writingmjb

Ken Sparling : INTENTION IMPLICATION WIND

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 20:01:00 +0000

I read it very slowly. Because every time I read it, it was startling. And I wanted it to continue to be startling. I didn't want to ever take it for granted. I had to read it like it was - as it was written. So it could keep on being startling. It was always being startling to me. That was quite important. It was beautiful and startling. And startlingly beautiful.

Things would just come out of it. Poetry. Very meaningful. Nested there. Growing out of it like flowers break through concrete. Which defined and superseded it. Like fish jumping out of rivers. The sun glinting briefly off their skin. Eyes flashing. Mouths trying to breathe air. Incongruous and perfect. Reminding us. And making evident the space around us, between us, and within. A brilliance that shimmers briefly in banality, but registers most deeply thereby. Like something unexpectedly you see caught up in the wind. It blows away before you can get ahold of it. You’re left grasping for it, only catching hold of empty traces of it, which remain full of imminent meaning. Until it turns into something else.

There is a story there. I would be inclined in one way to say that it is told impressionistically. I would be inclined in another way to say that it is told like cubism does portraits. I would be inclined in another way to say that it's just like any story told: the sense of it is aggregate. The characters and things that happen and the feelings everybody has, and the perceptions, all become evident in complex contradictory ways over time. Repetition. Like relationships. Thinking, or knowing, that it is something whole, even though each part rests easy on its own.

There is a story there. But more than a story, there is writing there. There are sentences and paragraphs the like of which i've only read in few, very few, writers. It does stand out. This is literature as an art form.

One of the very few books I will return to, to continue to read and be inspired by.

INTENTION IMPLICATION WIND

Writing It

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Relax. What is that doing again? Where did it go? How did it stop?

Maybe it’s not this after all. Maybe this is just doing it again. If I just breathe and don’t pay attention really to what is coming out of my fingers then what happens?

Is there anything in there? Is there anything out there? Is there anything there at all? Like what, for instance?

Just place your fingers on the board and see what happens. Can you get in front of the thought? Can you get beyond dictation? Is there anything out there? Is there anything in there? Is there anything there at all?

Relaxing means letting it go and letting it come. It is the thing. It’s it that’s interesting - not you. Trying to make something may be interesting, but it is not it. You have to forget about it. Maybe you can listen to it. Maybe you can see it. Maybe you can feel it. Maybe you can call it, but will it answer? It does not answer. It is the answer. You can call it but it doesn’t answer. You can tune into it. You can be aware of it. But you can’t control it.

There are things. There are always things. And the minute you get out of your own way then the things begin to be it. That is the way it is. Listening is key. Hearing everything is necessary. Listening is better though. Listening isn’t necessary but it is it. Sometimes hearing is enough. Because sometimes listening is you listening. Stop being you listening. Stop being you hearing, looking, etc. How can you? How can you stop being you doing anything?

This is writing when it comes and it goes the way it comes and goes and you are not in the way of it. It is very hard sometimes to not be in the way of it. There are sounds and there are things that you identify as making sounds. Anybody is an anybody any time. When you start to laugh at it, then you know you’re there. Not there as you being there but you there just the same. Simply. It is very hard to be simple. When you’re trying to be simple. It is simple to be simple when you’re not trying to be simple. Everything is anything. And the moment that it is, it was.

If I know you are not there, then it comes. When you’re there, you stop it all from coming. Then you are not there it is there and that is all that anybody needs to be there. To be there with it you must not be there with it, you are it, simply. And you cannot do that. But you can let it happen. If you get out of the way of it and stop being there with it, especially when you don’t let them be there with you being there with it. When you’re writing it for anybody else, you’re not. You should not divide it into two, but it’s hard for anybody not to do, because they always see themselves as them and it. That’s the way it is. And there’s nothing you can do. So do nothing and you’ll see.

Doing nothing is of course doing something, but it’s interesting because it’s doing nothing. More than interesting of course, it’s what it is that must be done in order to be there with it and not be there with it, but be out of the way of it, so that it can be there. Regardless of you. It’s interesting to think about, but when it happens it’s not interesting, it’s something else altogether.

When you edit you are editing and that is different from writing but it is related in a way. It is what you do when mining and you find something of value and you put a polish on it. The polish is attractive but it covers up the thing about it that’s important, which is it. It can help make anybody want to see it, who might then see it, but they might not see it, they might just see the polish. They might see the polish and know that it is in there, and just knowing it is in there can for some of them be quite enough, even though they’d like to see it, they cannot, but they’re glad to know that it is there. They have it then. Of course it can’t be had. Anyone who thinks it can be had, likely cannot see it, feel it, know it, or whatever. Even though they are it in a way.

Where it goes is where its gone when you are talking about it. There is nothing wrong with talking about it. Sometimes it can help. It can help remind you if you have forgotten. It can also sometimes help you thereby to remind you to get out of the way of it and it can go be there now. It is always now. When it’s then or later it is being talked about.

When it’s there and you are writing, it is writing and you see it when you read it later on. It has left a trace and or else it’s there depending on the way you read it. It is both and neither but it all depends on how you’re reading it. Are you reading it? Are you writing it? It is writing. It is reading. That’s the way it goes. If you’re writing it or reading it then it is gone, even though it’s left a trace. It’s still there, if it is, if you’re able to tune into it.

It is always there but it isn’t always saying what the writing’s saying to you. Sometimes it is saying what the writing’s saying to you, sometimes it is saying something else. That’s why anybody reading it can say it differently from anybody else who’s reading it. When it’s there. It isn’t always there. When anybody gets there in the way of it being there then it’s not there, even though it is in a way, it’s not, because no one’s seeing it, feeling it, knowing it, being it, etc. It is there because you’re not, so if you’re always in the way of it, if no one’s getting out of the way of it, then it’s never there. Even though it is, it doesn’t matter, because if no one’s seeing it, being it, etc., then it isn’t what it is. It might be what it was. It might be something it will be. It won’t be what it is.

It needs awareness of it in order to be it.

Attention

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:13:00 +0000

What is a distraction? What is full attention? If attention can be full, then it can be empty. And it can be anywhere in between. Can attention overflow? Can it run out, as a motor vehicle runs out of gas? What is it to have no attention at all? Is attention just a figure of speech? It is just a featured term in an economy of awareness?

If attention is a moving thing, then can it move of its own accord? Does attention have its own interest? Does interest move attention? Or does attention just move without motivation? We can steer attention. We can focus our attention. We can control our attention. So then, is attention separate from us? We can separate ourselves from attention, but is attention separate from us?

We can think about ourselves as constituted by a lot of different things. A lot of different parts. Like a machine that we can influence, steer, control. Physically that varies. There are things like breathing that we need not control, it’s automatic. But we still can control it. There are notions that if we do control it, we can reap benefits. That is often the promise of control, in general. Exacting it, reaps benefits. But it is subject to an economy. Too much control can create drawbacks. So the act of controlling is itself subject to a control, an economy.

With matters of awareness, with our psychology, the separation of our constituted sense of self into many different aspects and predilections is very much subject to various controls, various economies, with commensurate notions, ideas, philosophies of benefit, of improvement, of evolution even.

Who or what thinks of everything and makes the systems of control, the economies? Who or what is aware, attends to anything, or for that matter is distracted by anything? If you have attention, then can attention have you? If you are attention, what then does that mean? You are attention, you are awareness, and attention and awareness are you.

Naturally, because we see ourselves as our selves, we can control our selves, and release ourselves from our own control. At least in theory. Are we control? In as much as we are awareness, are we also in the same way the economy of us?

What is the relationship between control and discipline? They could be said to be more or less the same. But there is a cultural investment sometimes in the difference between the words. Discipline and control could be seen as economies and also as exercises or expressions of our being, which is a moving thing, and as a moving thing can be a thing that can be followed and can be steered. Different disciplines can have different relationships to and economies of the dynamic tension between following and steering. Which is to say that a particular discipline can represent a specific orientation to the dialectic of control of being.

