poetry anthROPology

To continue from last bit of wind baggage, I suppose my real question is: should new technologies produce new forms of learning? In other words, what are the benefits of conveying the same type of knowledge or information via new modalities? Shouldn't instead those new modalities instead be aimed at conveying new types of knowledge?

Or does the converse actually happen: do new technologies merely confirm our past visions, our former suspicions? For example, the airplane confirmed the dreams of all cartographers and put to rest the myth of the giant (was it last visited in that 50's/early 60's TV serial Land of the Giants?). On the other hand, satellites in addition to giving us a present-time omniscience are suggesting new ways of reading masses and contusions as visible maps of history. Even Paul Valéry (quoted by Benjamin) noted the degree to which early 20th century technologies forever altered our perceptions of time and space.

Speaking of Benjamin, I am really thinking about his most famous piece, ... Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. And it is here an apposite argument is put forth: "One of the foremost tasks of the arts has always been the creation of a demand that could only be satisfied later." In other words, artworks engage ideas that have yet to be realized or again quoting Benjamin (this time quoting Breton): "The work of art is valuable only in so far as it is vibrated by the reflexes of the future." Borrowing on this, we wish to see myopically -- not blindly, but like the fly but panoramically and also three-dimensionally -- so Cubism precedes the invention of new optics, Dadism precedes the splicing and cutting of films. And where might all of the above stand in relation to Einsteinian physics?

In ancient times, didn't humans have dreams in which they fly? And if so what did the landscape look like? In the Middle Ages, how does Chaucer describe the world viewed by Troillis once he has exited life .. but as a dull gray marble, its concerns now so petty and so distant. When the cartographers referred to above first set out their designs, how could they imagine all information flattened .. perhaps they had stood on a mountain and viewed the valleys from on high? Perhaps some might argue that mapmaking, akin to our use of language, arises out of a natural inclination to use symbols. So I have heard of abstractions drawn in the sand by ancient groups of Pacific islanders before taking cross-ocean voyages. Having never taken a single linguistics course, however, maybe I'll leave symbolism well enough alone and return to the idea of prescience and science, or my first concern, which was whether new technologies should be used to convey new forms of information.

My point is that very often new technologies are often employed to the opposite effect: to merely replicate something that is best (or at least well) achieved using some older medium. Thus many early photographs attempted to achieve the effects of painting (although certainly in retrospect their own remarkable qualities arise in the struggle). This is almost the opposite of what Benjamin suggests when he says that later technologies will achieve effortlessly what prior technologies struggled to achieve.

The introduction of new media into "interactive informal learning environments" (oh .. I suppose they mean museums, parks, playgrounds and the like) -- where the intention is outrightly didactic -- often manages to achieve very little in the realm of say history or anthropology (the opposite is true as yet of science and art for the reasons given in my previous entry). Sometimes a nicely designed computer module will take a visitor through an abbreviated history on some topic .. but why need this module be site specific? Wouldn't it offer as much online? (See the Field Museum's online exhibit on chocolate for example.) In other words, how does the new technology contribute to pedogagy pure and simple? Ambient sound can if employed with care and a certain nearly musical (i.e. Cageian) sensitivity produce powerful effects. Does the fact that it is my body moving across space triggering said effect render the effect more instructive, more stimulating? I would argue that the stimulation is of value but the instruction is often paltry.

I think this may have to do with the traditional relationship of history and anthropology to the archival document or the artifact and (be patient but we are back to Benjamin again) the special idea of aura.

In the world of art, physical computing and interactive technology projects have engaged viewers by incorporating the viewers actions and inputs — whether breathing, gesturing, waving — into the process of creation. Words fall, colors radiate, sounds emanate, images fracture, objects respond. These effects are often intended to evoke, disturb, startle, mesmerize, elate … in other words, their intentions are to engage while stimulating viewers to question or revisit some aspect of their surroundings or social behaviors. While the project itself may arise out of a well-argued conceptual framework, the visitor experience tends to shy away from intellectual engagement and instead be highly sensory/emotive. Something is captured, learned — while the experience may linger, the idea may be transitory.

