DC's

 

‘Frans Zwartjes is arguably Holland’s pre-eminent experimental filmmaker. His highly stylised, poetically claustrophobic films achieve a unique level of sensual intimacy in their renditions of sexual and domestic tension, and voyeurism. Most famous for a prolific series of short films created in the 1960s and ’70s including Spectator (1970) and Living (1971), Zwartjes conjured up oppressively private worlds defined by the compulsions of his heavily made-up, fastidiously dressed (or undressed) performers. These wordless works draw on performance art but are equally distinguished by their oneiric visuals, disconcerting editing rhythms and hypnotically minimal sound design. Their expressively grainy visual textures emerge from uncomfortable close-ups and distorted angles, a transcendentally voyeuristic camera that prowls and clings to the figures it films. Yet this vision seems more engaged with the external projection of inner turmoil than the objectification of bodies and, as such, is imbued with its own unnerving compassion.

‘Although his films are widely available in digital formats, this celebration of Zwartjes’s art is a rare opportunity to see them in their original 16mm format. These films are essentially handmade, homemade objects. He devised and mastered a filmmaking technique every bit as personal as the scenes he filmed. He frequently cast the same performers including his wife Trix, Moniek Toebosch, and even himself. He did the camerawork himself, and his complex, astonishingly assured visual rhythms are the result of cutting in-camera, essentially turning the camera on and off during shooting instead of editing afterwards. He even went as far as to process the films himself to obtain the look he was seeking. Only 16mm projection can do this vision full justice.

‘Zwartjes’s background as a musician is one of his many talents (he is also a painter, sculptor, teacher and violin maker) that is perhaps not mentioned enough. The striking sound design of his films, hypnotically accentuating the prevalent mood of mounting psychosis, is one of their most accomplished features.’ — Maximilian Le Cain

 

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Stills

 

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Further

FRANS ZWARTJES – THE GREAT CINEMA MAGICIAN
Frans Zwartjes @ IMDb
PORTRAIT OF FRANS ZWARTJES
FZ @ MUBI
Frans Zwartjes ‘Masterpiece / Spectator’ (LP)
In Memoriam: Frans Zwartjes
FZ @ letterboxd
FZ @ Cinema of the World
Susan Sontag zag het al: Frans Zwartjes (1927 – 2017) was ‘belangrijkste experimentele filmmaker van zijn tijd’

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Extras

FRANS ZWARTJES, FILMMAKER

HM2015 Frans Zwartjes

PORTRAIT OF FRANS ZWARTJES

 

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Interview
by Mike Hoolboom

 

Q: The person making ordinary films in the Netherlands works within a context: you can see a certain filmmaker as an inspiring model or you can dismiss him to try to do it your own way. Did you have a context like that?

FZ: What made a huge impression on me was the New American Cinema. The municipal theatre in Eindhoven presented a new American film program in the early 1960s. For the first time I was able to see films by Bruce Connor, by Markopolous, by that fatso… Peter Kubelka and by Andy Warhol. I thought: Jeesus Christ, what’s going on! In The Shopper by Warhol, the camera is first pointed at the ceiling and then sinks downwards, but you can feel that it was not done by hand. The bolt at the top of the tripod wasn’t screwed tight. The camera sinks down by itself, splendidly. While the camera keeps on shooting, you can meanwhile hear someone talking. The protagonist just keeps on going. The crazy thing is that I started to be irritated by the film after a little while and I went out to get a drink. I must have gone back and forth ten times and each time that I opened the door to have another look, I thought, damn it all, it’s awfully good! Those screenings had a big influence on me.

Q: You developed your films by yourself in your home laboratory.

FZ: Yeah although… actually it was a cupboard. When I got my first little film back from the laboratory, I thought it looked like garbage. I went back to the lab, that was the NLF back then and said: “I want to develop my own material.” The man opened a drawer and handed me a sheet. I looked at it: R36, Agfa. It had instructions for reversal development. He immediately took hold of one more sheet, one which the address was written of Brocades in Amsterdam. You could buy chemicals there.