If attention can move on its own, flow like a stream, then it can be followed and it can be steered. If either following or steering can be done with attention, then attention is separate from whoever or whatever follows or steers it. And whoever or whatever has the discipline of following or steering, of doing something somewhere in between, or doing something else altogether different with the stream of attention, then has at least three separate yet related things it is aware of: themselves, their attention, and their discipline. Who or what is aware of all of that? Can they or it even speak without then thereby separating themselves, itself, from themselves/itself again? Can awareness in itself express itself without separating from itself?

If awareness is a figure of speech, then it can do anything we say.

Traveling

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:00:00 +0000

(A slightly different version of this was published by Dandelion Magazine in Spring 2005)

Snow and open road

I am riding in a car

A dream of the past

– Senta’s 23rd Haiku

I wake up in the body of a man. He’s in a car. He is the passenger. The woman driving is, I think, his wife. She looks like she is in her 40’s. I think she is attractive. I like the way she’s dressed. She looks pretty cool. Maybe she’s an artist. It’s hard to see her body, but I think that it looks good. Her face is dark and beautiful. Her eyes are green. Her lips are full and are very red.

I look down at the body of the man. His hands look older than my hands. His clothes suggest that maybe he’s an artist too. I can’t control him yet. She is talking to the guy. I can’t understand it yet. But I can tell that she’s concerned about something. He seems a bit distracted. But I have to wait for clarity.

It’s their instinct that I always tune in first. The stuff of the reactive mind. Then I get the feelings. The senses and emotions. Then I get the dreaming. The poetic flow of imagery that reflects the hidden soul. With this I must be careful not to pay too much attention, but sometimes there are important clues. And finally I get the thoughts. The thinking mind. The notions and abstractions that coalesce the other layers of the total mind, and which shape the personality. It deliberates the self’s sense of its own self. The mirror, the sword. This is where my work gets done, where I can have some influence. I am hidden here.

The car is on a highway. We are traveling fast. I think we’re in the Rockies. There are a lot of mountains. They really look amazing. Snow is on the ground, but the roads are clear. There is not a lot of traffic. Inside the car is warm. But it doesn’t seem that cold outside, despite the presence of the snow. The sun is shining brightly and intensely. Its reflection off the chrome and glass of passing vehicles is nearly blinding. I think that we are traveling west. The dash board clock reads 2:00.

The guy feels pretty calm. I think he’s meditating. His wife is talking to him, and it’s starting to make sense. He answers her, but doesn’t have that much to say. I think they’re sorting something out, but it doesn’t seem that critical. He seems preoccupied with something that might be interesting.

I see the gate ahead of me. I’m not overly excited by the place I’ve traveled to, but I think I’ll stick it out. I have a kind of feeling for the thing. So, I let the gate go by. There’ll be another one. The gates are always there when I really need them. I shouldn’t be so cocky though, in case I slip on the cosmic banana peel. I might get stuck somewhere, and that would be a drag. I need to travel. It’s everything I am.

I can feel the dreaming coming on. I brace myself. The guy seems very calm but who knows what’s underneath it all. Watch out for the quiet ones, is what people always say. But it’s not that bad. In fact, it seems like he’s controlling it. Perhaps he’s meditating. He’s dreaming about space. My favorite thing. In fact, his dreams are something like my own. They’re very geometric, but it’s really about meaning. Then I see the ship.

Oh, he has a ship. That is quite surprising. Then his thoughts come into focus. In his mind he says “I am the passenger.” That is interesting, and somehow alarming, because that’s exactly how I feel about the places where I go. I feel my flight instinct kick in, but I manage to calm down. I check to see if there’s a gate, but there isn’t one. But that’s ok, I’m going to stay. This is intriguing possibly. What does he mean?

I can understand the woman now. She’s asking him about a trip. Is he all prepared to go? And he is saying that he is, but he doesn’t let her know that he is worried. It’s about the ship. He is not a driver. But he must drive the ship. He has a theory about that. And I think that he is right. He cannot drive the ship. He has to let it drive itself. He is the passenger. He has to let go of control, and be one with his desire, then his will can be the driver. It is just like the device. His ship and my device are very similar. And I’m not a driver either.

I am a passenger. I am his passenger. I have been in many people. Watching and observing. But I like to take control. Just a little bit. It’s interesting. It’s a bit like backseat driving, but in a subtle way. It doesn’t work as well to simply say to people where they ought to go or how they ought to get there. No one likes a back seat driver. But you can encourage them to dare to take a route or go off in some manner that they secretly desire. If you are too pushy, then they get upset, and then you feel like you are sick. They try to shut you out and that makes you feel much worse. Then you really need the gate, and even when you make it out, you feel hung over for a while.

This guy has made himself a ship and his wife has helped him out. She’s some kind of a mechanic. He drew up the plans and she helped assemble it. It’s a lot like the device. It’s metaphysical, but it looks like a space rocket with an art deco design. It’s very beautiful. It’s set up in their basement, but it’s also in his dreams. She isn’t going with him, and I wonder why she can’t. Perhaps she can’t receive it in her dream? I think she has the mind for it, but not the inclination. Clearly, he has both. Which makes me think I may have stumbled on a fellow traveler. But where exactly is he going? Maybe he’s looking for a gate?

He pulls the windshield visor down and lifts the flap up on the mirror on its back. He looks a bit like how I think that I might look when I’m his age. He’s staring into his own eyes, but I feel like he is looking right at me.

“I’m here,” he says to her. And she frowns at him. “What do you mean,” she asks? “I’m here!” he says emphatically. “I’m here inside of me.” And I know that he is right. But I move through space, not time. So I feel that he is also wrong. This all confuses me. She says, “Tell him, Quick!” He says “It doesn’t work that way.” And I don’t understand, but my flight impulse is very strong and I see the gate again. He tries to hold me back, and if he really wanted to, then probably he could. But I make it through the gate.

***

I wake up in the body of a dog. He’s running in a field. The dreaming of a dog can be very entertaining. But I play it cool in there and don’t pay much attention. Instead I take the time to think. I’ve never traveled through the temporal fields. I’ve always traveled through the space ways. So if that was myself that I was in, was it an older version of myself that exists in parallel? Or was I wrong about the mind, and about the gate?

I studied the Geometric Calculus of Mind at Ontos University. And I understand that the application of such science to the Society of Mind Theory, in concert with some specific Metaphysics. That’s what made the device a possibility. But none of that would matter, if it weren’t for my condition. I am genetically predisposed to memetic network transport; I have the right stuff for traveling. But unlike others, I am not an agent. I am a self-indulgent mental tourist. And as such, I am considered absolutely useless to anyone that matters in the ruling of the world. In fact, I only barely matter to myself.

There is the possibility that the guy could have been a Clone Bot. But why and how would it be older? And why would it be me? No, I think I may have missed something in temporal physics class. But if I did time travel, I don’t know how I did, or if I could again.

What could he not tell me? Wouldn’t it be weird if I were just his dream?

The dog runs around. I feel its excitement. Dogs have a strong sense of freedom that comes to them from moving. I indulge in the feeling.

Streaming

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 23:22:00 +0000

Sometimes i use a voice for writing. Sometimes a voice uses me for writing. At least it feels that way. Sometimes I have a notion that a certain way of writing is best. For instance, the voice that "uses me for writing." But when i try to deliberately use that voice, it fails. It puts me in a curious position as an enthusiastic audience to my own writing, one that seeks to emulate or copy the style i find inspiring, which i supposedly produced, yet cannot successfully reproduce. I have mostly resigned myself to not bothering to chase after it any longer. I think this particular style i'm mostly referring to is best suited to shorter pieces anyway, and my failures with it have occured when i attempted to sustain it over time in discrete bursts oriented to an extended narrative. Recently I tried to use it for a novel, but it fell apart. Although finally the proper voice for that novel has come. But i think i shall salvage the original inspiration that produced the text i tried to make into a novel and serve it as a short piece. No one would ever publish it, i don't think, so I'll post it here at some point.

