In the XML World

Posted on August 13, 2012 by Francois Lachance

Sometimes possibilities open with the correct confluence of languages.

I have been following with interest the recent (and ancient) thread on interdisciplinarity. I am intrigued by not only bridges but the building blocks of bridges.

I wonder if, at a sufficiently abstract level, some of those blocks may exist in the practice of markup. Markup aims to create a structured object.

Historically, we have come to a point where languages that express such a structured object can also be used to transform the structured object. Given the wise practice of documenting the decisions that lead to the creation of the structured object, in a sense a metalanguage is available to serve as a bridge between disciplines and further conversations about objects and their transformations.

In this light, one might consider the Text Encoding Initiative as a multidisciplinary project.

Notice I have avoided the mention of “method” in favour of “practice”.

This little message to Humanist seems terse but what an abyss lurks in the distance between method and practice.

And so for day 2070
13.08.2012

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A Tool in the Sky

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Francois Lachance

To fully appreciate the bravura of the ending to this poem, you need to recall the beginning. “a brief history of time” concludes “the mezzaluna rocking” section of Heartland by Michele Leggott.

the book slips past my ears
on the flight over three hours
following the sun folding up corporeal
reality and I’m not finished as we begin
the descent into earlier tray tables
secured seats in the upright position not
a molecule lighter or less perturbed
than the cold air under our wings we step
back in the same day and forget an hour
the spooling voice entered and can’t leave
or leaves many times without us going on
split or spilt from departures arrivals terminals
the book slips by and I am not done

[…]

[…] the mezzaluna
rocking out along the bay or through the fine crust
pulled from the hot oven the mezzaluna of doubt
of two hands of cutting it fine as the doors close
the bell clangs and the drunk begins his hyena call
to the black universe then charms a small boy in a paper hat
it’s my birthday too very same as yours same as you I am
going to see my friends all my friends tonight seven days
of crossings going off like steel drums again and again
we say goodbye and walk into Hill of Content where the book
opens itself to the very page I was on real or imagined
starting over on the way back against the turn of the earth

We are not done. We are undone.

The half moon in the heavens. The half moon in the hand.

Rocking.

And so for day 2069
12.08.2012

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Agreeing to Perpetual Commotion

Posted on August 11, 2012 by Francois Lachance

Inscribed under the sign of fado, Michele Leggott’s conclusion to milk & honey is an expansive poem called “wild light” whose ending opens the mind onto wide vistas

[…]

travelling light
because our hearts
those crazy old caloyers
have gone on ahead
with all the stories on a string
all the stories in the world
waiting to happen
again
light swings between us
luminous and dispersive
anguish no anguish
I won’t be back this way again
but the world of light
throws its salts into the sky
one more time
foam dew clouds lightning
and on this arm
of the harbouring planet
we look up and agree to live
in perpetual commotion
a new moon and just below it
the evening star

OMAPERE, 25 JANUARY 2004

Anchored in place and on a thread raising to source of light.

And so for day 2068
11.08.2012

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4 Down: Inhabitant of Lesbos

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Francois Lachance

I have heard variations on this joke but here it takes on a charm of its own.

WHEN MY
GRANDMOTHER
LEARNS
I AM A LESBIAN

(looking up from her crossword page)

“Don’t be silly, dear. You’re Scandanavian.”

from Julie Marie Wade, When I Was Straight

And so for day 2067
10.08.2012

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Stark Consequences

Posted on August 9, 2012 by Francois Lachance

Nigel Slater. Real Fast Food. On improvization…

If you get halfway through a recipe and find that the crucial ingredient is missing, then you must experiment or starve.

He goes on to observe in a variation on the adage that necessity is the mother of invention: “Improvization is a wonderful thing. It is how cooking moves forward.”

And so for day 2066
09.08.2012

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yr utopia: dreem not uv its prfekshun

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Francois Lachance

bill bissett – The Gypsy Dreamer
Director: Luis De Estores
Described as “an evocative, multifaceted portrait of acclaimed Canadian poet, artist, singer, and peer mental health advocate, bill bissett”.

“forget living a normal life that’s my message of hope, my message of hope is try and most successfully, most organically, most exquisitely, most happily, live your own life”

Caroline Bayard and Jack David have a wonderfully evocative description of bill bissett in the introduction to Out-posts / Avant-postes

bissett, in performance, relies absolutely on the poem: he does not supply anecdotes about when and why the poem was written and he often commences a reading by chanting one of his single-line (many times repeated) poems, such as “day go day go my heart a cum home a”. To first-time bissett observers, his chanting, Indian-like poems, and his rattle, often come as a surprise or a revelation. Each performance differs as the “spirit” indicates, for there are no definite patterns to follow.

