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'Until the age of twelve I thought I was gifted with the power to shape the future, but this power was a crushing burden, it manifested itself in the form of threats, I had to take just so many steps before I got to the end of the sidewalk or else my parents would die in a car accident, I had to close the door thinking of some favorable outcome, for example passing a test, or else I’d fail, I had to turn off the light not thinking about my mother getting raped, or that would happen, one day I couldn’t stand having to close the door a hundred times before I could think of something good, or to spend fifteen minutes turning off the light the right way, I decided enough was enough, the world could fall apart, I didn’t want to spend my life saving other people, that night I went to bed sure the next day would bring the apocalypse, nothing happened, I was relieved but a little bit disappointed to discover I had no power.' -- Edouard Leve, Autoportrait
'I would rather be bored alone than with someone else. I roam empty places and eat in deserted restaurants. I do not say "A is better than B" but "I prefer A to B." I never stop comparing. When I am returning from a trip, the best part is not going through the airport or getting home, but the taxi ride in between: you’re still traveling, but not really. I sing badly, so I don’t sing. I had an idea for a Dream Museum. I do not believe the wisdom of the sages will be lost. I once tried to make a book-museum of vernacular writing, it reproduced handwritten messages from unknown people, classed by type: flyers about lost animals, justifications left on windshields for parking cops to avoid paying the meter, desperate pleas for witnesses, announcements of a change in management, office messages, home messages, messages to oneself. I cannot sleep beside someone who moves around, snores, breathes heavily, or steals the covers. I can sleep with my arms around someone who doesn’t move. I have attempted suicide once, I’ve been tempted four times to attempt it. The distant sound of a lawn mower in summer brings back happy childhood memories. I am bad at throwing. I have read less of the Bible than of Marcel Proust. Roberto Juarroz makes me laugh more than Andy Warhol. Jack Kerouac makes me want to live more than Charles Baudelaire. La Rochefoucauld depresses me less than Bret Easton Ellis. Joe Brainard is less affirmative than Walt Whitman. I know Jacques Roubaud less well than Georges Perec. Gherasim Luca is the most full of despair. I don’t see the connection between Alain Robbe-Grillet and Antonio Tabucchi. When I make lists of names, I dread the ones I forget. From certain angles, tanned and wearing a black shirt, I can find myself handsome.' -- Edouard Leve, Autoportrait
Edouard Levé SuicideDalkey Archive
'Suicide cannot be read as simply another novel—it is, in a sense, the author's own oblique, public suicide note, a unique meditation on this most extreme of refusals. Presenting itself as an investigation into the suicide of a close friend—perhaps real, perhaps fictional—more than twenty years earlier, Levé gives us, little by little, a striking portrait of a man, with all his talents and flaws, who chose to reject his life, and all the people who loved him, in favor of oblivion. Gradually, through Levé's casually obsessive, pointillist, beautiful ruminations, we come to know a stoic, sensible, thoughtful man who bears more than a slight psychological resemblance to Levé himself. But Suicide is more than just a compendium of memories of an old friend; it is a near-exhaustive catalog of the ramifications and effects of the act of suicide, and a unique and melancholy farewell to life.' -- Dalkey Archive
Excerpt:
One Saturday in the month of August, you leave your home wearing your tennis gear, accompanied by your wife. In the middle of the garden you point out to her that you've forgotten your racket in the house. You go back to look for it, but instead of making your way toward the cupboard in the entryway where you normally keep it, you head down into the basement. Your wife doesn't notice this. She stays outside. The weather is fine. She’s making the most of the sun. A few moments later she hears a gunshot. She rushes into the house, cries out your name, notices that the door to the stairway leading to the basement is open, goes down, and finds you there. You’ve put a bullet in your head with the rifle you had carefully prepared. On the table, you left a comic book open to a double-page spread. In the heat of the moment, your wife leans on the table; the book falls closed before she understands that this was your final message.
I have never gone into this house. Yet I know the garden, the ground floor, and the basement. I’ve replayed the scene hundreds of times, always in the same settings, those I imagined upon first hearing the account of your suicide. The house is on a street, it has a roof and a rear façade. Though none of that is real. There’s the garden where you go out into the sunlight for the last time and where your wife waits for you. There is the façade she runs toward when she hears the gunshot. There is the entryway where you keep your racket, there’s the door to the basement and the stairway. Finally there’s the basement where your body lies. It is intact. From what I’ve been told, your skull hasn’t exploded. You’re like a young tennis player resting on the lawn after a match. You could be sleeping. You are twenty-five years old. You now know more about death than I do.
Edouard Levé lit "Oeuvres". Extraits.
