DIU 8 26 august 94 "...almost all our language has been taxed by war." Perhaps there is logical fault: 1. Poetry is maybe not characterised by any kind of language, i.e. poetic language. 2. Poetry is perhaps not dying. 3. Poetry perhaps never existed as a category. Maybe we are accustomed to call quite different things by the same name. --PH A logical fault is a good place to begin 1. If poetic language constitutes poetry by denying that it is language, then 2. The death of poetry is the birth of verbal communication 3. Call me by my rightful name --Kimberly Filbee This is a time of massive habit and immense social complexity, but the complex systems are extremely frail. Joseph A. Tainter (in _The Collapse of Complex Societies_): Complex societies are problem-solving organizations, in which more parts, different kinds of parts, more social differentiation, more inequality, and more kinds of centralization and control emerge as circumstances require. Growth of complexity has involved a change from small, internally homogeneous, minimally differentiated groups characterized by equal access to resources, shifting, ephemeral leadership, and unstable political formations, to large, heterogeneous, internally differentiated, class structured, controlled societies in which the resources that sustain life are not equally available to all. This latter kind of society, with which we today are most familiar is an anomaly of history, and where present requires constant legitimatization and reinforcement. The process of collapse is a matter of rapid, substantial decline in an established level of complexity. A society that has collapsed is suddenly smaller, less differentiated and heterogeneous, and characterized by fewer specialized parts; it displays less social differentiation; and it is able to exercise less control over the behavior of its members. It is able at the same time able to command smaller surpluses, to offer fewer benefits and inducements to membership; and it is less capable of providing subsistence and defensive security for a regional population. It may decompose to some of the constituent building blocks (e.g., states, ethnic groups, villages) out of which it was created. Collapse is currently a familiar condition in eastern Europe and Africa. I was driving across the Midwest on the days of the coup in the Soviet Union. There was talk of the victory of capitalism over communism from both red- neck senators and learned commentators. I recall one voice, emerging from the babble: "If communism has collapsed, can capitalism be far behind?" Environmentalism as a philosophy is as bankrupt as the progressivism which it opposes. Its romantic conceptions of the wilderness, of the personal as public, and of the aesthetics of nature are dangerous preoccupations of the few privileged souls who are disgruntled with their own privilege. Arne Naess, Bill Devall, George Sessions, Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey, and Gary Snyder are wrong, but profoundly wrong. It will be necessary to say precisely what is wrong with their positions. Even if the population of the world can be scaled back to a fraction of its present size, the complex life that does not depend upon material luxury for its interest requires concentrations of people, talent, intelligence. It will be necessary to pay attention to wildly abstract forms. Our knowledge of them is all that will keep us from repeating ourselves. If, of course, the damage is not irreparable. --Thus, Albert or Hubert And as though we had not entered unto strange, apocalyptic times the Academy continued in its blithe, purblind operation, a brokedown machine caught in the endless loop of its programming, now wildly, ridiculously irrelevant. In a generation human population doubled, and then threatened to double again, as more and more oil was burned to feed the automotive economies of countries newly "freed" from Communism, and the rain forests were burned to feed the economies of the Third World. Crisis hovered at the edge of our consciousness--as a goad to consumption, the media- gestalt provided a continual source of anxious titillation--but in our whitewashed classrooms we saw only the chalk on the blackboards, heard only the monotonous voice of the lecturer (our own, perhaps), and fidgeted as the minutes and hours passed away in