In the meantime, here is the original piece that i wrote that inspired this contemplation to begin with. It is obviously not without its antecdents in other authors, stylistically, (kind of kerouac meets gertrude stein, oddly) but i myself revelled in how it allowed to me portray something i otherwise could not have done with simple conventional description. I wrote it around 2003, i think. It is very interested in the idea of "there" - particularly how any city, any place really, has a particularly character or personality that is present in its, or as its, "thereness." It is also entertained by the way that "you" can be used interchangeably with "one" (or for that matter "I"), but how by using it, the reader is implicated in the experience. Of course some readers may like this, and some may not - as is always the case with anything written.

New York Story

- We went to New York and there was nothing there specifically that you could say was just one thing about it that was there, but there was a lot of everything that we were always feeling there and feeling it as everything was like always feeling it as being in New York and the feeling of New York - it was all about the fact that you were there and feeling it as there, that everywhere was always New York there - like there was this awesome moment when we went into a small and casual eating place - the kind of place where you go up to the counter like a deli and all the food is there under the glass and you ask for it and they heat it up and you pay for it and you sit down with it at the tables after picking up your plastic cutlery, and there are different people all around, and when you're done you take your paper plates and cardboard cups and plastic cups and plastic forks and knives and the napkins that you had to look around for because they came out of a dispenser shaped like an upside down trapezoid that reminded you of something, but you're not sure what, except maybe it was like something not quite typical but for sure it's in some bathrooms, but it didn't look like something that would be the thing that you'd get napkins from, and the plastic cutlery was different too because it was so thick, and you felt bad a little like you were being wasteful because you went and got some more of them after you got a brownie because you weren't sure if she picked up a knife the first time when she got the cutlery for the pizza you were sharing and for stirring sugar into the coffee you were drinking, which she didn't need because she was having iced-coffee, and you shared the brownie, and she touched base with people you were meeting up with by calling on her cell phone, and you looked around at the different people who were sitting at the tables or waiting for the tables, and you saw that there was a specific table that people did prefer, because you saw that as soon as one group left, another group would take that spot - it was coveted, it seemed - and all of this was regular, this action was quite normal, but some things were quite special - like the kid who served you at the counter who said go pay the beautiful girl down there at the cash - and he kept saying that like he wanted her to hear that he was saying that, calling her the beautiful girl that we were supposed to pay, and all the while he was smiling and being playful and getting us to play along, and there were a couple of young girls down there by the cash and he was trying to point out the one he meant, and you didn't really know which one he meant but you were surprised and you were delighted too by the whole routine and he had an interesting face, a latino face, an open face, a friendly face, a playful face, and you felt special in some way like you did the whole time you were there in New York city this time when you were there, like you were somebody, like as if everybody thought that maybe you were somebody, like you never feel at home, quite the opposite in fact, unless you're with your friends, but that's different because they know you, so the whole thing was remarkable and a little bit perplexing and a little something else because you thought you were a nobody but you didn't want them to find out because you liked the feeling, like you thought that they thought that maybe you're a somebody (like when those people threw that party for the new book by Thomas Pynchon and nobody had ever really seen him but everyone decided to come to the party in a bar in New York city dressed or made up like they thought that maybe Pynchon dressed and therefore looked like, and there was one guy there that no one recognized, so they thought that maybe it was really him, especially because he had a bad fake sounding french accent and a big white hat and because when someone took his picture he got upset and ran away just like the way they figured Pychon would because he had never had his picture shown or given any interview and would likely run away and be upset the way that this guy was, but it turned out that it wasn't him, but everybody thought perhaps he was, they thought the person was a somebody, you see, and that's the feeling that you had like you were that guy who people thought was Pynchon, even though he wasn't, and maybe he caught on to that and didn't want to disappoint them and let them know that he was not, and because then also he would have to feel that he was really no one and maybe that was something like the way that you felt too) and because it made you feel like maybe you were someone after all, and you tried to set yourself, compose yourself, and hold yourself and carry yourself too in a way that was agreeable to you and fit in with the general feeling that you were having, that maybe you were someone, which was remarkable - and you even had a look once at yourself, at your reflection in the window of a subway car and thought that you looked pretty good, which was unusual for you and not a feeling that was a common one for you to have, and perhaps it was then all of these remarkable and wondrous things combined, that rushed together suddenly as you looked around at the people in the diner as you both were getting your coats on and throwing out your trash and looking at the people there again, perhaps it was the all of everything that gave you an epiphany and made you feel a rush of love and joy for all the people there in the diner and all the people there in New York being how they are, all different of course, but somehow in some way being part of something that was peculiar, distinct and singular and specific to that moment - it was glorious - and it's getting even better as i think about it now.

moving playing thinking saying

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 23:44:00 +0000

Moving is playing music. Meditation is holding a note. Meditation is listening carefully to the music you are playing (attending to your movement).

Holding the note. Listening to the note. Playing the note. Writing the note. Letting the note write the writing. Letting the note move the movement. Moving playing.

Being part of it all. Is being part of all of it. Going with the all of it. Listening to somebody else’s note. Listening to somebody else’s playing. Listening to the movement. They call a piece of music a movement. They call dance moving to music. All movement could be said to be dance. All movement could be said to be music playing.

Language orders a world. Changing the language changes the order of a world. Worlds are ordered by language.

What you say is how you make a world. A world is a culture is a life is a living. Making a living is making a culture.

Knowledge and thought can be known or thought to be different.

Thinking can be knowing and thinking can be talking to oneself.

The mind is a language construct. Language constructs are cultural constructs. Cultural constructs are world orders, which are made by language and which make language. The mind is constructed as the origin by language, which is developed by the mind. Language doesn’t come from anywhere. Language is constructed but it’s always there before and beyond any way that it’s constructed. Words are a part of language, but they aren’t language as such. Language as such is never known. It can be thought about. Perhaps it can be felt. But knowing it is shaping it some way, constructing it some way. And the language that is shaped some way, constructed in some way, is not language as such.

Space is a language construct, which makes things present as things. Things are subjects and objects.

Listening is reading. Watching is reading. Feeling is reading. Thinking is writing is reading. Talking to yourself could be writing. Usually, writing is talking to somebody else. Thinking which is talking to somebody else could be writing. Thinking which is writing is talking to somebody else, even if it is yourself.

Book by Ken Sparling (Pedlar Press)

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 19:35:00 +0000

This is book is sublime. Every time I read anything by Ken Sparling I get excited about writing.

Book is an unusual book. At first you might think that there isn't anything holding it together as a book, like as a novel, but the more you read it, the more the sense of it as a total thing emerges, mysteriously, ineffably, but none-the-less as there.

Some of the sentences and paragraphs are so good I can barely contain myself when I read them. Brilliant.

Book Tour - Montreal - Reading Anderson

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Fri, 06 May 2011 05:27:00 +0000

15 April 2011

The night before the reading was magic. We went out with our friend Dayna. We were meaning to just go for one drink somewhere and then go get something to eat. But the barman, for an inexplicable reason, but very serendipitously, decided to engage us, me in particular, with a discourse on scotch that came complete with object examples. There were some very great samples at a very agreeable price. I reckon he was a saint.

I read at Drawn & Quarterly, which was an exciting prospect. So many colourful books. So many great books. If I weren't so distracted I would have bought the lot of them. I meant to come back the next day - record day - but the weather and our disposition dictated otherwise.

The event was very casual. I read with Jacob Wren. There were two nice people behind the cash. There was a stage and a microphone set up and a music stand with my and Jacob’s book on it. No one introduced us. We decided the reading order. I went first. We decided when to read. It was very cold on the stage. This was funny because everywhere we went I commented on how hot it was inside. So we were always taking off our coats in stores. It was cold and damp outside, but so hot inside everywhere. So I went on stage without my jacket or even my hat on. And it was very cold up there. Afterwards, we offered to sign books.

It was so great to talk with people I hadn’t seen in a long time. The audience was full of people I knew. That made me glad and nervous at the same time. It was like how I feel when there is a party for me. A birthday party. Or whatever. I always feel excited by that, but also rather conspicuous. But it felt good to read to my friends in Montreal. It was like reading to family. To that other kind of family.

