly from his wife’s neck…

You loved her. You loved her…

The ground was soft and not unpleasantly damp. He kept breathing as she whispered to him, her voice filling his brain like spooling gauze. It wasn’t flowers or copper anymore, but a stronger odor, much stronger, like breath and blood…

Imagine me cutting your dick off and reattaching it over and over again, for all eternity. That would feel good compared to what’s in store for you.

If an individual’s agony could split the universe and manifest itself as a retribution-seeking, ghoulish head planted in a wood’s clearing… if only.

But as he ran deeper into the forest, further and further from his wife's freshly strangled corpse, he swore that something was tugging at his feet. The tugging feeling never abated. Sometimes he wonders when the woods will stop spinning around him, or when the worms will cease threading his sockets. But mostly he just rolls his head and babbles, wheeling nonsense into the empty air.