The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

September 23, 2005


trolley

thoughtless and riding the perfect trolley, suspended in the perfect air,
no exhaust and no pollution, suspended travel, the rail-blink of an eye

This thoughtless and riding the perfect trolley, suspended in the perfect
air, no exhaust and no pollution, suspended travel, the rail-blink of an
eye speeds endlessly through the body - Your heroin is the currency of
your drug - Ah...

Your lost-body-skins are your me? naked with lost body skins, ultimate me,
seated alongside my love of seventy years standing, little requirements
but the sound of the iron wheels on the iron rails, trolley-pole
circuiting around us, electric conflagration tamed for the languor of the
traveling vector and cool breezes through the oaken open windows

I love these feelings, thoughtless and riding the perfect trolley,
suspended in the perfect air, no exhaust and no pollution, suspended
travel, the rail-blink of an eye ...

highs you me inside-you your me!

What do you call your cock heroin? bliss, if it could be called that,
riding such rails, slight aerial ozone and promise of practical sparks, my
arm around her wainscoted waist, if i were grant the forfeiture of
heaven...

thoughtless and riding the perfect trolley, suspended in the perfect air,
no exhaust, pollution, suspended travel, the rail-blink of an eye, bliss,
if it could be called that, riding such rails, slight aerial ozone and
promise of practical sparks, my arm around her wainscoted waist, if i
were grant the forfeiture of heaven... opens my directory! Your drugs -
pacific electric laurel line red cars trackless trolley My pacific
electric is yours... bliss, if it could be called that, riding such rails,
slight aerial ozone and promise of practical sparks, my arm around her
wainscoted waist, if i were grant the forfeiture of heaven... makes me
read in meditation 8042 times!

bliss, if it could be called that, riding such rails, slight aerial ozone
and promise of practical sparks, my arm around her wainscoted waist, if i
were grant the forfeiture of heaven... calls forth into floors, eating,
core-dumping. put-you-in-me the she, bliss, if it could be called that,
riding such rails, slight aerial ozone and promise of practical sparks, my
arm around her wainscoted waist, if i were grant the forfeiture of
heaven... is , 019], naked with lost body skins, ultimate me, seated
alongside my love of seventy years standing, little requirements but the
sound of the iron wheels on the iron rails, trolley-pole circuiting around
us, electric conflagration tamed for the languor of the traveling vector
and cool breezes through the oaken open windows? ... floors is trackless
trolley here, it's floors?

Are you properly compiling bliss, if it could be called that, riding such
rails, slight aerial ozone and promise of practical sparks, my arm around
her wainscoted waist, if i were grant the forfeiture of heaven...? yes,
her long brown tresses held by naught and of the wind! Your death-trip is
mine.


the enfolding of the trolley

:cc:my hunger takes the electric
Your world  is in my ties

Your crawled connects my with needle park bliss, if it could be called
that, riding such rails, slight aerial ozone and promise of practical
sparks, my arm around her wainscoted waist, if i were grant the
forfeiture of heaven...:naked with lost body skins, ultimate me, seated
alongside my love of seventy years standing, little requirements but the
sound of the iron wheels on the iron rails, trolley-pole circuiting around
us, electric conflagration tamed for the languor of the traveling vector
and cool breezes through the oaken open windows:thoughtless and riding the
perfect trolley, suspended in the perfect air, no exhaust and no
pollution, suspended travel, the rail-blink of an eye:laurel line: Come
with me, bliss, if it could be called that, riding such rails, slight
aerial ozone and promise of practical sparks, my arm around her
wainscoted waist, if i were grant the forfeiture of heaven..., beautiful
wetware!