I hadn’t been in Montreal for about 3 years. And the last few times we were there, we were dealing with all our stuff that we had in storage. A lot of stuff. So this was the first time together without that business to deal with. But there was this other business to deal with, which is a rather different kind of business. I was a bit distracted while I was waiting to read. Then afterwards, we went to a place to drink and eat and celebrate, and that was very much agreeable. Then, the next night we went out, but I was nervous thinking about Kingston, which was the next day, so it was difficult to enjoy myself, even though I saw even more people I hadn’t seen in a long time, and I spent more time with my dear friends.

Sandra had just been recently to Montreal, so she was less overwhelmed by it than I was. Montreal has a very special place in my heart. It does for my whole family. It’s always been a part of my life, one way or another. It is one of those places. There are not very many of them. Fewer every day. It was great to be there, but I wasn’t quite there under the circumstances in the way I would have liked to be there. However, there were moments. Very magic moments.

Wherever you go -- there you are.

reading writing

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Wed, 04 May 2011 17:04:00 +0000

When you're reading a lot of different writing at the same time, and you're never reading any of that writing for a very long time at any specific time, then you're reading the writing more as writing than you are reading it as the experience of whatever the writing is being or becoming. The magic and mystery of writing, or of anything that is created, including people, happens when you are reading them or living with them or - more generally - being with them long enough so that the spirit of them emerges and becomes present to you as something distinct from the more immediate sense of the form. It is distinct from the form, and yet it is only there because of the form. It is there because of the form and because of your engagement with the form over a period of time consistently. That is the magic formula. Reading things periodically is not the same as reading them continuously over an extended period of time. Your engagement with it makes a difference. And the extent of your engagement with it makes a difference. This is true of many things.

Book Tour - Montreal Preview

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 22:43:00 +0000

I'm going on a little book tour to read from my new novel, Anderson.

Actually, "tour" is a bit of an exaggeration. I'm reading in three cities: Montreal, Kingston and Toronto. They're all along the same route. Once I've flown to Montreal, I'll take the train to Kingston and from there also the train to Toronto. I quite like the train and miss travelling that way, which isn't so much a thing out in the West.

So, it's kind of a long weekend tour. The first stop, Montreal —April 17th at 7PM— I'll be reading at Drawn & Quarterly bookstore. This is quite exciting, and possibly dangerous for my wallet, given my love of their comics/graphic novels. They have some of my favourite authors in that medium: Linda Barry, Chester Brown, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, Julie Ducet, Joe Matt, Julie Morstad, Joe Sacco, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Adrian Tomine and Chris Ware. That's a pretty amazing list, and there are plenty others I've still to explore.

I'm reading at Drawn & Quarterly with Jacob Wren, who is another Pedlar Press author. I read with Jacob and 4 other "Pedlar Men" in Vancouver for the launch of Anderson. I bought everybody's book that night, and have read and been impressed by all of them, their unique voices. Pedlar Press is a publisher I'm very proud to be with. Jacob is based in Montreal, and I like to think of Montreal as home, even though I don't live there any more, and my immediate family is all in Toronto. But Montreal has a special place in all our hearts, wherever we live. I still have a lot of friends there that I stay in touch with, and I'm looking forward to seeing them. Hopefully, spring will be at least somewhat in effect -- I can hardly think of any where else I'd rather be when the warm weather finally returns to Montreal. Everyone is soooo happy for those first few weeks.

New Novels

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 23:55:00 +0000

I'm going on tour soon with my new novel Anderson. It is a short tour, but nevertheless I am thrilled by it's prospect. I shall be reading with other people, which I do enjoy, in two of those locations. One of the people I shall be reading with is another Pedlar Press author, Jacob Wren, whose book, Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed is very interesting.

I shall write about all of that a bit more later. But right now, I'm thinking about how I have a new novel out, and yet I am also working on a third one. So, in a way, I have two new novels. I thought that I would write the one I’m working on faster. I was sort of planning to be nearly done at this point. But I'm learning that what I think about such things is unreliable. And in fact, I seem to be better off not thinking about it one way or another. Rather, I ought to just write it, and when it is done, if ever, then I can think about it in other ways.

Because I have been a bit impatient with this book, and I was a bit with Anderson too, I find that I have reiterated it a number of times. My first book, Monkey, I was very patient with, and I let it form itself the way it was, without thinking about how I should go faster to get it done. The impatient relationship to my writing has proven to be unproductive. I hope therefore, that I am abandoning it as an orientation, strategy, or whatever I might think it is. It is not beneficial.

There is a possibility, I haven't ruled out, that I do this sort of thing to myself in order to trick myself, to pretend the value of a certain abstract relationship to production is worth committing to, only to discover that it isn't working, and thus serving to make me revalue the process that was challenged by this abstract relation. Such an elaborate ruse seems a bit absurd, but it could be part of an over all (crazy) purpose. Whatever the reason, I have discovered yet again that impatience with my work is pointless, and surrender to my natural process is rewarding.

I've been working on the new piece since November 2008, which is about when I handed in my manuscript for Anderson. I was intensely into writing this new piece, and I wrote about 60,000 words, and then I started rewriting it. I was playing with a different method for writing also. I usually go forward with a piece. I start here and I go there. Then I go back over it a number of times, adding, subtracting, refining. But with this one, I deliberately wrote in a fragmented manner. So that the pieces could be put together afterwards. This was interesting. But it has turned out to be rather unsatisfactory. Now I have assembled all of the bits and pieces and gone over it and cut it all down to about 35,000 words. I have changed that bit 3 or 4 times, trying to find the best way to tell it. And now I am back to my natural method. Now I know I have it, the relationship to making it that works with it, and I am rolling it out in a forward movement like music.

Symphonies can be written in different ways, with different sections being composed at different times, and reassembled in an order separate from when they were written. Film and TV, of course, are also usually produced this way. But musicians who improvise have this way of going forward in their composition that I relate to as a writer, who was at one time also a musician.

Anyway, I just did an interview for a radio program (Mouth to Mouth) in Vancouver, and also for the Toronto Quarterly, and it’s got me thinking about my process.

writing is like food

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 20:52:00 +0000

Writing is like food. Different foods affect the way you are. If you want to be a certain way, find the food that will affect you in that way. I'm talking about writing.

About Me

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 06:39:00 +0000

This is the introduction that was read before the reading. It's a bit long, but I think it might be interesting as a short history. Bio's are usually dull affairs. The pedigree and all that. I've always found it more interesting to find a story in someone's bio. So, I tried to make one. Bios are strange things in that they are often written by the people they are about in the 3rd person, because they are supposed to pretend to be written by somebody else. I don't know why this convention is observed when it is rather apparent who is actually supplying it. Anyway. Here is the bio that was read, 3rd person and all, despite the fact that I wrote it.

Michael Boyce was an army brat. This means he moved around a lot as a kid. His first 4 years of school were spent each year in a different city in Eastern Canada. He didn’t like school much. At 16 he was thrown out of one. He didn’t go back until, at 21, he went to university as a mature student.

In the interim 5 years, between being a high school dropout and a university student, he played experimental rock, jazz and punk rock music. He thought he was a musician.

When he started back at school, he thought maybe he was a writer. He had a book of prose poems published by Stuart Ross’s Proper Tales Press. He would stand out on the street with a sign around his neck, just like Stuart, Lillian Necakov, Mark Laba and Crad Kilodney used to do. But he didn’t do it very well. One of his teachers scared him about being a writer because he pointed out how hard it is to succeed and survive as one. So Michael started thinking that he was an academic, because he seemed quite good at that. But somewhere during his PhD studies in Montreal, he decided that he wasn’t. He just didn’t like the culture. Instead, he thought he was an artist.

He worked in university radio production doing shows with International Artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and star Pianist Dana Reason, and got into video documentary and media art.