In the realm of the museum and other informal learning environments, efforts have been made to engage visitors through interaction — moving objects, pressing buttons — as a means of spurring on learning. A tension then arises between two sometimes conflicting aims — the desire to impart some body of knowledge with the greater aim of raising visitor awareness and the desire that visitors should somehow engage with these educational structures in a way that stimulates their curiosity but also allows them to “participate” in their own education.

In science museums, visitor interaction is easily engaged through the process of re-creating certain effects, e.g. through direct experimentation. Thus we can be fascinated by an arc of light or spinning orb whose and then desire to learn what scientific or mechanical process has made this thing possible. In this way it is possible to directly involve visitors in the process of discovery, whereby known conclusions are reached. These technologies often promote the visualization of science (see Why art).

In art museums, visitors engage directly with the work on display by reading — and not merely passively viewing — the works. There is not a single line of reasoning or point of view to communicate: viewers in a sense create the works before them through their varied interpretations. In other words, each one conjectures something different and what is evoked is by no means universal.

In the realm of the history and anthropological museums, another set of problematics arise. These exhibits often are focused on the display of artifacts — artifacts that are in some way impugned with meaning or in some measure give insight into the social realm of some other society (past or present). In this, the objects may be said to take on some kind of “aura” of significance — whether intrinsic or suddenly conferred by the special lens through which the audience is encouraged to engage in disquisition (i.e. the display case or raised platform, the spotlight). Interpretive texts are then meant to lend greater insight, maps and photographs impart context.

The question needs to be posed: what role can the latest ‘strategic impacts’ (horrid phrase ... from where did it come? warfare?) play in heightening visitor learning — and experience — in the historical and anthropological museums? Certainly, many online educational sites — such as those produced by the Field Museum — have provided one successful example

In designing museum exhibits, certain ends are commonly sought: one hopes that visitors, upon leaving an exhibit, have come to view a certain subject in a new light; one hopes to awaken people from the sleep of the everyday, to cause them to question what is commonplace, to view their world in a new light; to make connections between the knowledge offered for their taking and the world in which they live. These aims are often the underlying motivations — or strategic aims — of most exhibits. My long-winded question then concerns the degree to which new bells and whistles (or smoke and mirrorrs) actually enrich the experience of learning.

[more to come]

I need to expand my list. But for the time being, these have been of help when thinking about ideas of representation and interpretation, particularly in museum exhibits and websites:

Jean Baudrillard. "Simulacra and Simulations". I like looking at this as a travel memoir and thinking about travel itself as a form of seeking out, ingesting and reproducing.

Walter Benjamin. "Paris in the 19th Century" on the role of the flaneur; and "The Task of the Translator". It seems worthwhile to think of museum interpretation as a form of translation, wherein the thing beheld or ideas represented have undergone a "sea change".

James Clifford. "Introduction. Partial Truths" from On Writing Culture. The role of anthropologist as author; the act of constructing narratives as a collaboration between ethnographer and subject.

Michel de Certeau. “Walking in the City” from Everyday Practices. The pedestrian reinvents the city, subverting the scripts of urban planners.

Greg Dening, Performances. On language and discourse; interpretation and the poetics of history.

John Dewey. Excerpts from Art as Experience. Visitor experience; interpretation; triadic relations…

Michel Foucault. “Panopticism”: Design as social experimentation; "Truth and Power" on notions of hegemony.

Jürgen Habermas. “Modernity – An Incomplete Project”.

Lucy Lippard. Off the Beaten Track and Lure of the Local.

W.G. Sebald. Austerlitz. On maps and excavated memory.

Edward Tufte. Envisioning Information. (The ideas once stated seem obvious but the pictures are invaluable.)

Raymond Williams. Marxism and Literature. On hegemony and agency.

