Over and over
A passing thought, and one which I hope to return to, on repetition, and on lists.
I've been reading and re-reading Georges Perec's "Species of Spaces" (the first act of repetition here) over the last few years, as I circle around a poem, or series of poems rather, nearing completion now. Those with a passing familiarity with Perec will be aware of his membership of the OuliPo, the constrained, e-less novel La Disparition, the sustained brilliance of La Vie a mode d'emploi. What interests me more about species of spaces is the number of esssays and pieces dealing with acts of ordering. Placing things into lists (his list of everything eaten in a single year, which something tells me is an idea that has recently been re-visited; the lists of ordering all the items on his desk ), or taking a conceit and repeating it.
It is this last which provided the genesis of the piece I'm working on at the moment. "245 postcards in real colour" is a text which is simply that. A sequence of postcards.
"We've landed near Tropea. Magnificent weather and dinner by candlelight. There's a good dozen of us here. Love."
"A big hello from Inverness! Weather good for the time of year. Decent nosh. Good for the calf muscles. Many regards."
"We're at the Hotel Dardanella. Noshing and lazing about. I'm getting fat. Back beginning of September."
Taken in isolation each one of these postcards is nothing. A few banal sentences. But taken altogether, the 245 postcards have a hypnotic effect. There are no shocks or surprises, each is relentlessly quotidian, but put togwther they become something altogether other, they become a poem, a hymn to endless holidays if approached from one end, an uneasy, unsettling critique from the other (there's something disturbing about constant good spirits, after all, you're always waiting for the crack). It's like listening to the subtle tonal shifts in a Can track, or a piece by Steve Reich. The repetition is constant, the sentiment is constant, but the actual phrasing shifts from postcard to postcard.
Needless to say, what I've done with this idea is something a bit different. Firstly because I would never have the confidence of a Georges Perec to simply pace these tiny texts in agglomeration without comment. It's his genius to do that sort of thing. Take the by turns amusing and worrying "Attempt at an Inventory of the Liquid and Solid Foodstuffs Ingurgitated by Me in the Course of the Year Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Four" which starts off "Nine beef consommes, one iced cucumber soup, one mussel soup" and goes all the way through, with line breaks for a new category of food ("Two haddocks, one sea-bass, one skate, one sole, one tuna") down to the final, haiku-like:
"N coffees
one tisane
three Vichy waters"
Viewed as a whole, the year's worth of food looks simultaneously somehow too much and too little. It revolts and intrigues.Youo wonder how your year would have been if you'd eaten prcisely that. You fear how it would look if you logged your own year this way ("three cold leftover curries, five reheated suasage rolls, half a bowl of the kid's Rice Crispies"). This is the effect of the repeptitoin, in this case of an idea, a simple idea, simply presented, the food is relentless.
The second reason I'm doing something a bt different is becuase Georges has already done it, obviously, so it's a bit dull to simply repeat what he did. For the act of repetion to work down years, one needs a little variation.
I've been reading and re-reading Georges Perec's "Species of Spaces" (the first act of repetition here) over the last few years, as I circle around a poem, or series of poems rather, nearing completion now. Those with a passing familiarity with Perec will be aware of his membership of the OuliPo, the constrained, e-less novel La Disparition, the sustained brilliance of La Vie a mode d'emploi. What interests me more about species of spaces is the number of esssays and pieces dealing with acts of ordering. Placing things into lists (his list of everything eaten in a single year, which something tells me is an idea that has recently been re-visited; the lists of ordering all the items on his desk ), or taking a conceit and repeating it.
It is this last which provided the genesis of the piece I'm working on at the moment. "245 postcards in real colour" is a text which is simply that. A sequence of postcards.
"We've landed near Tropea. Magnificent weather and dinner by candlelight. There's a good dozen of us here. Love."
"A big hello from Inverness! Weather good for the time of year. Decent nosh. Good for the calf muscles. Many regards."
"We're at the Hotel Dardanella. Noshing and lazing about. I'm getting fat. Back beginning of September."
Taken in isolation each one of these postcards is nothing. A few banal sentences. But taken altogether, the 245 postcards have a hypnotic effect. There are no shocks or surprises, each is relentlessly quotidian, but put togwther they become something altogether other, they become a poem, a hymn to endless holidays if approached from one end, an uneasy, unsettling critique from the other (there's something disturbing about constant good spirits, after all, you're always waiting for the crack). It's like listening to the subtle tonal shifts in a Can track, or a piece by Steve Reich. The repetition is constant, the sentiment is constant, but the actual phrasing shifts from postcard to postcard.
Needless to say, what I've done with this idea is something a bit different. Firstly because I would never have the confidence of a Georges Perec to simply pace these tiny texts in agglomeration without comment. It's his genius to do that sort of thing. Take the by turns amusing and worrying "Attempt at an Inventory of the Liquid and Solid Foodstuffs Ingurgitated by Me in the Course of the Year Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Four" which starts off "Nine beef consommes, one iced cucumber soup, one mussel soup" and goes all the way through, with line breaks for a new category of food ("Two haddocks, one sea-bass, one skate, one sole, one tuna") down to the final, haiku-like:
"N coffees
one tisane
three Vichy waters"
Viewed as a whole, the year's worth of food looks simultaneously somehow too much and too little. It revolts and intrigues.Youo wonder how your year would have been if you'd eaten prcisely that. You fear how it would look if you logged your own year this way ("three cold leftover curries, five reheated suasage rolls, half a bowl of the kid's Rice Crispies"). This is the effect of the repeptitoin, in this case of an idea, a simple idea, simply presented, the food is relentless.
The second reason I'm doing something a bt different is becuase Georges has already done it, obviously, so it's a bit dull to simply repeat what he did. For the act of repetion to work down years, one needs a little variation.
posted by Matt | 10:13 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home