6:10 minutes (5.65 MB)

Our notions of what counts as literary shift constantly, a theme woven throughout much of the work that has happened in courses I've taught this semester. Sometimes as these shifts play out, it can be difficult to recognize the emerging forms among an evolving landscape formed around stalwarts like Shakespeare, Faulkner, Austin, Morrison. We need podcasts like this to help us make such identifications.

My first thought after landing here was, what a great Web site. Who would put so many resources into making something so kitschy? I still just had a great time poking around, but after eventually jumping to the corporate sponsor, I'm thinking, what a slick example of contemporary advertising--slick in both a good design and a watch your wallet kind of sense.

[via funny pages]

I'm starting to think about the upcoming Computers and Writing presentation. The last time around I wrote prose, which was a nice change of pace from the show and tell routine I've been doing at conferences for the last few years. I'm thinking some combination of reading prose and showing stuff, but haven't arrived at a decision yet. I might just do a video ala 2006 (below)

0:09 minutes (111.88 KB)

From the teaching files, an extension of the idea of using found images to create videos, this project rips YouTube videos and compiles them into something new.

Here is a draft of my bit for the panel Jenny Edbuaer Rice, John Biewen, and I will be putting on in New Orleans. The panel is on sound in composition, so it's a bit ironic that the audio quality of this is somewhat dicey, but you do what you can.

Musical Pieces: Readymade Audio Projects and Creativity from Daniel Anderson on Vimeo.

These have now been in the ground for three years. The cherries are not working out so well; they tend to attract Japanese beetles which cause trouble all around. Will probably swap those out for more apples this week.

16:08 minutes (14.77 MB)

This is a repost of a playlist composition I want to share with some classes. I'm posting here an audio mix of the playlist and the textual mix below. Prompted by the phrase "was dead three days," the story is about missing time.

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Three Days Dead

"One Tree Hill" U2 (lyrics)
The story begins today, steeped in references to our shared memories. The black center of The Heart of Darkness and the songs of folk found in Jara’s music trick us into thinking these are only our struggles. But the tale leans back, archetypal, toward the symbolic scene.

---

"Babylon" David Gray (lyrics)
Three days bind the story. Its deeper movement starts with anticipation.
An eager descent softened by hope:

Friday night I'm going nowhere / All the lights are changing green to red

A blessed mistake.

Only wish that you were here

You know I'm seeing it so clear
I've been afraid

To tell you how I really feel

Admit to some of those bad mistakes I've made

The long passage back.

Turning back for home

You know I'm feeling so alone

I can't believe

Climbing on the stair

I turn around to see you smiling there

In front of me

---

"Sympathy For The Devil" The Rolling Stones (lyrics; Salon piece)
This big picture plays out in close up, the curtains rich burgundy, velvet and deep as blood. Not fabric, but membrane screen image flickering as grey light comes up from the back of a stage. The lit grey screen contracts into a tight circle and swings off stage to the woman, wracked. The light swings back, center stage. The dead.

So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
(woo woo)
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste, um yeah
(woo woo, woo woo)

The dead shimmer as the man extends his arms and gathers them, shapelike, collecting them like clouds dissipating in summer sun. He breathes deep. Looks off stage. The light dilates, brightens, and swings with his gaze, highlighting the woman. Her face is framed at the bottom by fingers, steepled over lips. Eyes closed with thought. Brow set, wrinkled. He looks to the light. Turns.

---

"In The Garden" Van Morrison (lyrics)

The streets are always wet with rain
After a summer shower when I saw you standin'
In the garden in the garden wet with rain

You wiped the teardrops from your eye in sorrow
As we watched the petals fall down to the ground
And as I sat beside you I felt the
Great sadness that day in the garden

His fingers curl over the back of her hand. Nerves race up his side and fire up his face. He radiates. She breathes, opens her eyes. He’s fixed. She too.

And as it touched your cheeks so lightly
Born again you were and blushed and we touched each other lightly
And we felt the presence of the Christ

And I turned to you and I said
No Guru, no method, no teacher
Just you and I and nature
And the father in the garden

---

The man awakens. He stretches, expectant. Remembering the garden. Sunday. Ascendance. The morning light warms the side of his face. Questions. The circle of light surrounding him on the empty stage expands and all around him the dead. He squints toward the sky. The morning sun makes no sense. Three days and still he sits among bankers, butchers, mothers, fathers, sisters, sons, the lost souls of the darkened world. Sunday’s past and something’s wrong: “They call it stormy Monday but Tuesday’s just as bad.”

"Stormy Monday" Eva Cassidy (lyrics)

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"Black" Pearl Jam (lyrics)
The sadness smacks personal and profound. Lured by pain and beauty to betray the world, he feels now the loss and fingers at his own soul like a sore, remembering. That joining. That giving, that, allowed just an instant, instantly changed forever.

And now my bitter hands shake beneath the clouds
of what was everything?
Oh, the pictures have all been washed in black--
tattooed everything.

