Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1306250105030.3892@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Begin from Last Principles
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 01:07:24 -0400 (EDT)
Begin from Last Principles End from First Principles. Begin with music: what I am capable of doing, i.e. the fingerboard or instrument as a sonic _field._ It's possible to be safe here: within the field. It's possible to be alive: i.e. the recording of the fact that _I am still alive._ That I am weaving what no one else can, that this is _my song,_ and for me alone to pass on, i.e. the recording. That the same is true for a text that _is not a response to an other_ but proceeds from within, a territory that internally coheres. It is _here_ that I am comfortable. That the order of letters is mine and mine alone, _during the production of the order._ What occurs later is of less consequence. Still, there is the desire for acknowledgment: _This_ is the music you have created? How wonderful! This text - it changed my life! Vistas opened! And within, I think it should always be this way. And without, it never is: without, it is alien, vacuum, unresponsive. Therefore I continue, turn inward farther, if that were possible, create and recreate my little worlds, present them - and the cycle continues, endlessly without grace. The Last Principles are those surrounding despair and death, the curtain, the barrier, rendering everything else useless, blank, emptied demarcation. They can be anything you want, I want; they make no difference, except for a ritual I might call the Scattering of Marks. It's nothing more than a momentary thing; in the scheme _of things,_ it is not a thing nor a scheme. The Last Principles might be the glance once sees as one is dying, the glance between two of the living, before one, or slightly to the side, so that the seeing is, eternally, incomplete. But in the scheme of things, this is as before; the Last Principles might as well be the first or the middle; logic has no place - no foundation - in its incompleteness. I would call you unto me, but can no longer speak; I would speak, but can no longer murmur; I would whisper, but the barrier is that which refuses, itself, burial, but comes for one and all, an enclave or particulation better left for better poets than myself. So I will do music and I will hear music, and within it are incredible structures, novelty, something new sounding for the first and last time as well. And this is surrounding by the beginning and ending of the recording, by the placing and tuning of the instrument with me, and its release and releasement within the sonic, within the realm of being-in-process, the file only something, thing or scheme, to be raked, articulated according to the proper signatures of time and codecs, and as proper, as possible, however considered, the feedback of the sound for this moment, into another place and another time, such as might be heard, the slight exfoliation of a world when I have gone from it, leaving this trace, this holograph or signature, this check- mate and chiasmus where appearance conceivably rises, only to fall, collapse again, and the cycle continues, endlessly without grace. Of First Principles, nothing can be said, after the fact or scheme, the emptying of the word, the sign.