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 writings. 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.

I have decided to attempt a realization of Section II of Projects Finnegans Wake. This section calls for participants to read assigned sections of the text at a specific time. The reading can be performed at a location of the participant’s choosing or wherever they happen to be at the time. 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.

If you have never read Finnegans Wake, the full text is available here. Be sure to read aloud, because a great deal of the sense comes through the sound of the words. The length of the passage assigned will depend on how many readers we line up.

If you are interested in participating, please leave a comment on this page.  Please note that comments will not be published so feel free to ask as many questions as you like.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.

This page will be updated as details are finalized.

- 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.

There have been some changes to our words section. Changes include the first appearance of Chicago.

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A new mural is available, a very small section of which is pictured to the right.

April 24, 1851 is a tryptich. You can view the full screen version here.

bend of bay murals are designed to fit a wall of any size. More murals….

Last month’s most read page in words:

Maryrose

We imagine. We imagine her sitting. We imagine her sitting at the edge of a bed, carefully stitching needlepoint flowers. Two roses in narrow, pink thread, petals stitched over pencil lines sketched lightly over cream colored cotton background. Stems formed from green and brown thread, carefully interwoven. Three short shafts of gladioli, red white and yellow arranged as a fan behind the roses. She stitches humming, rocking her head from side to side humming quietly and forcing the needle through slowly so as not to puncture her finger. That had happened once. She struck the tip of her index finger and a sharp electric spasm raced through her hand and forearm. Removing the needle a small bulb of blood formed. She wiped it away, rubbing the wound lightly with her thumb. A dull, throbbing pain lingered for a week, during which time the roses stems and gladioli went unattended. Carefully now she stitches slowly humming softly forming flowers in thread.

Read more..

It takes insouciance to use the word insouciance twice in one article.  Unfortunately, that article is not free.

But..

If you subscribe to The New York Review here you generate a little money for charity. We give all our commissions away as described on our masthead.

New content is available in words, including a short piece about a striver, Cycling.

Cycling

Once upon a time there was a man on a bicycle and this man on his bicycle was riding up a hill. He was growing tired, this man on his bicycle, because the hill was steep and he had been riding his bicycle up it for a very long time. It seemed like a long time, to him. It seemed like forever to him.

Continue reading….

The short story Work, which follows in its entirety further below, first appeared in Caliban 12 in 1992 and was added to bend of bay - words in 2001. Over the past several months a number of people have emailed us requesting information regarding its composition.  While the story is fiction, it was written on the afternoon of July 6, 1989 directly in response to this article The New York Times. 

After Slaying, Brighton Beach Mourns Its Unofficial Mayor

By CONSTANCE L. HAYS

Published: July 6, 1989

 

About 300 friends and relatives of Max Kowalski, a Holocaust survivor who was stabbed to death in Brooklyn last month, gathered last night for a memorial service in the neighborhood that had proclaimed him the unofficial Mayor of Brighton Beach.

Mr. Kowalski’s black yarmulke and broad smile were familiar sights along the boardwalk in the seaside neighborhood. He would stop to chat and to cheer others up.

On June 24, he confronted a man in a boardinghouse, where he rented a room, after the man apparently inked a swastika and a skull and crossbones on Mr. Kowalski’s door. During the fight that followed, Mr. Kowalski was stabbed several times in the head and neck with a pair of scissors and a fork, and bludgeoned with a religious statue. He died immediately. ”He stood up for what he believed in,” said a friend, Sol Tosneiak, after the service at the Sea Breeze Jewish Center. Mr. Tosneiak and Mr. Kowalski knew each other as children in the Polish town of Grodno and met again in Brighton Beach. ‘He Helped Everybody’

”He was our leading citizen,” Ben Lederman, the director of a local drive to spruce up the area, said earlier yesterday. ”He helped everybody, with any carpentry work that needed to be done, or fixing a television or a radio. Most of the time, he didn’t take any money for it.”

Mr. Kowalski, who was 75 years old, lived in an apartment near the boardinghouse at 3066 Brighton Fourth Street where he was killed. He had rented Room No. 6 on the second floor of the boardinghouse for more than 20 years, friends said, and it became a sort of clubhouse for him and his friends - many of whom had also lived through the horrors of the Auschwitz concentration camp. He kept his tools there, Mr. Lederman said, and he would invite friends up to talk or play cards. A Tattoo From Auschwitz

Mr. Kowalski still had a tattoo on his arm from Auschwitz, and he would talk about his years there. ”His outlook was that he was fortunate to survive,” said Mayer Brandwein, who is a co-owner of the Brighton Beach Dairy Restaurant, where Mr. Kowalski often stopped to have coffee.

In the concentration camp, Mr. Kowalski spent much of his time working as a carpenter in a Nazi officer’s house and he believed that this was what saved him, Mr. Brandwein said.

And yet ”the brutality of what he went through at the time of the Holocaust was the reason why he met such a violent death,” Mr. Brandwein added. ”The symbolism of the swastika was an outrageous thing for him, and I think that’s why he took it so strongly.”

Shortly after Mr. Kowalski was attacked, the police arrested Ruben Martinez Zucarino, a 36-year-old native of Cuba who had lived in Room No. 8 for the last three months. He was charged with second-degree murder. Bloodied Pair of Scissors

The police said they found Mr. Zucarino standing in his room with a bloodied pair of scissors in his hand. Mr. Kowalski’s body was sprawled on the floor, partially blocking the door. They also found a statue of the Virgin Mary, made of plaster with a metal base, which had apparently been used to strike Mr. Kowalski.

Work pays tribute while expressing outrage over the crime and the pestilence:

Work

A pestilence fell upon the earth and he was removed from his place and taken to the place where the work was done.

The work began slowly, but then proceeded apace gaining in both efficiency and speed as the urgency of the work became apparent to many and many cooperated, placing themselves and their resources at the disposal of those who directed the work and some offered themselves body and soul to the completion of the task.

He was a carpenter and carpenters were required for work but not for the important work.

He did not participate in the important work which was better for him for by not participating he could observe the work and learn from the work.

The work, however, was never completed. Others intervened to stop the work. He was glad and rejoiced for though he was a carpenter he did not like the work at all.

And though he was glad and though he rejoiced he did not rejoice in the manner of rejoicing and could not return to the place from which he had come for it could not be found nor could those with whom he had come be found.

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We have added a new section, Murals. Each mural was designed to be projected or installed on a wall of any size.

The selection available here will change from time to time.

For additional information on any mural, contact bend of bay.