Hervé Loevenbruck at EDOUARD LEVE exhibit
AUTOPORTRAIT & SUICIDE d'Edouard Levé, mise en scène de Guillaume Béguin.
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'What I find potent in Bellamy’s work is a concern with class, feminism, performed subjectivities, and trangressive sexuality rendered in imaginative hybrid poetic-fictional forms. If someone wants to give me a grant or fellowship, I’d love to write a book on why art/poetry is necessary and the relation of this—or not—to healing (yes, that unfashionable topic among art and poetry world cognoscenti). Or to put it more politically, what are the spaces of resistance to, and healings from, arbitrary exertions of power? I feel as if Bellamy’s interests have moved in this direction as well, if recent writings and her excellent blog are any indication.
'Bellamy recently used her blog to document the end of a romantic entanglement, and these entries have now been published by Publication Studio. The book includes photographs and material not posted online. Here’s the publisher’s description: “While ending an affair with a Buddhist teacher, Dodie Bellamy wrote about it simultaneously on her blog. This experiment in writing in extremis explores nuances of public shame, the vagaries of desire and rage, and Bellamy’s confusion over the authenticity of group and individual spirituality. What is personal, what is public? In the electronic age, can anybody tell the difference?”
'How does it all end? It’s obvious from the first page that the relationship is doomed, and Bellamy says as much early on, “Of course it ended badly.” But the conclusion itself is hardly the point. The process is existential.' -- Alan Gilbert, Harriet the Blog
Dodie Bellamy the buddhistPublication Studio
'While ending an affair with a Buddhist teacher, Dodie Bellamy wrote about it simultaneously on her blog. This experiment in writing in extremis explores nuances of public shame, the vagaries of desire and rage, and Bellamy's confusion over the authenticity of group and individual spirituality. What is personal, what is public? In the electronic age, can anybody tell the difference?
'the buddhist celebrates marginalized subjectivity as enacted in the work of female artists from Bessie Smith to Eva Hesse and Carolee Schneeman, to Bhanu Kapil and Ariana Reines. The Allone Co. Edition contains the essence of the blog, as well as more extended narratives too explicit to post on line. Designed by Wayne Smith.' -- Publication Studio
Excerpt:
The buddhist said he loved me when we were fighting as much as when we were purring to one another, he said he loved all parts of me, all moods of our interaction. And I believed him. I could tell him anything, I could be any way with him and he would still love me. My therapist’s response to this: when things seem too good to be true, they are too good to be true. Anals of official philosophy are fucked by bureaucrats of pure reason. The buddhist’s attention was so dazzling I felt like the star of a reality TV show, the fat woman who has an extreme makeover—ugly parts are cut away, new parts are stitched on, then she’s coached into fitness and retooled by a team of beauty experts—for the grand finale all her friends and family gather to witness the unveiling of the gussied up version—she is stunning, a bride to her dream self. Then the cameras and support staff vanish, leaving her to deal with the profound loneliness of ordinary life. Standing in line at Safeway I vacantly stare at a magazine cover featuring three former contestants from a series about pregnant teens, now that the show is over their lives are falling apart—depression, drug addiction, boob jobs. I look at Kevin beside me, peacefully sleeping in the navy cashmere cap I bought him for his birthday—I get a hit of his otherness and his sweetness and it pangs my heart—with this incredible love, right here, that slaps me in the face on a daily basis, what was the point of the buddhist? He made me feel sexy special exciting—traits I don’t particularly try to convey, like I’m over such staginess—but I must still crave it, must still long to be that dazzling woman beneath the klieg lights—all eyes turning to watch, to delight in Her/Me. For women, God is always about the gaze. Little ones to him belong, for they are weak and he is strong. Jesus loves our weaknesses, but God loves our glamour.
Dodie Bellamy - Sky over Indiana (excerpt from manuscript)
Whistle While You Dixie (excerpt) / Dodie Bellamy
Last Day of Summer workshop (accidental video)
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Luke Degnan: I’ve followed your Twitter feed for a while. Do you consider Tweets a part of your craft? What draws you to Twitter as a poet?
Mark Leidner: I love many things about it. One way to think about it is practice. It makes me practice attention to sentences. I will often think of jokes that I’ll want to share or absurd things, and I love the challenge, as quickly as possible, to change the joke or the idea or the concept into an efficient, little sentence that’ll carry it. I also love how it’s made me think more aphoristically. One feature of an aphorism would be the cinematic way a sentence unfolds. So you get a subject and a verb, and you don’t know where the object is gonna be until you hit the object, and sometimes what the object will be will make you reinterpret what the subject and the verb were. So I like thinking about the narrative of cognition that happens when you read a sentence that’s guided by the grammar. Tweeting has made me pay more attention to that because often the rhythm or the grammar or the alliteration, all those features that make a really good sentence great, for some reason they are foregrounded when all you have is just one sentence as opposed to elaborating on an idea.
