Archive Fever

I know where I'll be Sunday night. I'll be in the Mission, a canape in my hand, at the Nonsite Collective's dinner and discussion that's open to the public too, so if you're around you might enjoy yourself. This month's presentation will be on Jack Spicer; more specifically it will be a sort of reconstruction of the circumstances surrounding the gift of a huge number of Spicer's papers to the Bancroft Library in the spring of 2004. Wow, five years ago already.

I remember one evening some years back when Robin Blaser was in town giving a reading, and afterwards we were driving him and David Farwell through Golden Gate Park—from the back seat of our car Robin casually mentioned that he and Holt Spicer, the poet's surviving brother, were donating the remaining Spicer papers to the Bancroft. Kevin who was driving, froze up and he nearly screamed. "What! But then I'll never get my hands of them." (Because processing of a major archive is notoriously slow.) But Robin quickly added that he and Holt had made it a condition of the deed of gift that Kevin and Peter (Gizzi) would have full access immediately, even before processing began—because K. and P. had already started working on their edition of Spicer's collected poems.

Considerably relieved, Kevin drove them back to Fran Herndon's place and the next thing I knew, the papers were in Berkeley, and once again I became a "Spicer widow" because he was over there every chance he got for what seemed like a year.

He was there so often that somehow Tanya Hollis wangled him a sort of fellowship by which he and Peter would sort out the papers, and the library would pay him 10 dollars an hour. "I would have paid them ten dollars an hour!" marvelled Kevin. And that, or so I take it, is what this meeting is going to be about—the labor of processing a large archive. Also speaking will be Tanya Hollis herself, as well as Jocelyn Saidenberg, both of whom were working for the Bancroft at the time and who were really responsible for making sure that Kevin followed certain protocols.

And also for this meeting Kevin has rounded up a host of the younger poets and artists who volunteered to assist him and Peter during many difficult months of transcribing thousands of pages of manuscript material, and other dirty work. I got to know some of these young writers at this time and they have become like family friends—Jason Morris, Logan Ryan Smith, John Sakkis and Brandon Brown. They will be talking about what it was like to slave away as unpaid serfs for Kevin and Peter, and some of them will be reading poems by Spicer which they actually discovered themselves! In a class of her own is Kelly Holt, who is editing Spicer's letters for Wesleyan and who is writing her dissertation on the ties between Spicer and Ernst Kantorowicz, the German refugee historian who taught Spicer, Duncan and Blaser in the immediate postwar years at UC Berkeley. Kelly will be speaking too. Funny how it was just one trunk but look how it started to separate out after a few months . . .

Spicer papers in an interim state, backroom Bancroft Library, late fall 2004

And now the papers are fully sorted out—well, almost so, there will always be more work to be done—and you can see the finding aid, compiled mostly by Kevin and Jocelyn, at the guide to the Jack Spicer Papers.

So if you're curious and you want to come by, you can find the address and directions at the Nonsite Collective's invaluable website.

Roberto Bedoya, "Flight Recordings" (for Dario Robleto)

Gee, ever since I first heard the words "Blossom Dearie" the other day, they're coming out of the woodwork: i.e., the men and women who love her! Now one of my oldest friends in San Francisco, the poet Roberto Bedoya, writes in to contribute a poem that alludes to her, so I asked him if I could reprint it here on my blog. I didn't know she had written a song about Dusty Springfield, in which she muses, "Dusty Springfield, that's a pretty name—it even sounds like a game." If you ask me that's the pot calling the kettle black, no?

I met Roberto many years back when he was the director of Intersection, then the most important and significant reading series in San Francisco, or so I thought. Everyone wanted to read there, it was a real community platform. Recently Robin Tremblay McGaw conducted a penetrating interview with Roberto in which he sketches out those long ago days that seem like just yesterday, the birth of the New Narrative and the practical hegemony of Language writing, and much much more, at her blog, X Poetics.

Kevin was involved with Roberto before I married him, and in one of those "only in San Francisco" developments, Roberto very graciously had a reception for us after our wedding in his beautiful backyard behind his old house on Fair Oaks, and everybody came, and I wore a drop-waisted floral dress that I loved until I saw the photos.