He also told me which was the cheapest material: Agfa’s 5-61. That was what they made their prints on. An incredibly straight curve and very, very slow: six ASA. You had to make your shots in the sun in order to be able to see something later on. It came in rolls of three hundred meters. In my darkroom, I cut them up into rolls of 30 meters that would fit in my camera. You get really strange things: perforations on the wrong side, or losing hold of the roll and everything falling apart. Then you’re up shit creek. But I always managed. After a while, I became very skilled at developing. I could develop 300 meters a day. Film on Saturday, watch on Sunday. I had students who asked me how I developed that black-and-white. I explained everything, but they still gave up. Because even if you’ve got instructions you’re not there yet. What’s important is how the material is exposed and how warm it is and how long you leave it in the developer. It’s something you’ve got to twig to. You only learn by doing it, really.

Q: Who did you show your own work to?

FZ: I didn’t know anyone!

Q: Did you not have any contacts with other Dutch filmmakers?

FZ: Of the “regular” filmmakers, only Pim de la Parra came to me and said, “You’ve got to apply for some government money. You shouldn’t be paying for those films yourself, are you out of your mind? I’ll help you.” That didn’t really happen, but still… And Johan van der Keuken. They aced normally. All the rest thought my films were strange, very unprofessional tomfoolery. But they couldn’t escape the fact that Living (1971) was something to reckon with. I heard that later from Bert Haanstra. When I was working at the violin maker, Marree’s studio, he came around. He had been given equipment by The Hague. Given! Lenses and a body and some other things: 35mm equipment. He asked if we would make a case for them. That’s how I came into contact with him. And when later on I started to make a film with a friend about the war wounded in Guinea-Bissau, I looked upper Bert. He immediately said, “Wonderful! A documentary, there’s something we understand at least.” He told me they had wanted to give me the National Prize for Living, but they went and gave it to Ed van der Elsken because he needed money. Ed sold me the Cook lens around that time, the wide-angle that I used so much. Money problems, I guess. It was a 5.7, high quality. I wanted the widest possible angle without it being a fisheye.

Q: There is a great deal of eroticism and there are many distorted power relationships in your films. Do you learn anything about yourself by watching your own films?

FZ: According to Trix, I’ve have never been as clear about myself as I am in my films. But I didn’t not see that at all when I was making them. I didn’t interpret those films. Others did, but what they said was often beside the point. I can still remember a screening – Trix and Monique Toeboesch were sitting on a bench in the film – and you know what someone said to me? “Say, I didn’t know that you wife was a lesbian. How terrible for you!” An adult man said that, a family doctor. I explained: “We’re just making a film, you know.” He acted a bit angry, “Look, you can see it too… Take a look!” I said, “I don’t see anything. I certainly don’t see that.”

I can remember Pentimento (1978) being screened in Rotterdam. The theatre was full of feminists saying I should be done away with. “It should be against the law that ever receive another cent!” And wherever that film was shown, they stormed the projection room in groups of ten, grabbed the projector and pitched it into the street, film and all. That happened a couple of times.

Q: Did that upset you?

FZ: No, something I like a lot less is when, for instance, I expect a really strong effect from a scene an right at that moment I see people leaving the movie theatre… If you don’t see anything at all, and you stand up… that’s… Well, that’s not really irritating but it leave me feeling awfully helpless. It’s just like when someone says, “Well, you know you that Bach’s compositions are just repeating fractions.”

Q: What is your own favourite film?

FZ: In my opinion Spare Bedroom (1970) and Living (1971) have a peculiar indefinable atmosphere. That quirky fidgeting and then the whimpering of the music… When I last saw the film I thought: how did I ever come up with that? I would never be able to do it again now.

 

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15 of Frans Zwartjes’ 45 films

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Sorbet III (1968)
‘A man in drag reaches for some sorbet and then eats it.’ — letterboxd

the entirety

 

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Birds (1968)
‘Hypnotic, repetitive film featuring Trix, Zwartjes’ regular partner in crime – and in life. The second ‘turtle dove’ is a piece of a toy between her fingers. Even before Structuralist film had really found its mojo, Zwartjes made this ironic deconstruction of the watch-the-birdie principle.’ — IFFR

the entirety

 

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A Fan (1968)
‘A man in drag sits on a couch holding a fan. The wallpaper behind him is floral patterned. Although the man does little more than looking around and waving his fan, Zwartjes created enormous tension.’ — letterboxd

the entirety

 

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Visual Training (1969)
‘Oppressive black-and-white study of a man in pale makeup surrendering as apathetically as a zombie from a German Expressionist film to primitive, childlike playing with food. Possibly inspired by Viennese Actionism and the mythopoetic American underground, Zwartjes more than once ventured into orgiastic territory.’ — iffr

the entirety

 

