02-15-2012, 10:41 PM
I do not understand how playing around with an old tape-recorder is either poetry (Leanne) or Psychology. Although no doubt sincere, the guy is a phoney by any sensible standards. He must have been around in the days of 'tachisme' or 'action-painting', which, as a student at the RCA my sister indulged in, in our back-garden. This involved her placed several gigantic tubes of paint (needless to say, supplied free of charge) on a canvas; she then cycled across these, they squirted out, and she cycled back and forth. She then set fire to the paint, but somehow preserved a burnt canvas. And that was it. She moved on, and paints beautifully.
Was it Art? Is le feu M. Chopin poetry? I think the question needs to be put differently. Why do the practitioners of such-- and in terms of Art, this is much more true, with installations---feel the need to attach what they do to the coat-tails of Art and Poetry? Why not singing? Or carpentry? Plainly, there is an attraction which the old fuddy-duddy poets and painters have, people who wrote poetry when you would have been under no illusion that it was anything but that, and people who painted actual paintings so-called because the were painted, and by a skilled hand.
I suggest that if you create a new art-form, you should be sufficiently proud of it to give it a completely new name. M Chopin did not-- he stuck to French 'sound poetry'. Nor, perhaps for financial reasons, do the installation brigade. I can enjoy some of this stuff, although frequently it comprises one idea spread thinly over a long period of time. However, it is not painting, nor is it sculpture. And a match-stick on a record-player -- not poetry. Otherwise, the word must comprise everything: my left-over muesli, some pink glasses I have, a double-decker bus, my scarf-- not representations of these, but the things themselves. The word then would have no more meaning than 'stuff'.
One cannot, I suppose, get more obscure than addressing a person in a foreign language. But that made me wonder, looking at things a little differently. I was brought up Catholic in the days when Mass had to be in Latin. There is no doubt that the intoning of this had a great effect :
'Credo in unum deum' began the Creed, and then a bit later, a thunderous 'Deum de deo, lumen de lumine, deum verum de deo vero' (Lit:God of(from) God, light from light, True god from True God'). I do not know to this day really know what that meant, nor many of the other bits. But the sound of it all! If occasionally, I hear the same stuff in English --it is just flat. So, totally obscure, more than M Chopin, yet.....
But whatever the effect of the Latin Mass, for that matter, and much more poignantly, the Russian Creed, and 'Lord Hear my Prayer', or even the 24 hour Qur'an recital competitions of the ME, it is not poetry. Maybe not quite music either. So join M Chopin & invent your own categories!
Was it Art? Is le feu M. Chopin poetry? I think the question needs to be put differently. Why do the practitioners of such-- and in terms of Art, this is much more true, with installations---feel the need to attach what they do to the coat-tails of Art and Poetry? Why not singing? Or carpentry? Plainly, there is an attraction which the old fuddy-duddy poets and painters have, people who wrote poetry when you would have been under no illusion that it was anything but that, and people who painted actual paintings so-called because the were painted, and by a skilled hand.
I suggest that if you create a new art-form, you should be sufficiently proud of it to give it a completely new name. M Chopin did not-- he stuck to French 'sound poetry'. Nor, perhaps for financial reasons, do the installation brigade. I can enjoy some of this stuff, although frequently it comprises one idea spread thinly over a long period of time. However, it is not painting, nor is it sculpture. And a match-stick on a record-player -- not poetry. Otherwise, the word must comprise everything: my left-over muesli, some pink glasses I have, a double-decker bus, my scarf-- not representations of these, but the things themselves. The word then would have no more meaning than 'stuff'.
One cannot, I suppose, get more obscure than addressing a person in a foreign language. But that made me wonder, looking at things a little differently. I was brought up Catholic in the days when Mass had to be in Latin. There is no doubt that the intoning of this had a great effect :
'Credo in unum deum' began the Creed, and then a bit later, a thunderous 'Deum de deo, lumen de lumine, deum verum de deo vero' (Lit:God of(from) God, light from light, True god from True God'). I do not know to this day really know what that meant, nor many of the other bits. But the sound of it all! If occasionally, I hear the same stuff in English --it is just flat. So, totally obscure, more than M Chopin, yet.....
But whatever the effect of the Latin Mass, for that matter, and much more poignantly, the Russian Creed, and 'Lord Hear my Prayer', or even the 24 hour Qur'an recital competitions of the ME, it is not poetry. Maybe not quite music either. So join M Chopin & invent your own categories!