Now here's Roberto's note on his poem:

A number of years ago I wrote a piece for an artist named Dario Robleto. He works with vinyl records turning them into objects. There was a hip-hop show in SF and a piece of Dario that I own was in it and Kevin mentioned to me how much he liked it. It was a spool and needle made out of fools gold and an unraveled 45 of Patsy Cline's "I fall to pieces" which I all to say attached is a piece I wrote for him to accompany a "black box" made out of Dusty Springfield records.

Flight Recordings
For Dario Robleto

1

How is it gratuitous
this between
holding sentiments

throw your voice
and receive
waves
timber
"all of me" holding time without arms
a voice opening the body
alms to the trace of the note
"asleep deep in the heart"
immortality embedded in vinyl
calling to us with songs
we are sure, we have
lived before

wishin' and hopin'
thinkin' and prayin'

at the bottom of black
stars
intuitive forms
flights


2

Everything is rhythm. The entire destiny of man, is one heavenly rhythm,
just as every work of art is one rhythm, and everything swings from the poetizing lips of god.
-Friedrich Holderlin

All audible musical sounds is given us for the sake of harmony, which has motion akin to the orbits in our soul, and which, as anyone who makes intelligent use of the arts knows, is not to be used, as in commonly thought, to give irrational pleasure, but as a heaven-sent ally in reducing to order and harmony any disharmony in the revolutions within us
-Plato

But it is precisely the idea of absolute time, without any connections to space, flowing forward at a regular speed, that permits the attribution of a vital, gentle slow rhythm - or even the complete absence of rhythm- to the primitive mind.
-Roger Bartra

Rhythm does not belong to the order of nature or of language, or even of "art,” where it seems to predominate. Rhythm is not the simple alternation of Yes and No, of "giving-withholding," of presence-absence or of living-dying, producing-destroying. Rhythm, while it disengages the multiple from its missing unity, and while it appears regular and seems to govern according to a rule, threatens the rule.
- Maurice Blanchot

The composition is the thing seen by every one living in the living they are doing, they are the composing of the composition that at the time they are living is the composition of the time in which they are living. It is that that makes living a thing they are doing. Nothing else is different, of that almost any one can be certain. The time when and the time of and the time in that composition is the natural phenomena of that composition and of that perhaps every one can be certain.
-Gertrude Stein

If you'll only give me time
- Dusty Springfield

We are time and cannot escape its dominion. We can transfigure it but not deny it or destroy it. This is what the great artists, poets, philosophers, scientists and certain men of action have done. Love, too is an answer: because it is time and made of time, Love is at once consciousness of death and an attempt to make of the instant an eternity. All loves are ill-starred, because all are made of time, all are the fragile bond between two temporal creatures who know they are going to die. In all loves, even the most tragic, there is an instant of happiness that it is no exaggeration to call superhuman: it is a victory over time, a glimpse of the other side, of the there that is here, where nothing changes and everything that is, truly is.
- Octavio Paz

...when I talk to my friend, when I write to her, I am writing to someone whose otherness I accept. It is difference between me and my friend that allows meaning: meaning begins in difference. And it is meaning, the meaningfulness of the world, that is consciousness.
- Kathy Acker

In music or in one's voice, an echo may reenact an emotion of distant past. These rare memories may also be beauty
-Louise Bourgeois

A heart without music is like beauty without melancholy.
-E.M. Cioran

when memory is unforgiving
mute eloquence
of taciturn ghosts
wreaks havoc on the living
-Harryette Mullen

You got to give me some, give me some of your loving
You got to give me some of your loving
Now, I'm not a greedy girl, I don't need a world
- Dusty Springfield

There is a whole range of melancholy: it begins with a smile and a landscape and ends with the clang of a broken bell in the soul
-E. M. Cioran

How'm I gonna get through
-Dusty Springfield

The Soul should always stand ajar
That if the Heaven inquire
He will not be obliged to wait
Or shy of troubling Her
-Emily Dickinson

How'm I gonna get through
-Dusty Springfield

The fascinating chill that music leaves
Is Earth corroboration
Of Ecstasy's impediment-...
-Emily Dickinson

I'm all cried out over you
-Dusty Springfield

I cannot differentiate between tears and music
- Nietzsche

It was a dream come true for us when Dusty Springfield agreed to sing with us on the song "What Have I Done To Deserve This?" She hadn't recorded for several years but as soon as she arrived in the studio and began to sing we knew that the greatest female singer Britain has ever produced was still on brilliant form. Quite honestly, we were in awe of her.