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Spare Bedroom (1969)
‘Two sombre personages who are engaged in a claustrophobic game of attraction and repulsion.’ — MUBI

the entirety

 

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Anamnesis (1969)
‘Film in three parts in which a man and a woman, Zwartjes’ regular actors Trix and Lodewijk de Boer, circle around each other, both in the house and outside beside the water, repelling and attracting each other.’ — LUX

the entirety

 

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Spectator (1970)
‘This 1970 film from the experimental filmmaker tackled the concept of the image as an object of the ultimate expression of desire.’ — Nowness

the entirety

 

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Behind Your Walls (1970)
‘As he does more often, Zwartjes creates an intoxicating, surreal microcosm – this time through a bizarre pantomime featuring extras in heavy make-up. A great example of how the experimental filmmaker was able to unorthodoxly forge colour and black-and-white, silence and an eclectic audio mix into a lyrical poem.’ — iffr

Watch the film here

 

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Living (1971)
‘Frans Zwartjes and his wife explore their new home, and the sexual tension they’ve brought with them to it.’ — letterboxd

the entirety

 

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Audition (1973)
‘Because many of Zwartjes’ films are actually silent films, without any dialogue or direct sound, the music always plays the key role. Zwartjes made that music himself, often with his brother Rudolf and Lodewijk de Boer. Audition is a fine example of a film with a good musical soundtrack. The film is a visual improvisation between the camera and the actors, with virtually no storyline – a man watches and listens to a woman singing, while another woman looks on, mainly in exciting black and white images.’ — Eye

the entirety

 

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Bedsitters (1974)
‘Bedsitters takes place on the landing and the stairs of Zwartjes’ still-new, empty house in The Hague. The filmmaker evokes a mysterious and complex space by using a ‘floating’ camera to film some creeping and mysterious characters. Even when Zwartjes himself appears in the frame, the camera continues to float. The fluid movements and a substantial wide-angle lens turn the house into a building that defies logic.’ — Eye

Watch the film here

 

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Pentimento (1979)
‘This film is dominated by an icy blue. In a monumental building a group of scientists submit women to obscure and inhuman experiments, in which sexuality and cruelty constantly merge into one another. When the film was released, this horrifying game of power and powerlessness was condemned severely by a militant group of feminists. The criticism was undeserved. After all, ‘Pentimento’ is an art-historical term for a hidden image underneath the actual image giving an indication of how the latter evolved to its current state. The film does not endorse the lopsided power relations in our world but actually challenges them.’ — The Uncomfort Zone

Watch the film here

 

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In Extremo (1981)
‘The central element in this film is formed by the preparation for and execution of a performance. The performance, a parachute jump, is carried out by an artist (Perrenet) and his girlfriend during the opening of an exhibition. As spectators to the performance, which takes place in the artist’s studio, an art dealer and several friends have been invited. The art dealer enters first, followed by Armand, who looks at some paintings made by Zwartjes; they spout the usual ‘gallery nonsense’. The art dealer appears most interested in the girlfriend. ‘My latest creation’ is how Amand introduces her. The guests who arrive thereafter are introduced in short, independent sections.’ — Letterboxd

Watch the film here

 

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Medea (1982)
‘Frans Zwartjes’ adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy, originally produced for stage by the actresses Josée Ruiter and Çanci Geraerdts. Two theatre actresses recite the classical Greek tragedy backstage while applying makeup, smoking, wrapping each other in cellophane, etc. Medea is very stripped down in its presentation. Darkness permeates the entire movie, with only a minimal amount of blue light shining on the performers.’ — Letterboxd

