i ask questions to you
hello all,
hello jared, you make me want to scribble stuff about what i'm working on when i'm really too tired. but it was interesting to read about your project. as often, i can think of parallels - it's endlessly fascinating to me how different/alike our thinking about our projects is (same goes w/catherine and steve).
a question - when you say "I preferred that the constraint not appear as a constraint," what are you talking about at that point? i thought you were doing away with the constraint altogether by not having the titles? and i don't quite get the relationship to sonnets. maybe i should just call you on the phone?
will this gang of poems have a group title? (like 'measuring daylight' w/the dated journal entries.)
how does putting the date at the end counteract land art machismo? i question because i'm interested, particularly w/looking at smithson.
though i know you're giving it as an example of what you used to do, i like the idea of the title (or the date) as a sort of flexible support structure for the poem.
related to that, i've been thinking about genre today. have you seen this movie "cure"? it was so fucking scary to me...whereas tony found it not scary at all. but since tony is submerged in school i have control of the netflix queue and was putting other movies by the "cure" director on. and, i'm being round-about here, i was thinking about his movies and started reading interviews with him. he makes mostly quasi-horror movies and had interesting things to say about genre as a starting point - here's some excerpts from an interview....
Tom Mes from Midnight Eye's second interview with Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
------------
Q: I, and I think that goes for a lot of people in the West, got to know you through your film Cure, which was very much a genre film. Do you see yourself as a genre filmmaker?
A: Which genre my film ultimately belongs in is up to the audience when it's finished, but certainly as a starting point I always start my next project considering which genre I would like to work in. So in that sense I am a genre director.
Actually, I'm often misunderstood. I don't start with a philosophical or thematical approach. Instead I often start with a genre that's relatively easy to understand and then explore how I want to work in that genre. And that's how a theme or an approach develops. The genre is first.
Q: I think that's an approach that very much shines through in Charisma, which starts out as a detective/cop story. Then even when it starts to delve deeper into the themes, there's still occasional flashes of what I would see as genre elements, like the skeleton in the forest.
A: Yes, it certainly is a detective story, but it's also a sort of American-style Indiana Jones/two-teams-vying-for-a-treasure film. That's how I started it. But instead of a box of treasure I decided to make the treasure a tree that's in a forest. Then you start to imagine "what value does the tree have" and "what is the condition of the forest it's growing in?". Then you start to realise that you're not making an Indiana Jones movie at all, but you're making a much more complex film. That's the process of my filmmaking.
The reason I take this approach to filmmaking is, although film needs a fictional story element, it also is a medium that allows you to record the reality around you. You're filming real forests and real people. I think that film for me is a medium point between a fictional story and reality. You start with the genre, which is fiction, and gradually move towards reality. Somewhere in between you find film.
To put it simply: I would like to make a movie like Indy Jones, but there aren't any real people like Indy Jones. That's the beginning of my filmmaking.
---------------------------
i realized just this second that i may find this genre talk particularly interesting because i've been reading abt shakespeare. and just read "the tempest" which i know i've heard described before as a revenge play w/all the genre outcomes flipped. also, though, the interview made me think about how in working on flaming telepaths, i was winding up at the same old same olds i always seem to land on (in terms of imagery, themes, etc.) but on this crooked path through science fiction. and even if the sort of sci fi-ish premise only existed in my mind i did find that it wound up enriching the same old same olds. and this funny current project i'm working with is developing its own weird little back story: (amnesia, robert smithson post-apocalyptic landscapes, etc., a grandmother).
one thing i like about the kiyoshi kurosawa quotes is his discussion of starting point and ending point.
starting w/a set of constraints and then letting bits of experience accrue to these constraints - is that similar to what you're talking about j?
and to pose another of those vexing blog questions, how is that different from writing one's whole book about math or whatever overriding theme is selected? (i believe that it is but couldn't put into words why.)
lastly, jared, i like your writing about staying in the moment of composition. i realized reading your post that i've set up the way i write so that i can always - or at least mostly - feel like i'm composing, not revising, when i'm doing anything at all. (i think that's bc composition has so much to do with arranging and re-arranging for me.) i've never been very good at revising or enjoyed it much. so now i just write ....but extremely slowly....