Dusty was a tender, exhilarating and soulful singer, incredibly intelligent at phrasing a song, painstakingly building it up to a thrilling climax. She was also a warm and funny person.

"What do you want me to sing like?" she asked on that first day we met.

"You", we replied, and she seem quite surprised.

- Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe (Pet Shop Boys) on the death of Dusty Springfield, 3rd March 1999

Dusty Springfield
Silver star shine over crystal waters
Petals fall from her glance
Flowers sparkle
With a dew of morning, feathers float from her dance

From the song “Dusty Springfield” by Blossom Dearie

I got a brand new walk
A brand new smile
Since I met you baby
I got a brand new style


3

How does a Black Box hold

-orphaned imaginations
-desire rendered invisible lingering in the song
-the velocity of sadness
-the requirements of myth
-emancipations ?

this that which is given
between
solitary listeners

2001

Here's Blossom Dearie's tribute to Dusty Springfield:

Out of the Mouths of Babes

I imagine most of my readers will know who Pamela Lu is, but those who don't won't understand the pleasure and excitement I got when she left a hefty message in the comments box for my Run, Sally, Run post. I've known Pam since 1995, when she was one of the brightest lights in a new generation of poets and writers who revitalized the Bay Area poetry scene. In 1998 her first book, Pamela: A Novel, was published. Forthcoming from Kenning Editions is a long-awaited second book, Ambient Parking Lot.

In a brief earlier message, Pam suggested that my "Girl Body" piece referenced Blossom Dearie—the recently deceased NYC cabaret singer. When I wrote back claiming ignorance of Blossom Dearie, here's what Pam replied:

i was thinking of Blossom's rendition of "teach me tonight" on her album "once upon a summertime"--it's the only mix of the song i've ever heard, which version were you thinking of?

actually, Blossom Dearie is totally apropos to yr piece in some ways. cuteness as seduction, ambiguous-aged girl sexuality, babydoll voice crossed with empowered diva/piano virtuoso. the vulnerability that would almost be too-easy prey to exploitation if the girl standing behind it, like yr Sally, weren't so obviously in charge (obvious, at least, to most receivers of yr piece). but in other ways, BD with her classical/jazz salon polish has nothing in common with S's unmediated, polymorphous physicality. makes me think about the amorphous line between the objectified and the empowered, the ambiguity of age and pubescent/pre-pubescent sexuality that you're working with here, that at the same time interests me and makes me quite uncomfortable, in ways that i can only begin to unpack.

My reference to the old standard "Teach Me Tonight" was to George Maharis' 1962 rendition, which, according to Wikipedia, reached #25 on the charts. As a child I was a great fan of Maharis' portrayal of Buzz Murdock on the TV series Route 66. In fact many of Sally's fantasies in "Girl Body" are based on my memories of Route 66 plots. Thinking about this got me to review Maharis' life, and I was reminded of his 1974 arrest/scandal for having sex with another guy in the restroom of a Los Angeles gas station. How fitting, given my later trajectory, that my big childhood heartthrob was gay.

Tod and Buzz of Route 66, Martin Milner (L), George Maharis (R)

But Maharis wasn't my first. My earliest media crush was on Tommy Kirk, for his role in the Disney Series The Hardy Boys. When this aired I was age 4 through 6. It turns out that Kirk was also gay. He was exiled from Walt Disney productions after he also was found having sex with a guy. It seems I not only like them gay, but notoriously so. When we were visiting Raymond Pettibon in Venice recently he was reminscing about the late 1970s sleazy gossip tabloid, edited by the mysterious "Bill Dakota," called The Hollywood Star, and Raymond remembered one article by Dakota alleging that it was Disney himself who was having sex with Tommy Kirk. I make no claims as to the reliability of The Hollywood Star, but Raymond made a wonderful collage out of Disney's satanic majesty. Our friend Mac McGinnes gave Kevin a complete run of every issue of The Hollywood Star one year for his birthday—the most thoughtful gift Kevin had ever heard of.