Watch the film here

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Adem Berbic, Well, hello. The Close-Up thing seems a little iffy at the moment, so we’ll see. If it happens, we’ll ask for more than one screening, I think. After-parties are my idea of hell, but thank you anyway, haha. I would think anyone you know who isn’t a fatalist or sadist would choose the productive angle. Zac and I go to Berlin to show ‘RT’ in late-mid May, but we should be here otherwise. I think I’m going to see James soon, so I’ll ask him what’s the what on your event. I’m not very big on pre-‘Naked Lunch’ Burroughs. I haven’t seen the ‘Queer’ movie, but someone whose opinion I trust said it’s like a 90 minute homoerotic perfume commercial. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yes, that’s precisely my/our fear about the upcoming US midterm election. I never heard back from the Viennese programmer, so I assume that’s a no, very unfortunately. Thanks to love, but it looks like the visa problem is fatal and I will have to reapply. Expensive stressful headache, but that’s how the cookie crumbled. Love giving a very un-warm Paris ‘welcome’ to the return of the cold and rain, G. ** Charalampos, I still like Iceage, but I don’t love them like I did during their first three albums period. I still love Elias’s voice, and I’m relieved that he’s past the phase where he was trying to sing Nick Cave. I have too many ‘Bee Thousand’ favorite songs to list them. Almost all of them. Hi from this place. ** _Black_Acrylic, I just read something about ‘The Great Hip Hop Hoax’ not two days ago. I don’t have Netflix, but I’ll look elsewhere and maybe get lucky. ** Carsten, Well, Kier sort paraded and flounced around whenever I saw him. And I saw him throw any number of hissy fits when he thought people weren’t treating him like a living legend. Well, at least your friends are freed, whew. Wow, that’s some poem. It’s very ‘you’ but the tone feels new and exciting. Thanks, pal. ** Thom, If I were a bookstore, short, fragmented novels would be what my bookstore was known for. Right, about the boxsets. I don’t currently have a turntable or even a CD player so I don’t have to battle with my pragmatic side over whether to spring for them. I would say thank goodness, but it’s also sad. I hope your jams are being very, very soupy. You satisfied? ** HaRpEr //, Oh, cool, yeah, Sharits is wonderful. I hope you get to see his films projected sometime. It makes the obvious big difference. You know Tony Conrad’s legendary film ‘The Flicker’ I’m guessing? In the documentary, to me at least, Coppola came off pretty well, but I admire obsessive self-styled visionaries and what it takes. LeBeouf, on the other hand, comes off completely insufferable. And his recent homophobic bullshit just dots that i. ** Malcolm Cooper, Hi, Malcom. Good to meet you. We could be related as I know virtually nothing about the extent of my extended family. Nice that Richard Siken was your mentor. He’s great, not that I’ve met him. His new book is terrific. Sure, I’ll talk with you about that. I’ll send you a quick hello email so you have my address. I feel confident somehow that you’re one of those fairly rare writers who used your MFA to your work’s advantage rather than as drill sergeant. And thank you. Happy to have helped dissuade you from being the new Michael Chabon, although you might have gotten rich. And probably talk with you soon. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Hi. I did try your mix, and, yes, it didn’t work. I’ll just daydream about it. Little Caesars sounds very promising. Yay! I make coffee by boiling water and pouring it through a filter/cone full of grounds that is sitting on top of my cup. And I’ve been doing it that way for years, except when I’m in LA and use a coffee maker machine, so I assume nothing’s changed. ** Laura, Chopped? What does that mean? No, you’re obviously attractive, and it seemed superfluous to say so. I co-translated a book of German short stories by this obscure Austrian writer Franz Boni in the early 80s with a co-translator who only spoke German as a second language, and, boy, was that a headache and failure. ** kenley, I know nature has a good reason why mosquitos need to exist, but I still wish they’d go extinct, those tiny monsters. Wonton is better. And I have a fetish for grocery store cakes. Yum/yuck. So congratulations to you all! ** Right. Today the blog chooses to direct your attention to arguably the premiere Dutch experimental filmmaker, and the rest is up to you obviously. See you tomorrow.

 

‘For a long time I’ve been wanting to write something about John Keene‘s Annotations, which I think is one of the most remarkable books about St. Louis, though I’ve never met anyone else who has read it. (I might have called this post “The Best St. Louis Novel You’ve Never Heard Of.”) Published quietly in 1994 by New Directions, its understated title and gray-scale cover guaranteed its obscurity, arriving already a cult object that would be discovered only by a few. I am not sure if this is what Keene intended, but the humility of the title, as well as the slinky, elliptical methods of the writing, suggest that he might not have minded. It’s a work that falls halfway between poetry and prose, and does not go out of the way to explain itself. It has the feel of something private, something written out of necessity, a book one eavesdrops on as much as reads.

‘As the title suggests, the book sometimes has the feel of marginalia or endnotes to a main narrative that is missing. That could be frustrating to some readers, but it also is one of the special pleasures for a St. Louisan, recognizing the local references that are dropped into the narrative like incantations: Homer G. Phillips, Chatillon-DeMenil, Natural Bridge. These names, dropped seemingly at random into unrelated paragraphs, begin to build an associative logic, and show how cities and memory are inextricably linked (as Calvino also realized).

