Jim Jarmusch on Originality

While thinking about next week's uncreative writing class, I was reminded of this Jim Jarmusch poem I found awhile back. He advocates the abolition of intellectual property rights on the grounds that they stifle creativity.
Just something to share with you...

That Phenomenon We Call Texting

The idea that technology would move towards a method that would allow the user to write more complete sentences sparked my interest because it's a text-alternative I'd never really thought of before. However, with the recent addition of qwerty keyboards on phones, as well as the ever more invasive use of combined devices such as the blackberry and the iPhone (combined meaning they combine the features of many existing technologies), it's not inconceivable that these technologies could cause texting to move towards a more structured format.
That having been said, I think much of the appeal of text messaging is its brevity. Rather than calling someone and having a long chat, or writing out a full e-mail, texting allows a person to communicate snippets of ideas quickly and efficiently. True, it lacks "complete" or "thought-provoking" sentences, but these types of sentences are not what texting was designed to communicate. If a person really has something profound to say, it's unlikely that they'll use a text message to say it. It's just not the right venue of communication.
I actually touched on this a little in my previous post. People, in general, understand that different situations require different methods of communication. One does not write a treatise via text message, nor does one use phrases like "what's up" in a formal letter.
Thus, I don't see texting evolving to a more complete form, not only because that's not it's purpose, but also because with the ever more up-to-date technology, we haven't seen any major shifts in texting style.

Quieting the Text Message Opposition Squad

As a product of the digital age, I have long been of the belief that technology is not, in fact, destroying everyone’s brains or souls (the two most popular arguments waged against technology). For me, the mere fact that technology continues to advance, and to advance at an ever-increasing rate, is proof that these new technologies are not eating away our brains – otherwise, who would be around to come up with new, better technologies? Yet it was enlightening to read Crystal’s academic/linguistic argument against those who see the technology of texting as an apocryphal entity.
His arguments really struck a chord with me because for the past few years, I’ve made it no secret that I openly judge everyone (to some extent) by the methods they use to text. For example, my little sister, who is currently a sophomore in high school, thinks it’s “cool” to intentionally misspell words (ex: “wut” instead of “what”, and “kewl” as opposed to “cool”), and also uses many asterisks and exclamation points in her messages. I’ve often told her that her misspellings and misuse of punctuation make her sound less classy in her texts, but she simply responds that she has no use for sounding classy in text messages – they’re not formal types of writing. (As a side note, consistent with Crystal’s observations, my sister is actually a very good writer.)
However, in the same vein that I think people who abuse the English language too much in their text messages sound less intelligent, I think being overly-formal makes a person sound pretentious. After all, as my little sister often tells me, “it’s just a text message”. There’s an important balance between formality and informality that is crucial to sending an acceptable text message – a balance that is lost on so many people. A text is not an e-mail, nor is it a letter, and thus does not need to be treated as such. Lowercase i’s are ok, as are un-capitalized proper nouns. I, for one, will often use two periods in place of a space..giving my texts a more flowing feel.
Yet I think the important distinction to make is that, while people use atrocious grammar and punctuation in text messages, most people understand that this impropriety should not flow over into their regular writing. My writing certainly doesn’t look like my text messages, and I think people who are concerned that texting could be detrimental to the overall state of writing have a pretty poor outlook on individual thought processes. Undoubtedly, even these worry-warts take on a different tone when they’re scribbling out a memo than when they’re writing a letter to a friend, and furthermore, change tone and style when writing a letter to a boss or other professional person. I don’t see how this process of subconscious textual change is any different than what goes through a person’s mind when he/she switches back and forth from text messaging to other sorts of writing. Thus, the text message opposition squad needs to stop worrying and embrace the opportunities that the digital world can bring.

Flarf Appreciation Day

After spending a couple hours last night, sifting through you-tube to try and find the perfect flarf video to show during my in-class presentation, I feel that I have a new appreciation for the genre. However, it seems that by simply writing flarf, one can’t get the full effect of the message. After watching numerous performances, it is clear that flarf authors have a very particular feeling in mind when writing their flarf poems - feelings that simply can’t be captured by mere text.
Take Gary Sullivan, for instance. I would describe his recitals as unprovoked explosions of electricity. (Of course, I only use that description because I can’t think of anything better). At the 2006 Flarf Festival, his presentation of “Poetry Phone” gave off a vibe that simply couldn’t be elicited by a mere individual reading of the work. He knows which statements he wants to emphasize, where he should take pauses, and all the other nuances of his work. These little distinctions make flarf poetry, it seems, more of a performance art than merely a textual one.
That having been said, there is something wonderful about stumbling across a piece of flarf and being able to interpret it your own way. While reading different sections of the flarf section of Jacket magazine, I experimented with reading a few aloud. Besides the fact that my roommates thought I’d gone a little batty, I had a lot of fun trying out different characterizations as I was reading through these poems.
When you’re just reading to yourself, it’s very easy to just scan over the words, not really allowing the finer points of the words to sink in. Yet flarf seems to be an art that pushes the English language to its limits – thus it deserves to be both written and spoken. If I had to characterize it into a genre, I would not hesitate to call it a performance art.
The work of Rodney Koeneke provides me with a case-in-point. Though Gary Sullivan has some real winners (he should, he’s the originator of the genre), Koeneke’s works really left an impression on me.
I first discovered him while sifting through videos from the 2006 Flarf Festival, where he presented his flarf poem “Pizza Kitty,” then recognized his name again while reading selections from the July 2006 edition of Jacket magazine. His were actually the first poems I experimented with reading aloud – yet having already heard his performances of “Pizza Kitty” and “On the Clamways,” I think I already had in the back of my mind an idea of how these should be presented.
I guess what I’m really getting at is the tension I’ve felt when reading these poems as to whether I can really appreciate them without hearing them from the mouth of the original author.