After taking his PhD in Humanities, he worked with Montreal film makers Daniel Cross and squeegee punk Eric Denis (aka, Roach) on a film called Squeegee Punks in Traffic. He worked with his wife, Sandra, and two other artists on an interactive installation. He shot a lot of dance on video. He made his own documentary and some small video-art pieces.

Then, when he turned 40 he thought he might be a writer after all. He started working on a script idea, and then decided maybe he should write the story first, and then the story became his first novel, Monkey, published by Pedlar Press.

Then he and Sandra moved to Banff, where it was very good and interesting to think about himself again as an artist. As a writer who’s an artist. He met a lot of amazing artists there and he is now working with one of them, Myron Campbell, on an S3D animation for the NFB based on one of his short stories.

Another short story, which he was writing while living in Calgary, kept getting longer. When he and Sandra moved to Vancouver, he kept writing it, and it eventually became a novel. It is now this novel, Anderson, also published by Pedlar Press, which he is presenting to you today.

Larissa Lai's Anderson Blurb

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 20:13:00 +0000

Larissa Lai was very nice to write a blurb for the back of my book, Anderson. I love her work. Her novels When Fox is a Thousand and Salt Fish Girl are quite distinctive and just great. I particularly found Salt Fish Girl a haunting peculiar novel with a sensory quality like no other I've read. Needless to say, therefore, I was honoured by what she wrote about my book—and of course I'm very grateful.

Here is what she wrote:

Michael Boyce’s Anderson is a neo-modernist novel for the new masculinity. You could think of it as the love child of a threesome among Virginia Woolf, Alfred Hitchcock and Yoshihiro Tatsumi. What I’m trying to say is: this is the weirdest novel I’ve read in a decade, and I mean that in a good way. Michael Boyce has produced a wonderfully interior, completely over-the-top, disturbing and hilarious portrait of the inner life of a self-confessed detective of the soul. It remakes urban-realism, 1930s fatale-noir and dark fantasy to produce a genre that queries the relationship between text and experience, or, if you prefer, body/mind and representation. It makes an art of telling feeling to exhaust the language of affect, producing emotive and spiritual perception anew. After irony lies a blacker humour that possesses the body and haunts the reader to the edge of her capacity to perceive.
—Larissa Lai, 2010

Anderson Acknowledgements

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 21:17:00 +0000

Anderson started as a short story that kept getting longer and longer until I had to admit that it was a novel. Part of the reason that I had to admit it was because I was sending bits of it to Myron Campbell, whose curiosity about the character and excitement about what was happening and anticipation of what was going to happen next spurred me to elaborate on the matter. So I definitely have Myron to thank for that. Once I committed to it being a novel, I sent it in serialized form to him, Ravi Rajakumar and Trent Noble. They were an attentive audience whose feedback allowed me to gauge what was working and what was not. Ravi, as always, also provided much needed attention to errors and questions about unusual syntactic treatments, which is part of what I like to play around with. I’m additionally grateful to Myron and Trent for ideas on how to spread the word.

I gave an earlier version of the first few chapters to J.R. Carpenter, who’s general comments resulted in a very specific change to the novel’s flow. My sister Donna read a version and paid Anderson the incredible compliment of wanting to hang out with him. That endorsement meant a lot to me. Her husband, Bruce, also provided an insightful and critical reading.

I am ever grateful to my lovely Sandra Dametto for her support, inspiration and strong understanding of structure and story.

I feel very blessed to be part of the Pedlar Press family. Beth Follet is a dream I don’t care to awake from. Her sense of things is perfect, her editing spot on, and her support is amazing. Designer, Zab, is sublime, and I can’t believe how lucky I am to have two of my books designed by her.

Thanks to Larissa Lai, whose novels I love, for her support and endorsement and the amazing blurb she wrote for the back of the book.

General thanks go to Stuart Ross, Aaron Peck, Laurie Dawson, Mitchell Politeski, my remarkable mother Dot, sister Maureen and brother Ron.

The city characterized in this book is a composite of Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, New York City, San Francisco and somewhere else altogether imaginary. These cities have all been formative in some way or another of my interest, comprehension and apprehensions about cities conceptually, aesthetically, philosophically, socially, etc. —and by extension, are instrumental in the development of my general sense of place, what it means to belong somewhere, and the great mystery of being anywhere.

Certain music inspires, invokes, evokes certain spirits of writing. While writing Anderson I listened to a lot of jazz from the likes of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, John Coltrane, Dana Reason, Art Blakey, Cecil Taylor, Max Roach, Herbie Hancock, and Frank Zappa, as well as things like Robert Fripp’s Frippertronics, King Crimson, Soft Machine, Brian Eno’s Ambient music, Talking Heads’ Fear of Music and Remain in the Light, Arcade Fire’s Funeral, Neu and Kraftwerk.

Other things that helped to spawn this work: Comics like Steve Ditko’s Doctor Strange, Neal Gaiman’s Sandman, The Hernandez Bros’ Love and Rockets, Herriman’s Krazy Kat, Segar’s Popeye and Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy; the Films Noire of the 1940s and 1950s; Humphrey Bogart’s John Huston and Howard Hawk’s films; films in general by Akira Kurosawa, Seijun Suzuki, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Fritz Lang and Orson Welles; writing by Gertrude Stein, Earnest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Neil Stephenson, Douglas Adams, Lao Tzu, and Eckhart Tolle; and cartoons by the Fleischer Bros, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Shamus Calhane and Fritz Freleng.

Thank you all.

Anderson Book Launch

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 04:32:00 +0000

Here is the poster for the event at Sitka Books & Art in Vancouver. It features 6 authors, including me, from Pedlar Press, organized under the rubric Pedlar Press: Men In Print Reading Series. The other authors on the bill are incredible - all very unique voices.

Writing Anderson

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 06:11:00 +0000

Anderson started as a story entitled Anderson Detecting. It was originally written with the same sort of cadence as Monkey. I started it around the time that I was finishing Monkey. The writing style didn't suit it though. It felt affected. It didn't come naturally like it did for Monkey. It was just a style I was enamoured with and wanted to keep using. Things don't usually work that way for me. Everything I do has to have it's own personality. Like children.

I put it aside but the character still appealed to me. And the title. My work flows out of the title usually. But the title changed because it was a title that was in the style of Monkey's writing also. So eventually the title changed to just Anderson. I like one word titles. But the book I'm working on now isn't a one word title. I tried to make it a one word title, but it just felt like I was being affected again. I have more stories to tell about that book later.

Anderson was a short story for awhile. I had a plan to write and publish some short stories in hopes that my name would get around and people would trace it back to Monkey. I wanted more people to read Monkey. It got very good reviews, but not a lot of people read it. It is a very unusual style, and that may be part of the reason why it remains a bit obscure.

Short stories are an interesting form. There is very little support for experimentation in the short story by those who typically publish them. I don't particularly like short stories over all because of the standards and conventions that prevail with respect to them. But I do like to write them. I find them very good for getting film ideas out, and I do believe that they can surprise me by turning into novels, like Anderson did.

I was determined not to write in the style of Monkey after Monkey because I determined that was the Monkey style and should only be for it. With Anderson, I was finding a more simpler style to work with. It took a little while to find the right voice for Anderson. Myron Campbell helped to turn the short story into a longer story, and into a novel by way of his fascination with it and the character. Ravi Rajakumar was helpful in this respect with regard to Monkey. There is nothing better for writing than having an avid reader. But J.R. Carpenter was indirectly responsible for the voice of Anderson. It was simply because of a comment she made about one of the opening paragraphs. I was thinking about what she said in the context of situating the character in this particular paragraph. And as I thought about it and tried a sentence in different way, it suddenly dawned on me that I should change the whole thing. It was an epiphany. Anderson became wholly active from that moment.

I like things that manifest indirectly and organically. The more planned something is for me, the less interesting it is. There is a degree of planning, of organization, but it is very much done in the service of discovery.

now and zen

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:28:00 +0000

I haven't written here for a while because I feel too conspicuous.

