Am I Trying Too Hard?

That is me doing a rather failed chest roll.

I've been thinking about the word "precious," and I'm curious about the ways different communities of writers use it--usually negatively. I'll be up front, I really despise the word "precious." However, I'm guilty of calling other people's work precious, and my work's been called precious, but what really are we talking about?

I think that "precious" is code for "pretentious." And we all have different ideas about what exactly is pretentious. Pretension has a lot to do with our notions of boundaries, and those notions are informed by culture. The first time I wrote anything that had references to China and Chinese, someone called the piece pretentious. I've been noodling away with a piece that does in fact use some Chinese language, but it's not going to see the light of day for a while, and when it does, I know someone is going to say it's precious and/or pretentious. No doubt it was probably pretentious of me to study Chinese in the first place.

Preciousness is also related to affect, artificiality, and over-refinement: if a poem is precious, the suggestion is that there's something inappropriately costumed or ornamental (read "trivial") about it--it's paying attention to detail or playing with language that, for whatever reason, is irrelevant. That "precious" tends to have feminine metonymic associations seems quite obvious. That point alone is enough to make me suspicious of it as a vague descriptive term.

I don't think anything can be irrelevant in poetry, though I suppose it's possible to have something irrelevant to a particular poem in a poem, but I'm not even sure about that. Irritating, strange, failed, unexpected, frustrating yes, but not irrelevant. Parataxis, especially when it involves a variety of supposedly trivial details, always risks failure, that's why I like it.

Part of what poetry can do is address things that we can't/don't/aren't allowed to/don't know how to/are afraid to/ talk about in other discourses. Sometimes this means poetry's doing heavy creative thinking on big concepts like hopelessness, violence and racism in the US (Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely, for example), or poetically witnessing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Carol Mirakove's Occupied). But equally important are books like Nada Gordon's Folly, a book that really picks at stubbornly gendered dichotomies like folly/reason, trivial/serious, affect/authenticity in ways that are hilarious, strange, intelligent, and purposely very difficult to pin down. Folly is proof that social critique doesn't have to be the opposite of throwing a party, even though a lot of people, especially those smitten with Reason, would like it to be.

Preciousness is also related to a sense of "trying too hard"--if you're going to impress, you shouldn't give it away that you want to impress. If you're going to wear make up, it should look "natural." I remember having a debate with my mother about this when I was around 12 and busy attempting to wear eyeshadow and nail polish in a way that probably made me look like a confused tart. Eventually I said something like, "but mom, the point of painting my nails red is so that they do not look natural."

The dance movement piece I performed with a lacrosse ball as part of my movement for theater class went well, and I got a lot of useful feedback. However, one of the critiques I received was that one of the movement/shapes I'd held for a sustained period of time clearly looked like a strain, like I was "trying too hard." It's true--I was trying too hard, and I wanted everyone to know it. I wanted to, sigh, be vulnerable, and wanted the piece to be as precarious as possible. That shape was one way of letting the audience see the structure and process of the piece in that moment. I purposely chose a shape that was difficult for me to hold, and I choreographed a variety of ways of falling out of it. I don't believe in self-harm, so I made a conscious decision to not just fall out of the shape. What's weird about that is that my attempt to be direct and honest was read, by some, as artificial.

I've only ever used the word precious to describe someone's work in private conversation, but I'm going to make an effort to not use it as a descriptive word relative to writing again.

Want to impress me? Throw a really good party.

I have finished the introduction for Ben Lerner.

I attempted to practice my lacrosse ball choreography piece, but I couldn't practice too much, because my hamstring is really, really still messed up. I hope that I'm in decent shape for tomorrow, and I hope that performing tomorrow doesn't mess it up even more.

I did get some suggestions about what to do for my pedagogical performance, but no thanks to you all, my dear blog readers. Facebook, twitter, and listservs are where it's at now. At least in terms of advice about conceptual pedagogical performances.

I graded.

I did not write a poem, but I will write one after I write this post.

I was reminded of how difficult it is to organize anything. And how I like to organize things anyway, because I like things to happen. Want to impress me? Throw a really good party. Even if you don't want to impress me, throw a really good party, anyway.

Give me suggestions, happy hamstrings, lacross balls, etc...