I was privileged to hear him live here at Glad Day Bookshop in the Poetic Justice series. He did indeed open with a chant. And I’m so glad that Luis De Estores captured some of the magic. it mks the or din airy speshul

And so for day 2065
08.08.2012

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The Way the Wind Blows

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Francois Lachance

Reversing paragraphs in our source — evoking taste then its source.

First the explication:

It’s this breeze, the legend states, that makes up the secret ingredient of Prosciutto di Parma, drying the ham to its signature sweetness and making it one of the most popular varieties of Italian prosciutto – its name recognized around the world.

Next the description of motive force:

Dating back to 100 BC, historians have remarked on this ham produced in Parma. According to legend, the breeze from the Versilia coast drifts through the olive trees of the Magra Valley, picking up the fragrance from the chestnut trees before settling in the hills of Parma.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/trademark-dispute-prosciutto-di-parma-canadian-shelves/article37427226/

And so for day 2064
07.08.2012

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Paths to the the Pleasure Spot

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Francois Lachance

There are some books you wish you had come across sooner…

As the letters empty and reverse themselves, becoming their outlines, their own shadows, the reader sees and/or establishes connections between the images: “anybody looking at something,” Nichol has said, “takes a path through it, and that creates a narrative. So the best you can hope for is to present a text which demands of the reader that they organize it themselves.”

Stephen Scobie. bpNichol: What History Teaches. p. 50.

You see from 1968 on we really got obsessed with trying to get to a non-narrative prose. Was it possible? Steve [McCaffery] and I finally came to see that, no, it was totally impossible. In fact, anybody looking at something, takes a path through it, and that creates a narrative. So the best you can hope for is to present a text which demands of the reader that they organize it themselves.

Caroline Bayard and Jack David. Out-posts / Avant-postes p. 27. [interview with bpNicol]

La seule vérité c’est le plaisir du texte, le plaisir du corps. Si, pour moi, la transgression est importante, transgresser la loi, la hiérarchie, cela veut dire s’approprier des lieux de plaisir, non des lieux de production. Je dis cela en tant que poète. Parce qu’en tant que femme, dans la lutte des femmes, je veux m’approprier du pouvoir, et avoir un pouvoir de négotiation. Mais en tant que poète, ma priorité, c’est le plaisir.

Caroline Bayard and Jack David. Out-posts / Avant-postes p. 72. [interview with Nicole Brossard]

This would have been great to weave into my considerations of “Storing and Sorting” where I could have made a greater connection between the treatment of sequences (narrativity) and jouissance.

And so for day 2063
06.08.2012

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Casting the Speculum

Posted on August 5, 2012 by Francois Lachance

At the mention of “Andrew”, the phrase “fishers of men” popped into my head and dragged the rest of the poem into an interpretation where the first catch is the self.

The beauty of Titian’s Peter—you’d swear
those painted arms were flesh.
He’s fishing with Andrew, the two of them arguing,
hauling their heavy nets into the boat.
They bend to the lake’s mirror: among reflected reeds,
a heron’s image turning its liquid head to hunt.
And the floating shapes of men—necks, lips, bellies—
their bodies’ second life on the surface of water.

“Beauty as an Evolutionary Strategy”
Mary Cornish
Red Studio

And so for day 2062
05.08.2012

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Transcendental Orphans

Posted on August 4, 2012 by Francois Lachance

There is a smart aleck joke in the notes to Stephen Scobie’s bpNichol: What History Teaches. First the text block on page 118 that provides the “anchor” for the note in question.

But, given the multiplicity of language, this whole myth can also be read in another direction, and the The Martyrology can be seen as a drama of the continuing redemption of language. Poststructuralism celebrates the absence of the “father,” that is, of the very notion of a “Transcendental Signified” which would act as origin, source, and sanction for a stable system of signifiers. As I put it in Chapter 1, “The sign is empty; we are all orphaned in language.”10

And so the note:

10 See above, p. 00 [in TS, Chapter 1, pg.17].

Page Double Zero? No title abbreviates to TS in the bibliography. Transcendental Signifier? [Signified?] There is at page 17 of Chapter 1 the self quotation:

Roland Barthes observes that “every narrative (every unveiling of the truth) is a staging of the (absent, hidden, or hypostatized) father”: 26 the idea of narrative as an Oedipal quest should come as no surprise to any reader of Journal. Here we may briefly anticipate a later stage of the argument, and observe that the missing parent (a prevalent figure in Canadian literature)27 is equivalent to the absence of the “transcendental signified” in poststructuralist linguistics. The sign is empty; we are all orphaned in language. As Nichol longs to reach the (m)other through the diversity of language, that very diversity demonstrates the impossibility of concluding the quest.

Amazing if you squint a little that double zero 00 looks like an infinity symbol.

And so for day 2061
04.08.2012

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