Here is a rundown of the protest resignation of Berkeley Art Museum curator Chris Gilbert after museum officials complained about the exhibit text, which stressed solidarity with Chavez's Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela:
http://www.nyfa.org/level3.asp?id=484&fid=6&sid=17

Here is the curator's statement about his resignation (on Temporary Services — interesting blog):
http://tempserv.livejournal.com/34274.html

Here is the curator's exhibit description:
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibits/nowtime/content.html

And here is a critique by artist Martha Rosler, who asserts that the curator's political stridency becomes an impediment to viewer interaction:
http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0606/msg00075.html

* * * * * * *

This event should provoke a re-visiting of the nature of museum exhibits, the truths they attempt to convey and the different kinds of interests to which museums are beholden. While some radical spaces are attempting to address these issues, most museums remain staid institutions, with very particular ties to either community or monied interests. "Neutrality" then has long been a keyword for not rocking too many boats.

One point of contention concerns whether exhibits should (or do) function as forms of propaganda. Gilbert's exhibit "Now-Time Venezuela: Part One" hardly represents a novel effort to take a strong political stance: during World War II, the Museum of Modern Art staged a number of exhibits in support of the war effort that were outright propaganda (but took a novel approach to graphics/design). An exhibition of Macedonian iconography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art inadvertently took sides in a nasty nationalist debate on Macedonia's borders. In the latter case, what was left unsaid had tremendous political implications.

In this regard, to evacuate political content from an exhibit is to also take a political stance. In the recent past, much criticism has been leveled against museums for displaying objects, including works of art, within a vacuum. Should we appreciate Millet's idealistic paintings of rural farm life without appreciating the deepening impoverishment caused by ruthless 19th century agrarian reforms? Should an African art museum show off its collection of "treasures" without reference to the socio-cultural meanings and purposes attributed to the works?

On the other hand, does a psuedo-scientific one-liner truly help visitors understand the function of a yam house in Papua New Guinea? Sometimes the effort to contextualize display objects can be as reductive and

Neutrality -- long considered a virtue in exhibit development -- can also be quite problematic within the context of an exhibit that touches upon difficult (read sensitive) subjects. As a curator, one is constantly in contact with community members who are very concerned about the ways in which they are "represented" before a public audience. By paying heed to community concerns (as all museums must), one fails to be neutral. Thus in an exhibit on currency, we were obliged to underscore the sacred -- as opposed to monetary -- value of wampum.

Neutrality has too often been equated with a fear of saying anything disagreeable or offensive .. which can hardly represent an ethical step. For example, a critique of the relatively new Lincoln Museum in Illinois noted that the history of Lincoln's grappling with whether to address the issue of slavery was omitted entirely. Visitors are instead left with a two-dimensional and untruthful portrait -- as well as a false understanding of the times. Would our portrait of Lincoln be diminished to know that he contradicted himself? Are children better taught to learn instead that ethical decisions are always easy and that heroes never take missteps?

Too the stance of neutrality is sometimes problematic in and of itself. While I am inclined to side with those that believe that audiences should be made aware of conflicting points of view, neutrality too can serve to obscure important institutional biases — arising for example out of the vested economic and political interests of its board and administration. And neutrality is sometimes not warranted (one thinks of Switzerland's neutrality during World War II or the insistence on neutrality that has led many of this country's major news stations and newspaper chains to produce nothing but pablum. A recent university exhibit I attended for example omitted critical information for fear of alienating the collectors who had made the artwork available to the curators.

This points to another odd thing about curating and that is that one often must also seek loans or privileged research from those who are looking to advance their own points of view or protect themselves (and their holdings) from public scrutiny. In other words, the curator is sometimes obliged to bite the hand that feeds or, in so failing, promulgates an untruth about the content on display.

Neutrality can also refer to the ways in which globalization is sometimes a catchword for an odd form of cultural appropriation. While the first world may assert copyright over ideas long entrenched elsewhere, another strange form of cultural borrowing is afoot .. that in which specific forms of cultural discourse are neutered and turned into background music or pan-something cooking or quaint expressions on non-revolutionary tee shirts.