More on "Unocontaminated Meaning(s)"

"The materiality of language is that aspect which remains resistant to an absolute subsumption into the ideality of meaning. . . . To see the letter not as a phoneme but as ink, and to further insist on that materiality, inevitably contests the status of language as a bearer of uncontaminated meaning(s)"
- Steve McCaffery , in a 1978 essay on the poet Bill Bissett

McCafferey’s Carnival is a fascinating work (which is the understatement of the year). It handles physical text in a way that I have never before seen done, nor will likely ever see again. Taking the artist years to create using a physical typewriter, it is a project that would have likely been nearly impossible in today’s digital age. I say impossible because the computer would have been able to create text-art, but never mirror the writer-text connection which the Carnival so elegantly portrays.
It is the use of the phrase “uncontaminated meaning(s)” in the above quote that I find particularly insightful in attempting to decipher some semblance of meaning behind McCaffery’s creation. Pause a second to consider the implications of this seemingly innocuous phrase. By uncontaminated meaning(s), the author is implying that text exists independent of the language which it composes. Furthermore, it exists with a meaning all to itself – each letter has a personality, if you will, that often gets lost when it joins with other letters to make words, and with other words, to get lost in phrases, sentences, and books.
I see McCaffrey’s Carnival as a piece which attempts to redefine the individuality of each letter. Entire sections of his piece are made up of the repetition of only one letter – which I see as allowing the shape of the letter, and the repetition of the shape, to dictate that letter’s meaning. Still, the letter exists as part of a greater whole (as each letter does when composing part of a word), yet McCaffrey is challenging our generally held assumptions about the functions of letters by using them to create a whole that is diametrically opposed to what we are used to seeing.
McCaffrey takes the materiality of language to a level not achieved by other artists (here, artists includes writers, who use language as their medium). He uses words to portray a message, but not as writers portray a message through the construction of messages and the arrangement of language, but as a representation of the pure materiality which the letters possess.

Toward a New Nostalgia

In The Iron Whim, author Darren Wershler-Henry puts great emphasis on the interplay between writer and machine. For him, the writer’s product is unquestionably intertwined with the mechanism on which he is writing – implying that the same product could not be produced on a different machine. Were Kerouac’s On the Road written using a computer, for example, Wershler-Henry claims a very different product would have emerged.
I would certainly agree that, in writing, the media influences the message – as does the media of any artistic endeavor. However, whereas Wershler-Henry seems to view the demise of the typewriter as an unfortunate end of a nostalgic era, I would contend that the end of the typewriter era is, on net, more positive than negative. I don’t think he would disagree with me, but I would like to take this post to shatter his romantic view of the typewriter.
As a student of economics, I tend to look at everything in terms of opportunity costs. Though the computer replaced Hollywood notion of a penniless writer, hunched over his typewriter, pipe in mouth and scotch in hand, toiling late into the night to finish his manuscript, this image would not have disappeared were it economically viable to keep it in existence. However, with computer technology being so vastly superior to the typewriter, it was only economically feasible that one should replace the other. For those true romantics, use of the typewriter is still an option (just as use of the pencil was still the main option for Thoreau); yet for most writers, the enormous benefits of digitization trump their romantic attraction to their Selectrics.
These new technologies cause us to call into question the direction of causality between the creative process and technological advances. That is to say: have increases in technology created better writing, or has writing actually worsened as technology has become better? Critics abound on both sides of this argument, making this a very difficult question to answer. True, Shakespeare didn’t have even a typewriter to help him with his manuscripts, and he’s considered one of the greatest writers of all time – and Dante and Milton had the same handicap. Likewise, Scott Fitzgerald and Tennessee Williams wrote all of their works without a computer. These days, very few writers even consider the option of not using a computer to aid them in their writing.
It seems, however, that it would be impossible to make an objective judgment of which writers are better – each generation (let alone, each writer) comes up with such diverse material, it would be difficult to judge one in terms of the other. So when judging whether the computer (thus, the decline of typewriter usage) has caused a decline in writing, it must be decided that this is not a fair value judgment. One must simply acknowledge that writing has evolved into something completely new due to changing technology, and accept the beauty of it for what it is.