‘Though hardly a straightforward one, Annotations is also a vivid coming-of-age story that speaks of a sensitive, artistic, black boyhood in North St. Louis and later the western suburbs (Keene attended the St. Louis Priory School in Creve Coeur). It deploys a narrative voice that can dwell in luminous specificities:

Many backyards wore a chain-link garter that stretched out to the alleyway, and so whenever the rudipoots shattered their wine or soda bottles into smithereens of glass, it always fell to us to sweep them up. Now-or-Laters. Snoopy, the second in a cavalcade of pets, would parade regally about the screened-in porch. Daddy soaked then bathed him in a pan of gasoline to strip his coat of mange, so that when we spoke of him at all, it was as “under quarantine.” Children often see with a clarity that adults ignore.

‘This may give some sense of the way Annotations can move in and out of abstraction. It is childhood observed with crystal precision, but also great distance. The signifiers of childhood — Penrose Park, Chain of Rocks — become a kind of code that is still vivid and evocative but not fully legible, either to the narrator or the reader.

‘Annotations runs a slim 85 pages, including notes — these notes contain some of the most fascinating material in the book. “Rudipoots,” in case you were wondering, is defined here as “a colloquialism akin to ‘ghettoheads,’ meaning an ignorant or foolish person.” We also learn, for example, the meaning of Treemonisha: “A 1905 opera by Scott Joplin, written while he was resident in Sedalia, MO, and not premiered until 1972, in Atlanta, GA. The theme of the opera is the salvation of the black race through education, and Treemonisha, a young woman, is the protagonist.”

‘I don’t want to give away too many more of Keene’s Easter eggs, but this appendix beautifully unravels the culturally mongrel roots of St. Louis, which Keene describes as “a Creole core.” (Elsewhere, Keene wonderfully describes his own family as the result of “vibrant miscegenation.”) There’s a deep historical mind at work here, running from French-speaking slaves to the protests at Jefferson Bank, and the city’s ugly racial tension is not glossed over. Cops that could be relatives of today’s say “stop and don’t move”; a white cashier mouths a racial slur, thinking the narrator is out of earshot. He’s not. Still, Keene is attuned to what is best about the city, its rich, pungent multicultural soil.

‘It has been twenty years since Annotations came out. I’ve already read it twice and am probably just beginning to unlock its mysteries.’ — eplundgren

 

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Further

John Keene @ PennSound
John Keene: Upending the Archive
John Keene @ goodreads
John Keene Remembers Toni Morrison’s ‘Brilliance, Breadth, Acuity, Nuance, Grace and Force’
Paean (For Samuel R. Delany)
John Keene: Elements of Literary Style
“Like Currents in a River”: A Conversation with Speculative Fiction Writer John Keene
The Review: Counternarratives by John Keene
Podcast: Episode 64: John Keene (Translation Series, Ep. 2)
Looking for Langston, Du Bois, and Miss La La: An Interview with Author John Keene
COUNTERING THE NARRATIVE
Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set a Watchman’ Reveals the Limits of the Liberal Imagination
Buy ‘Annotations’

 

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Extras

A Reading by John R. Keene – Kelly Writers House Fellows Program

John Keene, Writer

Readings In Contemporary Poetry – Sarah Arvio and John Keene

 

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Interview
from The Creative Independent

 

You’re often exploring material that’s distant from where you are, geographically, historically, and culturally. Is that distance something you’re thinking about as you’re writing? Or do you just absorb whatever you can and then let it come out in the writing as it will?

It’s probably a little bit of the second. Characters, for me, are usually the way in. So, for example, [the story “A Letter on the Trials of the Counterreformation in New Lisbon”], one of the fundamental components of that story is that I don’t want the reader to know [who the narrator is]. You don’t find out until the very end.

So there what sustained me was the excitement of inhabiting that character, inhabiting that voice. And I think so often that has been the case for me, particularly with this collection, but in other things I’ve done, too. Just getting into character. When writing or reading, of course, you enter that character’s head, you enter that virtual space, and it’s spellbinding. That’s the other thing I wanted to do, particularly with that story.

Sometimes it’s language, sometimes it’s setting, sometimes it’s atmosphere. But to have those moments where the story itself almost casts a spell and pulls you in so fully that you could feel it physically.

