hey y'all

i'm still working on the project i played on the last day of class, using Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 as a foundation. it's slow-going, but definitely a worthwhile pursuit. here's something interesting i've found: Beethoven's Ninth Symphony of greater importance than technology

This article discusses how the symphony played a crucial role in the invention of conventional compact discs. It's a great brief insight into the way that all of our sign systems are constantly interacting with and affecting each other.

Check back in a week or so to see what I've come up with my own personal system of analysis. Hopefully I should have something really cool for you. I started trying to decode the second movement, but I'm not sure I like my system yet, so I want to wait until I have a better idea of how I'm going to make sense of this enormous bundle of sounds.

images

by francesca woodman

that are full of dread.

the dread of the use of the word dread

I really am very sorry about adding so many posts at the last minute. I had pieces of dread in various technological and physical locations and was only just now able to unite them (with the exception of final photographs, which had been camera-napped but will hopefully make it on this blog). The reason for the wide dispersion of work is that the dread comes unannounced very often and I made a point of documenting its appearance no matter where I was. (I have work on the dread's departure as well, but it will not be ready for quite some time.) I, perhaps, mislabeled a few of my pieces, since the #1 temporary dread remedy is, in fact, writing about dread. My project became a study not only of the feeling and how to interpret and represent it, but also how to counteract it through interpretation and representation. 

The project started when I began trying to think of a theme for our first poam assignment. I wanted to pick something personal, but mysterious so I would have a lot of very important questions to ask about it. I ended up picking the dread because it wouldn't leave me alone and I thought that while I was being dreadful I could at least explore the sources and consequences of the feeling. 

I began with lists (in the first dreadpost) of specific things that reminded me of dread, caused me to feel dread, or helped get rid of my dread. A few of them were highly specific and therefore not very accessible, but I started noticing sentences or images or whole stories that would remind me of the same feeling and I began to try and keep track of them. I felt obnoxious as it was posting ten entries in a row, so I chose a few of my favorite images and a short story. The work of my own that I included ranges from pieces written directly about dread, to pieces written while experiencing the dread, to pieces written about things that I think cause the dread. Some of them are more highly developed and edited than others, which are simply thoughts. 

I am excited to go back on this blog after I finish this last post to see if the pieces are at all related to one another or have any unifying images. The stomach and the teeth seemed present in a lot of my writings about dread, which lead me to begin transferring my written work into a highly textured 3-d form with the help of many bags of steel wool. Steel wool seemed a good material with which to construct dread because it was ugly but could be made into something more pleasing to look at (in my opinion). It also seems to be the right texture of dread and can easily be manipulate into different forms that can fit into all of the places where dread is found.

For my first structural idea, and the one I brought in to present, I chose the somewhat obvious image of the stomach. Dread is felt most prominently in the stomach. Often it is present in what feels like small balls of varying textures and numbers within the stomach. I made the stomach model the largest because I wanted it to have a presence, like the feeling does. I then began to explore what the inside of the steel wool stomach might look like. I mapped out a few possibilities with materials such as dirt, glass, fur, more steel wool, bronze wool, and clay. The feeling is never quite the same, depending on the source of dread, the time of day, the amount of food consumed previous to and after development of dread, phone calls made, projects assigned/due, run-ins on the street, glasses of water processed and endless other factors. 

I realize that upon reading the poems, if you ever get through all of this and make it down there, they might not seem to be depicting the same thing or even the same type of thing. I was very lax with my self-regulation in terms of what to consider applicable and what not. This project, as unfinished and fresh as it is, has helped me learn to slowly love the dread, or at least appreciate it as a character in my life. It is a constant source of dependable companionship that I will continue to get to know in the months and years to come. 

If this is extremely long when the margins get significantly thicker I, for the 4th or 5th time, apologize for taking up so much space. I hope some of this is at least fun to read.

mp

someone else's dread

and the dread of not knowing if you like a short story, despite its undeniable strain of dread

Two (from the collaborative project Seconds by Adam Simon and Matthew Sharpe)

The meanness of the satirical essay you wrote hit me yesterday like a baseball on the chin. Those Sundays we lay curled up in each other on your hard futon kissing and discussing Marx eventually gave me serious lower back problems but at the time I was having like these day-long orgasms in my brain. You said, "Satire will be an important tool for the revolution," and maybe it will but it also can be a place for someone to hide from the intensity of any real feelings he may have and also to transmute them into a very painful projectile to be hurled at the person he has them about. 