1. For the cross-genre workshop I'm taking this quarter, I'm preparing a "pedagogical performance" (i.e. a presentation, but more fun), on Notes on Conceptualisms, by Rob Fitterman and Vanessa Place, & Yoko Ono's Grapefruit. I've got a partner, and in theory I'll be focusing more on Notes, and my partner will focus more on Grapefruit. Any ideas on what we should do? I've gotten some good suggestions thus far involving unitards, go-gurt, and skipping class (because, of course, thinking about the pedagogical performance is more important than the actual performance). If I get enough suggestions, I can at least make a conceptual piece based on the suggestions.

2. In the documentary class, I'm working with a group to make a mockumentary about two animal communicators competing for the "Animal Communicator of the Year" award. Yes, I am one of the animal communicators. It's often very funny. I think posting the final project on YouTube is a requirement.

3. The test run of the movement/performance piece with lacross ball went well. I was happy because the sections that I thought were rough or unclear were the sections that the class also thought were rough or unclear. When I write, I know I can trust my sense of when something is finished, when it's working, whatever working means in that particular piece. With movement, I'm less confident about making decisions. So, it's especially helpful to know that my instincts about this particular piece resonated with others.

4. My left hamstring is bothering me again. It's more than bothering me, but I'm not yet willing to say I've injured it yet. But ouch--it was painful enough that I couldn't run today or do any complex contact improvisation. I'm going to take a hot bath, rest it, and hope it's feeling better for the next lacross ball movement performance piece on Thursday. I need to give the piece a title.

5. I am writing an introduction for Ben Lerner, who is coming to read in UCSD's New Writing Series this Thursday.

6. General thoughts on MFA Land: Well, as numbers 1-3 & 5  suggest, I'm having quite a bit of fun. As I've said, I find it more fun to be a graduate student than to be an adjunct.

I had one of those dreams last night where I find myself taking care of a huge number of birds.

 

The dream often goes like this: I discover that, unknown to me, there is another bird in the cage with Lester, and that all this time I have been feeding and taking care of only Lester, and not this other bird, who is almost dead. In the dream, I always nurse the neglected bird back to health, but there are always close calls. Sometimes the extra bird, or birds, are not in Lester's cage, but in some other part of the house--frequently under the bed. Once, I was on a pirate ship pitching and heaving in the middle of the storm, and I had to prevent several parrots from drowning and going overboard. In another version, I'm swimming through rough seas while two parakeets sit on my head, singing.

In last nights dream, I heard parrots outside, so I went out to see them. There were two hyacinth macaws sitting in the tree about the apartment building dumpster. They looked quite ragged, but I eventually coaxed them down and took them into our apartment. I found an extra, hyacinth-macaw sized jungle gym and put it in one corner of the room. The macaws began to play on the gym and settle in quite happily. Lester didn't mind them, either. After the macaws were relaxed and preening, Mark came in with two rainbow conures. I found a large cage for them and some extra toys, etc, and soon they were settling in, too. Some version of this kept happening--either I'd go outside and see two parrots and bring them in, or Mark would. At a certain point, our entire apartment was filled with parrots--two to three in each cage (Lester was the only one not sharing his space).

The last bird that Mark brought in was a huge pelican--but in the dream it looked more like a cross between a pelican and a stork, since the bird was very tall. The pelican's beak was cracked, and there were stitches all around her neck. We nursed the pelican/stork back to health, and eventually removed the stitches.

I suppose if I were a mother, I might dream about having ridiculous numbers of babies that I had to take care of. In my dream head, I know that birds are a stand in for "responsibility," among other things.

Does anyone else have dreams like this?

"Does gender affect x, y and z?" Yes, gender affects everything

What have I been doing recently? I have been making poems, making films (and getting much better at it), hooping, doing acro yoga, choreographing, hanging out with friends, and organizing readings at Agitprop. I've also been working (as in the making money sense--teaching, bits of contract work, my RA duties at UCSD), riding the bus, finally taking advantage of student health insurance by updating some prescriptions, and doing a worse job than usual of putting my clothes away. I also gave myself a large bump on the forehead by walking into a metal lamp post--not my best moment. So, I've been away from blogland.

I am indeed tired of conversations about gender and blogging, gender and publishing, gender and self-promotion. But I'm not tired of the topics--or, at least, I still think the topics are essential. I wish that we lived in a happy land of gender (and racial and socioeconomic) equality, but we don't. So, conversations and actions continue. And will always have to, because even if the world were perfect, we'd still have to work to maintain perfection. But I don't turn to blogland to have great conversations--especially not about gender.