...

In the following, the conceptual slant leads. Maybe this opens space for new architectures/approaches to exhibit design (as opposed to starting with the artifacts of a particular collection). Many attendant problems: How to illustrate? Why should these themes be framed as exhibits rather than articles? Or photojournalist essays? Why waste the space? What difference lies then between the exhibit and a work of conceptual art? Or is there a difference?

• Meaning of "Indigenous" — political, social and economic implications within a global society. UN validating separation based only on ethnicity, not ideology; indigenousness as the last stronghold of the threatened; the role of identity in global capitalism; evolving definitions of "indigenous" (e.g. in Brazil, where runaway slaves can now claim same); markers of difference; etc.


• On/Off Grid — border zones, "lawless" frontiers of the imagination intersecting with political economies, revisiting ideas of core-periphery ... or re-considering ideas of systemic collapse, the marginalized, globalization etc. "Placeless powers and powerless places" (ref. Michael Watts).


• Home Sweet Home — Evolving household structures (beehive adobe compounds, mcmansions, former soviet apartment complexes, etc.) focusing too on family networks (clans and webs) in a global society.


• "Original" — cultural syncretism, object displacement, cultural appropriation, etc.


• Anthropology and Colonialism — memorize and memorialize something (a society) as it disappears. Being for and against (abetting and opposing) the colonial enterprise. Can also look at changing or conflicting anthropological narratives (e.g. revisiting Redfield's work in Mexico, Weiner vs. Malinowski etc.).


• Going Native — the significance of cross-cultural identification.


• Tools as Prosthetics


• Inventing Tradition — emerging or re-invented practices (offices, campuses, cities, rural communities).

A good deal of critique (influenced largely by postmodernism) has emerged regarding the ways in which museum displays have often abetted the colonial enterprise .. by removing artifacts from context, casting a lens (and thereby distinguishing and alienating) the ‘other’ and speaking in a disembodied authoritarian voice (i.e. privilege masking itself as science). Today, in an attempt to re-contextualize historic objects, many exhibit designers draw on the pastiche and over-stimulation of Disney displays. Too often these latter over-simplify histories. The disneyficiation of exhibit design underlines how cultures and hidden histories are coopted, neutered and marketed under late global capitalism (I hate to say "post-industrial" as that term only hides the extraordinary labor and resources currently exploited ... although "late" gives in to a certain millenarian sentiment).

Exhibition as a form of anthropology: assumption that from shards, stories, architecture, ceremonies, one can create a coherent — if contradictory — cosmology. Inherent acceptance of idea that humans create systems of meaning and these systems are reflected in the most commonplace practices and objects of utility (do I mean tools?) and that they then seek to explain their acts/choices within those systems, or conversely re-interpret systems to explain acts/choices.

Culture with a capital "K": one must be wary of the idea of describing a specific ethnic group as a discrete entity that can be identified by distinguishing markers (let alone representing said group in a ‘natural history’ .. i.e. one step away from the animals .. museum). In this, it is important to consider the emergence of the concept of volk within late 19th century German and its spread — through a kind of intellectual proselytizing — throughout the Balkans and beyond. Further the role of ethnic difference within empire (particularly the Ottomons, who preceded the British in equating ethnic identities with economic niches, as a means of colonial administration). Too, it is critical to consider the syncretic nature of culture versus the homogenizing principles of nation.

Agency: This issue also warrants some reflection. I think of E.H. Carr's idea — bastardized here — of social thinkers being divided into two camps (like the two faces of Janus): the historians look backwards and are overwhelmed by feelings of determinism and the futility of action; the engineers and/or Utopianists look solely to the future, believing fully in man's ability to solve all problems through the application of reason or (good)will. Raymond Williams (in Marxism and Literature) tries to resolve a certain hegemonic conundrum, arguing that, while anti-hegemonies cannot help but reflect (and thus be determined) by dominant hegemonies, there are spaces that open up through what he terms "structures of feelings". De Certeau in Everyday Practices points to the pedestrian re-writing the premeditated script of urban planners. In this way perhaps, design may — gleefully even — both participate in and usurp/redefine the limits of our contextuallly determined perceptions.

