There will be a partial performance of Section II PROJECT Finnegans Wake on October 20, 2009. This version will be confined to Book IV and will start at 5:15 GMT (12:15 in New York).  Be on the lookout for our readers. They can be anywhere.

Update for October 12, 2009:

Since we announced the October 20 reading, we have had more people interested in participating.  The chart we are using is below. If you send an email or leave a comment on this page, we will send you a section. That, or just choose your own and let us know which section you have selected. You should practice to be sure you can complete your section in 10 minutes. We expect to have Book IV covered and doubling up should be fine.

Reader  Pages

I       593-596, line 16 (596.16)

II      596.17-600

III     600-603.16

IV      603.17-607

V       607.16-611

VI      611-614.16

VII     617-620.16

VIII    620.17-624

IX     625- end

If you would like to take part in this or future readings, contact bend of bay.

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Memorizing poetry gives you a feel for the language, exercises the brain, entertains when your iPod is dead, and carries on a tradition that predates writing. If you just memorize two lines a day you will have a nice collection in a month or two.

Cornelius Cardew is making a small resurgence.  Richard Gott has contributed this lengthy review-essay in the the March 12, 2009 issue of The London Review of Books. The essay provides a very good summary of Cardew’s life and work, from his early improvisational works, through the Scratch Orchestra and on to his rather sad, late, Maoist period.  Cardew lived a rich and influential life, which, after reading Gott’s piece you can explore more fully in John Tilbury’s  biography, Cornelius Cardew: A Life Unfinished.   Then listen to mode records new release of The QUaX Ensemble’s 1967 Prague performance of Treatiseto round out your Cardew experience.

Visit bend of bay on scribd.com for a selection of eBooks by our contributors. These books can be read online or downloaded to your computer or portable device.  If there are items from our archive you would like to see added, please leave a comment on this page or complete this form.

“If you live without Shakespeare, Chaucer is some consolation.”

pursued by bears takes its name from a stage direction by William Shakespeare. See: The Winter’s Tale, Act III, Scene III. 

Visit pursued by bears…

John Cage’s 1969 collection of musical manuscripts, Notations, is now available as a pdf file from ubuweb. Download.

Cage’s preface:

Notations - Preface by John Cage

James Joyce reads the Anna Livia Plurabelle episode of Finnegans Wake. A sound file is also available from UbuWeb. More Finnegans Wake on bend of bay, including recommendations for readers new to Joyce and the Wake, can be found here.

A member of bend of bay recently participated in a recording of John McDonough’s John Cage tribute “Landscape Under Construction.”  This recording will be part of “The Radio Pieces,” a two CD set forthcoming from mode records. In addition to Landscape Under Construction, the set will include Radio Music, Imaginary Landscape #4, and world premiere recordings of Speech and WBAI.

Landscape Under Construction is performed using boom boxes. In this particular realization, all CDs were performances released as part of mode records’ Complete John Cage Edition. Performers were given a score which generally contained instructions as to when to start or pause the CD, or raise or lower the volume. Some parts required more decisions on the performer’s part or prior preperation. A clock served as conductor.

More pictures from the session can be found on this Flikr page by vidiot, from which this image was taken.

In the 1980s I spent a lot of time reading and thinking about Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, while, over the same period, listening to the music of John Cage and reading his books. The two came together in a few performance projects which, for a variety of reasons, have never been realized. They were published by the The Abiko Quarterly in the early 1990’s. Versions of both can be found on bend of bay’s “projects” page.

bend of bay is now setting up realizations of Projects Finnegans Wake.  We are starting with Section II.  This section calls for participants to read assigned sections of the text at a specific time.  The reading is performed at a location of the participant’s choosing. Participation doesn’t require any particular knowledge of Joyce or previous experience with Finnegans Wake. All that is required is interest in taking part in an event that attempts to bring Finnegans Wake to the world in as inclusive a manner as possible. Its premise is that Joyce meant the work to be read and enjoyed. Participants will also be asked to  provide some form of documentation of their performance.  This should be submitted along with an indication of the location at which the reading took place.  Documentation will be made available here.

If you are interested in participating, please leave a comment on this page. Please note that comments will not be published without your permission so feel free to ask as many questions as you like.  You can also use bend of bay’s contact form or write info@bendofbay.org.

If you have never read Finnegans Wake, the full text is available here.

- apc

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Beneath a downtown bridge the bottle rolls into the Monongahela watched by two who having spent the day fishing shoot rats and cans with a 22.

There were three platoons. They drove from coast to coast working in kitchens, carnivals and shelters.

