D I U e m n s a i c g v r i e 1 7 i n r p a s t r i i y t o y n s of an 28 october 94 "Poets associated with United Artists" UNTIL LIBERTY OF EQUALITY CUP Existential philosophy is lopsided because it ignores the fact that "hirm" (a portmanteau for woman & man) is born & lives, obviously (philosophy being the study of the obvious) influenced by environment, DNA. He & She are not wholly free. Every freedom is a conditioned plurality. A wave collapses, an internecine branch reals. If a hirm is free & responsible for what he or she does only of & to he or herself, why (as JP Sartre states) is she or he a moral example for everyone (or anyone) else? -- it follows from this switcharoo of is & must that if each hirm is totally free (not influenced or influencing) to act --- his or her action would only be good or bad to him or herself, since by the permises of this philosophy, every other person could not be conditioned or influenced by the example or action-thought of anyone else but their own person. It is by the very fact that humans *are* influenced by each other through heredity, through culture, the now in which we live, that what one does would have any social benefit or detriment. If, to the contrary, only the personal thoughts/existence of each of us are our sole activators-maker of our actions, then it follows that the effects of our actions, whether taken individually and/or in concert, can have no influence on the present or future fellow beings or ancestors. So, Sartres' existential philosophy - in this instance - not only is based on an erroneous (out-of-kilter-context) premise, it is also invalid - i.e., what follows from his premise is self- contradictory. Diploma bones. --Thus, Harold or David May there be no hindrance. May there be other sorts of systems not obtained by mechanical processes music spatial images in each grain of sand a voice moving disappearing regularly alternating music around it the old red buildings small trees and garbage little skinny birds moving the difference between a visual element and a sentence heard at the same moment the axis a code inverted to protect a specific absence of locality wheels endlessly spinning montages intervening voices of an old lady in black djellaba next to me a series of differences woven music no logic naming no exact significance the images diaphanous adobe houses haun- ting the road sheep in the same manner indeterminate the notion initially presented restored consists of music hitch-hiking the visual text reflected patterns inverted seduced to survive the code the hazards adored superabundance. May there be no hindrance. --HH ...There is no Gordian knot to cut here. Every part of the maze is a knot tied to every other part. To cut down the trees and scatter the animals, to make broad paths and wide clearings, is not to solve or enter the mystery, but to obliterate it and erect empty designs in its place. Such acts may give me passage and room to move about, but not entrance, and entrance is what I crave. There is no quick, easy way into this or any other place, no sign pointing out the beginning of the path-- no path to point out, for that matter. And yet, as I look out from this house into the round yard bordered by a sea of trees, and beyond them to the unseen shape of the penisula itself, uncurling like a tendril growing into the sea, I seem to sense that this spot is as good as any from which to begin. I take the sheet of paper, half-filled with sentences, out of the typewriter and hold it up before my eyes. Turning the sheet sideways, I look over its edge out the window to the trees beyond. When I do, the vertical lines of black ink begin to blur into the dark, rising bars of the trunks. It is a self-conscious gesture, but perhaps that is what it takes-- a deliberate change of perspective, a loosening of focus, and a bending of your lines of sight to what it is you would see. Or perhaps the secret is even simpler, as simple as the insistent, hidden song of the ovenbird, deep in the layered woods around me, that now begins to rise up out of the kettle hole in a ringing and ever more confident crescendo; teach-er, Teach-er, TEACH-ER, T E A C H - E R ! (from "A Primal Place" by Robert Finch) Playlist, Conference of the Birds, KZSC, Santa Cruz 10-17-94 David Murray Big Band/ Lovejoy/ David Murray Big Band Conducted by Lawrence "Butch" Morris World Bass Violin Ensemble/ And We Thought We Were Different/ Bassically Yours Claude Debussy/ Baeu Soir/ Music For Clarinet, Strings, and Piano Maria Bethania/ Alibi/ Minha Historia Cesaria Evora/ Sodade/ Trance Planet ... Lilly Tchiumba/ Madie Dia Muxima/ Angola: Songs of My People Bonga/ Melembe Melembe/ Paz em Angola Les Grandes Visages de Cynadier/ Legba Mia Mia/ Africa in America Los Munequitos de Matanzas/ Oye Oye/ Congo Yambumba ... Fanta Damba/ Beydi Traore/ Fanta Damba Henry Threadgill/ Grief/ Song Out of My Trees ... Euis Komariah/ Daun Pulus/ Jaipongan Java