Yes, of course there are exceptions, and I turn to specific blogs for conversation--typically blogs written and moderated by friends that I knew before we interacted in blogland. I've met some people through blogland, and that's been great, but even there, the lasting virtual connections that I make tend to be the result of a whole network of community and social connections that exist alongside the virtual ones.


I do not turn to Harriet or Silliman's blog for conversation. I turn to them for information, but not conversation. In fact, unless I become a paid blogger for Harriet, I'm unlikely to ever join any comment stream on any post there, ever. The comment streams there tend to be repetitive and frustrating. I really do prefer to talk to someone at a bar, or cafe, or over food. I'd rather argue with someone that way, too.

Women do blog, and blog in interesting ways. Smart women and men know this, and read accordingly.

There's almost never any substantial debate in the comment stream on this blog because I rarely make statements like, "Workshopping sucks," "MFA programs are bogus and anyone who does one is a tool." "Women are smarter than men," "white space on the page is lame," "Flarf is more avant-garde than the avant-garde," etc. Blogs that make these kinds of statements are more likely to have overrun and often irritating, unproductive comment threads. My blog is too random, and I post too many pictures of my parrot for that to usually happen. This is fine with me.

The post on this blog that gets the most hits and has the most comments is "Today, I tried to spell fluctuate as 'fluxuate.'"

I think that repeated, community-minded actions and groups of people really do help shift gender (and racial, and socioeconomic) imbalances in the world of writing (and, when I'm feeling idealistic, the world). I can think of numerous examples that have been important to me personally and recently, in no particular order and off the top of my head: HOW2, Delirious Hem, Foursquare, the Press Conference 1, 2 and now 3, the Positions Colloquium in Vancouver, Bridge Street Books, The Flarf Collective, Pussipo, Ruthless Grip reading series in DC, In Your Ear reading series in DC, Palm Press, Tangent Press, Les Figues Press, the Cal Arts Conferences, Area Sneaks, the Poetic Research Bureau, my own attempts in conjunction with others to do a series at Agitprop here in San Diego, the Agitprop Gallery itself, Krikri, and any dinner hosted by Jerry and Diane Rothenberg.

Workshopping is Weird

I've decided to think of workshopping as like a reading where one doesn't always read but people tell you what they think in detail anyway.

Currently reading, for class Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Woot!

It's raining.

Filmed today. Editing tomorrow. Using a camera isn't as awkward as I thought it would be.

I had two vaccinations yesterday, and my arms are sore. Ouch. Ouch.

Aliens! Desert! California!

I want to visit the Integratron! And it's all because of someone in my documentary class, whose name I can't now remember, who brought it up. How can I not have heard of the Integratron!

According to its website, the Integraton is " an acoustically perfect tabernacle and energy machine sited on a powerful geomagnetic vortex in the magical Mojave Desert." Van  I've never even been, but I already want to write about it--like the Salton Sea, it's one of those places that, well, if I could kind of understand it and write about it, then I feel I might understand something essential about Southern California. The history, briefly:

George Van Tassel was an aeronautical engineer and test pilot who worked for Lockheed, Douglas Aircraft and alongside Howard Hughes at Hughes Aviation. After retiring from his aviation career, Van Tassel and is family moved to a place called Giant Rock--a 7-story high, freestanding boulder--in the Mojave Desert near Landers, California, where they opened an airport and restaurant.

Van Tassel initially learned about the rock from a prospector and desert dweller named Frank Critzer, who had created a cave-like dwelling under the boulder. Because Critzer was a prospector, he always had a lot of dynamite, and one day he died in an explosion. Van Tassel eventually acquired the land surrounding the boulder from the Bureau of Land Management, and went on running the airport and the cafe.

Until....he began hosting/conducting meditation sessions in 1953 in the rooms underneath Giant Rock, which "led to UFO contacts and finally to an actual encounter with extra-terrestrials when, in August of that year, a saucer landed from the plant Venus, woke Van Tassel up and invited him onto the ship. There the aliens gave him the technique for rejuvenating living cell tissues."

Aliens! Desert! California! Prospectors! Meditation meetings! Men in the aeronautics industry! Huge boulders! UFO conventions that were eventually held at Giant Rock! The word on the street that Giant Rock was a sacred site for the Native American people(s) who originally lived in the area! The weird utopian, anti-government, anti-tax subtext of so much UFO literature!