"and returning to revise a poem put me in control too much, i think" - i'd be curious to hear more about that - bc it surprised me - i've always thought of control as one of your major values (w/fucked-upedness being another one to keep things even).
that's weird to hear about bronk. his poems are so rigorous and wind-y, that's quite a first draft. it's like hearing that he bends iron bars with his bare hands. where could i find the essay?
anyway, this all sounds very exciting. i'm a bit off-balance (who are you and what did you do with jared?) but happy for you to be in this new territory and happy for me to eventually have the new poems to read.
xo,
lauren
hello jared, you make me want to scribble stuff about what i'm working on when i'm really too tired. but it was interesting to read about your project. as often, i can think of parallels - it's endlessly fascinating to me how different/alike our thinking about our projects is (same goes w/catherine and steve).
a question - when you say "I preferred that the constraint not appear as a constraint," what are you talking about at that point? i thought you were doing away with the constraint altogether by not having the titles? and i don't quite get the relationship to sonnets. maybe i should just call you on the phone?
will this gang of poems have a group title? (like 'measuring daylight' w/the dated journal entries.)
how does putting the date at the end counteract land art machismo? i question because i'm interested, particularly w/looking at smithson.
though i know you're giving it as an example of what you used to do, i like the idea of the title (or the date) as a sort of flexible support structure for the poem.
related to that, i've been thinking about genre today. have you seen this movie "cure"? it was so fucking scary to me...whereas tony found it not scary at all. but since tony is submerged in school i have control of the netflix queue and was putting other movies by the "cure" director on. and, i'm being round-about here, i was thinking about his movies and started reading interviews with him. he makes mostly quasi-horror movies and had interesting things to say about genre as a starting point - here's some excerpts from an interview....
Tom Mes from Midnight Eye's second interview with Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
------------
Q: I, and I think that goes for a lot of people in the West, got to know you through your film Cure, which was very much a genre film. Do you see yourself as a genre filmmaker?
A: Which genre my film ultimately belongs in is up to the audience when it's finished, but certainly as a starting point I always start my next project considering which genre I would like to work in. So in that sense I am a genre director.
Actually, I'm often misunderstood. I don't start with a philosophical or thematical approach. Instead I often start with a genre that's relatively easy to understand and then explore how I want to work in that genre. And that's how a theme or an approach develops. The genre is first.
Q: I think that's an approach that very much shines through in Charisma, which starts out as a detective/cop story. Then even when it starts to delve deeper into the themes, there's still occasional flashes of what I would see as genre elements, like the skeleton in the forest.
A: Yes, it certainly is a detective story, but it's also a sort of American-style Indiana Jones/two-teams-vying-for-a-treasure film. That's how I started it. But instead of a box of treasure I decided to make the treasure a tree that's in a forest. Then you start to imagine "what value does the tree have" and "what is the condition of the forest it's growing in?". Then you start to realise that you're not making an Indiana Jones movie at all, but you're making a much more complex film. That's the process of my filmmaking.
The reason I take this approach to filmmaking is, although film needs a fictional story element, it also is a medium that allows you to record the reality around you. You're filming real forests and real people. I think that film for me is a medium point between a fictional story and reality. You start with the genre, which is fiction, and gradually move towards reality. Somewhere in between you find film.
To put it simply: I would like to make a movie like Indy Jones, but there aren't any real people like Indy Jones. That's the beginning of my filmmaking.
---------------------------
i realized just this second that i may find this genre talk particularly interesting because i've been reading abt shakespeare. and just read "the tempest" which i know i've heard described before as a revenge play w/all the genre outcomes flipped. also, though, the interview made me think about how in working on flaming telepaths, i was winding up at the same old same olds i always seem to land on (in terms of imagery, themes, etc.) but on this crooked path through science fiction. and even if the sort of sci fi-ish premise only existed in my mind i did find that it wound up enriching the same old same olds. and this funny current project i'm working with is developing its own weird little back story: (amnesia, robert smithson post-apocalyptic landscapes, etc., a grandmother).
one thing i like about the kiyoshi kurosawa quotes is his discussion of starting point and ending point.
starting w/a set of constraints and then letting bits of experience accrue to these constraints - is that similar to what you're talking about j?
and to pose another of those vexing blog questions, how is that different from writing one's whole book about math or whatever overriding theme is selected? (i believe that it is but couldn't put into words why.)
lastly, jared, i like your writing about staying in the moment of composition. i realized reading your post that i've set up the way i write so that i can always - or at least mostly - feel like i'm composing, not revising, when i'm doing anything at all. (i think that's bc composition has so much to do with arranging and re-arranging for me.) i've never been very good at revising or enjoyed it much. so now i just write ....but extremely slowly....
"and returning to revise a poem put me in control too much, i think" - i'd be curious to hear more about that - bc it surprised me - i've always thought of control as one of your major values (w/fucked-upedness being another one to keep things even).
that's weird to hear about bronk. his poems are so rigorous and wind-y, that's quite a first draft. it's like hearing that he bends iron bars with his bare hands. where could i find the essay?
anyway, this all sounds very exciting. i'm a bit off-balance (who are you and what did you do with jared?) but happy for you to be in this new territory and happy for me to eventually have the new poems to read.
xo,
lauren
posted by Lauren | 7:56 PM
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