The van broke down. They met a man with money and jokes and food.

They fought over the bottle.

She said he had two kids somewhere. Maybe we should tell them he is dead.

in line, waiting for food.

Soldiers, children, stand by cradling Kalashnikovs. Some smile. Some struggle for seriousness of expression adopting mannerisms from satellite TV.

- Join our movement. We have satellite TV.

Meanwhile food is running low. Green broth in steel drums. Is it food, or something else? Coolant.

- Don’t worry. It’s loaded with vitamins and nutrients. Enough to see you through the day.

The line snakes and swells back to Eden and forward to judgement day. Children keep order.

- You there. Get back in line. You there. Keep moving.

A rumor rolls forward.

- There is not enough food. There is not enough for everyone.

- Don’t worry.

The voice of reason.

- They will bring more.

More is coming.

Sandstorm in the distance.

- Those are trucks. See. More is coming.

The trucks arrive. Soldiers.

- What? No food?

That is a problem.

In this day and age, no less.

What went before, happened next.

John Ashbery sat staring at the page for hours. He only had one or two good hours in him at most and here he was, late in the day, with nothing to show for it.

John Ashbery sat staring at the page. It was late in the day. He only had one, maybe two hours to go. And nothing to show.

John Ashbery sat staring at the page.

J. A. sat staring.

J. A. sat.

J. A.

J.

When tired, they slept. Tall grass by water.

Tall grass by water. Developers. Paradise. They have been coming here for years, and plan coming for years more. There are plans for a major new development with a community center and system of roads connecting it with last year’s church and hospital complex. Thus it will be easy for them to move between the two, unmolested in paradise.

J.A: It is like dropping a bucket into the mind to see what comes up.

They spend their days waiting for the construction to begin. Waiting for the tap tap tap of JA’s typewriter. He only has two or so hours to go. Sometimes they avoid the roads and walk on the water instead.

John Ashbery stood up, leaving the typewriter and a blank page, its blankness duly noted and catalogued by his assistant and companion of thirty five years.

NEWARK — John E. List, a former Sunday school teacher who was on the run for more than 17 years after killing his family in 1971, has died while serving a life term for their murders, authorities said Monday. He was 82.

Someone from the town wanted to hang him, hang him high.

“String him up,” he said.

I did not want to string him up. I wanted to speak with him for a minute first and try to find out what it was that made him do it.

“What made you do it,” I’d ask.

I would ask, and he would tell me.

After I found out what made him do it, after he told me what is was that made him do it, I would write it down. When I wrote it down, I would try and remember exactly what he said, what his words were, what his exact words were word for word and not the words I thought he said or perhaps really should have said because they would have made what he said that much more clear. No, I would write down his words, exactly what he said, word for word, exactly as he had said it. But if I could not remember exactly what his words were, I would do my best to keep the essence of what he had said intact.

After I wrote it all down, I would read it over and over again. As I read, I would concentrate on the man, my interview with the man in the cell, the interview where I asked him why he did it and what was going through his head when he did it and so on and so forth. I would read and concentrate and as I read I might notice some things I got wrong, subtle nuances I failed to capture, or things I just plain forgot. Reading what I had written over and over again in this fashion will serve, with each pass through what I had written, to bring the two versions further into line. I would read what I had written as many times as necessary to ensure that what I had written was faithful to what the man had said and the environment in which he had said it.

At his point I would have full convergence and a factual story. I would have a record of why the man did what he did and why he did it, why he said that he did it, and if he had to do it all over again what he would do differently. I would know that if he could change one thing, any one thing at all, what this one thing was. I would know something about this man and what he might have become if he had changed this one thing, if in fact he had wanted to change one thing at all.

“In summary, the anatomic cause of death was acute bronchopneumonia; predisposing factors included dilated cardiomyopathy and pulmonay fibrosis.”

Now that we have all the facts of the case, we can start to recreate the story of his life. Whether we will be able to solve its mysteries is another question.

There was something about the lungs. They seemed to have shown some radiation damage. What could have caused this? I suspect the x-rays.

They asked about alcohol, although there was no sign of liver or other damage. How much of this is based on hearsay, or the suspicions of people like us or the embellishments of the landlord? Read this section with some care.

His lungs had apparently been compromised for some time. What words were used? I have the autopsy. Whatever it was it was unexplained and so the question is whether the cause of this was the same as the cause of what happened to his heart. And what of the radiation – - could it have just been the series of x-rays he got over the years or was one of them botched?

Now that we have the whole story, from beginning to end, we can start to write down the whole story, from beginning to end, and then back again.