Favorite Passage

From Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

Tereza keeps appearing before my eyes. I see her sitting on the stump petting Karenin's head and ruminating on mankind's debacles. Another image also comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman's very eyes, put his arms around the horse's neck and burst into tears.

That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In order words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture had broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse for Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse.

And that is the Nietzsche I love, just as I love Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting his head in her lap. I see them one next to the other: both stepping down from the road along which mankind, "the master and proprietor of nature," marches onward.

Frank-Film by Frank Mouris

Here's an animation where the narrative is very mundane but hard to understand because of a second layer of speech. I think I read something in Everything Falls Apart, by Jonathan Safran Foer where he said that writing is too distinct/clear to represent life. What are some different ways to make writing or speech blurry? I thought of this when we talked about writing in other languages and how that can affect the flow of the piece.

Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen, a poet and songwriter has been influencing me since I was a child. If you haven't heard the song Avalanche yet try reading the lyrics and thinking about them for a little bit. Then go back and listen to the song and be prepared for his brutal beauty!

Avalanche:

Well I stepped into an avalanche,
it covered up my soul;
when I am not this hunchback that you see,
I sleep beneath the golden hill.
You who wish to conquer pain,
you must learn, learn to serve me well.
You strike my side by accident
as you go down for your gold.
The cripple here that you clothe and feed
is neither starved nor cold;
he does not ask for your company,
not at the centre, the centre of the world.

When I am on a pedestal,
you did not raise me there.
Your laws do not compel me
to kneel grotesque and bare.
I myself am the pedestal
for this ugly hump at which you stare.

You who wish to conquer pain,
you must learn what makes me kind;
the crumbs of love that you offer me,
they're the crumbs I've left behind.
Your pain is no credential here,
it's just the shadow, shadow of my wound.

I have begun to long for you,
I who have no greed;
I have begun to ask for you,
I who have no need.
You say you've gone away from me,
but I can feel you when you breathe.

Do not dress in those rags for me,
I know you are not poor;
you don't love me quite so fiercely now
when you know that you are not sure,
it is your turn, beloved,
it is your flesh that I wear.

We Feel Fine, by Jonathan Harris

Hi everyone, this is the "We Feel Fine" work that I had mentioned this week. It works by compiling any kind of statements with the word "feel" from posts on the internet. I think the way it is displayed creates a really strong atmosphere of pulling real people out of thin air and kind of connecting with them. It turns out quite poetic because it centers around one word that shapes the sentence.

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

Christian Bok - Eunoia

http://archives.chbooks.com/online_books/eunoia/details.html

Invented languages, online books and more. His work is worth having a look at.

and/or

and/or, a print journal for creative experimental writing and/or innovative graphic art, seeks submissions from writers and/or other sorts of artists whose work openly challenges the boundaries (mimetic, aesthetic, symbolic, cultural, political, philosophical, economic, spiritual, etc.) of literary and/or artistic expression. Please visit our submissions page for details. Deadline for consideration for Volume 2, March 1, 2011.

Ummm, Noise

This is a project by recent RISD graphic design graduate Megan Feehan. It creates written word that more closely follows the way we speak, "ums", "ers" and all.

Call for submissions!

Dear Friends,

Last year I curated and constructed a collaborative, hand-sewn, one-of-a-kind book for Bernadette Mayer, with submissions from artists/writers around the country. This project led me, as Drunken Boat's fiction editor, to conceptualize a larger folio of work. The folio will be published in Drunken Boat's Issue 14 (summer 2011), and below is the call for submissions (drafted with Bernadette Mayer):

Call for Submissions: The Bernadette Mayer Folio: Bernadette Mayer's writing experiments, from the 1970s to the present, challenge artists to change the world. We are looking for art and writing that responds to this notion and/or to Bernadette Mayer. Your response can be written, performance-based, filmed, recorded, visual. We seek responses through any medium, and encourage media projects. Consider ways in which your response might operate at the intersection of conceptual art, performance and experimental work. Deadline 15 April, 2011.

Please pass along to writers and artists who might be interested in submitting/creating something for this folio. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best wishes,
Deborah Poe
http://www.deborahpoe.com/
www.drunkenboat.com

Click here to see Jason Huff's project "Autosummarize". You can download the PDF from his website. Another project of his to check out is "The Road Not Taken". Jason's work often deals with technology, and its relationship to language.

This article made me wonder whether it would be possible to turn our procrastination into writing? Maybe that's a way to start?

A heartbreaking and wonderful piece for anyone who has not already seen it:

http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/david-foster-wallace-in-his-own-words

Richard Serra

Hello! Here is something I mentioned last week, Richard Serra's verb list, I totally love this piece:

http://clichesite.com/alpha_list.asp?which=lett+1

Clichesite.com an alphabetical list of cliches!

TV writers rolling out the cliches....

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2010/03/office-delivery-nbc-human-target-fox-burn-notice-usa.html

"Recipe Art" by Mira Schor

Recipe Art

Mira Schor

p. 230-231 A Decade of Negative Thinking by Mira Schor

Embodied in the high-concept, one- or two-sentence description, the recipe ingredients usually include something from the real cleverly juxtaposed with something else from the real, or something made with a material from the real not ordinarily an art material; something that references the real; something made from something else (e.g., a minimalist sculpture made of chocolate, a similarly monumental cube made of millions of wooden toothpicks, Richard Serra—leaning-plates made of red lipstick, etc.). Recipe: something from popular culture + something from art history + something appropriated + something weird or expressive = useful promotional sound bite. The work is selected for review because it can be written about efficiently. It is not necessary to see the piece.

Welcome to MTWW

Welcome to Making the Written Word workshops!

Please feel free to post any writing related things you come across here. We hope you will use this space. We've suggested some links and books that are worth checking out. There are also some articles to read and some more loosely writing-related sites.

We're looking forward to meeting you soon,

Mimi + Phoebe