Tuesday, March 27, 2007

What There Is: Amelia Arenas on Williams

Essayist, playwright and art historian Amelia Arenas talks about what Williams means to her in another installation of fairly unedited, raw material. Again, bits of this interview will most likely find their way into a final mix, but since the blog allows for a record of process, I thought that it would be useful to store here and make available larger, less superficial chunks.
Arenas talks about Williams & economy of language: (3 min. 14 sec.)
On anti-bohemianism and obstetrics: (1 min. 30 sec.)
Paterson and beauty: (2 min. 30 sec.)
Arenas reads from the "Beautiful Thing" passage: (2 min. 41 sec.)

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Monday, March 26, 2007

Fosse on My Left and Jehovah on My Right

My copy of Paterson disappeared in the vortex of my apartment. That's not an excuse for no recent posts. But I was thinking that, perhaps, the book became invisible through frequent handling; that, like the purloined letter, it was so unavoidably and continuously present as to render itself invisible. However, instead what happened was more interesting. It had been on the piano stand, having fully evolved into music. I had been trying to figure out how to score the Ginsberg letters, which I thought could either be done--in the hands of a capable avant-folk strummer (not me)--a la Incredible String Band (imagine the line "When I come back . . . I'll have W. C. Fields on my left and Jehovah on my right. Why not?" done with the Scottish psychedelic crooners' twang) or with a typical boho jazz accompaniment, of which I am more capable, but would still be lacking someone with Ginsberg's voice to drive it home.
If I had actually lost my copy, I would have lost these notes (below) which are written in the backcover. I could say I wrote them there as the dance-grammar for a possible work entitled Paterson: The Musical! but they are really there just because I had the copy of Paterson on hand when I came upon the following while buying tap-sneakers in a dance store in Asheville, NC: a list of the names of Bob Fosse dance moves, "The Language of Fosse." I'll list this lost language in case I misplace it again . . . a particular type of "idea-in-things":
parallel attitude
hieroglyphic
Calypso run
hat trick
hinge layback
front attitude swipe
4th position turn
chasse changement
shoulder knee pop
monkey down
meltdown
Italian changement
foot drag, puppy dog hands
crescent jump
backbend layout
matador
spender pose

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