I deleted some extraneous words from tonight's State of the Union address. Here's what I found:

…war, shock, danger, suffering, victims, terrorists, terrorist, starvation, oppression, terrorists, terrorist, terror, captives, terror, pain, grave, fears, enemies, hatred, hatred, madness, destruction, nuclear, public water facilities, chemical weapons, surveillance maps, war, terror, hijacked, dangerous killers, methods of murder, outlaw regimes, ticking time bombs, terrorists, enemies, battlefield, terrorists, risk, terrorist, terrorist, terrorists, terrorists, training camps, regimes, chemical, biological, nuclear weapons, threatening, terror training camps, terrorist underworld, remote jungles, deserts, the centers of large cities, terrorist cells, hostages, terrorists plotting to bomb, weapons, terrorist camps, terrorist parasites, threaten, terror, face of terror, regimes, terror, threatening, weapons of mass destruction, regimes, regime, missiles, weapons of mass destruction, starving citizens, weapons, terror, hostility, terror, plotted, anthrax, nerve gas, nuclear weapons, regime, poison gas, murder, bodies of mothers, dead children, regime, regime, terrorist allies, evil, threaten, weapons of mass destruction, regimes, grave, danger, arms, terrorists, hatred, attack, blackmail, catastrophic, terrorists, weapons of mass destruction, missile, sudden attack, dangers, peril, dangerous regimes, threaten, destructive weapons, war, terror, waged, terror camps, terror states, fight, fight, war, war, war, weapons, enemy, innocent lives, troops anywhere, weapons, defense, threat, attack, no longer protected, attack, bioterrorism, emergency, vaccines, anthrax, deadly diseases, bioterrorism, combat, illegal drugs, trained by al Qaeda, war, war, death, war, terrorism, enemies, fear, evil, evil, attacked, crisis, emergencies, danger, prison, evil, war, poverty, violence, oppressed, midnight knock, secret police, tyranny, threats, war, terror, danger, terror, evil, danger, enemies, suicide, murder, tyranny, death…

notes on some films that will show tonight

Feeling uniquely today the jute between Chagall’s mule and star. Ginsberg’s half-buried angel. Off to shoot sky mixing into animals. All of this is in that line between branch and sky. Pulling images out of that horizonal space. With some exurbia mixed in.

This is, perhaps, a poorly wrought metaphor, but it will do: In reaching for a visual image, a hand outstretches from my hand and finds, diagonally across, some observation about poetry. Reach for one, find two. The mind delights in contrasts, and working in two mediums gives both forms a scaffolding (so you don't have to half-nelson fellow artists to see what you're doing).

Totally captivated by this idea –which I return to—that one of poetry’s functions is to find and experiment with logics, or why things connect to one another. All different kinds of rationales purported—personal, symbolism, surrealism, dada, cubism, etc. Why things are connected, which has everything to do with motivation.

The poetic line works within this context of close, meticulous attention, which is why it is well-suited for looking closely at why certain words connect to one another. Poetry is a laboratory for logics.

But here’s the difficulty: So much of a poem must be manufactured, which is taxing and the process is susceptible to blockages. (Found lines, yes, but they get so unwieldy and keep your portals shut on a day when you want all your egresses to be open.) So, the benefit of working with multiple logics is tempered, or challenged, by the need for manufacture.

Film and video, in contrast, supply images. There is the challenge of keeping extraneous details out of the frame. But, like a poetic line, a visual image forges a connection between disparate things. It makes a statement about why things are connected. Each image can present one or more logics. Framing is your diction.

Chance courses through the image either as a conceit or partnering logic. In exchange for that underlying basis for connection, and supply of images, time and space get torqued. A viewer knows, when watching film or video, that she is somewhere in a hall of mirrors, even if the image stream appears similar to her daily perception.

Friends,

I've made this haunting short, single-image film. I tried, for two days, to get this image right. Going back and back and back and erecting all the required apparatuses to tweak the composition.

