MultiMedia and the Avant-Gardes

I had to help write an essay about multimedia performances a few years ago, and found a wonderful book by Richard Kostelanetz which gave me a clue to how to shape the piece.

I have just bought it through AbeBooks for a very good price, as the Amazon going rate seemed much higher (£20-30 for the paperback).

Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes.

Mr Kostelanetz has written a myriad of fascinating material, and his website is definitely worth a visit.

Admittedly, I bought the first edition (1993) - the one that inspired me - and he has updated the second edition (2001) - with the cover shown here.
Indeed, he has offered some draft updates, should a third edition ever appear.

What I found, to help me shape the essay/thesis (with a deadline of a week!) was his reference to mixed-means theatre. He analysed the various forms that he covers with that term (Happenings, stage performances, kinetic environments, etc) using what I assume he got from Aristotle's rather rigid 'unities' for theatrical performances:

• The unity of action: a play should have one main action that it follows, with no or few subplots.



• The unity of place: a play should cover a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage represent more than one place.



• The unity of time: the action in a play should take place over no more than 24 hours.

However, to describe the wider variety of audience, performer, creator interactions of mixed media / multimedia performance (including circus, in my terms) he offered this table:

And that gave me all the structure I needed to help my friend shape his thesis. We simply worked through all the practical projects and shows he had done, and described them as involving:

• open or closed space



• fixed or variable time



• fixed or variable actions.

So I owe Mr Kostelanetz quite a bit (and the library for having a copy of his book available at the time).
On top of all that, I love dictionaries, and this remains a treasure trove of cross-references, eye-openers, and other fun. He doesn't only cover some of my own favourite artists: Duchamp, Cage, Jarry, Joyce; but other perhaps less expected ones like Burroughs, Dylan and Bucky Fuller; and also genres from Performance Art to Punk Rock to Hypertext, and groups like Fluxus and Dada.

Quentin's message of hope

If you’re on a tightrope when you first set off you don’t know how much play there is in the rope, but when you get into the middle between the ages of 20 and 40 the thing rocks like mad and it’s too late to go back even to look back.

But if you go on as carefully as you can, you see the other platform and then you just make a dash for it not bothering with what the audience thinks, or waving your arms or looking dangerous, and difficult and prodigious.

What you grab hold of when you get to the other side in fact the edge of your coffin. And you get into it and you lie down and you think, ‘my cuffs are frayed’, ‘I haven’t written to my mother’. And then you think ‘it doesn’t matter because I’m dead’.

And this is a message of hope. It will come to an end. It will come, we cannot be blamed for it and we shall be free.

Quentin Crisp

Nothing original under the sun (stolen from Shakespeare)

Anyway - as I was saying - funny times right now.

I have to know about most internet things as part of my job - so although I run my own life on Gmail, Blogger, WordPress, PayPal and the home space that came from my service provider (even though they changed hands in the last few years) - I try everything out, so I have Yahoo and Hotmail accounts, YouTube, MySpace, etc.

When I joined Facebook I broke some kind of written (or unwritten - I skimmed through the Terms and Conditions - as you do) rule about using your 'real name'. Although I always performed under my 'real name' in a business where people often make them up, or simply work under them so long they become acceptable - 'know as' - and you can even open bank accounts without 'legally changing' your name.

So anyway, I open and kill Yahoo accounts all the time, just to get 3 days free trial of the magnificent XM Radio. No doubt, many Americans listen to one of the dozens of channels while driving. I can only get it on the internet (no satellite signal) and can't subscribe (I asked and no-one replied) so I have to keep inventing new Yahoo addresses just to get another trial period.
I don't want to sound mean about Yahoo's service, but at least I found one good use for them.

But I digress (quite often). I joined Facebook for an exploration, as Sid Scribe. Now Sid has a history. In the early days of email I got several addresses of varying degrees of privacy (to avoid spam) and one I used simply for activities that might generate or attract junk mail - or simply endless newsletters that I had subscribed to. So to subscribe I had an email address of s.scribe@ntlworld.com - just so I'd know the kind of stuff. He became Sid Scribe when 'filling in personal details' and emerged. In Facebook I gave him TJ's avatar, but TJ 'is' someone else again, (ermerging from some collaborative writing by the Maybe crew) so I've added a 'real' pic.

Confusingly, once people 'knew Sid was me' (I wish I'd spelled it Syd, now) through the friendship chains - people kept greeting me on my rare visits to Facebook, poking me, inviting me to games - I dunno. I still really only go there as part of my job...

I have had connections with the 'other' Toby Philpott before, and he seems like a nice guy (we have chatted occasionally, as people still sometimes get confused. For a while he had a link to 'The Star Wars Toby Philpott' on his blog, as I had "The Liberal Legend - Toby Philpott" on mine. Now I find at least two more in Facebook! So, stuck with my cover story, Sid Scribe has now invited the three other Toby Philpott members as friends. Hail Eris! I actually had more fun in MySpace, but that's another sub-personality and another alias. That bogus guy has videos at YouTube, as well, and has written most of OM (Only Maybe) for over three years. With fantastic visual from Bobby, and others.