I always tell my students about this experience, and this has happened a number of times, but one of the ones I think of most vividly, and I taught the book a few years ago, was Cormac McCarthy’s, The Road. The father goes down those stairs, and the little boy is at the top of the stairs, and the father looks down and it’s dark. And McCarthy: elaborate prose, right? It’s interesting when you read that moment, because he pulls that impulse to overdo the prose, he pulls it back and you get something a little bit clearer, but sort of strange and disorienting.

The power that fiction possesses to create those experiences, I feel like so often, writers sacrifice that because they want to be efficient, or they want to just tell the story, or whatever reason, they want to entertain in other kinds of ways. But, I’m interested in how fiction can do [what McCarthy did in that moment]. So that was one of the things that I tried to do in various ways, successfully or unsuccessfully, in Counternarratives, too. To get you so fully into that moment and that character that it’s writing from the inside out. I just wanted to point to that.

You’re also a translator, and when you talk about occupying someone else’s position, it almost sounds like the work translators do.

It is a challenge but I also see it in certain ways being akin to being a fiction writer. If you’re doing anything where you’re getting into any kind of character that’s even somewhat different from yourself—really truly stepping outside yourself into that character—that is what translation requires. So there’s a sense in which, even if the translation itself doesn’t work, that process of writing fiction, and particularly writing fiction that’s not transparently about oneself, is a certain kind of training. That doesn’t mean, again, that the translation’s gonna work. But it does mean that on a certain level, you become that other person in that moment and you think from the inside out.

One of my teachers once said the text in the original language stays the same, but we always need updated translations. And we’re always getting new translations of old texts. Why is that?

Because I think, with each new translation, you bring a different perspective to it. Often, of course, what happens with new translations is they re-situate the work for a new context. I think of a writer that’s so beloved and has been translated by different people in so many different ways, like Rainer Rilke. Two people whose translations of Rilke I think are really great are William Gass and Steven Mitchell. I believe Gass’s precedes Mitchell’s. You know, William Gass was an extraordinary writer in English. But he was also a profoundly philosophical writer. And he, of course, spoke German. He had training in German. So his translations have a certain kind of philosophical sensibility, like he’s capturing something in Rilke, I think, that most translators probably wouldn’t.

With Steven Mitchell, you have a translator who has an extraordinary ear [and] an extraordinary eye and his desire is to give you a Rilke that, on the one hand is as approximate as possible, but also doesn’t lose any of Rilke’s strangeness. If you go back and forth between those two translations, and of course, many lesser translations, you really start to get a sense, if you don’t speak German, of what Rilke might be like. And that, I think, can be really great.

But at times updated translations can just be terrible. If you’re translating the work of a poet, particularly a poet who is also an extraordinary prose writer, you want to retain that poetry, so you want to err on the side of the lyrical that might not be as exact, as opposed to the exact that is not so lyrical, because [otherwise] you lose what is essential to that writer.

You write about contemporary politics a lot, mostly on your blog. How has that affected the way you think about your writing, given how historically embedded your work is?

I wanted to have this blog I thought was gonna be about art and letters, things that were of interest to me that I wasn’t seeing on a lot of other blogs. Of course, it didn’t take long for me to start periodically talking about politics because, how could you not talk about politics during the Bush years?

I realized even in the posts before that, that weren’t directly about politics, that I was thinking about politics. It struck me, it wasn’t planned, but that Counternarratives is about the past but also about the present. So much that it dramatizes, has direct parallels with today. I write slowly. But when I was younger, one of the things that I struggled with, one of the reasons it took me so long to get Annotations out was, before Annotations, I was actually trying to write about the AIDS crisis. I had some poems that I published and I think maybe a story or two, but it was like, because it was so overwhelming that I felt like I just could not get my… it wasn’t that I couldn’t get my mind around it, I couldn’t get my art around it, particularly in a fictional form, because it was just there. It was pressing and the totality of it. I think now that I’m older, I have a better sense of how to incorporate things, or how to work with things. But, even still, it’s like, you come to realize you don’t always have to write about something directly.

What is your daily practice like? Between your university duties and blogging, how do you get words down for your fiction and poetry?

In the past, before I became chair and acting chair [of African American and African Studies at Rutgers], I had more time to let my mind work through things sometimes in a very straightforward way on the blog. And I try not to edit it. That was another thing I was always aiming for, to write shorter entries.

