Official website hereby launched!

Posted by landis on May 5, 2011 in Gigs, News | 0 comments

Welcome to the digital home of The Minor Arcana. Feel free to prowl about our new digs and see what’s what. Not all the pages are up yet as this is damned hard work & there may not be any info which we deemed proper to include under the headings you see off to yr left there in that navigation bar. However, all of the links do have important and interesting content behind them. Some of which you will expect and some of which will provide an amusing (& family–friendly) surprise. If you want to get to the meat of this blog post avert yr eyes to the side a bit till you see the information about the Minor Arcana’s upcoming CD release show…seriously, it’s like…the paragraph immediately following…

…this one. Speaking of navigation bars, if you look down you’ll see links to various & sundry websites (Reverbnation, Facebook, Twitter). We are (personally) of the opinion that you should make full use of those little linkedy–links which you can click to “Like” The Minor Arcana on Facebook and follow us (er, Matthew, really…) on Twitter! We encourage you to visit all the websites so that you can like, friend, &or follow us. Believe it or not, some promoters and club owners care about web presences so yr engaging in the aforementioned Internet–y activities will make it easier for us to get gigs & tour (so that we can come to yr town…maybe yr house! and steal yr bed… and the chips in yr cupboard….and the booze in yr liquor cabinets…and wrestle about yr living yr room with yr cat, or dog, or each other, or YOU…). …not that we wouldn’t gig or tour without yr help (because we are & we will, both presently & in the future), but still…be a pal, would you?

So about that…gigs…thing—The Minor Arcana’s CD release show (yessir, it’s a bonafide Big Deal), our celebration of our debut full–length record Emotional Alchemy will be JUNE 18th at Philadelphia’s venerable & esteemed venue KUNG FU NECKTIE.

gig flyer

the MINOR ARCANA’s

CD Release Extravaganza for EMOTIONAL ALCHEMY

with Johnny Miles & the Waywards and Psalmships
Kung Fu Necktie 
1250 North Front Street; Philadelphia, PA. 
—Doors open @ 7 pm
—21+ (sorry kids but be adventurous…) 
—tix are $10 a pop, but we done–went broke making the record in question,
so at that price it’s a bargain. so buy yrself some tickets!

Just remember, friends…please do utilize the above link, buy tickets, plan on having a good time, plan on doing it up, and plan on seeing us there! I mean, you can buy tickets at the door, suuure…but! sometimes in art (as in life) it helps to just commit to something….something reckless, something unexpected, something which can (& will) trump the boredom of everyday life; so you might as well commit to showing up to Kung Fu Necktie on June 18th and dancing & singing your precious little heart out!

—Matthew Landis, circa…the wee small hours of the morning, on 5 may 2011.

Scoring Speech & Scoring Song in Michael Cross’ IN FELT TREELING

Posted by landis on Jan 31, 2011 in Blog, poetry review | 0 comments

Michael Cross’ in felt treeling is a series of eclogues in the form of a libretto. The musicality of the language is evident in the internal assonance and the shortness of his lines. It lends itself to song and to melisma, encouraging the reader to embellish and to cut away. The short verses lend themselves to intense structural and formal analysis and aestheticized considerations of image and representation.

The verses sung by the two characters in the libretto, Eumenides and Lavina are scored not only with line breaks, but virgules. The virgules are meant to alert the reader to phrasing which extends beyond the practice of acknowledging line breaks as a sort of added punctuation in poetic performance. This lends itself to a sense of phrasing that reflects the realities of vocal performance and the way the voice—especially in contemporary classical/theatrical music (as libretto hints at)—is not treated as a purely sing-song device, but rather as an instrument functioning within an ensemble of structural, tonal, and aesthetic considerations.

e.

hath added water / to the sea

hath disengaged our sight / it’s teeming brink

and naught our watch / upon your lips

anon / kindly met and tempt

tempt such / purely sharp in fragrance

that we propelled / that those around can see

 

l.

not paper / nor brittle

in that stolid / posturing

in brandish crux/

so brackish / as to splendor

I, helpless / I am

within the chamber / of my mouth

of what became / a remedy

within that even / night

 (Michael Cross, in felt treeling, p. 42, Chax Press 2008)

