Well, for now, until my ears stop bleeding and my brain stops boiling out my ears. I started work on it at noon Saturday and just finished recording and mastering at 2:30 AM. I wound up using penny whistles, cello, flute, four different guitars, three different keyboard patches, hand drums, real drums, electric drums, three part harmony with myself (I hope I don't go blind), and bass guitar. I am WAY rusty, and my fingers hurt tremendously from the steel strings digging into my sadly non-calloused finger tips.
Anyway, I've charted the flow of the project to end with "The End" fittingly enough, and beginning with a poem called "The Beginning" oddly, fittingly, and unfortunately unimaginatively enough. I thought that since this was my final class for my final year (not true) and the end of a long road to BA-ville, that I would create something called the end.
I have "The Beginning" which describes the birth of life and the ultimate climb of the evolutionary ladder to the point at which we attain the mental capacity for superstition, for mindless ceremony and meaningless rituals are what separate us from the animals (just kidding, somewhat).
In the middle, I've written several poems asking questions and intentionally delivering no answers or speculations ending with "The End" which is a question to provoke.
We all want power. If we didn't, we'd have been content to stay in Eden, if there was one, and remain naked and ignorant, but we didn't and we continue to seek power by asking questions. Knowledge is power and the only way to get it is to question.
The chap book will be four inches square with a fold out sheet that the reader will read on the way the to cd, which will be at the heart of the package.
I should have it done by tomorrow.
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Good luck it sounds like you have been working hard and I can't wait to hear it. I really like reading works when it deals on religion and the bible because that is one topic I really know a lot about.
ReplyDeleteJeff -
ReplyDeleteThis sounds amazing. I'm really excited to see what "the ultimate climb of the evolutionary ladder to the point at which we attain the mental capacity for superstition, for mindless ceremony and meaningless rituals" sounds/looks like. Is this all one long poem or are you splitting it up into sections?
I'm curious about the middle poems that ask questions but give no answers. Is "the end" going to be something representative of the human experience of death? That we leave this earth/our consciousness with many things left unsaid or undone? Or are these the questions that I'm meant to be left asking?
I like your setup for the chapbook -- it sounds compact and fitting for your project.
Sir Goins,
ReplyDeleteI love the way you write your posts. Your humor bleeds throughout the post.
Anyway onto a topic not about humor or blood (maybe) the content. Interestingly enough we have both gotten on the "religion train" and from the sounds of it we are heading for crazy-ville. The questions you ask invite interesting assumptions about religion. For example (from the content listed in the post) you are thinking a lot about Christianity and The Beginning and The End ( Good ol' Alpha-Omega as we said in the monastery). The Alpha-Omega concept is a very interesting place to explore. There are a million different theories and narratives about how this world began and how this world will end. One of my favorite versions speculates that the universe was created and destroyed in a near simualtanious instant and all that we know as matter is the debris and waste from that instant. Thus, we are living outside the original "universe" and in a wasteland of small-scale scientific process. It is a very flawed theory, however it is an interesting brain-exercise to imagine yourself living in a galactic dump. Any advice I would give you concerning the project would be to think about your poetry and if the poetry is solely reflecting a western/christian approach to religion. If so, consider making your poem more inclusive. If you are making a comment on western/christian religious thought than avoid describing the project as a commentary on religion, but rather a commentary on western/christian thought.
Best- tim