With my creative work, it’s a little different now, because I find it harder to focus because there’s always something else to think about. So, what I’ve tended to do, is have these periods where, even if it’s just a few sentences a day, to get them down. And then, when I don’t have to think about hiring or something like that, then I can actually immerse myself. That was one of the ways I was able to get Counternarratives done. Because when I shifted from Northwestern to Rutgers, I had a full complement of classes and things, but I would have these down periods, and I would just seize on those to get as much writing done as possible, both during the semester and during the summer. And, as I said, the last few years, it’s been a little bit more difficult. That’s why I don’t even blog as much, because so much mental energy has to go to the daily administrative demands.

I’m always amazed when people are able to write. They say, “I wrote 5,000 words today”, or however many words they wrote. How do you write 10 pages?

I don’t understand it either.

I’m always astonished by it. I think about during NaNoWriMo or National Poetry Month now, people who write a poem a day. I tried to do that where I tried to write a poem a day for a month. And you come to realize that a lot of the poems are really bad. But if you have 30 poems and let’s say 25 are bad and you have five that are even semi-decent and one that’s really good, you have one good poem for a month. There’s something to be said for that.

Some poet just posted the other day, “Oh, my god, I wrote seven full poems last year.” And people were like, “Oh, my god. I can’t believe you wrote that many.” These were not just teachers or administrators. So you come to realize, if you’re gonna have a certain number of poems over a certain number of years, that you do have a collection of poems. And you have poems that you really love. You don’t have to write 70 or 700 poems.

But, it is a challenge. And then with traveling, personal things, stuff like that, it becomes more difficult. I try to carve out little bits of time, and even if it’s just a few sentences, those sentences are the way back into whatever it is that I’m doing. Words, notes, things like this.

Do you find carving out that time puts pressure on you to use it?

It’s a relief. It’s a huge relief. It’s always a joy. It gets to the point sometimes, I don’t know if you ever have this experience, where you’re thinking about something you’re working on and it’s so potent that you wake up thinking about it, or at some point where your mind just goes into idle mode for a few minutes and then you’re just in that other world, and you think, “Oh my god. I have to come back to reality.” So even just thinking about it can be really exciting. Then just writing little things. Like I said, little notes and writing things down, just to keep myself going is key.

 

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Book

John Keene Annotations
New Directions

‘An experimental first novel of poem-like compression, Annotations has a great deal to say about growing up Black in St. Louis. Reminiscent of Jean Toomer’s Cane, the book is in part a meditation on African-American autobiography. Keene explores questions of identity from many angles––from race to social class to sexuality (gay and straight). Employing all manner of textual play and rhythmic and rhetorical maneuvers, he (re)creates his life story as a jazz fugue-in-words.’ — New Directions

