A note on Notes

“not just that space is unruly but is imposing its own terms. Some kind of an I won’t survive. The demands of listening to our universe and on language and our participation – overwhelming.” Val writes this passage, via notes, via Myung Mi Kim’s talk at the Nonsite Collective last Saturday. I had the thought that I would take Val’s notes (because I could not go myself) and write them up, into, something. A reading report, a “piece” (because Val is overwhelmed at work and I am overwhelmed at work and and and). But then I read the notes and just sort of fell in. And did not want to fall out. It seems in writing the notes into a “piece” via me or via Val, then there is less Myung, less of any of us, as in proximate to the moments in time and space where conversation passed.

So, I opted to have this. Just the notes. Which seems like a simple idea—but is a soft and shocking reminder for me, to do the soft and expansive thing, Open a door, a notebook. Listen.

–Amber

P.S. Send us stuff from your notebook!

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Penury – new book

Dura – previous book

-presence of reader: White space of the poem present in reading. She is creating arc as she reads, every time it’s a different kind of arc.

-musical training? Multiple voices, orchestration. Learning to hear her music/each word as distinct material of language. As books go on, more time and space to hear each word and its resonance.

-architecture being interiorized in language. Can see places, environments happening. Everything pared down.

-tuning a space, poem as way to tune an environment. Listener becomes an instrument in the room.

-collaboration/commission w/ John Zorn – bilingual text, he already had the music – traditional Korean drum, she wrote response to music. Graphic physiology of writing in Korean stops at age 8. So text is littered w/ mistakes – nonstandardized text. To what degree do you push it to correctness. Do you need to negotiate this? Not just temporal, but spatial tuning. What is emerging or emergent?

-nonstandard Korean – but so much of way she uses English is nonstandard. Did her standards change? Feel invitation to collaborate when reading her work—can read page in so many different ways. To what degree does any of us have access to forging a language? Question of provisional – how it provokes the generative and the idea of: I’m closing the book b/c this is too hard. Simultaneity of what is it to keep reading vs. what is incoherent, not graspable.

-the way she makes it thru different books during reading – a lot of folding, unfolding, reconfiguration. First 2 books are about learning and language acquisition – learning becomes release of one’s acquiring of knowledge. Language is strange rather than it becoming more familiar – attenuated and distended space in which language is being made – undecidable space, language always being formulated; once you unhook language from nation and soil, what happens to it? Can you do it? For her it is a problematic.

-what happens in the gap between beach and massacre? Ingesting and digesting the world and where and how I fall in it?

-sometimes you come across a word that may not be a word – hinging and unhinging. Global English – politics of English. Rendering powered relations in language. English has global power. Terrorization and personal terror. What/who enforces primacy of English globally? English as scene of indoctrination, inculcation. Model of mastery, clarity – making sense.

-mastery as a question – allowance of opening the spaces, swimming thru of language and relinquishing of language to allow reader to collaborate.

-american English – language made out pollution, accretive. Keeps absorbing.

-weight of each word, the way it sounded in a room. The way it sounds in a body.

-listening as prime moment for writing. Writing more of an act of listening. Or care or attention. Sensing. Trying to listen to whole thing. Listening as aperture. Sensuality of page, mark making, impressions of page, going thru the body.

-“How do you expect me to survive your poetry?” Do you recognize what you’ve proposed to me as a reader? Making a circuitry. Surviving not making meaning. What is social contract about poetry?  I’m being asked to consider this. Challenging to self-govern in process of reading. Be w/o rules and be that way w/ me.

-this rupture’s already there, I am not making it. Some people don’t want to acknowledge that.

-real sign of listening – the poem brings me to listening – listening as destination point.

-in childhood – I didn’t know how I was going to survive language. Language and fear of self. B/c language as tool of engaging w/ another – in part  shyness. Listening and honoring rupture is almost necessary for survival. B/c of onslaught of info.

-hand moving across page vs ear hearing. What is habituated, underexplored, etc? How do you govern yourself in unruly space? Many people don’t want to consider.

-unpack difficulty – what does it mean? What do you have a problem with?

P.P.S.  Check out more notes from Myung’s talk, sure to be forthcoming, at Nonsite.