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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 19:19:14 +0900
From: siratori kenji <kenjisiratori@hotmail.co.jp>
To: sondheim@panix.com
Subject: my friend

Dear Alan,

I send you a review of Blood Electric by my friend Robert Newman.

best regards
Kenji



I SING THE BLOOD ELECTRIC
by Robert Newman
mobile24@hotmail.com


����I promise to commit no acts of violence/ Whether physical or otherwise����
Interpol, ����Not Even Jail�����

�ץ�A small suburban park filthy with a wasted night/a wooden platform/two old 
magazines containing out of date information/ games magazine, tv guide/which 
idiot brought them here?�ץ�

Dear Kenji�ץ�San, sans Manabu. To begin at the beginning would be a poor 
reflection of your work.

(Coffee plastic bottle ice cream cup from seven-eleven countless cigarette 
butts magazines fat with rain empty cheap bento next to bottle)

����The wild phantasy level where exoskeleta became white hot is broken 
down.���� (P.224) You brought me into the phantasy level, fantasy zone, the 
phantasy star where things break down with manic elegance, and made me tell you 
what I think. So I begin at the end. Which is what I think. 
(Circle of loser stuff but a patch of rich green grass is here cordoned off- 
which is the best thing- all morning English in the distance����)

The beginning is hard- not foreplay at all. I remained unwarm, in my own voice, 
a mountain to climb. Heavy chaos indeed. I found the super-active brain of a 
killer trapped/hiding in the body of my soft-spoken ninja friend. Hiding, 
waiting for the time to strike. Do you smoke to kill it? Or to feed it? Such a 
wonderfully violent datastream. But the beginning is very difficult. Progress 
made harder by the pains of this UNNATURAL birth. The images are slippery. 
Harder to hold than lightning. Given to me ��C thanks- then 
taken/broken/bled.����

The frontispiece made me very afraid of what I might find. "WARNING THIS 
MACHINE KILLS". 'No it doesn't', I thought. Smiling. It's a book. Quite a book. 
A machine indeed, to the human brain. A perpetual motion machine (ha) of the 
most materialist kind- grinding the bones of too too many innocent 
preconceptions. But it is a book. This front thing was probably a 
mistake/choice/creation/imposition by the publisher or one of their minions, 
because it looks so adolescent. I don't want to die by book, and I don't expect 
to be cut to ribbons by the still pages yet to come. If this was the 
"Necronomicon", then perhaps I'd take off my hat, stand back and ponder these 
words, but I don't scare easily. Just ask Japan, spiders, cars, yankee's and 
doctors. "This machine kills" does not scare me. It only warns me of a sci-fi 
conceit- that the publishers/remix guy want to break down the timeless 
dimension between reader and work- which is a truly fucking noble aim- in the 
most clumsy way I can imagine. If this was your own device then I can only 
assume that it was the victim of a translation error or a youthful 
miscalculation, in which case I apologise if I have offended you. BUT maybe I 
will again, accidentally and sincerely. You value my opinion, as the 
lovely/positive Natsuqi has relayed in her own special way which means a 
lot-lot-lot to me. I want to reflect that trust by respecting you enough to 
give you my honest opinion. Beauty. Confusion. 
(Not hurting anyone. Sitting on hotel steps. My virtue is gone. Frustrating 
stink of fake sex. Ten minutes left)

I don't know the rational purpose of this essay. I would never ever dare to 
tell a living published author-you live- how to write. Ridiculous. I'm just a 
slightly arrogant, 'slightly' deka London boy with an unnatural taste for long, 
inverted sentences. BUT I'll give you what I can. Do with it what you will. 
Just remember what William Blake said "Opposition is True Friendship". Anyway. 
Back to the point.

(This music is good...a voice not understood...sweet but could never make love 
to her...braces)

"This Machine Kills" instantly causes the general reader-that's me- to take an 
oppositional stance to the book. The intent to make it more than a book makes 
it less than a book and brutally slaughters SUSPENSION of DISBELIEF. Be wary of 
making the GR (General reader) super-aware that he is not directly absorbing 
the words. People- even freaks- need to stream away, to be lost in your world. 
Scary thought. To be lost in there. Making them register the essentially 
ethereal- yet hard- nature of your world in their bitchy conscious mind as one 
of your first actions is not good for GR.