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Excerpt

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Laura, Hi. Your birthday put my last one to shame. That’s you? So now I have a visual to write to. You look so relaxed. I think Kristof was more irked by the comparison than by Duras? That was my read. If ‘Heated Rivalry’ helped facilitate two new Bresson fans, then more power to it. I don’t think I’d call whatever state I sink into ignorance. Fecklessness maybe. Not sure. Today? See if I can solve a giant, possibly fatal and suddenly arising problem with my visa application. Work on an RT screening possibility. Possibly eat Ethiopian food and/or see art. Don’t know entirely. Hugo presented my email address to you. I hope your birthday happiness was just the tip of the opposite of the iceberg. ** Carsten, I used to see Udo Kier around in LA ‘cos he lived next door to a friend, and he was always flamboyant in not always charming ways. I, of course, have no memory of any pussy eating talk in ‘Sinners’, haha. Mega-luck to your Vietnam friends. How can it be so difficult to assassinate that pig. ** jay, Hi. Yeah, the Dorian Electra inclusion seems to have been the big wow moment of yesterday. Interesting. I love your shout out re: ‘Megalopolis’ but I just really don’t think I can stomach it. I wish I hadn’t watched the doc in that regard. That is terrible sounding art, although the term psychedelic can make almost anything tolerable (to me). I like how stately your tastes are. I literally have nothing on my walls. They’re just white expanse. Partly strategic, mostly just lazy. Yes, I am in Paris on Friday. You’re popping in and out? Well, as ever, if you want to kill some minutes over a coffee or something with me, hit me up. In any case, how extravagant! Coolness and loveness. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Oh, that’s why it didn’t work. But now it will. Yum. Everyone, Remember the access you received to darbbzz’s mixtape yesterday? Well, turns out it was in ‘private’ mode, but now it’s not, so head over there again via this. ** _Black_Acrylic, Nice! Everyone, The one and only Ben ‘_Black_Acrylic’ Robinson wrote about one of yesterday’s flamboyant stars, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, in the legendary zine Yuck ‘n’ Yum back in 2013, and you can read what he wrote, and you should because he knows his glittery shit. Here. Cookie Pie Man sounds like a very convenient and dangerous lad to have around. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thank you for leaving everything else behind! My weekend … just kind of the usual stuff, I think, as I barely recall. Yours wins. New SCAB! Cannot wait! ’28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’ isn’t horrible, it’s just kind of whatever and empty. Shame about love’s current situation, although what would we do if he got snuffed? Yikes. Love wondering if Orban is really going to be defeated and if it’s possible that he would let that happen. ** T, Hi!! Zac says the new Oneohtrix album is surprising really good. I had kind of started to give up on him. So maybe, yes! We’ll be here except for a few days next week when we’re showing ‘RT’ in Stockholm. Yes, write me. My address should be the same: denniscooper72@outlook.com. It’ll be so nice to see you! ** fish, I’m not flamboyant either to say the least, but flamboyance seems like an excellent way to grow old. Thank you so much about ‘I Wished’. That’s so heartening to hear. I read ‘The Bell Jar’ so long ago that I barely remember it. It being funny doesn’t shock me nonetheless. Her poetry’s quite good. I have poetry on the blog once in a while, so you can test yourself with it to start at least? Happy day! ** kenley, Thanks! Very cool about the gig! And the bookstore haul. The doc isn’t fun in the monstrous sort of way. It just kind of occupies 90 minutes, I would say. No, I can lay out the Zoom club’s agenda. Like last time it was that doc and a short play written by one of our members (Benjamin Weissman). But usually it’s a text from the outside. Winning a hot dog eating contest (hopefully) and then doing karaoke sounds very dangerous. It has warmed here of late, but we’re supposed to sink back into winter a bit next week. But it’s warm enough that the fucking mosquitoes are alive again! ** Adem Berbic, Adem, you (not) old dog! We’re actually talking with one of the cinemas you mentioned right now re: a possible screening, the ‘ineffectual also-ran’ one, ouch, but we’ll take what we can get at this point, and they’re mulling it over, so who knows. Needless to say, I’m going to strongly lobby for the productive choice. I’m productive, and I’m pretty okay, life-wise and pleasure-wise, as such things go. The world could use a hysterical version of Blanchot, again needless to say. What you wrote makes sense, sure. I can only speak as me, but being a reasonably stable, relatively hard working Walter Mitty vis-à-vis my dark side and letting the collision happen imaginatively strikes me as by far a wise decision on my part. I’m a little stressed today, but I’m okay. And, dude, your book! I have it courtesy of James, but I haven’t had the brain space to start it yet. But I’m about to. Amazing! Congrats! Enjoy that! ** Steve, Not in general, but I think I remember a video or two by Tokio Hotel that thoroughly charmed. That’s my suspicion about ‘The Bride’. Plane film, I think. ** HaRpEr //, ‘The Argument’ is a good favorite choice. I do really like ‘Repeater’ too. Interesting: my way of trying to deal with being very shy and confused by what people might think of me is to try to seem invisible or unidentifiable enough to be dismissed as unremarkable at a glance. ‘Muffled flamboyant thing’: that sounds beautiful and ideal. ** horatio, Hi! I guess never underestimate how far afield this blog can go. Right, the Coil, I know. Yum. I have the Alice Cooper one somewhere in my Los Angeles outpost. I remember ‘The Butch Manual’. Wow, I forgot all about that. I’m gonna see if I can find it somehow. Nice. Yes, we did get into AIFVF! How about that? And I have you and totally and only you to thank because I wouldn’t have submitted if you hadn’t urged me to when I met you. I was hoping we could be sharing that berth. Sad. But ‘Best of Fest’: congrats! What’s the Ireland festival? Lovely to see you. ** Okay. Today I’m spotlighting an excellent novel that not enough people seem to know about. So, the usual, in that sense. Give it a shot. See you tomorrow.