LD: In the HTML Giant comments section you wrote, 'sometimes there is too much irony all piled up in the barn, and you have to / pitchfork another steaming pile of irony on top of it all, and you have to / pitchfork another, and another, and another / when the world is shit-streaked with irony that is when beauty will emerge / love is irony / purists sure hate farce / but pushing against things is the only possible way to live'. Can you comment on this?
Mark Leidner: I believe that, I think. It’s really interesting to think about how a public forum, like a comment stream, can…it makes everything you do a sort of performance. On the Internet you have to compete for attention because there are a million people talking about a million things, and comments are all over the place. Sometimes it’s just a game to see if you can make a comment that seems interesting in itself whether it’s true or not. I love the challenge: can you even be interesting in that kind of comment frenzy?
Back to the actuall thing about pitchforking irony. I think that comment says something true, but maybe it frames it as this is the only way to achieve beauty. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. It’s just the main way that I’ve experienced it. It’s blowing through irony or so immersing myself, or a speaker so immersed in the antithesis of what they want. In some ways irony is the opposite of beauty. I don’t know. I’m just really interested in exploring darkness, things you’re not supposed to do, things you’re not supposed to say or think and trying to be caught in them that you can emerge from them. Ideally I’d love to write a poem that has this fun and interesting ironic sensibility, but it’s only the surface, and there’s actually a depth and sincerity all pinioned by language.
(more here)
Mark Leidner The Angel in The Dreams of Our HangoverSator
'The Angel in The Dreams of Our Hangover, the sophomore release from SATOR PRESS, is a quick read full of wisdom. The design and layout of this book is beautiful. Each aphorism leads very well into the next. Throughout the 80 or so aphorisms some themes arise and they arise quickly--they are the poet, the West (Western wisdom) and Christ.
'The poet: "poets are the unacknowledged law school students of the world."
'The West: "whatever ends the West will be remained / the West."
'Christ is mentioned the least but is also mentioned first, "a thousand people in a room, a thousand parodies of Christ." One-third of the way into the book "...the West absorbs Christ," and seventeen pages later, "one does not begin a poem, one abandons one's life."
'There are dozens of other subjects but the above feel reused with great purpose. The depth of this small book is what makes it genius. Showing us not only Leidner's powerful use of language, image, and subject, but also giving us a hint at the enigmatic and exciting direction of SATOR PRESS. Mark Leidner has crafted a sharp read unlike anything I've read so far this year. Highly recommended.' -- Ben Spivey, Your Brain's Black Box
Excerpt:
the purpose of love is to gain so much of one person’s trust, that when they are dying you can tell them it will be okay, and they will believe you
the period of time beginning halfway into the previous second, and ending halfway through the next, is what is known as the “fiscal second”
early on in his career, the poet sold his soul; he then spent the rest of his life trying to redeem it; as a result, he was highly motivated, and all of his ambition was sincere
missing someone is like what the wind feels like to itself
history is the first enemy, and in the end, the only companion, of every visionary
love is like a bunch of mountain ranges
that when you look at them flatten to nothing
then leap back into the sky when you look away
the white male wears a mask that faces himself; then calls himself the world
God is a good comedian but he only has 1 joke and it’s 24 hours long
Mark Leidner 9.30.09 Turners Falls, MA
mark leidner - what's cool changes
mark leidner - self-portrait at 28
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p.s. Hey. So, The Weaklings opening event last night went really well. I guess I'll give just a few details in my day report to Itmpw below, and then I'll have pictures of the show and shebang on Monday that will flesh out the report and name names and stuff. As in the last couple of days, I need to move kind of swiftly through the p.s. as I have a Paris-bound train to catch, and my apologies for that, and I'll start getting leisurely again the next time I see you. ** Jax, Hey, Jack! Wow, so you're off on that Alaska sojourn today. Man, I'll be very curious to hear about that, either during or after depending on your internet access and time and all that. I would think that the Seattle border dudes would be as mellow as the protectors of the US get, at least in theory. We'll see. Safe flight if you see this pre-airport, and have the awesomest time, and love to you, J. ** Postitbreakup, Hey, Josh. Nothing but an honor to open a passageway to your story, sir. Gosh, man, that's so incredibly sweet of you to say about my stuff and this place. Don't forget the incredible riches I get out of doing this. It's heavily a two-way street, that's for sure. Yeah, thanks, Josh, and lots of