Hardy Boys, Tim Considine (L) and Tommy Kirk (R)

Pam, I have to say I knew nothing about Blossom Dearie until you mentioned her, but now that I have researched her a bit, I'm struck by exactly those elements in her image that you are. "Cuteness as seduction?" Check. Her "ambiguous-aged girl sexuality, babydoll voice crossed with empowered diva/piano virtuoso"? Check. What is with that voice? Even her name is perverse in some nearly unspeakable way—sounds like a cow's name, a cartoon cow with a bell around her neck, it's not a name suitable for humans. If you look up "Teach Me Tonight" on Wikipedia (sorry to keep referencing the dreaded Wikipedia; I always tell my students that it is not suitable for scholarly, or even accurate citation), there've been nearly 60 versions recorded. The biggest hit was by the DeCastro Sisters, whom I've never heard of either. The most interesting angle on Dearie is her tiny little squeak combined with her ageless jadedness, like she's been around forever, and when that happens on the screen you always realize, it's a horror movie (when a child reveals adult traits), or it's a JonBenet type thing.

When I was growing up it was popular for kids to imitate adults on TV and in the movies, and whenever such an adult/child hybrid appeared on our TV, my mother would go insane, and start yelling, "I hate this." Which now I think must have tied in with her attempts to infantilize me, like she was terrified of my adulthood and what it would bring. But perhaps that was about her own mortality too. Kevin says that Blossom Dearie has been a cult figure for the entire time he's been alive, and he never could understand her appeal exactly, but that part of it was her undoubted skill at songwriting—at a time when few women were in charge of their own material.

And she was sarcastic, snarky even; performing a number like Dave Frishberg's "I'm Hip" (one of the tunes recently revived by Kevin's idol, Kylie Minogue) she was part of the scene but stood apart of it also, analyzing it, a paragon of self-consciousness.

Looking back, "Teach Me Tonight" seems a perfect love song for a child, the way it collapses the bedroom and the classroom:

Starting with the ABC of it
Getting right down to the XYZ of it
Help me solve the mystery of it
Teach me tonight

Sex was a mystery, but I loved school and learning and I thought Maharis and Route 66 were infinitely sexy, and I was the eager pupil in my fantasies as I lay on the living room floor with my face practically pressed against the TV screen. In the song it's Maharis playing the eager pupil but there's so many slippages going on in the child/adult desire arena, it simply didn't matter to me.

Here's Blossom doing "I'm Hip":



And here's Amy Winehouse doing a fabu rendition of "Teach Me Tonight":

Reanimated

These lovely orange roses were waiting for me in my kitchen when I returned from a quick trip to Whole Foods this evening. Kevin's such a sweetie. In the parking lot of Whole Foods I ripped open my impulse buy, a bag of Luscious Lemon Swirls from Blessing's Alive and Radiant Foods. I usually don't care for raw cookies, which are usually grossly sweet, but these are addictive, delicious and uncomfortably weird at the same time. I bit into one and I thought, these taste kind of a like a punishment dessert, like you'd find in a vaguely Christian cult, where the women wear baggy cotton dresses and scarves on their heads. This thought, as I sat in my car with the sweet/bitter taste of cashew-lemon-honey-coconut cookie filling my mouth, made me want to start writing my blog again. Thoughts of Proustian madeleines echo about, but this was a kind of reverse madeleine, not drawing me to the past but beckoning me to commit to the future.

Kevin frequently jokes and prods about what he calls my "dead blog." I've been distracted by personal concerns, health stuff and being behind in work, feeling overwhelmed and trying to rah-rah myself into the needed enthusiasm to catch up. Material I've been motivated to write about has tended to be too personal for the personal yet highly mediated tone I've struck for this blog. But I'm back for now, mediated but all me.