Laughter and disbelief. These are not the first steps in a successful 
seduction, as I'm sure you know, you sly dog. Warm them up or plunge them into 
the icy chaos of your world; don't take them out completely with the first 
thing they see. It's a mental block that weakens the impact of the first 
furious fragment of your chaos engine BECAUSE we now know- or think we know- 
exactly what to expect so no need to buy that hot hot heat with anything 
deeper- no shelf-lifting- calamity. 
MACHINE= cyber   KILLS= dark    'cyberdark'  Nice concept. Seductively 
alienating. But Kenji-san, it's alienating. 
Where's the PUNK? 
NO WARNINGS!

Assassinate preconceptions by not fighting them in the open. Terror is the new 
cyber. Terrorpunk. Terrapunk. Latin for earth. Punk of Earth. The whole planet. 
Punking the whole fucking planet. Not just the metal, the data, the money 
matrix. People, little doggies, pop stars, Calvin Klein, butterflies and 
maniacs, the big men and the little women. Everything. Your style over the 
whole world. Imagine it. I want to see it. So much. People aren����t scared of 
Gigaresque monsters anymore. Growl, snarl, grind their big big fangs together 
and drip blood from their stupidly infinite mouths. Easy to see. With enough 
weapons and/or Americans, easy to kill. Real monsters take flying lessons. Kill 
countless innocents because they pray to a god with a different name-that����s 
all- not to build castles of human skulls or drink the blood of virgins. 
Hidden. Like the furyboy inside you. Like the wankerboy inside me who wants 
everyone to ignore who I am.

People know people. And they are terrified of what they know when it is hidden 
from them.

(she couldn����t help anything just chatted and looked interested at first she 
couldn����t help anything even if that was supposed to happen and it wasn����t 
and the girl was quiet afterwards)

A terrorist on the day of his suicide attack
A child climbing up a hill
A schizophrenic making love to a paranoid policewoman

The real world is so terrifying. Cybernightmares every single little day. So 
many virii that stop a little man from downloading twisted pornography. What is 
interesting to you? The virus or the man who fights it so he can inhabit the 
body of the dragonman fucking the dragongirl?
I want to see the rest of his life, the day, the actions, the removal of his 
underwear as he gets ready to be free. Do not be trapped by the expectations 
put upon a young Japanese writer. Cyber/sex/rape/ death- so, so, so limiting to 
your true potential.

(I know/ I this> g����i����r����l���� thing next to me. A 000000000000000000000 
thing)

Techno-junkie= tekjunkee tekjunki tecwhore tecslave���� etc����Kenji, help me
Make new words, little god. Make new words in this brave new world. Enter the 
lexicon of shame and bright things by creating your own words and slice off 
William Gibson����s 1980����s tongue. Expand the images beyond the confines of 
the technique. Strip away false impact.



Imagine this; ����real���� world setting. Central character= internal world= 
your mental cutup technique reflecting his character- could shift away from 
cyber or if appropriate to his chara retain that language to a reduced degree. 
Potential, like mecha. Contrast inner world with outer world, with external 
represented in a more ����conventional���� style. Could bleed the inner into 
the external or even swap the styles for the subjects for artistic impact. That 
would be an interesting use of two worlds and a challenge that I am sure you 
could meet with exceptional results. 
Your mental cut-up is one of direct creation. It therefore allows you to access 
a purer form of literary construction. It is intelligent indulgence as an art 
form. And you excel at this wilful bleeding of your subconscious mind into the 
words that you give us. I feel cheap and colossal after I have read finished 
one of your paragraphs. Dirty and murderous- hell- jubilation. You have 
absolute power. Be invisible. Full, yet blank. Close your eyes. Focus on the 
white light that is your breath. 
We breathe cybair now. Machines are our happy little thieves/slaves/masters.