love to you this weekend. ** Bill, Hey. Wish you could have been there. It was really fun. The show emitted quite a cacophony of sounds, so the silence of yours was all for the best and worked wonders. Very cool on the Millhauser. Yeah, I've always wanted to dip into Another Country. One of these years. ** Schoolboyerrors, Really great to see you and get to talk at least a bit last night! Thanks so much for making the northern voyage. Tomorrow I'll get to read your linked interview at last. Can't wait. Take care, D. ** Schlix, Hi, Uli. Ha ha, it would have a great treat to see you, but you missed a lot of rain, so you probably made the right decision. Where are you going on Monday? Have a blast if I don't talk to you before you leave! ** David Ehrenstein, Hey, David. Thanks, I think a leg was broken. The Woronov event sounds wonderful, no surprise. I don't suppose it was recorded for online sharing? That 'Kitchenette' thing is a real score. Wow. Yeah, I'm so glad it went so well. Fantastic! Great, I'll read your 'DHD' piece once I'm resettled at home tomorrow. Thanks a lot for the alert. Everyone, the master of many things and d.l. David Ehrenstein has written what looks to be fantastic piece on film director Jim McBride's legendary and long hardly seen 1967 film 'David Holzman's Diary', and there's also a link to watch the film itself. Highly recommended that you head over there this weekend, perhaps even now. ** Pilgarlic, Hey. Most of my Goad experience/ knowledge has to do with his old 'Answer Me' mag and days. I enjoyed that. I read something about somebody dying at Bonnaroo this morning. I'm glad it wasn't you, duh. You didn't end up going? ** 'Stoopid Slapped Puppies', Hi, Nick! It was cool. Oscar's perf was wild and awesome. Hopefully, I can swipe some pix from Kiddiepunk's far superior camera for group viewing on Monday. Esther did a kind of secret, invisible performance. I hope somebody snagged an mp3 of it. Great weekend to you, great Nick. ** Paul Curran, Hardly enough time to get to hang and talk with you properly last night to say the least, but it was really lovely to get the time I did. I hope your family gets back in two whole pieces and not too terribly spacily today. ** Thomas Moronic, And you, great to see you ... uh, 10 or so hours ago, Mr. T! Thank you so, so much for coming down for the event. ** David, Hi, David. My brain is kind of scrambled this morning, but let me forefront your query. Everyone, the superb d.l. David wants some summer reading suggestions from you guys, if you don't mind. Specifically, in his words, 'Can anyone recommend any outre' crime / horror etc. fiction or queer /gay literary biographies? Thanks much'. Please help a d.l. out, yes? Thanks from me. ** Puella aeterna, Hey, Caroline! It was so great to get to meet you and share at least a little face and talk time. Hopefully, that was a little icebreaker, and we can meet up more thoroughly again soon somehow. Thank you so much for being there. Take good care. ** Hyrule Dungeon, Hey! How are you, man? It's really good to see you! That game does look pretty incredible, doesn't it? I need to find a PS3-sporting friend pronto. Thanks a lot for that! Everyone, artist/writer and d.l. Hyrule Dungeon alerts everyone to this trailer for a very cool looking PS3 game called 'Journey'. It's a beaut. Take a look. ** Pisycaca, Hi, Montse! Thank you again for yesterday, my pal! Yeah, I'll show you the show on Monday. I did drink a little wine, yes. Just a bit more than a wee bit. A superlative laden weekend to you and Xet! ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Morning, sir. Well, morning here. Assuming I make my train, London has not done a number on me. Got me plenty wet a couple of times, although that rain of yours takes the cake, assuming it was left out in it. Or something. Can you record that fan sound, or is it all about the magic of human ears? Probably, right? A very cheerful weekend to you. ** Little foal, Hi, Darren! Yeah, it would have been sweet if you could have been there, for sure. Your love of everything is wonderful news. I'm kind of in a loving everything state too. This year is being amazing so far. Well, like I always kind of say, the cool thing about here is that it's always here and, at the same time, it's there if you want it to be like ... earwax? No, that doesn't work. But you know. Yeah, graduation will be over before you know it. Pretend you have a small part in a theater piece, so small that no one's going to hardly notice you. That's what I try to think in those kinds of situations. Like at the readings of my work that I have to give, ha ha. It's true, though. I'm glad you're reuniting with that girl. It'll be really interesting what she went through in the meantime that made her reach out again. Someone who was at the opening last night has tickets to the Biophilia premiere event in ... Manchester, I think, the lucky dog. Yeah, 'The Finish Line' turned into 'Email, Fax'. Thank you very kindly, Darren, for what you wrote. Yeah, I have all that structural stuff that's very important to me and without which I don't think I could even write, but I think all that is probably more important to me because it's the only way I know how to write, and I spend so much time figuring that stuff out