When I looked up the link for the Luscious Lemon Swirls, I was surprised to learn that their manufacturers are guided by religious principles. From their About Us page:

Until we compose a manifesto that as accurately expresses our guiding principles we'll leave it to Nelson Mandela's inaugural speech...

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God; your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

NELSON MANDELA, inaugural speech, 1994 May Your Blessings Multiply!

You'll all have to try these cookies and you too will experience how a raw cookie can "manifest the glory of God that is within us."

Besides the inherent godliness of the raw cookie, other recent experiences influenced my cookie/cult linkage. On a recent episode of Dollhouse (Joss Whedon's newest TV series), Echo, the show's heroine, is reprogrammed to be a devotee of a Waco-type cult, which she infiltrates. In order to make her more believable to the cult (even though little that actress Eliza Dushku ever does is in any way believable) the company Echo works for/is enslaved to performed a dangerous operation on her to make her blind and to implant teeny cameras in her eyes that broadcast to headquarters all that Echo could not see. The picture I'm embedded is of blind Echo tapping her way into the cult with her cane.

I also recently wasted more time than I care to think about on a site entitled "Is Amway a Cult? An Analysis." But the characteristics listed of a cult—specialized terminology opaque to outsiders, charismatic leadership, suppression of critical thinking, reframing intuitive processes into a scientific method, the goading for all followers to work hard in order to succeed even though statistically success will elude all but a few—did not make me think of cookies. I thought of Creative Writing programs, especially when such programs covertly or overtly push students into a formulaic contemporary American bland narrative style—not great innovative works of genius, but midlist fiction. The current crisis in midlist fiction publishing may ultimately be a boon to American fiction. With nothing left to lose, perhaps fiction writers will again be free to be creative, to gather enough energy to get off their butts and frighten and delight us.

But I'm digressing. The other influence of my cookie/cult flashforward was another website I got lost in, Frugal Abundance, a Christian-inspired site on how to maintain "a gluten-free, casein-free diet (GFCF) on a limited budget." I've developed a gluten intolerance, for which I'm still learning the parameters, mostly meaning at this point, how little is too much. Last week I got "glutened" or "glutenized," which is celiac slang for somehow consuming gluten and getting sick. Being fluish for nearly a week, I found myself compulsively "researching" gluten intolerance issues on the web, as though if I read enough about the topic I'll brainwash myself into being so careful I'll never fuck up again. Anyway, there are lots of homey recipes on Frugal Abundance, including one for cookies—gluten-free oatmeal chocolate chip "Monster Cookies."

Given the recession and general financial panic, Frugal Abundance is an interesting site, making frugality a moral imperative. For all us liberal bohemians, it's easier to swallow such values if they're couched in a Buddhist vocabulary. This morning poet Sara Larsen was over, and I was telling her about how when I was a child women in our social circle would save their old nylons for my grandmother, and my grandmother would cut the old nylons into little pieces and use them to stuff the toy animals she sewed. This wasn't a liberal recycling impulse, it was simple, ordinary life. I can imagine how that would be turned into a marketing opportunity these days, a special nylon shredding kit sold on eco sites. The kit would include special nylon shredding scissors, a cute cotton drawstring bag (made in China), and an instruction booklet.

Perhaps the most interesting section of Frugal Abundance is the Christian Womanhood material, where you can learn how to sew your own bloomers and headcoverings. "Just work within your own comfort zone, and play around with it a little. If you don't like scarves, try bonnets, or even hats. One darling woman I know, has chosen to wear baseball caps, because they are what works best for her. She calls it Caps for Christ, which just tickles me to no end. You will know which type of head gear is best for you, trust the Spirit to guide you, and be gentle with yourself as you adjust." I'm trying to come to understand the values of submission, hard work, and modesty. "I'm not a glamorous painted woman who is comfortable with outward success in a wicked world." Amen.

So. Has anyone been watching Dollhouse and if so, what do you think?