“…this unsettled way of reading … which naturally seduces us into as undetermined a manner of thinking. … That assemblage of words which is called a style becomes utterly annihilated. … the common defence of these people is , that they have no design in reading but for pleasure, which I think should rather arise from reflection and remembrance of what one had read, than from the transient satisfaction of what one does, and we should be pleased proportionately as we are profited.”

Richard Steele, in the Guardian, 1713, quoted in Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, The Hogarth Press, London, 1987 (1957). p. 48.

“‘The present age may be styled with great propriety, the Age of Authors; for perhaps the never was a time in which men of all degrees of ability, of every kind of education, of every profession and employment were posting with ardour so general to the press.’

‘The province of writing was formerly left to those who, by study or appearance of study, were supposed to have gained knowledge unattainable by the busy part of mankind.’

Dr. Johnson in the Adventurer, 1753, quoted in Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel, Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, The Hogarth Press, London, 1987 (1957), p. 58

This afternoon I did an hour and a half of ‘real’ radio at the studio of Radio Oltranzista: http://www.radioltranzista.net/. Federico Bonelli had asked me to come to the studio to play some stuff and I’d quickly copied a bunch files from my harddisk to choose from. I know of Federico’s love for futurism and interest in poetry – so I started with James Joyce reading Anna Livia Plurabelle. Then via Cage’s Roaratorio and Imaginary Landscapes 4, to Walter Ruttmann’s Weekend. Then, to wake up, some loud USA/USB, after 8 minutes merging to Oorbeek, to old wax recordings from Uzbekistan (1905) and Angola. Followed by Ezra Pound and Charles Olson reading poetry, ending with a glorious set by Pho. We’ll do it again. It was great fun. The magic of radio still exists when you’re in a studio, making a program live, improvising.

Yesterday the audio-input and/or output of the logic board of my Powerbook G4 was destroyed. It happened while playing a composition of Thomas Köner. Whenever I turn on the volume on the laptop there’s a very loud high pitched noise. And I mean very loud – much louder than you’d image would be possible. Think: ear-piercing. Everything else still works. Well, the option is to have a new logic board installed (400 – 700 euro’s), or just keep working on this machine and not use sound. And eventually when other parts start breaking down buy a new one. Hmmm.

So I started testing my old white ibook, the one that had screen problems. Maybe I could use that for playing music?

This is the time of the endexam exhibitions of the arts academies. So I’ll plug the exhibition of the Frank Mohr Institute, that runs from now till the 8th of July in the building of Media Arts Friesland in Leeuwarden (Nieuweweg 1a, in the centre, above the Halfords/MacDonalds). Painting and Interactive Media are in the same building. Worth a visit if only for the organ-installation of Steven Jouwersma: http://borgels.blogspot.com/. Also the rest is very much worth the visit.

I’ll also point you to the exhibition of ‘our friendly competitor’ the Piet Zwart Institute, whose students will invade the stage of Worm in Rotterdam: http://www.wormweb.nl/agenda.php?id=1002.

Then, connected to the upcoming 5daysoff-festival, Montevideo has a show with a lot of sound art, (In)visible Sound: http://www.montevideo.nl/nl/agenda/detail_agenda.php?id=361&archief=M

But most of all I’d like to plug the breathtaking exhibition that Lucas van der Velden curated at the Vleeshal and the Kabinetten van de Vleeshal in Middelburg – with very careful, precise, concentrated works of Thomas Köner, Jürgen Reble, Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag and Ryoji Ikeda: http://www.vleeshal.nl/.

Went to see the three choreographies written for three Duivelsdansen of Simeon ten Holt at the Oude Kerk. I did not go to hear the music of Ten Holt. I will gladly admit that his music has its own value and its own signature – but I experience it as high culture kitsch. I went there because F. has worked together with Hillary Blake Firestone – one of the 3 choreographers/dancers.

I didn’t like much of the dance either. The first dancer moved very beautifully but ran out of ideas after five minutes, the rest was fragmentary and overly dramatic. The last piece was even worse. It was full of moments were I imagined myself as a teacher asking the aspiring student “why didn’t you go for this, why didn’t you explore that, try to be more radical, dare to be minimal.” It was utterly boring, stupidly dramatic, and well, a sort of good taste amateur theatre, only better performed and with a much more expensive decor. And then there was this superfluous gimmick of the grand piano slowly making its way through the space…

Hillary Blake Firestone’s piece saved the night. She used gaffer tape (an idea she “stole” from F. – who used tape extensively for the decor in Hillary’s Featherweight). She demarcated the space, she dared to be playful and she dared to be minimal. Her physical dance – in which she referred to the body movements of track atlethics – grabbed the attention, and what’s more, through her dance she made me realize how Ten Holt also refers to stride piano in his work. (Which made me a more sympathetic towards the music).