It is interesting to note the difference between the rhythmic devices and aural consilience in each characters verse. Eumenides’ repetition of “hath”, lends a certain amount of archaic grace to his address. The first two lines are nearly, but not quite, halved by their virgules. Five syllables then three in the first. Six and then four in the second. This sense of the elongation of the line gives the stanza a sense of momentum which is maintained by the even split in the third line (four syllables on each side of the virgule) but the momentum is halted in the fourth line by “anon”, which stands as the lone word on the left side of the virgule. There is a deferment here which is then thematically suggested on the second half of the virgule (“kindly met and tempt”) and the meter is balanced by how nicely the “k’s” glottal stop plays off of the ephemeral “m” and the repeating dentals of the “t”. There is also the strong, short “e” in “met” and “tempt”, a perfectly rhymed assonance which restores the sense of momentum, which is built by the repetition of “tempt” in fifth line. The stanza then opens up into the neatly constructed six syllable line on the right side of the virgule (one 2-syllable word, two 1-syllable words, one 2-syllable word) and ends with the longest line in the stanza, the eleven syllable final line with four syllables followed by the longest syllabic grouping of seven. This sense of peak and valley and the knowing manipulation of momentum in this stanza pushes and pulls the reader much as Eumenides’ himself is pushed and pulled by the temptation and anxiety hinted to in the content of the line (“teeming brink”, “tempt such”, “that we propelled”). It is a stanza about unrealized momentum, a paradoxical inertia which is both “teeming” and “tempting”—replete with possibility and yet somehow also fraught (the “teeming brink” after all, implies an overflowing, yes—but that overflow might result in emptiness). In this sense the formal construction may aid the reader in the same way that the dramatic construction of opera aids the spectator. Even though I don’t understand Italian, I can understand Puccini sung in Italian due to the formal features of the music: its tempo, a major or minor key, the preponderance or absence of dissonance, how lyrical or disjointed the melody may sound, sharp & stabbing staccato or warm & rich legato.

Lavinia’s stanza contains many of these same formal elements (though it is more sparse than Eumenides’). Let us instead focus on the aural qualities of this verse. One of the striking things about Lavina’s verse is the third line. The lacuna after the virgule clearly signifies a longer silence. The sense of silence absolute due to the terminating consonant “x” in “crux”. Still, the lingering “s” sound at the end of crux could—I suppose—be drawn out for effect. The “s” sound is repeated when Lavaina’s voice re-enters in the fourth line and is reinforced by the glottal stop in the “k” in “brackish”. The device is even more accentuated due to the repetition in the words “brandish” and “brackish” themselves. The “-nd” is substituted for “-ck” and the suffix remains the same. Our “s” sounds then return “as to splendor”. The following line “I, helpless / I am” lends itself to dramatic moments in the frequency of pauses combined with the invocation of the lyrical “I”. We are made aware of whose voice is silenced in these pauses, of whose “helpless” voice was absent in the previous lacuna. We are then propelled forward by the longest lines of the stanza before we are halted in the last line, on the right side of the virgule with the single word “night” and its definitive terminating consonant. Lavina’s stanza is more sparse, there are more internal silences and thus more chances for dramatic phrasing. One can imagine the way one might “sing” these pauses. As I mentioned before, drawing out the “s” in crux, putting a little ritardando over the entirety of the line “I, helpless / I am”, and then snapping back a tempo into the next two longer lines—as in Eumenides stanza, we are “propelled” to the final line where an even more dramatic ritard awaits “within that”; setting up the drawn out elongated “e” ’s in “even” and finally climaxing on the “ah” of “night” (if one were singing anyway—best not to sing out of the back of one’s throat as the “aye” in the “i” sound of “night” implies; a nice open “ah” is better), closed off with unambiguous finality in the crisp, consonant “t”.

This is what—as both a musician and poet—I find most beautiful, most fascinating, and so thoroughly impressive about Michael Cross’ book/libretto. He managed to score the speech in such away that the musicality of phrasing not only lends itself to the evocative, that is, implicit suggestiveness which music possesses but also manages to capture the way in which structural inventiveness and formal awareness can inform the musicality not just of lyric poetry, but of song itself. When one sings in a contrapuntal piece, you are functioning within a fugal structure; when Messiaen writes vocal lines in modes of limited transposition (scales which cannot be transposed into every key and thus are limited as to which keys they can be used in within a piece) then that singer, too, is limited in the range they may sing in and, depending on the tonal qualities of the scale (or the lack of tonal qualities) what stylistic or interpretative options are open to them; one may also think of dodecaphonic music (Boulez’s strict serialism to Schoenberg’s twelve-tone rows) as an entire school of composition dedicated to exploring the ways in which structural, formal, and conceptual “limits” inform the performance, style, and interpretation of a piece for a performer and fellow composer far more than the “average” spectator or listener. Cross’ book manages to do the same for poets while still embracing the pastoral and elegiac tradition of lyric poetry—however, like the poet whom he studies (Louis Zukofsky), he has made great strides in helping to re-invent, complicate, and enrich the tradition of lyric poetry and what it can mean outside of the mainstream conception of lyric poetry as writing which is reader friendly and “not difficult” (i.e.—nuanced, subtle, elegant &c.). Michael Cross’ in felt treeling is a brilliant, innovative and experimental contribution to lyric poetry and full of gorgeous pastorale and beautiful, concise writing.

