All right, so talk a bit of talk.
One of the things that I'm working with now,
and I used to--
and by used to, I mean like two months ago,
I had this bad idea that I could--
the good idea was I could come up
with kind of "ars poetica," which I'd like to call
kind of an "arsehole poetica."
[LAUGHTER]
But I thought that what I would do
is I would connect that to specific poems
that I've written, as if one poem would be easily classified
as one thing.
That's stupid.
So what I started doing instead is
thinking about a system of gestures and dynamics,
so I really appreciate the body and writing session
we had earlier today because all of these gestures and concepts
come from movement.
So far, I have shuffled, stagger--
you saw some of the shuffle, stagger, and shimmy.
I'm working now on stammer, struggle, and stumble.
Now, what occurs with each of these things?
So let's just kind of walk through them briefly.
So shuffle, as you all know, is kind of this abject sort
of minstrel sort of act.
[VOCALIZING]
And to me, that's something about an imbalance in ground.
The person who's shuffling is at a lower position
on unstable ground to somebody in power.
But what's interesting is if you take somebody like Muhammad
Ali, his footwork oftentimes resembled a kind of shuffling.
Boxer's footwork, or his rope-a-dope.
Because what's interesting to me about that
is if the ground is unstable, and I don't own the ground,
then the person who's being--
I'm speaking right into this.
Too many hip hop videos.
Hey, what's up?
[LAUGHTER]
Then the person-- then the person who owns the ground
is actually the person who's in trouble.
So the shuffle can have a combative aspect to it as well.
Stagger-- very similar.
The stagger is usually done by somebody
who lacks control of their body-- the drunk.
[STAGGERING]
The person who's just been shot in a movie and is about to die.
[STAGGERING]
The zombie.
[STAGGERING]
All these are people who are not in control of their bodies.
Yet if you think of dance, many dances
are actually controlled falls.
And so it actually takes somebody
who is in great control of their body to do them.
For example, the Roger Rabbit.
[DANCING]
That kind of thing.
Or a martial art form like capoeira,
which I won't demonstrate because I got
banned from doing it because I did so horribly.
But the stagger or even drunkeN-style Kung Fu
is actually taking that idea of control,
bring it back into the body, and kind of an awareness
of the body and the shape.
And some of that I relate to kind of formal practices
in the visual aspect of my work, which you'll
be seeing more of in a moment.
The shimmy is an act that is an offering.
It looks like an offering, but it's actually a lure.
It's kind of a here it is.
No it isn't.
Here it is.
No it isn't.
Here it is.
No it isn't.
And all of these I think of as being absent presences,
physical alibis.
Here, I'm offering.
Oh no, come.
Here's an offering.
And actually, instead of it being an offering,
it becomes some way that gets the person who's
being shimmied at to be drawn in to the shimmier.
So it can become about the shimmier's desire
in an interesting sort of equilibrium.
And there's ambivalence in all of these sort of things,
and I love ambivalence.
I think that these gestures sort of mimic a dynamic
that I think about a lot in terms
of managing contradiction.
The management of contradiction seems to me in many ways to be
an African-American aesthetic project since before
the presence here-- so African--
but especially sharp in here.
One of the great examples of this the most popular
is probably something like soul music, which
manages the contradiction of the body
and the spirit in the same space by using techniques that you
might use in a gospel song.
(SINGING) Oh, Lord Jesus.
Oh, Jesus, Jesus.
Oh, Jesus.
I said, Jesus.
Oh, Jesus.
You can just turn that to (SINGING) Oh, baby.
Oh, baby.
I said, baby.
Oh, baby.
I said, baby.
Oh, baby.
Baby, be mine.
It's that kind of thing that's managing and kind
of a contradiction right in that space.
[CHEERING]
You're only clapping because I'm good.
[LAUGHTER]
And of course contradiction would be an important project
for kind of a cultural and cognitive inquiry when you're
going, I'm a person, and everything you says,
no you're not.
But I'm a person.
No you're not.
But I'm a-- well, then, what am I?
So I think that that's something that's
really an interesting question that we can ask about our form
and an interesting way of dealing
with some of the questions that are
particular about this symposium.
The question of when are we reading versus looking?
How do we take advantage of a space like the page
and translate that into what in some cases
is really an analog of the page, which can
be a web page or some blogs?
But how do we transform that?
And how do we make that transformation meaningful and
not just a kind of a new coating, a new shell?
How can we make that meaningful?
And I don't-- anybody who's been at the panels yesterday
doesn't need me to think about that.
So please grab one of the panels if you
weren't here because they could do a better job.
So that's a lot of talking.
Let's go back to poetry.
Poetry.
All right--