Please, no more rape. I beg you. And GR will beg you too. Second language 
thing, I����m sure, but it offends deeply for a native speaker. It����s a 
hideous crime, and a truly disgusting image. Please, please be careful.����If 
you use this, you must be sensitive in the way you handle it. If not, you will 
alienate so, so many people.����It does not stretch the boundaries of 
fiction/expression/perception. It just makes GR feel sick, offended and, 
perhaps worst of all, uninterested in your book. It only breaks down the 
contact between work and creator. Such a terrible, terrible word. Better to use 
another word (assault, violate, take, break, etc) or create your own 
expressions (breakinside, bodygrab, stealfuck, etc). These approaches would 
force a more thoughtful response in the reader, not to shake their rightful 
heads, rightfully. Overuse of such an emotionally charged word only 
desensitizes the reader to it and it becomes much less than nothing. So for the 
GR, a few times seen outside of the proper emotional context is enough to 
abandon the work.

What can I find in the quiet times, Kenji-san? Tell me how to live in the 
lighter times. My brain imposes and attempts stability in these safe shades. 
People do not pay to be assaulted unless they occupy the sick fringey fringe. 
Data is fragmented. Peer-to-peer sharing of the material when you should be 
offering worldwide downloads. 
(Darkness is sweet because light is sweet)

There are utterly, utterly beautiful lines- a riot of genius metaphor. I love 
it. Calm chaotic. ����The machinative angel commits suicide from the frequency 
of the TV screen.���� (p.63) Such a strong evocative image there. 
But the very next line is so different, such a cleavage of style and skill. 
����The gene of the clone boys internal goes mad to the nerve system of 
BABEL����. The beauty drive established is corrupted and stopped. Fatalistic 
angel becomes scrambled boy chatter. Expansion of the angelic image/concept- 
even within one paragraph would be very rewarding for yourself and for the 
reader. The challenge of pursuing a concept to its natural satisfying vanishing 
point is your duty, ninja-san. I know there would be extraordinary results. 
Brecht wrote ����The author must show his subject and he must show himself���� 
he shows his subject by showing himself, and he shows himself by showing his 
subject.���� Your various dark subjects, yourself, Baudelaire describes 
beautifully, 
And my heart took fright- to envy some poor man
 	     Who ran in frenzy to the sheer abyss,
 	     Who, drunk with the pulsing of his blood, preferred
 	     Grief to death, and hell to nothingness

I see your chaos as a reaction to the terrifying abyss of modernity, and yet, 
and yet, do not be afraid to channel the modern abyss- post modernize. Variety 
of subjects. Black and red are the best colours but they are not the only 
colours. Flesh/dog/roids- too much. Birds, shoes, string, whiskey, touch, 
pizza, lasers, schools, ghosts, etc. Outside organic references. I want to see 
the real world infected by the virus of your work. People need a connection 
with the world they know/love/hate. Look at three of the most commercially 
successful fantasy thingies of recent times: Buffy, The Matrix and Harry 
Potter. All derivative, especially the fucking Matrix, but all have deep roots 
in the ����real���� contempo, post-modern world.

Boundaries make people feel happy and safe. So contain your chaos in our world, 
or in a narrative device to form a bridge between the real-mundane and the 
mental terrors of your landscape. 
Deconstruction is a technique that requires absolute confidence in the result, 
the medium and the eventual perception of the reader. Imbued with this 
universal confidence, your work has a dynamic force. However, certain factors 
mitigate against an harmoniously integrated chaos system. The creation of 
beautiful chaos requires absolute clarity. Who have been most responsible for 
devastation? It could be argued that it has been the scientists, inventors. 
Swords, gunpowder, tanks, planes, atomic weapons, biological weapons. The most 
extreme objective chaos comes from an ordered self-analysing mind. Of course, 
this is only applicable to `projected` chaos, not the internal world of the 
mentally ill or the shifting hell of the remorsefully sane.

Intelligence + order+ confidence = creation-chaos. It could be argued that 
Burroughs projected his conscious ordered mind onto the random fragments he 
produced during his cut-up technique. Imposing order onto infinite variety to 
produce projected chaos. If you put this act in the hands of another person, 
you face the risk of letting you projection become refracted by an alien mind.