tedium. Crisis? One felt foolish, impotent, inappropriate talking about it--as though one were harping (yet again) on the Masonic World Conspiracy, or the flouridation of water, or the Zapruder footage, a frothing maniac on a streetcorner soapbox. The bludgeon of complacency hung over us; we busied ourselves with the busy-work we were given. Myriad new jargons were developed, and entire departments trained in their proper usage. New disciplines were invented, old ones merged and reorganized, with career-minded scholars ever on the lookout for niches to be filled, concepts to be appropriated, icons to be demolished. Committees formed and re-formed to devise improved and more effective educational regimens. Administrators searched for ways to accomodate increasingly illiterate students. Leftists continued to pursue their political agendas through a kind of pedagogical redistribution of the wealth, and conservatives reacted with whining and authoritarianism. Artists sought Mammon... And the Words transfixed us: Coca-Cola, Health Care, Ph.D., Lexus, Rolex, NATO, InterNet, Woodstock, MTV, MicroSoft, Disney, Bill Clinton, Buttafuoco, Rwanda, Infiniti... (COMING SOON!: "Social Breakdown: Part One") --pop-apocalyptic productions FOR OUR POST-APOCALYPSE BALTIMORES There is no longer any Poe To fit this horror to a t, No tree to climb or hang These sentiments in effigy, No straw to burn beneath their feet, Aesthete-- There's just the street, and the machines we meet, Sweeping yesterday's leaves into the gutter --Amerikkka Online Playlist, Conference of the Birds, KZSC, Santa Cruz 8-15-94 Massenet/ Meditation (from Thias)/ Thias Cecil Taylor/ 5:04/ Chinampas Hot Points George Lewis (w/ Quincy Troupe)/ The View from Skates in Berekley/ Changing With the Times World Saxaphone Quartet/ Astral Travels; Land of Mystery/ Moving Right Along Edward Brathwaite/ South/ Rites of Passage ... Roland Kirk/ Alfie/ Now Please Don't You Cry Beautiful Edith Michele Rosewoman/ We Are/ Occasion To Rise Claudia Villela/ Taina/ Asa Verde Teta Lando/ 14 Chuvas/ Esperancas Idosas Simapatia/ Duesa do Asfalto/ Djosinha Saozinha/ Despidida/ Saozinha Sings Eugenio Tavares ... I Wayan Sadra/ Stay A Maverick Fred Ho and the Afro-Asian Music Ensemble/ Ay Bayan Ko/ The Underground Railroad To My Heart Frank Lowe Quintet/ Exotic Heartbreak/ Live... Soundscape ... Bala et ses Baladins/ Sakhodougon/ Objektif Perfection Pete Condo/ Sentiemento/ Este Negro Si Es Sabroso Nicolas Vivas y Su Conjunto Caney/ Oye Mima/ Nicolas Vivas... Odilio Gonzales/ El Borinquen Flores/ Ni Me Madera Son Buenas Cesaria Evora/ Sodade/ Trance Planet ... Abu Griesha/ (titles in arabic) Last Exit/ Zulu Butter/ Last Exit Trio Hurricane/ South/ Suite of Winds Steve Lacy/ Underline/ Ballets Human Feel/ Retrogression/ Welcome to Malpesta Readlist, The Last Days of the White Race Radio Free Northamerica, 25 Aug 1994 Jorge Luis Borges, "Poema de la Cantidad" ("Poem of Quantity") / *The Gold of the Tigers* Will Alexander, "Cosmic Babylonian Transgression" / *Arcane Lavender Morals* Jenny Holzer, "Venice Text 1990" / *The Venice Installation* Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, "1440 The Smooth and the Striated" / *A Thousand Plateaus* Robert Borden, "Meat Dreams" / *Nada Poems* Katie Yates / *Reference* "Acaso cada hormiga que pisamos es unica ante Dios, que la precisa para la ejecucion de las puntuales leyes que rigen Su curioso mundo" ("It may be every ant we trample on is single before God, Who counts on it for the unfolding of the measured laws which regulate His curious universe") --J.L.B. "We will see Venus smoking green in a mirror of transparent eruptions where the mind will obliterate itself and give homage to the humming of infinity" --W.A. "I AM INDIFFERENT TO MYSELF / BUT NOT TO MY CHILD" --J.H. "it can be said that space is susceptible to two kinds of breaks-- one is defined by a standard, whereas the other is irregular and undetermined, and can be made wherever one wishes to place it" --G.D. & F.G. "America, where any boy can grow up to be Burger King, America, where free stallions are ground into dog food, America, where the cash flow pumps its purple heart" --R.B. "it was the way you ran raggedly out of town" --K.Y. D escriptions of an I maginary U nivercity in making (the) logic of snowflakes please correspond cf2785@albnyvms.bitnet