Magic, Mysticism & Politics in Poetry: A Few Thoughts in Response to a Note from a Friend

Posted by landis on Oct 25, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments

The following is an email I composed in response to an email thread that we at the New Philadelphia Poets have been kicking around amongst ourselves for a few days in preparation for an issue of Wheelhouse Magazine we’re curating or something like that:

I wouldn’t advocate squelching magic. And clearly I wouldn’t advocate attempting to stem the ebb and flow of imagination. I also wouldn’t want to say that one person’s prosody was “wrong” or “foolish”. And my rejection of the idea of disciplic succession, as it were, is more about the tendency for people to latch onto their chosen poetic lineage and to narrowly define the limits of the succession. I would count the Black Mountain Poets/San Fran Renaissance as an influence on my work as well. I’d also count Conceptual Poetry/Oulipo. I’d also count Cage and MacLow. And Langpo. And the New York School. And the Metaphysical Poets. And Patti Smith. And Gertrude Stein. And the Objectivists. I think we’re on the same page here, in the sense that latching onto poetic camps single-mindedly is bunk , right? I know, for instance, that while you might see yrself as part of the lineage of Black Mountain you also would never say, “Well, I don’t like John Donne or Jackson MacLow or Laura (Riding) Jackson because they’re not closely associated enough with the Black Mountain lineage.” You would never go about attempting to tear down the work of Language Poetry or Stein or Jim Carroll in order to advance the project of continuing the Black Mountain School’s influence. It’s that sort of rigidity I object to in the idea of disciplic succession. Because it is a choice and it is not destiny. Which is not to say an author’s choices are the first and last word, or that an author’s choices are destiny. I am certainly not obsessed with the individuality of the author. I’m certainly willing to admit something of an author function, a confluence of social forces which explain certain aspects of a writer’s work and I am also a BIG believer in the importance of the reader participating in the construction of a work.

I don’t object to the notion that we are not in control of our own universe (as writers or human beings of any sort). In fact, I’m rather convinced of it. What I am not convinced of is the potential for that lack of control to auger (the pun is deliberate) something potentially benevolent or enriching about that lack of control. I think the point made about Magic meaning different things to different people is quite true. It doesn’t have to be spiritual or superstitious (although I constantly throw salt over my left shoulder while cooking and don’t toast with water, etc…mostly because I LIKE the rituals even if I don’t think they carry meaning, which I’m guessing is also part of why many poets engage in mystical practice, which is fine). I guess my reticence is sort of Nietzschean in nature, in that it is rooted in my suspicion of hierarchy (which necessarily presupposed by the spiritual…sacred/profane, spiritual/physical; it’s not an equal playing field—one is certainly capable of some things the other is not, the primary difference being I have explanations & evidence for the limited capacity of the physical world and no explanations or evidence for the heightened capacities of the mystical world; ie, I’ve never experienced it and I’ve also found that the significance of coincidence or aberration tends to be something attributed only by those who have experienced such coincidences and aberrations, which means while it may be significant to that person and thus, have great impact, importance and REAL MEANING for them, it hardly constitutes evidence). It’s also rooted in my atheism or rather, what I’d say is more like agnosticism with convictions—the convictions being the belief that while the likelihood of there being a god, an afterlife, or any sort of mystical undercurrent to the world is highly unlikely, I also must simultaneously acknowledge my own inherent LACK of gnosis. I acknowledge that there are things I simply cannot know or understand. The difference is I don’t choose to accord some sort of significance to the inexplicable, I don’t try to read the tea leaves of ambiguous circumstance and liminal experience because I LIKE IT. I like the potential for wonder and curiosity, I like ambiguity and liminal experience. I suppose attempting to sift through it in a search for gnosis, or rather, to believe there is an ATTAINABLE gnosis to be had doesn’t interest me personally. What’s more, I’m fairly sure if there is such knowledge of god or of the universe or what have you…if there is such a kind of gnosis I don’t presume to think I could ever be the sort of person to grasp it. I’m not sure that human consciousness is capable of it. Humanity’s capacity to turn even the most beautiful and spiritual ideas into self-interested clusterfucks of violence and exploitation astounds me. Krsna consciousness, or Hare Krsna, a religion I studied extensively as a teen and found SO beautiful and open and free has been used, in some instances to swindle desperate and confused people out of money and material resources. The Gospel of Christ, one of the most astounding testaments on behalf of humankind’s potential for good and beauty, has been an ideology of exclusion and extermination since it’s institutionalization (never mind the fact that the Jesus Christ was not a historical figure). Look at what has been done in the name of Islam. And how the strife between Hindus and Muslims in India has been a fount of conflict and violence. Even Buddhism has been used as a front to maintain monarchical and feudal control.

