Saturday 28 February 2009

Some useful things to remember

Hooo! What’s the beat of the day?

“The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes…without chaos, no knowledge. Without a frequent dismissal of reason, no progress…for what appears as ‘sloppiness’, ‘chaos’ or ‘opportunism’…has a most important function in the development of those very theories which we today regard as essential parts of knowledge…These ‘deviations’, these ‘errors’, are preconditions of progress.”
Paul Feyerabend (Taken from ‘Introducing Post-Modernism p.109, originally from ‘Against Method’)
"[A] Dada exhibition. Another one! What’s the matter with everyone wanting to make a museum piece out of Dada? Dada was a bomb ... can you imagine anyone, around half a century after a bomb explodes, wanting to collect the pieces, sticking it together and displaying it?"—Max Ernst, Quoted in C.W.E. Bigsby, Dada and Surrealism, ch. 1

Tuesday 24 February 2009

Wishy-Washy 101: A first thought about processes

So there’s this principle behind having this blog right? It’s intended as a catch-all for processes- you see I was having conversations a couple of times this weekend where the word process has come up quite a bit. This first was with Stephanie Leal, who has kindly offered up her own work and time to the poetry choir . She asked me mid-way through my particularly wishy-washy bit of explanation what exactly the long-term goal was. It took me back a bit, because I’ve only ever thought of the choir as an exploratory function- I mean, it has several positive focuses, but ultimately its great strength lies in the fact it doesn’t rely too heavily on a narrow set of parameters to define its success. I wouldn’t want to be part of it if our only aim was notoriety, the intention is to explore that magic word: Processes.

Ditto with this blog. Processes in writing are kept mysterious for the large part, because it makes people aware of the vulnerable flabby parts of the work- often, in my wilder moments I’ve named it as the Wizard of Oz complex truth be told we all like to keep hush hush. After all, how can an author maintain that sense of booming wilderness voice when they show everyone what they are up to? The reader’s reluctant too I guess, after all no one comes to see the stripper’s fillings, they come to see the show.


So the plan? Well I’ll talk some more about processes soon. I’ve got to go out for a walk and think some more.