Nasida Ria/ Jadikan Anuk Asuh/ Keadilan Betty Carter/ Love Notes/ Feed the Fire Cassandra Wilson/ Baubles, Bangles, and Beads/ After the Beginning Again New York Composer's Orchestra/ Valerie, Explain Pollock/ First Program in Standard Time ... MS Gopalakrishnan/ Sobillu: raga Jaganmohini/ Le Violin Muddy Waters/ My Home is in the Delta/ Muddy Waters Little Milton/ Angel/ Reality ... Yosefa/ Yaraya/ Yosefa Sonny Simmons/ Sundown in Egypt/ Ancient Ritual Sonny Sharrock/ Many Mansions/ Ask the Ages Pharoah Sanders w/ Maleem Mahmous Gania/ Peace in Essaouira/ The Trance of Seven Colors ... Les Amazones de Guinee/ Tayasalla/ Au Coeur de Paris Syli Authentic/ Aye Na/ Dans l'Arene Alan Liu has criticised what he calls the aesthetic of postmodern detailism. It is, he say, correctly we believe, a way of sneaking foundationalism back into a philosophic house that has discovered itself to be quite enduring (as an underwriter of the philosophic enterprise) despite the fact that it appears to be floating miraculously a few inches above the ground. By contrast I or I propose the usefulness and even necessity of grand synthetic gestures. It is methodology of Malthus, Darwin, Henry and Brooks Adams, Spengler, and Toynbee at its boldest that provides a means of grasping the possibility of knowing and acting in light of ones knowledge. Of the systematics we mention here (there are many others, of course) perhaps the only one that is difficult to uproot from the foundations is Malthus'. The use of these grand gestures, however, is not the establishment of truth. In fact, it is precisely our inability to assure ourselves of their truths, and there is good reason to believe that the world is altogether too complex to be grasped in relation to a single picture. Our systems are always on the order of cutting a section of the great cone. However, if the endless detail that proliferates so thickly in humanistics studies are to provide the kind of knowledge that is required, we must come to see large schemes as tools of our particularity. Our particularity is absolute, it is our way of constructing that is variable, and we propose that the methodology of the humanities is to take up the challenge of the great fictions that have always been its base. The function of the Humanities is to generate models that allow us to grasp the relationships and uses of the particulars with which we are confronted. To be sure, the truth of such synthetic pictures cannot be guaranteed. We begin to get to know something and something about its density and solidity in the world by moving it from system to system. We would recommend _The People's Chronology_ or, better, a cd-rom chronology as the greatest of heuristic devices. By scanning information in the most skeletal of form, one can begin to get a feel of the larger patterns of things. The idea is not find the pattern but some of the patterns, patterns of patterns, and so forth. --Thus, Albert or Hubert Readlist, The Last Days of the White Race Radio Free Northamerica, 28 october 1994 Gwendolyn Brooks, "A Bronzeville Mother Loiters In Mississippi. Meanwhile, A Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon." / *Blacks* Dolores Kendrick, "Sophie, Climbing The Stairs" / *Woman of Plums* Sonia Sanchez, "Reflections After The June 12th March For Disarmament" / *Homegirls And Handgrenades* Audre Lorde, "Coal" / *Undersong, Chosen Poems Old & New* Elizabeth Alexander, "The Venus of Hottentot" / *The Venus of Hottentot* Sherley Anne Williams, "Letters From A New England Negro" / *Some One Sweet Angel Chile* The last bleak news of the ballad. The last of the rugged music. The Last Quatrain --GB This learnin' to count and spell at the same time be a nuisance, but I've gotta do it. Only way to learn somethin' in this world --DK I have come to you tonight thru the delaney years, the du bois years, the b.t. washington years, the robeson years, the garvey years, the depression years, the you can't eat or sit or live just die here years, the civil rights years, the black power years, the black nationalist years, the affirmative action years, the liberal years, the neo-conservative years --SS Love is a word, another kind of open. As the diamond comes into a knot of flame I am Black because I come from the earth's inside take my word for jewel in the open light --AL from this table, I'd spirit his knives and cut out his black heart, seal it with science fluid inside a bell jar, place it on a low shelf in a white man's museum so the whole world could see it was shriveled and hard, geometric, deformed, unnatural --EA They murmured discreetly among themselves, the women smiling quickly, the men nodding or cutting their eyes towrd me. Finally an older man stepped forward, "I'm is Peter, Miss Patient Herald," he said, pumping my hand. Then, with great satisfaction, "Lotsa room in the Big House. Now." --SAW D I U c / o t h e l o g i c o f s n o w f l a k e s cf2785@albnyvms.bitnet