I think that religion, mysticism and myth are important maps of humanity’s collective experience. In a lot of ways mysticism and religion are sort of like an act of detournement; absorbing the images of the past, its time. When Benjamin wrote in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History” that each age was endowed with a “weak Messianic power” there’s always been a sort of fundamental misunderstanding. It is not triumphalist, end of history rhetoric only the socialists win. That’s why it’s “weak”. And the Messianism he refers to is fundamentally rooted in the Kabbalah’s sense of Messianism—the Messiah never comes. Derrida addresses this in Specters of Marx as well. In the second footnote to the second chapter “Conjuring—Marxism” Derrida addresses Benjamin’s concept of messianism. He writes:

It’s interesting here, the synchrony between Derrida’s reading of Benjamin and Situationism. In the passage that this footnote is appended to, Derrida is discussing the concept of hegemony, specifically as it regards “critical inheritance”, as he calls it. He writes that “a hegemonic force always seems to be represented by a dominant rhetoric and ideology, whatever may be the conflicts between forces, the principal contradiction or the secondary contradictions, the overdeterminations and relays that may later complicate this schema—and therefore lead us to be suspicious of the simple opposition of dominant and dominated…” (Derrida, Specters of Marx, p. 55). What Derrida is also attempting to address in the text is the way in which “mysticism, spectrality” is folded into the logic of capital. Derrida speaks of the provocation of other ghosts, of the multiplicity of this “sociality” as he calls it. There’s always more than one specter, more than one spirit. This mystical experience, this provocation of ghosts not only binds people together in a common experience (the mystical undercurrent), but it binds us together in the socialized relations not of but as commodities are bound together. Producing this “mysticality” (I’m thinking of the “phenomenological conjuring trick” as Derrida calls it…he refers to a passage in the first book of Capital where Marx describes how the table at an auction, seems to dance for the potential customers, how the commodity casts of an aura of exchange-value and mystically transforms itself from a table which can be used into a table which can be bought). “This socius, then, binds all “men” who are first of all experiences of time, existences determined by this relation to time which itself would not be possible without surviving and returning, with that being “out of joint” that dislocates the self-presence of the living present and installs thereby the relation to the other.” (Derrida, p. 154) Derrida is referring to Marx’s labor theory of value when he refers to “men” as experiences of time. People are transformed, mystically, into commodities endowed with use-value in the capitalist system. Derrida goes on to explain how if the “’mystical character’” of the commodity…is born of the ‘social form’”, we must understand this mystical character, this secret. It’s worth, again, quoting him at length since any paraphrase would lack his eloquence:

Derrida’s point (or more precisely, Derrida’s phenomenological distillation of Marx’s point) is that while mysticism or spiritualism (remember, Derrida is essentially discussing Marx’s Saint Max section of The German Ideology, the section on mystical experience, Fourier, and Spirit and Marx’s refutation of Stirners “mystical anarchism”) can offer a transcendence of “spectacle” (Derrida cleverly notes that the market is a “front for all other fronts”), but that this transcendence itself is still a reflection of the social system it is enmeshed in and engendered by. It’s not a question of whether mysticism pre-dates capitalism or vice versa either, it’s a question of whether mysticism is somehow singular in the fact that it has not become a reflection of the capitalist system. In another section of the book, Derrida reminds us that even ghosts must be given a body, that the return to the body (revenant) is what makes the ghost visible, that the transformation of the visible into the invisible the arrival (arrivant) of the ghost IS a revenant, a return to the body. It’s another of Derrida’s characteristic double binds, the arrival/return and the departure (the ghost must have left the body, the departure/arrival of the spirit). I wonder however, is atheism too, a reflection of the capitalist system? One would immediately argue not, since it is fundamentally a rejection of hierarchical organization and foundational principles. Still, it can be said that, ultimately, mysticism is not necessarily a hierarchical organizational principle. It can be an event, a transformation, non-hierarchical, completely subjective and unattached to any religion, faith or school. It can simply be an event. As Derrida would characterize it, the event of an event, the spec(tac)ular event of the event of transformation, the anticipated future event. However, if this future does not include a radical change in the social system which it arrives in, I wonder what the transformation means…is the arrival of a return a transformation at all? It reminds me of a passage by Vaneigem in his The Revolution of Everyday Life:

I’d add another question to Vaneigem’s closing interrogative: how do we know we are not just ghosts who cannot recognize ourselves in the mirror?