156 lines
8.5 KiB
Plaintext
156 lines
8.5 KiB
Plaintext
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ooooo ooooo .oooooo. oooooooooooo HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #561
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`888' `888' d8P' `Y8b `888' `8
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888 888 888 888 888 "An Explanation Of One Of My
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888ooooo888 888 888 888oooo8 More Inscrutable Works"
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888 888 888 888 888 "
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888 888 `88b d88' 888 o by Ashtray Heart [4/11/99]
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o888o o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8
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I had chance to run into my esteemed editor for this publication,
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Mogel, earlier today, and I thought I'd share some of what was said as an
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introduction to what follows.
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"Terribly delighted to meet you again, Heart. I must admit, though,
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old bean" -- for, dear reader, though you may never know it from his
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writing, this is actually the way he talks! -- "something has been puzzling
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me about your last work."
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"Oh?" I said, my interest piqued.
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"Well, the bulk of it is fabulous, absolutely top-notch--" I knew
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then that he was lying to me, but I didn't hold him against him -- that is
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an editor's job, after all -- "but this one piece. Something dot TLX. I
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honestly can't say I understand it in the slightest, my dear chap."
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"Really?" I responded, even more bemused. "What is it in the work
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that eludes you?"
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"Dash it all, David--
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"Dave."
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"Dave, if I didn't know you so well, and if your work hadn't been so
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consistently good, I'd almost think you were trying to put one over on me."
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"Oh, no, heaven forfend."
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"Yes, exactly what I say, heaven forfend. But I'll be blasted if I
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can get a line of sense out of that piece. Do you think you could be so
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kind is to explain to me a bit about this piece? What it all MEANS?"
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"I'd be ever so delighted to, dear Moggie." -- for this is how I refer
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to Mogel, although only when the two of us are alone, for the simple reason
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that people tend to assume that the two of us are homosexual lovers when I
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call him by that name in mixed company. Oh, a sad, sad thing it is that
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this world has lost the capacity for puckish nicknames, yet inevitable as
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well, I suppose.
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But I digress. I was meaning to explain, for dear Mogel and for
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you, the meaning of one of my latest, and I believe greatest, works, though
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one that I must admit does not lend itself easily to the comprehension of
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the unvarnished mind. I speak, of course, of the avant-garde poem
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CUSTENU.TLX. Looking over the work, I can see where it might be construed
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as unclear in places, and how a detractor might reasonably make the case
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that it is, in fact, untenable shash, bottom-of-the-barrel-scraping work.
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This raises again the ancient philosophical question: Is artistic merit
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inherent within the work, or does it depend on the perspective from which
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we view it? Without wishing to take a position on this debate, or
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invalidate the reader's initial perception of the work, I wish to present
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some perspectives on the work that I hope will help you to appreciate its
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purity, beauty, and thematic cohesiveness.
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The title of the piece, "CUSTENU.TLX", is in fact an ironic
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meta-statement concerning the propensity of poets to revert to oblique
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imagery in the absence of real inspiration. Applied to the standard 8.3
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DOS filename format, it becomes updated for the technological age (and the
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technological origin of the work), drawing parallels between the savage
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obscurity of many poets' work and the savage obscurity of many computer
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conventions that exist to this day.
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The first line of the work, which reads, in its entirety:
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#LID 1033 1 225
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is perhaps the most puzzling. This line is known as the "key" to
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the work; in this case a secondary key, as much if not most of the meaning
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can be gleaned with out it, but a key nonetheless. Checksum purposes could
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perhaps apply. It might be worth counting the number of characters and
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words in the poem to see if the characters come out to 1033 and the words
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to 225. If this is so, it could be a clever mathematical perspective, or
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summation, of the whole work. Alternately, one could use textual and
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numerological analysis on this line. It is worth noting that the first two
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groups of characters add up to 8 and the last two digits are 25. Could
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this be a reference to the closing figure on the first Soft Machine album,
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"Box 25/8 Lid"? The natural cadences and syllabic contents could also be
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implied. Finally, the numbers could have some highly personal meaning
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known only to the author. Yet none of this is visible to the untrained
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eye. Why start a work, a work one intends to be a strong work, with such a
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line? Well, if the work is about the nature of obscurity in poetry, why
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not open with a nod to the ultimate obscurity, a tacit acknowledgment that
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some truths are too deep, too personal, to ever be meaningfully conveyed?
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The rest of the poem covers more traditional ground. Despite being
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developed in one-word fragments, most of the words have clear cultural
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meanings to most people. It is here that the central theme of "CUSTENU.TLX"
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becomes evident: Beauty, history, progress are found in those elements
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which are ignored by "mainstream" or "polite" society. Indeed, once one is
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past the prologue, the first thing to strike the reader is that a goodly
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percentage of the words constituting the work are variations on the
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infamous "F Word", perhaps the ultimate example of a taboo word (though
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not, these days, the MOST taboo). This is my most scorching challenge to
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our world, to the limitations of our "official" language, to the language
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found in dictionaries and taught in schools. A language that denies its
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own sexuality will find it seeping out in other ways, deformed by its own
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oppression, and eventually this dwarven libido shall become our masters.
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It is a list of political prisoners.
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What other political prisoners are on the roll call? What else must
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be freed? The answers are often surprising, and sometimes contradictory.
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But they all ring true, they are all parts of ourselves and our world,
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good or bad, that we must acknowledge. We find the names of Soviet
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premiers, long forgotten. We find writers (Dostoevsky), philosophers (Ayn
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Rand), onomatopaeiac musicians (Fripp), traces of long-suppressed religions
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(gnosis, excremeditation). We find the detritus of modern consumer
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cultures: plastic foods (cheez), plastic toys (Barbie -- also, of course,
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the name of an infamous Nazi butcher) and of course Gomer Pyle. There are
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Yiddish words (schmuck), magic words (shazam), fearsome words (klotz).
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There are technological words, words too new to be loved, to be accepted
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into the fleshy folds of our language (emacs), great gems of words,
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diamonds in the rough (opel), misspellings (pnik), telling us that even
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words that look wrong to many can still have their own virtue, their own
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rectitude, and in the end words that can never be except in the minds of a
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chosen few, words as the ultimate personal language, the joining of a few
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minds in their own mother tongue (jiggy).
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The poem almost certainly reaches its climax around the middle, with
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the juxtaposition of the two words:
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huggy
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icepick
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Love and Hate tattooed on Robert Mitchum's hands; cuddly violence.
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Our society as a whole distilled into two pungent words.
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The organization of the poem conveys one final truth to us. If such
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things, such words, are to be taken up, are a challenge to be obeyed, then
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they must be integrated into the proper order of things. CUSTENU.TLX is
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not a revolutionary poem, but instead an admonitory one. Only by giving
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the words clear order, linking them in ways other than their initial bonds,
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can we hope to succeed in these ways. These words must serve truly as
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words, and as such be alphabetized as words. When the unspoken becomes
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spoken, true power shall be unleashed.
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Despite such initial shortcomings as an almost preciptous fall into
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its own obscurity, then, I believe "CUSTENU.TLX" stands far and away as my
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most beautifuly, evocative, haunting, sweeping, and just plain best work.
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I do not ask for mass adulation, or even acceptance; I only meekly hope
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that I can open the minds of one person to its vision of transcendent glory
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and call to action for the future.
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I thank you for your time.
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[ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! #561 - WRITTEN BY: ASHTRAY HEART - 4/11/99 ]
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