All you need to know is that I conceived of the film a while back, first, with multiple sinks, then multiple hands. I even wanted rectangles somewhere in the frame. But the constancy of the image makes your interpretations --and you have no choice but to have many-- the variables. It's an unsettling and humbling film. Here's a still image from it. My only concern is that the film's 5:30 run time is not enough. Moon light, rain, role of the artist, I just keep going. All of those interpretations leave and that leaving, the knowledge that you can't tie shit to shit, becomes beautiful and pervasive. Unsettling impermanence. Air between the animal's joints.

Will show this at the Blue Door on Thursday.

there you go
now I am completely vocal
among unmet clerics

the magnet the winter sun
the graphic of the ham see going

soil meaning paint
marginal arms of your vision

withheld again and Philistines and
you thought you were here for the ledge

but that bridge is a fine thought

more than one of his
is made of we-- the permissions

of which parts
and where

effeminate the
shimmering
guttural eye

capital affection
looks like what?

strung pistons
& holding
something abstract

where is it amid
identical
books and stores

RLI EUE REO

(continued from yesterday)


toward objects and away from figures is the same

unique polarities are possible

a human can not fit through a mouse hole

a human is not a human

in a temporal sense is not a sense

the mind as muscle as finger

with seismographic tendencies


if I were to make a sense landscape

do not why is this can

the temperature of metal

the akinness of crevices


the novel writes itself in correspondences

document is also a verb

a gas can be contained in a container

you inherited a faulty box

it was the perfect gift


you is not a word but a commons

what is intimate is most social

to make proper a-the-this context


you don’t lose any beauty

that is in the transitions

might as well write math equations

a plus four when a is five is nine

an open door still has space in it

that space is measurable

but the space it connects to is not

reflecting on my rambunctious ethics

why carry the memory of the body along

the body this is

the body is the body

two magnets, a crater

projected into a center of gravity

the center of gravity of the mind is in language

straining to make a word behave

paint being made of earth


thoughts have focal lengths which may be beyond the eye

a sentence is always running

why make this sentence run

water from a stone or anguish

crystallized if and only if ordered

alone each word has registers

two words are cacophonous

running over grass blinking

film and window still. textured words of tape. a calligraphic book jacket.

real moon, fake moon

a gentleman and his hat in an elevator

any building may be classified
as a dwelling when a gentleman
and his hat in an elevator

the street has the character of a house
or not in the presence of such offenses

an assembly is usually so crowded
and in public buildings the left hand
which is why so many prefer canes

a more loyal citizen just might
for as long as he claims a spot
the atmosphere who wouldn’t
prefer a preface to a boiled fish!



the intentional cut

for one person to not look
not only directly is a breach
a cause of which can warrant

anyone whose eyes are wounded
or would open quick of memory

yet all too easily can fail
much attracted as this does
excuse but excuses explain
the intentional cut happily
is practically unknown

whether you are man or woman
I am very glad the breakup of

the victim embarrassed
to all who witness

a century ago it was not
unheard of in such a bad
place even young women
had to know of strangers

When to Rise

grown as well as half
both rise and go forward
a man as well as a woman

be very much be older since
seven or eight— a woman

she may very well if he has
told her anything

would be in a worst kind
of thrilling but not of other
hopes to see it makes no

difference whether or not
you have been introduced

end-of notes (close to an image)

lines air a concept an apple
lying on its side Chuck Close

tackle-tied weights except cut in half
bitten and food in your mouth
la la la la a philosopher

to scribe a score notes tied
to lines and visuals to fall down
the immense and immaculate ladder

half note quarter note eighth note
the whole world is flat
an illusion an allusion

still song strange
roads ghosts occupied
hardback dials creative uses for tack

sand death in the body registers
receded Chuck Close pushed
out of the way to make sand Chuck Close

what two words hold many
visual neighbors to do with Chuck Close
in and evening around