A couple of basic tenets on curating/developing museum exhibits.

• Exhibitions reveal partial truths. They act as a form of distillation — asserting something (a ‘positive’ truth) while leaving a good deal of space for interpretation (pace John Dewey).


• They represent a form of sensual communcation — primarily visual but often auditory, tactile, as well. The texts must therefore function like haiku — meanings are implied, not orated at length.


• As an ‘institutional’ practice, exhibits reflect (or institutionalize) relations of power and difference. While exhibits can encourage alternative readings and subvert commonplaces, one must consider (per Raymond Williams) how the “anti-hegemony” functions within (and reflects) the dominant hegemony.


• The curator must always question the point of view being promulgated (his or her own included), as well as the visitor point of view.


• Exhibit developers/designers employ all manner of trick (smoke/mirrors/buttons) etc. to lure visitors into becoming engaged more deeply with the material. The danger of course is that the tricks sometimes overwhelm the subject. One must remember that the design components must always speak to the essential exhibit concept. When the components are of necessity intrusive, how does this tie in with the exhibit theme?

Digression on specific instances

• The 2000 opening of the American Museum of Natural History“s Rose Center for Earth & Space serves as an apt example of poor information design — while a breathtaking vision in and of itself, at that time the paths through were labrynthine and disorienting, and the information purveyed oftentimes unintelligible. The one exception was the relation of the planets (an amazing expression of scale).


• The Museum of the American Indian by contrast intentionally obfuscates, as community curators sometimes chose to assert group identity while not revealing too much about the significance of certain beliefs or practices, or history. One wonders too whether much of the gadgetry employed by the Australian design team supported the exhibit themes or ideas.


• Like AMNH, NMIA’s encasing structure is visually magnificent and well considered as a piece of social architecture. In this instance the structure, beyond its social inclusiveness, also signifies an important change in relations of power. While too many of this country‘s original people remain economically and socially marginalized, NMIA's presence on the mall (as do NAGPRA and the Abramoff scandal) indicates the degree to which Native Americans are evolving into a strong political presence on Capitoll Hill. On the other hand, Bush’s recent decision to cut spending on diabetes research (a devastating epidemic afflicting many Americans, but particularly Native Americans) doesn't seem to support this idea or at least indicates a certain degree of giving with one hand and taking with the other. In this regard, perhaps symbolic gestures outrank efforts to benefit the majority.

A few rough thoughts on nationalism, inspired by a long stint proofreading documents at the U.N., a time marked by the end of the cold war. In this new paradigm, many ongoing wars (Angola, Mozambique) were now described as ‘tribal wars’, no longer as ‘proxy wars’. The official summations of the horrors unfolding in places like the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda failed to grasp the complex causes — for example, the intersection of local, state and global venal interests on the frontiers (as Erich Hobsbawm points out) of former empires. Curious to find out more, I embarked on a period of graduate study during which I looked closely at Yugoslavia, Mauritania and the Sudan.

1. It is understood that human beings construct phenomena through patterns that are both set and fluctuating. These patterns are not random — once established, they begin to function on some level as myth. Repeated often enough they become “true”.

2. Somewhat tautologically, in traumatic divisive times in particular but at other times as well, humans will turn to symbols and literary (fictional or non-fictional) narratives as explanatory devices. The narratives establish pattern, placing explanation in the mode of genre. In other words, the experience of the new — the extraordinary — compels us to seek out and then reinvent (or re-interpret) old understandings. This latter process is reductive (as is possibly all genre). Thus most nationalist myths, while deeply resonant, are also somewhat flat — and heuristically paranoid. For example, while rape may have been unfortunately prevalent in Kosovo (and without ethnic bias), Milosevic is able to convert one instance into a universal principle, and thereby give just cause to his nationalist manifesto.

