Here's my Artvoice answer:
I approach both my curatorial and creative works with palm flat to avoid bitten fingers. Bearing gifts. Head-on, as their eyes are side-mounted and possess only lateral visual acuity. With a chair and whip. In an orderly, single-file manner. With an idea for a feature-length film that would require further funding for development. Slowly in the standings, over the course of a long season. With the love of a parent. Brandishing a torch and pitchfork. With calipers to assess physical fitness. With disbelief.
On all fours. Hungry for more. On the third Tuesday of every month. When the bell rings. With a hohoho and a hahaha and a couple of tra-la-las. When we’re together. With tongue pressed hard against my teeth. With a shuffle-ball-change. After dark. Before applying pressure to the wound. With side-of-mouth precision. Leaning into the mic. As a form of activism. While gesturing. In the heat of the moment. While shaving the underbelly of a goat. With questions for the audience. While humming the theme song to Hockey Night in Canada. Guilty of jay-walking. Fresh from a morning run. Worried about rent. Occasionally. Frothing at the mouth. Frustrated by the 51-card deck. Blessed with the ability to read minds.
At the five ’n’ dime. When I feel like it. After the dishes are done. Instead of learning the metric system. During calculus exams. With a four-inch inseam. Second-guessing my decision to drink pomegranate juice. Under bizarre circumstances. Wickedly hung over. While wondering whatever happened to Sir Mix-a-lot. Full of pesto. Often. While striking flint against rock. Shimmering in the moonlight. Hot for teacher. Fit to print. While resigning from the House of Representatives. While wondering how the Republicans will justify their statement that “the time is right for new leadership at the Pentagon.” Sleepy from a hard day’s work. Full of vim and vigor. Confident the safety net is securely latched. Fumbling with my keys.
2 comments:
In my view, that's basically what my poems are about. As this statement relates to Test, well, on one level I just assume it applies, because that's how I find I approach thinking about most things. (Kevin's question was difficult because it asked me to think about a connection that I don't think is particularly strong, but, at the same time, it's a fair and relevant question. My elliptical answer was my attempt not to makes the connections too tight.) But, yes, I think lengthy readings with little in the way peripheral activity allows listeners to get out of a space where relatively simple or whole understandings are tempting.
I get this whole focus-until-break thing from my work as a copyeditor. I have to pretend that I'm fixing things when, in fact, when you look at language closely enough, it's disfunction through and through.
That's on off-the-cuff answer.
thank you kindly, mark, for expanding. i also found kevin's question difficult; anytime previously that i may've considered the relationship between my curatorial work and my personal creative experimentation has netted only flashes of coherent parallel or theory, nothing fleshed out and certainly nothing i've spent time articulating or developing. when i've found myself in similar situations with difficult questions (i recall rob mclennan asked me a question about how conscious i was balancing order and chaos in wsfl), my first impulse has been to say, "no," or "no, haven't REALLY thought about it and don't know that i want to muck about with a fantasy answer."
"no" is more succinct than stumbling through half-baked thinking-aloud.
my strategy this time, when responding to kevin (and similarly, when recently responding to harbourfront centre's request for a statement on the relationship of my work to the word 'desire'), was to conjure several pseudo-false/true answers that allow for a deep stretch of possibility but also a potential avoidance of earnestness in the answer. not to mention i wanted to enjoy the response process, and the few stabs at earnest answers i attempted felt altogether precious, contrived, and with too many caveats of "not always," "yes, but," and "both/and/also/or."
but i'm blah-blah-blahing.
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