I used to use this space to write in a mostly harmless not so careful playful way about some movies and some books I like. But now, since I make my living editing and writing, and work often in a freelance capacity, the prospect of a potential employer sizing up my ability to write copy for them on the basis of this material has stymied me. Not to the extent that I've taken it down and stopped writing in this form altogether, mind you. I just use different tools to write the sort of things I like to write for my friends and more anonymously for the general public. Respectively, Facebook and Twitter.

I do also have another blog where I write experimentally in a more or less intellectual capacity, though nothing that anyone would ever dare actually publish, because it is very experimental -- but I do that using a pseudonym, and very infrequently also. The rules of blogging (which i hate--as soon as something becomes popular, people start writing the rules for success in doing it) dictate one must publish frequently. Oh well. Perhaps my notion of success is different.

Why do I keep this thing, then? I entertain the notion that I could actually use it to address those potential employers. Although the prospect kind of bores me, and I resent the implication that I have to do injury to myself for the benefit of an absurd assumption (i.e. that I how I write with a personal weblog is how I write professional copy). But I don't really have time to do extra free work like that.

Anyway, I'm not sure that blogging is that interesting or viable a creative writing medium any more (mostly now for current events commentary). I'm not sure it isn't either, though.

So for the moment I remain suspended.

dear david bowie

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:04:00 +0000

The other night we went out to a club and did some dancing. Been a while. They were playing at nostalgia for a former club night that was long ago to some. Trading on its reputation history. The dance floor would sometimes have more people and sometimes have less people on it. We were goofing around. Play dancing. Then one of your songs came on: heroes. The dance floor flooded with people. Our minds were one. Our hearts were bursting. Kinship, love, remembrance, revived hope in nothing in particular. There you were, you and Eno and Fripp, all earnestness and sonic whimsy and joy turning it out. Sublime. And we were all full and as though knowing all each other.

t'was brillium.

movie reviews

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Sat, 02 May 2009 07:00:00 +0000

I've been thinking about a different approach to writing reviews of movies - write about they way they make you think and feel and be, the way they drive your walk, the way they shape your own imagination, not about their narrative, not about the way that it succeeds or fails in meeting expectations, not about how good the technical achievements of it are, not about the way it lines up with your prejudice, or even your ideals, not about the way it reinforces policy, or even the philosophy that you prefer - but the inspiration it produces for you, how it is a generative thing - The occasion of some other thing ...that’s when it does get interesting to speak or write ...not “about” it, but “from” it in a manner of speaking ...in a manner of speaking saying writing and etc. ...on the occasion of this movie , I feel inspired or compelled or driven in whatever way to say the following ...but that preamble can stay silent or inferred perhaps only by the title of the iteration piece of writing dialogue or speech or whatever you might call it after all.

why i like chester brown

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:46:00 +0000

I just re-read I Never Liked You, by Chester Brown, and it got me thinking about his work and why and how I like it.

There are often times I read about or hear about the narratives that Chester Brown makes. Chester Brown is good at making narratives and so of course it does make sense that anyone would say that he is good at making narratives. I do say so too, but I would like to say more pointedly that what I really like and do enjoy and find to be remarkable about Chester Brown is his drawing.

The drawing is the thing for me even though the story is the thing for me as well, i.e., the narrative. The drawing has a space in it, a silence and a special kind of stillness to it, that I find to be remarkable because I find, I really find, I really do discover every time I look at it, at any of his drawing, that I find that stillness space is there in it, because I find that it is there in me, whenever I look at it.

What is reading anyway? What is looking reading anyway? What is looking anyway? And listening? All of these are me doing something similar, and it’s not entirely because of seeing with my eyes or because of hearing with my ears or because of thinking with my brain, because the mystery begins when the limit of machinery and process is apparent, because it all is only ever looked at, read, analyzed, or understood (when understanding is an action more than when it is an object).

What I like about, what I really like about Chester Brown is his drawing, and what I really like about his drawing is the way the silence and the stillness and the space of it finds itself in me, and how I find it there and look at it and notice it by feeling it and seeing looking at it reading it inside the panels of his drawing. There is such a holding still in it, in them, in him, in me, when I am reading looking seeing them it him. There is stillness there, and anyone can see it find it feel it there and correspond with it because it’s there in anyone, is anyone, differently perhaps and similar perhaps. That can be interesting, and that can be the way it is remarkable or not.

I say it is remarkable.

Tell It Slant - Beth Follet

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:39:00 +0000

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children ceased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
— emily dickinson (quoted in Tell It Slant)

I recently read Tell It Slant by Beth Follet, and I must say that I think it's very much beautiful and great - quite vivid - and it makes me miss Montreal. (I am often missing Montreal, and it happens a lot, it seems, when I am reading things ... I think I have some sort of fundamental association - a correspondence, if you will - with Montreal and writing). There is a triad of cities in the book that are settings for the writing that I can currently relate to: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver.

Where you come from means something, and of course where you are means something else. There is often a relationship between the two, but sometimes the places are where they are, meaning whatever it is that they mean, without referencing or figuring predominantly in relationship to one another.

Sometimes you move around to different places, and doing so is tantamount to moving around in different modes of being. And sometimes it is just you dealing with different environments. And choosing to be anywhere is about choosing the environment, which is like choosing the space-of-being to be in.

There is also always sometimes a place you would like to be where you are not. And you can hope to be there, plan to be there, long to be there, etc. -- and yet not be there. And that also is a way of being; like being out of being and wanting to be in being.

Places can make you be some way, can shape you into being some way, influence the way you are. And people can in this way also be like places. So, going to places can also be like going to people, and going to people can be like going to places -- and both can be like going towards what or who you are, can be, when you are there in them, with them.

And of course all of this is very much like time, because when-you-are is very much like where-you-are. And you can think about the way you were, and think about what happened, and remember when you were with whom, where, about what and how -- like as though you’re in a dream (or writing) about what you think you do remember, and what you think and feel about it all.

You are now and you are then and you are you, but different in each place. That is, when it is or was.

This is how it all becomes to me, thinking now about it, like it all is what a diary is like, without it being written like a diary in form. It is, in this respect, sort of like the heart of a diary. Or, like the art of letters, when the letters are disclosures, poetic, of the heart and soul, growing, grown, finding, losing, lost.

But you are there when while it is all happening, so it doesn’t have the comfy cosy feeling that a thing that’s already happened and now you’re being told about it all does have -- it has the current feeling of whatever it is that is happening right then. And yet even though you are there with it, going along as it is going, you are also not there but outside of it, and so it is still in its way comforting to read it all. It’s a confession that is literary in form, and that is why and how it can be both romantic and aesthetic.

The book makes me think about Roland Barthes: The Lover's Discourse, (one of the many books I loved by him, but that one in particular was very important); Camera Lucida, (its sense of the erotics of slight disclosure, and I note the main character in Tell It Slant is a photographer); and Barthes By Barthes ("read it as though it were a novel" he says at the start of his autobiography ... more literary confession, more romance, more aesthetic, etc.). All those books went a long way to shape my approach to writing theory/criticism/philosophy (... dare I just call it writing?).

There is a peculiar kind of space in Beth Follet’s writing that I find very peaceful and languid; a sort of melancholy that is liberating in a particular sort of way. I love the way it is seamlessly fragmented - the shifting time frame - the slippage between the first personal singular and second personal singular - (I am fascinated with how saying "you" can be like saying "me"). It is writing that does not present itself as writing but as the shifting interconnectedness of stories/memories/impressions, of a seeming narrative making you become and be through unraveling it all, until there's nothing there but the everything that makes it possible ... the silence, the stillness.
Very nice.