3. There is a great deal of chosen behavior as well that comes packaged in mythic deterministic form. Thus are venal ends made justifiable and censure avoided. On a more subtle level, human beings are very much engaged in the exploitation and manipulation of their material world and, in this regard, all the networks and associations that govern the distribution of resources and power. Weber refers to the emergence of “interest groups.” The more complex a society — or rather the more that outcomes are tied to a global economy — perhaps the more these factions are in evidence?

4. The mythic narratives (or “mythico history” per Liisa Maalki (or hystery per someone else)) employed are explanatory. In other words, the perceived rationales for certain events unfolding are to be found imbedded in the narratives. Not surprisingly, these narratives (and/or the meanings ascribed to them) are often deterministic and to a certain degree simplistic (or reductive). This is only to say they can be read more clearly than dreams. Also, they are not to be dismissed.

5. Civil war is apocalyptic. The rending of society is in most instances violent. The motivations however are complex, and far exceed simple readings that assign the blame due to a difference in blood or culture — an innate antipathy among peoples. Civil war implies the breakdown of civil society or the subtle skeins that once held different factions in cooperative meaningful relation. However, the rationale for the dismantling of a society is often necessarily simplistic. One must keep in mind the ways in which both local and international media are coopted. By fastening on the sorts of nationalist myths that drive many civil wars, the media in the end supports the idea (convenient for the perpetrators) that these wars are fueled by innate hatreds between different peoples. War then is portrayed as the result of animalistic irrational urges, not the calculations of those who seek to benefit.

6. Prior to such a fissure opening, it is averred that certain dynamics are often found operating. Or not. This is not meant to be a generalist stand. Rather in the period following the end of the cold war, a series of conflagrations erupted employing extraordinary levels of violence. In some, resolution has been eventually achieved — oftentimes violently, sometimes not. In other cases, the state as construct has been entirely eviscerated (witness Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia).

7.

How can visual thinking help students enrich their understandings or re-conceptualize the world in which they live? More to the point, can visual thinking enhance intellectual inquiry? Especially as the pursuit of art does not correlate with scholarly activity? The correspondences and differences between academic and creative endeavor prove instructive, however.

As any new student approaches the terra incognito of the blank page, his/her inclination is to project a set of assumptions borne of unquestioned ideas. To learn how to draw — not re-create an image realistically — but to understand complex or abstract spatial arrangements, posit new relationships, invoke the unexpected, challenge perception, arrive at pure truth or assert its total absence, the student will need to learn how to see. This cannot be taught through words; it can only happens by doing. In this, the hand teaches the eye.

Where it is very good to debate philosophically aesthetic value or the possibility of apotheosis, it is another thing to express similar thoughts largely in non-verbal metaphor. It is another thing to evacuate metaphor and subsume oneself in process. So the atheist may momentarily find God or the believer indulge in apostasy. The terra incognito often provides a venue to test fast-held beliefs, to transgress self-prescribed confines.

As the artist evolves, he/she is engaged in a constant struggle, often trying to unite polarized concepts or methodological approaches. Ideological struggle often underlies in each individual artist’s work. These struggles, however, are not dictated alone by the accepted aphorisms of the time; stimulated by larger contexts and personal experience, there is a level of unconsciousness -- the very thing that Plato found in artistic production unconscionable.* The artist acts as filter for disparate, sometimes contradictory truths.

*While Plato disparaged all artists and poets (for asserting truths without understanding their origin), his philosophy falters when he asserts that through dialectic inquiry and the search for pure truth, the philosopher may ultimately make the “ultimate leap of the good.” In this, there is a suggestion that analytic inquiry is aided by “leaps” — and here one must assume the implication is of moving beyond what is known, engaging that which has not yet been governed within the framework of one’s philosphy. Dare one compare this sudden epiphany with ecstatic practice? Or perhaps free association, random conjecture .. the foibles of the imagination? It seems that Plato would wish very much to have his cake and eat it too .. to realize transformation (traditionally accessed through ecstatic religious practice, artistic endeavor or visiting nature in all its cataclysmic glory) while asserting that only one narrow path of inquiry leads to sublime truth.