When you want to make a choreography for Ten Holt, you have, I think, two choices: be just as minimal as the music (wear yourself out, as a dancer, doing the same thing over and over again), or completely go against it. The other two dancers didn’t do either and just brought some unbearable ‘drama’ to ‘kitschy’ music, in a beautiful church. Hillary dared to do something different and dared to be minimal – as long as she did that, it was utterly convincing.

As promised, Serge’s footage (alas just 20 seconds) of Jack Gallagher and Oorbeek in the pouring rain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLplqeQAKJM.

And, well, what do you do with dome time on your hands in a city like Leeuwarden, your students apparently not needing your help right now and the weather not so nice to sit in a park and read? You walk into this so-so-second hand bookstore. And there it is, as if it’s waiting for you, as if its specially put here for you: Merci Freddy, Merci Lucien, by the Flemish journaliste Jan Cornand and Andre Blancke, an account of the cycling season 1976. This is the first book I read about cycling and I partly ‘blame’ this book for my love of cycling. It has certainly played a role in my ongoing interest in the cycling of the seventies. They had it in the public library of Almelo and I must’ve read it three times from cover to cover. I’ve never seen it in any second hand bookstore. I buy it (5 euro’s). And while eating my dinner in the Irish pub, I read the account of the Giro of 1976, the one Johan De Muynck should’ve won, the one that the Brooklyn-squad dominated, and I enjoy every single word of it.

Interestingly: I find out that in 1976 the Giro-director had tried to come up with some ‘inventions’ to make the race more interesting, namely: putting two new cols (well, a col and a climb) on the programme that both were not paved yet. There’s nothing new under the sun. The Valjolet ( a climb somewhere around the Sella) and the Manghen. (The Manghen comes easily in the top 10 of my favorite cols: when I ‘did it’ a narrow paved road of very black asphalt and no soul to see.)

And into Schmidt again as well, as I received a little booklet as a present: Arno Schmidt in Bargfeld, from the series “Menschen und Orte” (“People and Places): http://www.atelierfischer-berlin.de/menschenorte/menschenorte_re.html. A nice little book, that brings the Schmidt-fan nothing new, nothing but an opportunity to read again an account of his life, and his work (“Arbeit, Arbeit, Arbeit”). The photographs also are well-known, but because I do not own any books on Schmidt except for the Rowolth-biography, they are very welcome. I’m always fascinated by photographs of writers desks…. I enjoyed it so much (the nearness of Schmidt’s world) that this morning I quickly picked a Schmidt-book from my shelves to read on the train to work. I re-read the ‘short story’ Schwanze and am beginning to also see the humour of the later work of ‘der Arno’ leading up to Zettel’s Traum. I left the newspapers unread today.

Page 120 already! Two days of reading, well, just a few hours, and I’m on page 120 of the Maximus Poems! Of course the whole thing is more than 600 pages long, but still… This is possible thanks to the style of these poems. This is not poetry to re-read. This is not poetry of precise, quotable lines, there are hardly stanzas that one would like to go over again and again, to savour all the music and meaning. (Those that stand up to this test are those one will find in the anthologies). Approach it with an expectation of finding ‘finished poems’, and one will find Olson a rather messy and careless word-smith. Olson lets the sound determine the syntax and the flow of words; this is poetry to read, line after line, ‘listening’: imagine a big man speaking aloud to you (Olson was a big man). He (Maximus, not Olson) talks on and on, makes little mistakes, comes back to the same points, repeats. Speaks sometimes in prose and at other times in verse. And slowly, while reading, the image of Gloucester takes shape, the early history and economy of it, the ‘locality’, the muthos – Olson trying to be a Herodotos to Gloucester, not a Thucydides.

Read the Maximus Poems that way, and you’ll find it fascinating. (Well, I do). And the image of Gloucester becomes becomes more and more clearer and multifaceted the further the poem progresses, the more Maximus ‘talks’.

(Of course, I write this after having read ‘only’ 120 pages…)

(Now that I finally upload this account of my reading experience – written down on a train, travelling to Groningen – I’ve progressed unto page 180).