---

"Pacing
the Cage" Bruce Cockburn (lyrics)
Reflection comes much later and brings with it nothing more than the slow turn of the proverbial screw. The unjust judge and the pearl of great price. He wanders the timescapes of the past, stepping into this very present. The rusted ships, scuttled on distant shores and waiting to turn to scrap. The lights of cities, biting and empty in their brilliance. The thrum of the engine soundtracked beneath the song of the lark. He wonders aloud, how is it that you’re just now “finding yourself in a place that you've willingly waltzed into. Suddenly, you realize it's not such a good place to be, and it's hard to find your way out, hard to know where the next step is supposed to go.”

---

"All
Along The Watchtower" Bob Dylan (lyrics)
Swiveling days compile their despondencies and urgent little victories. An adoption in Armenia. Plundering in Mertz. A library in Egypt. A Caldera vaporizes a village. A man has a dream. Resigned, he turns toward each event, draping shawls over corpse and cold soul alike. Lowering and lifting to the timeless rhythm of the rise and fall. More, he finally cries. I now need nothing more.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

---

"Across The Universe" The Beatles (lyrics)
The sound of horse’s hooves rises from the edge of the stage in clops like gentle rain. The ebbing and flowing circle of light that baths the man swells to full brightness and the two riders join the scene—the woman and the father, smiling. Musical feet fill the gaps as the horses stop, and with each beat figures step on the stage. Teachers. Farmers. Runners. Writers. Young and old, they step forward like members of a choir and mouth the sounds that change the world.

Jai guru deva om
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.
Nothing's gonna change my world.
Nothing's gonna change my world.

---

"With or Without You" (live) U2 (lyrics)
As the crowd gathers on stage, another sound swells from behind. A whistle. Clap. Clap. Whistle. Clap. Looking out he sees more souls pouring in from doorways and climbing down from the rafters. The days, he understands, have nothing to do with the scattered sequences of noon and night. The days instead have played out over these millennia in each ragged cough and lover’s cry. Three days dead, he understands he’s not alone and he “give[s himself] away”

My hands are tied
My body bruised, she's got me with
Nothing to win and
Nothing left to lose

And you give yourself away
And you give yourself away
And you give
And you give
And you give yourself away

She takes his hand. The sound turns smoky and swirls over the scene. It surrounds the man and the woman and slowly lifts them, as if on filaments of thought, invisible and rising skyward.

We'll shine like stars in the silver light
We'll shine like stars in the Christmas night
One heart. One home. One love.

From the Washington Post comes this piece about corporations playing fast and loose with images found online. The article is of interest to writing teachers working with new media for its illumination of fair use principles. If one of the four lenses through which we might view fair use is the potentially commercial nature of the use, it's tempting to look at the "photonapping" of images by corporations and argue for more flexibility when applying the profit criteria to use decisions. This, however, might not be true to the phenomenon reported in the piece. It's not that the uses by the corporations are fair. The article quotes Lawrence Lessig, who points out, "There's really no excuse for [these companies] except that they think it's not important to protect the rights of the amateur." For educators, these legal dimensions might be discussed as part of a broader conversation about how to make decisions about using materials in projects. I put a screen shot of the Post article above to serve as the link to the article, which I've attributed and which I'm discussing in terms of educational uses of media. Is it fair? These questions are sometimes complex.

Lessig's quote and the rest of the article, more interestingly, get at what is behind much of the trend of companies wanting to appropriate amateur materials from the Web:

"Authenticity is the new consumer sensibility," says Joe Pine, a business consultant and co-author of "Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want." It is the criterion "by which people decide what to buy and who to buy it from."

It's a byproduct of the user-generated world: the trustworthiness of YouTube, the realness of Facebook. Above all else, we believe ourselves. "People don't want to buy the fake from the phony anymore," Pine says. "They want to buy the real from the genuine."

If nothing else the trend asks us to continue thinking about the power of citizen media as reflected in the desires of corporations to be like Mike, or Allison, or Tracey.

I've been long cured of the illusion that starting a blog or other networked accretion will translate into productivity for a writing project. Still, I'm always eager to break out of isolated author mode and take things public. With that in mind, I'm posting a link to NowWriting.

I envision this wiki as an article in terms of chunking it for work prioritization, academic weight and such. I think of it as nothing like an article in terms of its composition process. I hope to write on it in a number of ways: cobble on it over the next couple of months in blog-like fashion; spend some time refining and extending pieces; go fungal with links to partial ideas that might be dumped or expanded; see if anyone jumps in to add or change ideas or foci. I honestly only know for sure that I want to toy with the idea of enacting rather than describing an emerging and converging kind of writing.

I've enjoyed fidgeting with the wiki software. I'm struck by the way that composing wiki text feels closer to the raw HTML coding of the early 90s. It's very liberating to link when the urge hits. Going back and changing, though, is tougher, I think. The naming of files when the link is created runs counter to the provisionality and fluid form that should be part of this kind of project. In any case I'll be pushing this around for a while and welcome joiners.