Making Bacon - Poetry Process from the Rooter to the Tooter
Among other things, I was raised on a heavy musical regimen of Art of Noise, Electric Light Orchestra and Frank Zappa. Frank Zappa’s electronic work (most notably his 12-minute long sound bite-pastiche “Porn Wars” and the entire Jazz from Hell album) was a staple in my cassette player from even an age Zappa would have frowned at. When I stole the George Duke records out of my oldest brother’s collection it wasn’t to jump around on the bed to Duke’s funk numbers…it was to develop the ear-hand coordination necessary to mimic his solos on out-of-time synthesized interludes like “The Future” or “Follow the Rainbow.” To this day I believe I could actually play all of “Part 1 - The Alien Challenges The Stick” if I only knew which key I needed to hit first.
All of which is to say, I have been musically weird a long time.
Things aren’t much different now. I still gravitate toward the glitchy, the dissonant and broken-sounding…music that sounds damaged. I love nearly every type of music that exists, but have long-nurtured a soft spot for the grinding of found sounds and samples crippled from long falls off of conservatory rooftops. From Skinny Puppy to Japanoise to dubstep, I have terrorized the neighborhoods I drive through on the way to work most mornings in an attempt to pump myself up for the day.
When I came across Matthew Herbert’s One Pig album I was instantly smitten. The theory behind the music was nothing new - found sounds and created instrumentation to build music - but the source material was compelling: the album is derived entirely from recordings of the life of a pig, from birth to slaughter to plate. Herbert extended the experiment to even building a few instruments from actual parts of the pig in question with which to compose his aleatoric polemic. Let me be clear: I was smitten with the idea, but no smiting occurs to me unless the music itself is actually engaging. I have to like the music a weird thing creates, otherwise it’s just argument-ending fodder for debates I might find myself in with people with inferior record collections. Suffice it to say, I love this record, literally from the rooter to the tooter. The piece, “December,” is a stalking beast of a song that easily qualifies for symphony-worthy arrangement, while “August 2010” builds what feels like a genuine attempt to communicate with the departed swine, even as the track ends with the sounds of lip-smacking and silverware clanking over the now-cooked muse. It is a boggling feat of musicianship, but more importantly it is a fascinating attempt to decipher relationships: man vs. nature as opposed to man/nature, and why these dichotomies exist. It is not an easy record to absorb sonically or philosophically, and I owe my musical upbringing for being able to approach such material at all.
Naturally, being a rampant performance poetry contortionist, I immediately began to wonder how such an experiment might manifest in poetry, how it would apply to poetry’s tools and mediums and histories, or how it could. What is the One Pig equivalent when the medium is language, sound and page? I wasn’t interested in merely deciphering some Hellenistic or Uta-garuta gamesmanship; I have Poetry Slam and its many variants for that. It is also no secret that I keep a notebook full of Evel Knievel poetry exercises and experiments I haven’t launched. And yet, none of the plans or trappings I’ve compiled capture the real mission of what One Pig accomplishes. Subject focus isn’t the answer. Length isn’t the answer. Theme is a start, but not the answer. Codification is another piece of the puzzle.
It occurred to me later that I might be deciphering the problem from the wrong end, that by attempting to encapsulate the mission from the beginning I was bypassing the most telling angle of the event: the conversation such work seeks to create. By attempting to answer the question by focusing on process I was dismissing the more powerful effect of result. Once I picked that apart for a while - a long while - I began to come up with some answers. Not ALL of the answers, but some of the key ones.
I am reminded of the thing I often find myself telling poets about process, and how the journey is most of the fun. This is still certainly true, but sometimes the road is fraught with genuine challenge above and beyond “I have nothing to say.” I can write anything. The question isn’t “What do I have say?” but “Am I using the right tools to create the desired effect?” Usually I am, but sometimes I’m trying to feed the pig after it’s been turned into bacon.
All of which is to say, I have been musically weird a long time.
Things aren’t much different now. I still gravitate toward the glitchy, the dissonant and broken-sounding…music that sounds damaged. I love nearly every type of music that exists, but have long-nurtured a soft spot for the grinding of found sounds and samples crippled from long falls off of conservatory rooftops. From Skinny Puppy to Japanoise to dubstep, I have terrorized the neighborhoods I drive through on the way to work most mornings in an attempt to pump myself up for the day.
When I came across Matthew Herbert’s One Pig album I was instantly smitten. The theory behind the music was nothing new - found sounds and created instrumentation to build music - but the source material was compelling: the album is derived entirely from recordings of the life of a pig, from birth to slaughter to plate. Herbert extended the experiment to even building a few instruments from actual parts of the pig in question with which to compose his aleatoric polemic. Let me be clear: I was smitten with the idea, but no smiting occurs to me unless the music itself is actually engaging. I have to like the music a weird thing creates, otherwise it’s just argument-ending fodder for debates I might find myself in with people with inferior record collections. Suffice it to say, I love this record, literally from the rooter to the tooter. The piece, “December,” is a stalking beast of a song that easily qualifies for symphony-worthy arrangement, while “August 2010” builds what feels like a genuine attempt to communicate with the departed swine, even as the track ends with the sounds of lip-smacking and silverware clanking over the now-cooked muse. It is a boggling feat of musicianship, but more importantly it is a fascinating attempt to decipher relationships: man vs. nature as opposed to man/nature, and why these dichotomies exist. It is not an easy record to absorb sonically or philosophically, and I owe my musical upbringing for being able to approach such material at all.
Naturally, being a rampant performance poetry contortionist, I immediately began to wonder how such an experiment might manifest in poetry, how it would apply to poetry’s tools and mediums and histories, or how it could. What is the One Pig equivalent when the medium is language, sound and page? I wasn’t interested in merely deciphering some Hellenistic or Uta-garuta gamesmanship; I have Poetry Slam and its many variants for that. It is also no secret that I keep a notebook full of Evel Knievel poetry exercises and experiments I haven’t launched. And yet, none of the plans or trappings I’ve compiled capture the real mission of what One Pig accomplishes. Subject focus isn’t the answer. Length isn’t the answer. Theme is a start, but not the answer. Codification is another piece of the puzzle.
It occurred to me later that I might be deciphering the problem from the wrong end, that by attempting to encapsulate the mission from the beginning I was bypassing the most telling angle of the event: the conversation such work seeks to create. By attempting to answer the question by focusing on process I was dismissing the more powerful effect of result. Once I picked that apart for a while - a long while - I began to come up with some answers. Not ALL of the answers, but some of the key ones.
I am reminded of the thing I often find myself telling poets about process, and how the journey is most of the fun. This is still certainly true, but sometimes the road is fraught with genuine challenge above and beyond “I have nothing to say.” I can write anything. The question isn’t “What do I have say?” but “Am I using the right tools to create the desired effect?” Usually I am, but sometimes I’m trying to feed the pig after it’s been turned into bacon.