It felt so good to be able to unburden myself to you re my inner conflict over my job at the ad agency, so then to see it lampooned yesterday on your blog in what was basically a "humorous" open break-up letter to me - "I'm hoping my $10 million campaign for the US Army is offset by the fact that I buy only free-range organic granola" - made me feel, well, I don't know, what does Marx say about how it feels to be betrayed by someone you lay naked next to for a cumulative total of fourteen months of your life, someone whom you let pull your hair - hard! - during sex because it game him so much pleasure even though it really hurt you although you sort of liked it but only because of the obviously intense pleasure he was deriving?

Also, do you think those cool hand-printed signs in the window of your bicycle shop aren't advertising?

After I read your thing I had a lot to say and even if you thought you knew what I was going to say and didn't want to hear it from yet another person, it wasn't fair to not let me say it, and the beautiful mixtape you gave me didn't make up for that because if I've gained any knowledge from my time with you it's that beauty is one thing and fairness is another. 

You said, "The distinction between the public and the private is a distinction internal to bourgeois law." So you keep posting those satires of me on your blog from the back of that little storefront were you work and sleep, and I'll climb up to the roof deck of my nice apartment building and advertise to the world till I'm hoarse that i loved you. 

spit as thick (apologies)

or 

the other woman's dread #2

your stomach noises

are loud on the hard

floor and I'm staring

again at the one

grey hair in your eyebrow

the space between our

lips is another person

drenched by now

in questions in an apartment

on the upper west side

again I am here in bed

but you smell better

I can hear your engine 

from halfway down the 

block and the clicking

of the driveway turn

like the creases on 

a bent finger

it tastes like wet

bread when you

use your whole

tongue

throw it back 

and I will tap

tap on enamel

until a few grains 

are pushing at 

the back

of my throat

will we keep

digging with scalpel

fingertips on each 

other's soft skin

into the cheese cloth

canyons of someone

else's soft wound?

friends

or

the dread of the vegan

glue them to your wall

and let them drip

onto your napping chest

when you were young

you ate your scabs

so you could make 

more 

faster

in a cycle 

body system

my phlegm tastes like

medicine as I pull it 

off my tongue and save

it for you for later

grow out your hair

while you're lying 

with long toenails 

snoring

letters touching

so often I see you but

never really all at once

I made her a water bowl

with a half&half container

but real heroes eat red meat

maybe soon you'll be drunk

under your desk and

remember to call me back

you feel heavier and 

heavier in the back seat

spin it in a circle, bite

spin it in a 

circle bite.

a bad quality image of the preparation of stomach#1 and stomach #2 with a special appearance made by Loretta aka temporary dread remedy #3.

sleep

sit on the couch

imagine a different living

room and put your hand

inside your stomach.

break it into three pieces

and give one to your 

aunt nancy for the trip

to italy.

don't give any to your 

parents because then 

you'd have to choose.

if you find anything

from red lobster or olive

garden in there give it 

to chuck for that time on 

the stoop in july.

throw the second 

piece up in the air.

make sure it doesn't

land near loretta.

roll the last piece 

in your palm so it's

smaller and put it on

adria's pillow. 

she'll find it in the 

morning when you're

still on the couch holding 

hands with dread.

the deer  county zero

or

the dread of false memory

dark in wisconsin looking 

for shapes on the side 

for 30 miles mistaking 

cardboard for flesh

swerving large metal 

outside the truck stop

brick lutheran church

every bump could 

have been

screaming in the bitch

seat, grab the oh jesus 

handle and close your

eyes don't think of vermont

postcard images  gumballs 

uncle john's porch  his

pancakes  fire  guns

replace the shreds and 

throw them over 

the top of the car.

curfew

or

the dread of landmarks

you stepped on my knee

and I sat on your foot

when there was a line 

for the bathroom I had to talk

to strangers because

I was wearing my seagram's gin

shirt not proud I rode the train 

alone getting off the six blocks 

away wrong stop

I had to walk past the kfc thinking 

about my mother's cabriolet 

in the parking lot with the wrong men 

on its last night white and clean 

before in the garage with inches 

of calabrian dust on the hood 

Then maya angelou at the feminist 

camp in woodstock talking 

about how the daughters of those

women are never the same though 

I'm sure I would have been fine had

I Ieft the talk early when I'd wanted to 

when I had to pee.