BERNEVAL

Lisa Robertson’s essay on “Atget’s Interiors” collected in Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture at one point draws on lectures by Gertrude Stein.

Atget’s neighbor Gertrude Stein said that paragraphs are emotional, sentences are not. We could extend her distinction: A room is emotional; an object is not.

The comparison as it is extended by Robertson continues through some succinct class analysis and then we arrive at the following and we must slow our reading down if we are not to mistake intuitions for institutions.

An item of furniture is a kind of preposition. “By,” “with,” and “of” are material intuitions. Of is a cupboard. With is a table. By is a chair. Each is a kind of household god. It intuits us.

The play with prepositions although it doesn’t specifically mention Tender Buttons reminds one of Stein’s book with its divisions of Objects, Food and Rooms.

BTW, Robertson notes that “Habit is emotional, intuition is not.”

And so for day 1033
11.10.2009

from “Value Village Lyric”

We think of the casual bravado of Baudelaire’s tied black cravat against the scrim of white collar in the photograph by Nadar. The fabric of his coat is stiff, with shiny folds at the torso. The shoulders have an unfamiliar, mincing cut. The upper collar is velvet. Where his hand rests in trouser pocket the jacket flips back to show the dark silk facing. We wish we could experience the fit of this jacket, slip our arms into the ruched sleeves of Baudelaire. Its odd skimpiness would translate our stance. Its worn cuff would brush our books, absorb our ink. We would realize the place of the pronoun beneath the binding torso of the tailored jacket, which would give our soul troublesome deluxe shape. We would be handsome and sparkling.

The is the penultimate paragraph of Lisa Robertson’s excursion into the “House of V” and provides a new view on vintage. It is collected in Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office of Soft Architecture which is itself a fine accessory to a fitting wardrobe. As a sometimes user of fountain pens, I am particularly captured by the touch of the cuff absorbing ink.

And so for day 1032
10.10.2009

Oscar of Between was announced in Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing by Betsy Warland.

                                                         It was then she became a writer.

Oscar was not yet then, but only Betsy. It takes four and half decades. In her sixtieth year, she chooses a parallel given name. Oscar. Names her unnamed self.

And it takes only an instant to become accustomed to referring to Oscar as she. What is intriguing about the website where Oscar of Between lives is the interleaving of work by Guest Writers and Artists. Along with the curating, moderated comments supplement the work-in-progress. As the work unfolds, one finds there kernels that invite further speculation and elaboration, kernels such as

Post bilateral mastectomy, others’ expectations. For prostheses. That Oscar.

— pros(e)thesis —

a kernel that appears at first to be mere back story and yet enables further unfolding of possible connections when one searches for that exact combination “pros(e)thesis” — thus fans out the theory writing into terms of embodiment and flesh —

[See Chris Land’s marshalling of the construction “prose(e)thesis” in relation to the work of N. Katherine Hayles in Technology, Text, Subject: ‘After’ the Human in Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science Vol 3 (4) 2005.] More in betweens for Oscar and Warland explorers.

And so for day 1030
08.10.2009

Two of many things are going on in Hannah Weiner’s “Research Important Conflict Two Obediant” (in Writing 25). One is a set of variations on continuous paragraphs of evocative strings in which words are repeated and transposed — a sort of music ensues. And given this texture, it is not remarkable that the proper name of an American composer is inscribed (by steps) into the sequences. We first get a capitalized “Glass” in a flow of uncapitalized words and further on more of the name appears. And likewise the poet’s own name is subject to a morsel-like inscription. And we have music that reads a little like this sample:

stay with the paragraph until omitted some people document please sentence write backward omitted add climax unfit is unjustifiable long sis its silence power spell requires short period put someone would complete and sentence since its say name you would omit object add sentences style like forbidden we live silently handle properly since its long period some complain entrance toward forgive paragraph someone substructure without cruel would understand speak cruel put in words definite destroy attitude your name would add a hurry structure complete put in another sentence end put name say forward always interest own subject corrected substantive in culture object observative slightly awkward sentence

And of course some semantics are at play in these paragraphs that “until omitted some people” carry on and at times incorporate commentary on the proces — just what the introduction of a name might cause: “your name would add a hurry structure”.

And so for day 1028
06.10.2009