so that I can write, but it's not stuff that people who read my things need to think about necessarily. Oh, gosh, I mean, if you really don't mind sending me the Woody Allen book, of course I would be happy to have it, but only if it's no trouble to you. You're so nice. Yeah, we have to meet up and hang out one of these days, and you should meet the other awesome people who spare some of their time for this place. It'll happen. No doubt there. Lots of love to you too, Darren, and try not to stress about the graduation 'cos it'll be over in almost a flash. ** Chris Cochrane, Hi, Chris. Good, I'm really glad the text thing worked out okay. Again, I'm sorry for the effects of my being swamped. The opening was big fun. You'll see visual evidence on Monday, so you can judge for yourself. Bon weekend! ** Sypha, Hi, James. I saw that someone had linked to that video on FB, but I hadn't watched it, and now when I try, thanks to your link, the video won't work and says there's something wrong with it. Hm. I'll try again later. Thanks, man. ** Statictick, Hey, Nick. A Detroit URGH equivalent? Nice. I was at a few of the concerts that were filmed for the original URGH. How was that? Any bands I would especially know? ** Alan, Hey, A! ** Oliver, Hi, Oliver. Sorry you couldn't make it, but that's totally cool, of course. It went well. You can sort of have been there if you see the blog come Monday. Take care. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey! Hunh, a historical dream. And you have them often or at least dream of historical cars? I feel like I've never dreamt about being in a past that I didn't actually live in, but maybe I'm a weird dreamer. Well, I am, I think. Shit, about the slashing of your friend's car top. So, it's a convertible or the slasher was super strong? That sucks. Christina Ricci is in a new TV series? That's pretty cool. I like her too. And I hope SMG's new show is okay. The visit to your grandpa's house was really nice and funny. Grandparents + 'Real Housewives' seems really funny to me. But I guess it's a classic, no lose deal to put something ultra-contempory in the same frame with older people. When I was young teen, one of the most popular posters that you'd see on people's walls was a blown up photo of an old lady taking a hit off a joint. That and a picture of Frank Zappa sitting on a toilet were the most popular posters. Weird. My day, quickly: Tender Prey and Wolf came by where I'm staying and picked me up, and we bought some supplies for the installation then walked over the gallery and started getting everything up on the walls and stuff. D.l. Bollo aka Weaklings artist Jonathan Mayhew showed up, and then Kiddiepunk and Oscar came, we all hung out and put the exhibit together. Bollo is a super awesome guy, btw, no surprise. Apart from running little errands and grabbing a bite to eat, that was pretty much the whole day in a nutshell, and then everything was set, and we just waited for people to show up. They started trickling in around 6 pm, and the place was packed by about 7:30. Like I said, I'll save most of the report for Monday when I can show you pictures, but the opening was a lot of fun. There were d.l.s and strangers and very cool artists/ performers and two really great old friends of mine by total surprise. Oscar did this amazing performance at 8:30. Esther and some collaborators made cool music/noise with her multimedia sculpture at different points as her performance. After the opening, a bunch of us went to this kind of club/pub place whose name I don't remember where we hung out for a while, and then I shared a cab with K&O back to where I'm staying pretty late and crashed. Sorry for the skimpy report, but I think it's easier if images do most of the talking on Monday. It was great, though! So, today I go back to Paris, and you? What did you do on Saturday and Sunday, pray tell? ** Jeff, Hey. Yeah, like I said, you don't sound like you're insane, man. It sounds like things are kind of good. Obviously, I like the helping people thing. I like helping people. I think that's kind of a sane making activity in and of itself. ** Slatted Light, Hi, D. Oh, gosh, no, you weren't off the map at all! I'll be clearer when I write to you, early next week at the latest. Or we could do a phoner/ Skype if you feel it. I'd really enjoy that! Yeah, that quote of Dodie's is great. Mm, as for me and the Cycle, I can't say that I ever felt entered into the Cycle's body. I think it was always more like building a body from scratch and using my head and heart and libido as its surveillance cameras or something. My brain isn't clear this morning. Dodie's idea is amazing, and it also feels really foreign to me and to my process. I think I'm always aware of the boundaries and trying finesse them, and when I can make them seem transparent, that's as close as I get, I don't know. Let me think about that. Interesting. Anyway, it would be great to talk if you want. Or I can write to you, if you prefer. Great weekend, David! ** Right. Three more books I read of late and dug hugely and that I highly recommend to you. See what you think, and I will see you from the French heartland with a 'Weaklings' slideshow on the day after tomorrow.
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