So, let's face it - I stole Language Is A Virus, and added those arch inverted commas for the E-Prime freaks who know the connection to Korzybski and then Burroughs...but poets don't own words, right? And I have used the damned title since 2001, so I got attached to it (After the other blogs, Spooking the Herd, and Thinking Allowed - up to 9/11 - or as the Brits should think of it, 11/9).

I thought it didn't effect me, but I decided to start blogging fresh. Find myself still here, seven years later.


The website with this title has some word scramblers for NaNoWriMo Writers' Block - which amused me, as I consider that kind of November. The whole site seems filled with treasures, but I have no idea what names or buzz words might make you click that link - Hakim Bey, OuLiPo, Nin, Burroughs, software to play with, articles, even NaNoWriMo widgets and logos, etc.

Oh and I saw Laurie Anderson live once - I loved that mix - it resembled the fringe theatre of the 70s, with all and any elements of theatre and performance art mingled. I loved it.

You have to play to learn.

Like Mind

With the usual mysterious synchronising of like minds I started looking/listening at Alan Watts on You Tube for no apparent reason – and when I went to the Forums I found Pentaphobe had posted a link to these delightful animations accompanying brief recordings of Alan Watts.

I know when I peep into the world of Sinologists, and serious Zen folk, and all that – I may hear Watts described as some kind of dilettante, or populariser – but I know for myself that he changed my life with a couple of books. I would have thought myself irredeemably mad in my teens if I hadn’t come across Psychotherapy East and West, and would probably not have found the courage to drop out without The Wisdom of Insecurity, and he popped up every now and then (when taking acid I found his beautiful little book The Joyous Cosmology - Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness both enlightening and reassuring, and I found The Book - On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are absolutely hilarious because I had just experienced that weird insight of the world as some sort of godhead playing hide-and-seek with itself…and so on).

Then I didn’t read him for decades, although his ideas would often occur to me (re-occur to me) at critical moments. I enjoyed his autobiography In My Own Way (beautifully ambiguous title), and later, Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown.

Then I get the impulse to look him up again, knowing that (for instance) he made a walk-on appearance in Cosmic Trigger, etc. And not only do I find these half dozen animations just recently posted at the Maybe Logic Academy, but one refers to ‘the language of the birds’ which I happened to use as the last five words of a speed novel I wrote last year (in a month), and have currently found myself editing to publish (just for the hell of it) on Lulu.

Small and self-referential world.

You can easily YouTube 'Alan Watts' yourself (and you will find more) but I’ll offer you a taste with this Conversation With Myself from 1971, because I think it important you hear his voice, and see his face, to fully appreciate his communication (excellent though his words remain).

Enjoy - if you have half an hour to spare...

Always Merry And Bright

Slightly disappointed mood.

The pseudo-Dylan movie "I'm Not There" seemed to fall between two stools. It didn't grab the non-Dylan fan in my house...so no conversions...and for someone like me it missed the point (about my personal vision of Dylan, at least) by acting so glum. Even the much-touted Cate Blanchett performance only managed world-weary punk existentialist - and utterly missed the wit, the venomous sarcasm, the furious energy and self-confidence - oh and the humanity and sensitivity. I'd recommend watching Don't Look Back (1967) if you want to see that period in something like a true light. And if (as this movie attempted) you want a phantasmagoric movie - capturing something of the atmosphere of some of Bob's songs, rather than mere 'reality' I'd go to Bob himself, and enjoy Masked and Anonymous (2003), or even the much-maligned Renaldo and Clara (1978). And for real fans, try Martin Scorcese's No Direction Home.

More vague disappointment

I came across John Fante in the library and happened to know that Charles Bukowski rated him highly.

I can see what he means in terms of vividness, painful honesty, etc – in fact if I didn’t know I would have thought Bukowski wrote it - but (just like with Bukowski) I eventually get tired of the unrelenting ugliness and grimness. And that isn’t because I haven’t lived in poverty (I have, more than once).

For instance – in Ask The Dust the Mexican girl is portrayed as smoking dope as though it’s heroin or cocaine (OK, written in 1939 by a self-tormenting ex-Catholic), they score in what sounds more like an opium den than anything Louis Armstrong, Carl Sagan or Bob Marley would have recognised. She then duly goes mad (as in Reefer Madness) and so on.

Very disappointing.

But, as I say, for all the vividness of the writing I always found Bukowski too glum and angry. I prefer the sheer reckless glee of Henry Miller. But then again, he escaped from the puritanism of the USA, unlike Fante the proud American, and expressed hatred for much of American Life, even though he retired there eventually.

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
Henry Miller

Starving writers writing about writing and writers goes back a long way, from Knut Hamsun to Miller, from Fante, Bukowski and Kerouac, etc.

And now I plan to publish something that deserves more work, but represents what happens when you sit down to speed write a book – so I guess I should shut up.

Although, the Unwritten Books Project sounds fun.

A Reader's Guide to the Unwritten amused my, too - in a Guardian blog.