[New-Poetry] Re: "Ode to Academics"

[James Cervantes]

Anny, I don't know what, exactly, I would subscribe to in the Ode,
which is an example of plunderverse culled from calls-for-papers that
came to my inbox earlier this week.  And "message" you get from the
whole montage is probably as valid as any.

- Jim

On 5/4/06, Anny Ballardini <anny.ballardini at tin.it> wrote:
> I wanted to read this long Ode later, but since you were so nice to break up
> my lines, I dedicated a couple of minutes to your work. If I agree with all
> what you say, on the other hand I feel that this is what we want. Would I
> like to go back to an en/closed matriarchal or patriarchal system? Would I
> like to go back to the little shop that sells me copies of Dante's Divine
> Comedy over and over again? Don't I like to be so _constipated_ by things to
> read, to look at, to watch
>
> on the other hand,
> wouldn't I like to build that farm and live like the Amish
> don't I dream it every night when I go to sleep
> and forget about it in the morning when I get up that I have to rush out
> out and out
> into the eternal out
>
>
> From: "James Cervantes" <cervantes.james at gmail.com>
> Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 6:40 PM
>
>
> > Ode to Academics
> >
> >
> > Wasted time, wasted space, wasted life.
> > Waste is what is both refused and dumped,
> > repudiated and thrown away.
> > Think about the ways in which waste is "managed",
> > how and where refused things and ideas are placed away.
> >
> > How much do we really know about nineteenth-century
> > Britain and America? Do the cultures of the age
> > still conjure up the same old vague impressions
> > about gentlemanly conservatism, moral hypocrisy,
> > oppressive domesticity, sexual repression, oversea
> > expansion, fin-de-siècle ennui?
> >
> > Consciousness of the body was heightened
> > when it was constantly brought into new
> > stimulating environments and put under scrutiny
> > from various perspectives. Texts were produced
> > not just to record the experiences but to participate
> > in these changes of perceptions.
> >
> > Freedom is far from free. Network and hardware
> > access bears often ignored costs. 'Free and open'
> > at times means 'closed and expensive'. Freedom
> > can be conceptualised to fit innumerable agendas.
> > There is no solace in the liberty of being employed
> > but poor, surveilled and uninsured.
> >
> > The central hacker ethos indicates that 'information
> > wants to be free'. Free Culture and Free Software
> > mark the tension between proprietary and open source
> > domains. The flood of civic, participatory technologies
> > such as the blog contributes to a larger number
> > of voices being heard. Online, commons-based
> > peer production creates novel, economic realities
> > that no venture capitalist can kill.
> >
> > These alternative economies are not fads but real facts.
> > The freedom to remix, to mash up, to reconceptualise,
> > recontextualise, hybridise, breathes in free cultural formations.
> > Citizens worldwide are armchair passengers on the nightly
> > news train or watch reality TV shows such as 'Big Brother'.
> > Benjamin Franklin reminds us that 'they that can give up essential liberty
> > to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.'
> > Bertolt Brecht associated a blue sky with freedom.
> >
> > Increasingly, companies give away things for free.
> > Enticing 'free gifts' must be paid back in the long run
> > to the Googles and Ebays. We buy into the hierarchies
> > of sharing and exchange. Can we live with the cruel lie
> > that to preserve freedom, one must strike pre-emptively?
> >
> > Possible topics may include, but are not limited to, lounge music,
> > tiki culture, burlesque, roadside attractions, "Oriental" kitsch,
> > cowboys and Indians, and/or space-age futurism,with consideration
> > of the racial/gendered/queer elements which mark the mid-century
> > American fascination with the Other. No conference
> > on the documentary tradition would be complete
> > without  a panel about the Direct Cinema movement.
> > Contributions on the representation of the Asian male
> > body in Japanese, Korean  and British cinemas
> > and on the representation of the male body in Spanish
> > and  British cinemas have been already commissioned.
> >
> > How is visual autofiction influenced by the media in which it takes shape?
> > Does autofiction as new genre call for renewed usage of visual media?
> > Does autofiction in visual arts specifically entail the breakdown
> > of different media. What is the relation between visualization
> > and performance in these types of artworks? What is the artistic
> > status of autofiction in various media? TRUE NORTH: A line
> >
> > from any point on the earth's surface to the north pole.
> > All lines of longitude are true north lines. True north
> > is usually represented by a star. To express direction
> > as a unit of angular measure, there must be a starting point
> > or zero measure and a point of reference. As a theatre scholar,
> > what are your baselines?  How do you determine them?
> >
> > The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;
> > and that which is done  is that which shall be done:
> > and there is no new thing under the sun.
> >
> > The evolution of 'evolutions' has taken us from the Bible
> > to Mao, from eugenics to rock music.  Never before
> > has fashion played such a pivotal role in the cultural,
> > social, and private lives of so many. Yet the spaces and places
> > which allow all this to take place remain obscured
> > functioning simply as backdrops when in fact they
> > are pivotal to the creation of meaning and the very notion
> > and function of display. Attention has been paid to the
> > surface/flesh/fabric of fashion and architecture, and little
> > to the depth/interior/insides of these places and spaces.
> >
> > Difficulty both privileges and excludes.  We revel in it
> > and we strive to master it.  At crucial times, we  even resist it.
> > Explore the value and the duplicity of difficulty as the word
> > is received and interpreted, explore the dynamic
> > between the complex and the simplified, and consider
> > the labor of  knowledge production alongside the wonder
> > of the virtuoso performance. Is the most "difficult"
> > the most revered? Does difficulty create or confine
> > one's  sense of belonging? ?  Is there a use-value
> > to this concept?  Is there pleasure in it?
> >
> >
> >
> > -- Jim
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > Homepages: http://home.earthlink.net/~jvcervantes/
> > http://www.poetserv.net/jvchome/index.html
> > Salt River Review:  http://www.poetserv.org
>
>
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