Words the Dog Knows, J.R. Carpenter

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 05:11:00 +0000

I’ve always have enjoyed reading J.R’s writing when her writings were short pieces and not the longer sort of piece that is a book, and I was curious about the way that it would be when it would be a book. I knew that I would like it, because I like her writing, and after all her book would be her writing too. Just like her online writing and productions are examples of her writing, and I like them as well. I was curious of course about the way it might be different. Because I knew that it would be a thing, a different thing, for her, and maybe also thus for me. I read her book when it was being written and talked with her about it. This is was a special way to read a book. When you know the author and can do this, I think it is a very special thing and I am grateful for it. After it was done being written and was out for the general public reading, I read it again, and this was interesting in how it wasn’t quite the same. Of course the difference partly is a matter of orientation. But some would say that and then just get on with changing channels. I like to hover on such things because it says so much to me about what reading is, and thereby writing too. I think that it is very apropos in this case because J.R.’s book, and her writing in general, is very much about reading. It is a writing that is reading. And reading is very much a matter of orientation, and that is what the writing reveals, an orientation. And I am delighted by the prospects of reading anew by changing the circumstances of my reading.

J.R. Carpenter’s book, Words the Dog Knows is obliquely about how a reader becomes a writer. Or rather, it is about how a reader is revealed as a writer; or, how reading in its own way is a form of writing and writing in its own way is a form of reading; and how they lead to one another, which could be said to be a question that the world of the book is addressing, albeit obliquely, because although reading is referenced, writing - as in being a writer, that is, as in the character being a writer - is not.

Reading starts in this world as a silent solitude. Even where it should count - in school - it still brackets the character/reader (Simone). The peculiarity of her reading, is the peculiarity of her being, which does stand apart, reading everything, and doing it even then, right away as a way of also writing it. She is not marginalized by this. She is empowered by it. That is a significant difference.

She reads books and the environment outside. Then as she is moving, growing up and leaving where she comes from, she writes more and more the reading of both outside and inside environments.

When she is being more a writer than a reader and showing that she is a writer, you can tell because the reading changes in the way that it describes, and how it makes connections. It is less a story in that moment, and more a picture and a reckoning.

The procedure is mediated, predicated, by dogs, by one in particular. Writing is the reading that will come out, it must to show itself, reveal its reading, make its reading, be the reading and the telling and the picture and the reckoning. Then it is no longer silent and in solitude. The dog and its silent but evident recognition of a growing lexicon is an important reference and association to/with this process. Because it too has something inside that must come out, both symbolic and factual. And because it, the dog, occasions relationships. You can learn a lot from dogs, by way of dogs, because of dogs.

“I am I because my little dog knows me,” J.R. quotes Gertrude Stein. Yes, first the dog, then other people. But also the city. Specifically, Montreal.

All of this is great for me. I love Gertrude Stein. I love J.R.’s writing reading. I think dogs are quite intriguing. And I love Montreal.

It is noted that Montreal has a legacy. The character has read the city in a book before she moves to there and reads it living there. She does not compare the two, rather, she refers them to each other, makes references and associations. Who is the narrator? She is, Simone, the reader writer. She reads things first in books, or by way of stories that she hears from other people, then she reads them living them, ‘in person’ as it were (a city is like a person too - Montreal and Rome, for example), and then she reads them writing them. She does not compare - she refers, references, makes associations. This is better for to expand the greater reading, rather than exclude and narrow it.

I like the way it makes me be aware of living something reading it and how that is a writing that is making it all be connected to a lot of other things, which both expands the greater reading (book) and brings things together to make wondrous sense; but not as predetermined unfolding already as it has been written - rather as magic miracle the force of reckoning (the energetic intensity of making an account of something not to be underestimated). That way everything makes sense, but it’s serendipity, delightful, surprising, (i.e. that it does) because it is contingent upon so many things that just happen to fall into place - as if they were meant to - where it is critical to emphasize the “as if.” Since you don’t know, it is thus delightful to discover it, the trace of possibly maybe. And anyway it doesn’t matter if it was meant to be. The wonder and beauty is in the happenstance - and the ontological thrill is the prospect that the world you read you write is reading writing you as well. It is a relationship.

The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:04:00 +0000

A little while ago I did a favour for my publisher and sold books at the launch for another one of her authors: Aaron Peck. It was a very interesting evening at Art Speak in Vancouver. I find it fascinating to be a witness at any sort of intimate event such as this. Particularly something so specific as a book launching. Having had my own book launches, I was curious about observing it from such a unique position. Of course I have been to other book launches by other authors, whom I either know or do not, but as a member of the audience, or a supportive friend. Here I was a book seller, supporting the press and a fellow colleague, whom I did not know.

It was interesting to try and guess the various relationships different people at the event might have with the author. I found I could guess with some apparent accuracy by way of their countenance, their disposition, how close they were. There is a reverence in launches, palpable, not unlike a graduation, a coming out party, or a bar-mitzvah/bat-mitzvah. I liked Aaron immediately because I could tell that he was both thrilled and embarrassed by the attention, an ambivalence I can relate to. I grew more interested in the prospect of the book as I sussed out the atmosphere of the launch and of Aaron himself. There is much to be gleaned from atmosphere.

I am always interested in Pedilar Press authors, partly because of vanity, I’ll warrant, but also because I know that Beth Follett has very exacting taste, and her choices, as far as I have sampled them, have not disappointed me yet. Her press is revered by many, as is the work of her designer Zab, whose work I was drawn to before I was even aware of the press. But there was something about this work that I was curious about in the same way that another Pedlar author, Lorenz Peter’s work immediately captivated me. In both cases, I felt in the presence of a kindred spirit. Sitting at the table with his books flying off of it, during lulls from people-watching and selling, I started to read the book: The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis. I thought, this is a writer after my own heart.

I commend Aaron Peck for his reading that evening. After a fine introduction to his work, he nervously, yet charmingly read from what I now realise is a book that could be tricky to decide what to read from. And indeed, he prefaced his reading with an acknowledgement of some controversy between he and some others who apparently had weighed in on the consideration. I believe he choose wisely. He read well, albeit briefly, and then left the stage and vanished largely from my view and from the room at large. Later, he showed up around my table, after I had the benefit of having read perhaps the first 15 pages or so, and of course having heard him read some of the same pages aloud.

By this point many of the people who had come to the launch had dispersed. I completely understood his inclination to stay away from the main room and harbour himself near to where the wine was being sold. I would have done the same. I have done the same. Once the coast was more or less clear, however, and he ventured out to meet me, we spoke amiably, and I in a congratulatory manner. We both agreed it was good to meet another Pedlar author, and wished to speak with one another again and further, which we did later in the week when more Pedlar authors launched and read more books, this time with Beth Follett in the house. I have more to say about that, and the books that came of it, as well as with regard to Beth’s fine novel Tell It Slant, from Coach House Press, later. For now, here are my reflections on Aaron Peck’s book.

There are some very nice sentences in the book. Like: In Yaletown the glass towers seem vulnerable. - And one of which, I thought went right to the heart of the writing itself; a line spoken by a character to Bernard Willis: Do you always tell stories that have no point? - It is meant, I think, to be a cutting question, but it is treated as a fair one, one to properly take into consideration, rather than responded to it as though it were ironic, like as though the question were really a directive that might have been heard as: Don’t tell stories that don’t have a point to them.

It might have well been the character’s point to have her question so received as such a directive, although with some humour. Regardless, the character receives it in two ways. One, yes, as her gesture, signifying an opinion characteristic of her disposition and challenging the parameters of the relationship between them, and thus calling into question his sense of his interest in her, and of hers in him; but also two, as a personal challenge to the value, quality, interest of stories, which is to say writing, without a point, or any obvious one in any case.

This is a bracketed novel, and in many ways I believe that bracket, that contextual frame, is a faux placement of a point, answering to the challenge, appeasing the call for it, while at the same time annexing it, marginalizing it in a manner of speaking. The bracket, as I call it, is the set up for the manuscript, the said bewilderments, which are constituted as a found manuscript published posthumously by “the editors,” who are themselves clearly a fiction. It is not at all as if Aaron Peck wishes you to believe it. It is only a device. And by extension, I really like to think that it being clearly a device, is precisely the point about what you might call the point of the writing (perhaps any writing), or the point of the story. The point is a device, a lure.