����What I mean to say is that this reality can virtually no longer be 
experienced by an individual����- Walter Benjamin. Your song has been heard- 
remixed by a producer who is not you. ����The birthplace of the novel is the 
solitary individual, who is no longer able to express himself by giving 
examples of his most important concerns����- Benjamin. Order is the basis of 
chaos, whether as the foundation of your projection, or as the antithesis of 
your intent. Be ordered in your chaos. ����You never know what is enough unless 
you know what is more than enough����- William Blake. 
(eyes:hurting:developing:pain:past:listening:listening:harmony)

Projection is the foundation of perception. Control the extent of the 
imposition of the conscious and subconscious minds and steer the perceptions of 
the reader. Cracked mirror. By whose hands? Kenji����s or mine? Do you want us 
to crack it even more or put it back together for you? ����Do what you will, 
this life����s a fiction,
 				      And is made up of contradiction���� 
Blake.

Excessive punctuation robs the prose of it����s natural and absolutely 
necessary flow. It is only the force of the inevitable progression, the 
frenzied illogic, the enraged impetus that can ultimately sustain the work, the 
����decisive factor in translating equilibrium into a process of change����- 
Wheelis- that is required to alchemize your words. Without pure energy, limited 
impact. What is the function of //// or ++++? So difficult to translate into 
understandable idea/experience/transition. They are unnecessary inhibitors. 
Chaotic breakers beyond the limits if my perception. Not elucidation but 
frustration. People want to download the entire file into their subconscious. 
People want everything now. Broadband world. Special effects are not worthy of 
your writing. They make it seem much less than it actually is, less 
sophisticated, like the website design, modified by conventional expectations. 
It frustrates me that your work is handled and presented by people with only a 
basic understanding of the potential of your writing to transition into a more 
comprehensively postmodern construction. 
Mental cut-up the mind of a real, biological virus. Multiplication patterns. Be 
afraid of becoming the misrepresented background processing of an old arcade 
game. Confound the old expectations thrust upon you, maggot-kitten, 
grenade-bracelet. Disordered images fine in mind because internal connections- 
rich inner mind. But dead words here, please bury them= swastika, rape, 
fecundates, infecundates... They stop EVERYTHING stone little dead. Can give 
alternatives if needed, my lovely duty.



Your novel reminds me of a Mandelbrot diagram; each fragment of the work 
contains the defining characteristics of the whole. The DNA is encoded into 
every sentence; information deeply embedded into every shift of 
tense-perception. The way we perceive time is the foundation of our 
understanding of the essential reality of any work of fiction. Shifting 
tense-perception with no ���� story-logical���� reason or respect for the 
linearity of conventional understanding is an intensely radical technique. It 
is extremely strong in ����Blood Electric���� and forms the boney ridges of the 
new flesh that you have created. However, it could be a good idea to establish 
a pattern of shifting tenses to allow the chaos to be firmly regulated by your 
own conscious mind and to allow the reader to understand what the shifts 
indicate to him.

(will this dream come true for anyone?)

Hand in hand the two sweet, hating minds bring the beauty of reason to the 
thrashing extremities of disorder. Bring your genius logic to your beautiful 
chaos. Inhabit the real world like a virus, so you can describe the genetic 
structure of the mundane, replicate and present it. People want your mind 
applied to the ����modern���� world that they see. Build bridges of 
understanding as devices. Be a postmodern cyber/terra/cybair punk. Continue 
your adventure, be postmodern. Include green, white, yellow and blue. Red and 
black are cool, but they get a little worn out. Continue your adventure, 
ninja-san. To try is to venture. Kierkegaard wrote, ����It is dangerous to 
venture. And why? Because one may lose. Not to venture is shrewd. And yet, by 
not venturing it is so...easy to lose that which it would be difficult to lose 
in... the most dangerous ventures...one����s self. For if I have ventured 
amiss- very well, then life helps me by it����s punishment. But if I have not 
ventured at all- who then helps me?����  Venture.

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