Where I do not believe that art allows the practitioner to arrive at truth in a more efficient manner and where I agree with Plato on some level — the truths of artists are messy — yet I think the idea of allowing associations to suggest themselves, or turning one’s eye elsewhere can only be of benefit to so many different realms of thought. In addition, as we live in a very visual word — and as increasingly information is distributed spatially in ways that suggest new relationships — the practice of art not by the few but the many can only be of benefit.

Large words trouble (that is to say interest) me in their ambiguity. Saying and not saying.

Many professional spheres rely on terminology both binding (that is to say signalling group cohesion and separateness) and blinding (the use of the word also effectively stanches further inquiry). The re-use of these terms does not necessarily arise out of laziness; rather these terms signal the limits just beyond knowing .. and in point of fact indicate a collective stepping-over-the-line. Their power for this reason is hallucinatory.

In a particular anthropology seminar, for example, I recall how the word “reification” (not used in the Marxist sense) had the power to stop conversation. Somehow now that the idea had been construed as matter and not energy, perhaps even noun and not verb (or adjective according to some schools), the collective imagination folded in on itself and ceased speculation. Notions afterall do not intercede on their own behalf; neither do they take up space. However, within this particular classroom, not simply the idea but ourselves, once reflected in Medusa’s eye, were converted to stone. “Reification” simply became the last word.

I wonder then if certain terms do not serve as incantation. But incantation too may perhaps be found in the rote hum of the machine, the curved drone of highway traffic, relying as it does on either deprivation or oversaturation (an idea very much pursued by Don DeLillo in Underworld).

This conversation concerns a a set of poems written and compiled over a 20-year period. While the work is original, I am inclined to believe that, having read elsewhere a poem that so perfectly mirrored my own sentiments, I became sometime thereafter deluded into believing that the words must be my own. So I am nagged with the worry I have read some or even many of my own words before. (I have therefore asked to be contacted should any of the lines strike a too familiar note -- see links.)

However, when not feeling mildly guilty for having (or not having) purloined another's texts, I have wondered at the legitimacy of claiming any text as one's own. That all poets steal is something of an aphorism. The reason for this seems (to my mind) eminently clear: the porosity of any artist's imagination is necessary to the mapping out unexpected associations. However, I also suspect that at times poetry arises out of a nearly autistic response to still the barrage of endless noise or distill it into a form if not more legible than at least constrained.

It follows (according to my addled logic) that if we are assaulted constantly in our lives by all forms of media, do we not as individuals have a right to appropriate and reformulate that which has been imposed upon us? I am reminded of a story about a poor student who eats his plain rice while inhaling the aromas of a local restaurant, whose owner then attempts to charge a fee for his smells. Likewise, did I ask to hear Stairway to Heaven 730 times during my fifteenth year and —if not— should I be deterred from its appropriation and re-use?

I suppose the question implied concerns the point at which intellectual property is transformed into raw data. In this a fine line is erased between that which possesses us and that which we ourselves possess — just as some would argue that language (overheard and appropriated as infants) is somehow deeply reflective of and imbedded within the structure of our minds.

Where of course one could make the argument above as concerns mass distributed media (or learned language), I suppose the words of other poets could hardly be said to fall into the realm of the hyper-prevalant — which is why I have asked for help in locating my sources. Someday I imagine a giant wikipoetry project will unfold wherein all poems and all sources will be connected (including legal texts, sitcom scripts, science journals, school yearbooks, farm equipment catalogues, etc. etc.) coming eventually to mirror a Borgesian one-to-one map (only this time of all human discourse). The problem with this fantasy is that such a one-to-one map already exists and the one proposed would be no more than a parallel internet having interest for a very tiny portion of the world’s readers.