Is it writing, or is it a story? This is always an interesting question for me. I like writing and I like stories, and although stories of course must be written, I do see them as distinct practices, things, gestures, aesthetic operations, orientations, whatever. Sometimes something (a book, a piece, etc.) is both, at once or periodically throughout. Usually, actually, most books I do enjoy are both in some measure.

There is a story, or stories, here in this book, and the frame, bracket, context, is a story with a point, but mostly the book, as far as I’m concerned, is writing, which needn’t have a point, because the point is in the writing itself, in the sense of: the point of the story is in the telling. This is very much writing that is reading. There is a way of writing where what you are doing is reading the world, the things, the relationships, or whatever around you, and that is what the Bewilderments of Bernard Willis is doing. I quite like the way it does it. It has a pastoral quality about it, which extends its interest in landscapes to those of both an exterior and interior nature.

What is the relationship between the two? What associations are drawn between these landscapes, the objects, buildings, people and spacial arrangements within them and their perception, their perceiver? These are things to think about while reading the book. Who is the narrator? This is also interesting to wonder about.

There are switches in the pronoun case, which makes the narrator slip from an inferred first person to third and even second person form. The narrator is ostensibly Bernard Willis, that is, in the Bewilderments manuscript, but it is not clearly always so, and why should it be, when he is a fiction anyway? This kind of slippage, which I like to perform myself, can have the effect of making a reader cognizant of the writing as writing, as in: the writer is doing something here to call attention to the writing itself, and to the devices, the tricks of the trade, used as conventions, and by revealing those conventions, it brings the reader a view into the creation itself, and to the reader’s role or relationship with/in it. The writing is like letter writing to me, which is to say that it has that quality of personal address, intimate, poetic, expressive, playful, sharing a confidence. This book is charming.

Now, any book, or any thing, can remind you of another. This can be a thing to celebrate or not. I do celebrate it sometimes and not other times. This time I do celebrate the way that it reminds me of Jack Kerouac. This is not obvious. I do not expect that anybody else would necessarily share this observation, this association. It has simply stirred me in this way. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because it made me feel reflective in a similar way that the sketch writing in Kerouac’s brilliant Visions of Neal did. It made me quiet reflective observing. It made me nebulous in a pleasant way. Like idyl reading of papers, magazines on Sunday, while thinking perhaps of going for a stroll, and chatting now and then a little bit about the things you read the things you see whatever you happen to be thinking about in an idyl way. It’s the gesture that counts, the intimacy of the sharing. It’s the saying that is the mystery.

Haruki Murakami hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Boyce) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:47:00 +0000

I shouldn’t really bother trying to say anything about the writing here at the surface as language because I read the book in translation. I’m not saying that I believe in some pure iteration, but let’s face it, a translation is a second iteration, spoke on behalf of the author by somebody else, who despite all good intentions and respectful observance, is not the author, and so does not speak or write in the same way, and apart even from the issue of unavoidable if not deliberate intervention, the aura or shadow, of the translator and its consequence upon the writing, the languages (the source and the target) themselves have peculiarities that are expressed by those who speak them in idiosyncratic ways, and which, as Derrida wrote, harbour resistance to translation (a resistance that reverberates back and forth between the two iterations). So although I am tempted or inclined or have, really, to say it plainly, formed an opinion about the writing style, I realize that it is an improbable conviction, and so I can only state it in quotes, so to speak, (even more than usual). That being said, I could then say that the writing seems to be simple, but it could be doing things in Japanese that are not apparent in English. Regardless, the simplicity, even in English, is probably deceptive. It puts the story in the greater relief, the plot, that’s to say. But the story doesn’t really make much sense, and I like it fine that way. It’s not about the story, really, it’s about the telling of the story, of course, as usual, but not always, but usually for me, that’s the sort of story I am interested in reading, because as far as I’m concerned stories, plot lines, are largely predictable and unsatisfying in their conclusion. There are some remarkable exceptions, but this is not one of them. Still, I wouldn’t really say the story is predictable, but if there is a mystery within it, I had solved it about a quarter of the way through, so that didn’t matter much. There was a question regarding the final result, which was for me an experience like watching independent films, wherein you’re never quite sure if the protagonist is going to die or not (one of the salient features of a “non-hollywood” type movie), but also wherein you’re rather indifferent to the result in any case -- for the most part, anyway. So it was here. Well, maybe I was hoping for a few things here and there, which meant I had some expectations that were finally confounded. Some may find that entertaining. I do not. I don’t hate the fact of it, however, either.

I had heard that Murakami writes like as though it is jazz music. This might be true in his own language, but it wasn’t evident in translation.

Anyhow, it wasn’t about the writing, or the story plot lines, or the characters as such, although I did enjoy the characters, but mostly what it was I liked was the atmosphere of the piece and the associations. Since the time when Kerouac first wrote Visions of Cody and On the Road and many other things (since 1950), the practice of including cultural references has become rather common in contemporary writing, blurring border lines between fiction and non-fiction designates. The world of the novel and “our” world intersect. This is quite common now, but it still does register as something sort of funny when it happens. When in novels other novelists are mentioned, for instance. Or like in movies when a character will say this isn’t like some movie, you know, this is real life. It’s not unusual for these referential things to occur in all forms of story telling now a days. But it still is a thing that resonates, for me in any case, because it is a moment when the interiority of the story world is folded out into the world at large, and vice versa. We know it’s all just one big fiction anyway (with very real effects, however).

So anyway, I like the cultural allusions in the book. I find them playful and evocative, and it makes the writer, for me, register as kindred spirit, since I am rather inclined to do a lot of that sort of thing myself in my own book writing. I like the oblique short hand this provides for profiling the character and the writer and the book all at once. Those three entities blur and blend in ways that is agreeable to me.

But what I really like about the book is its atmosphere. It is very much like a movie, for me, in this regard, a certain sort of movie, that’s to say. Actually, it is like most movies really. But some sorts of movies are structured in such a way that their story gets less in the way of their atmosphere, and I do prefer those movies, but I like all kinds of movies anyway, and get the atmosphere from even those that have a story getting in the way of its atmosphere. Not just movies, everything, like music (which is more obvious, and being as it was my first love, my first form of expression that I was enthralled and captivated by, just slightly before writing, and anyway it is a form of writing in a sense, like everything that is expression really is, anyhow, seeing as it was my first love, a form of expression that most obviously conveys an atmosphere, the being of the atmosphere, the quality and meaning of an aura that infects and influences you, seeing then all that, it is not so strange that I would be tuned into that in general). Some movies can be awful in a lot of ways, but still convey an atmosphere that is great to me, and I come away from them completely satisfied and totally turned on. That’s what I’m open for.

So this book has a way about it, a spirit, an atmosphere, an aura, a personality (should that be “bookality”?) that I enjoyed and found infectious and an influence on me. It is like watching old Humphrey Bogart movies through a Bladerunner William Gibson Kurosawa Antonioni filter. What a filter. The odd thing is, I think it’s odd, is that it comes across as Japanese even though it is translated. I don’t know what that means exactly, other than to say that it is Japanese as mediated through certain film experiences, much as the character’s experience of Western culture is predicated (if not mediated) by exposure and indulgence in cultural icons of old American cinema, scotch, American beer, American cigarettes, and European & American literature. Which is to say that the atmosphere of the book reminds me a bit of the atmosphere in contemporary Japanese pop yakuza films of the 60s and 70s (Suzuki and Fukasaku), and as much as it does say the Japanese culture inspired books by William Gibson (Neuromancer, Pattern Recognition), which are also big on atmosphere. It also reminds me a bit of the staid beat (as in beat writer and all of its intended permutations -- beatific, exhausted, etc.) ironic film atmospheric persona of Takeshi Kitano in Sonatine. Again not the storyline, not the being gangster, or being detective, but rather being the empty (like Meursault in Camus’s l’etranger’) and yet somehow also vaguely profound and tragic (like Rick in Casablanca) disaffected pointless genius special one for nothing in particular and no one in particular character shuffling through life seeking really only peace observing everything from over here and that is fine.

It made me want to be quiet, to observe without judgement, to eat a lot, to listen to music, read, and drink scotch.