Graffiti: Where to Draw the Line

Reading Gregory Snyder’s Grafitti Lives was an eye-opening experience for me. Though I am generally against the government being able to dictate what a person can and cannot do, I had always somehow held this notion that graffiti artists were no more than low-class criminals without respect for private property. Snyder’s book caused me to question this conception, and left me wondering where the line is concerning what does and does not constitute graffiti.
It was his discussion of pieces in his chapter “A Brief History of Graffiti Writing” that really led me to this question. In this chapter, Snyder talks at length about the three different types of graffiti: the piece, the throw up, and the tag. Though he generalizes what constitutes each type of graffiti, the chapter still left me unclear as to where the line is drawn between each. For example, when does a work of graffiti stop being a mere tag and constitute a piece.
Though this distinction might be easier to define, the question that really bothers me is this: what is the difference between a graffiti piece and a mural? Is it the legality of one as opposed to the vandalism of the other? Furthermore, just because something is not sanctioned, does this make it not art?
Of course, these are difficult questions to tackle. In New York City alone, there are some pieces on the streets that would rival some of the greater works of art found in museums – and it is indisputable that most of these works of graffiti can be classified as art. Yet as a matter of consistency, I’m still concerned where graffiti stops and legitimate art begins.
The best online definition I could find of graffiti (actually, graffito, which is the singular version of graffiti) was: “A drawing or inscription made on a wall or other surface, usually so as to be seen by the public” (thanks dictionary.com). Yet this is still insufficient to answer my question, for a mural or other legitimized work could fall into this category.
A second definition, also courtesy of dictionary.com, was this: “markings, as initials, slogans, or drawings, written, spray-painted, or sketched on a sidewalk, wall of a building or public restroom, or the like : These graffiti are evidence of the neighborhood's decline.” Though this definition is very similar to the first, and furthermore, does not differentiate graffiti from other art forms, I found it interesting by virtue of its sample sentence. Though the definition does not contain any of the negative implications often associated with graffiti, the sentence conforms to all graffiti stereotypes. Therefore, I would contend, that graffiti is not outwardly different from other art forms, but is differentiated merely by its connotations which link it back to the underground subculture from which it was born.

Yes, the Chinese Practice Graffiti Too!

I had the extreme pleasure of spending this past weekend at a conference in New York City – a timely trip considering the nature of this project. Having lived right outside of the city all summer, I knew right where to find the grafitti hot-spots. Yet while Manhattan and the East Village certainly offer some exciting grafitti options, it is Chinatown which ultimately contains the most interesting and unique samples of grafitti in the city.
Since Saturday afternoon of my conference afforded me a couple hours of free time, I naturally wanted to visit some of my favorite haunts discovered during the summer. Thus, my motives for visiting Chinatown weren’t entirely graffiti-based – admittedly, the main thrust of my visit was to grab some Sichuan chicken. However, during my journey through Chinatown, I discovered some graffiti gems.
One of the most interesting graffiti trends I discovered was the use of the sides of vans and other vehicles as a writing space. This naturally caused me to question whether these acts of vandalism were committed by the individuals owning the vehicles, or whether the owners were the unfortunate (or perhaps fortunate, depending on your perception) recipients of some impromptu artwork. Since Gregory Snyder in his book Graffiti Lives points out that some of the earliest graffiti manifested itself on the sides of railway cars, I take the stand that perhaps this “van vandalism” is a throwback to this early graffiti style. Furthermore, since New York City officially ended railroad graffiti in 1989 by refusing to run redecorated trains, this event likely gave rise to van graffiti also (Snyder 31).
I ran across three graffiti-covered vans during my trek through Chinatown, yet only the one emblazoned with the word “left” held any discernable message – the other two were likely just throw-ups or tags. Yet since they are not static spaces, these vans allow the writer of the graffiti to create a moving message – that is to say, one that will be seen my more people than if it were simply on a wall. Snyder highlights the moving graffiti message as an important means of unauthorized communication. Says Snyder: “the end of the train era also freed writers from underground tunnels and turned them into experts of urban exploration in cities all over the world” (31). Thus, while some of the original train-writers may feel they have lost the true essence of graffiti by losing the origin of train-writing, this inability to continue writing on trains opened up the stage for exploration on new media.
Thus, after trains lost their viability as a canvas, we began to see not only vans, but also walls, signs, stairwells, and even phone booths being employed in the service of the graffiti artists. As graffiti is an important method of both communication and of self-expression, the choice of place to showcase one’s graffiti skills is a choice that greatly can impact the message of the graffiti. My trip through Chinatown provided me with many diverse samples of writing spaces, all of which seem somehow fitting to the graffiti they contain.