Sunday, April 24, 2016
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Syzygy Cypher
Syzygy Cypher
Poetry Cult
I assembled my eleven part presentation SOLSYSTEM for the Syzygy Cypher Poetry Cult, thanks to Beau Aaron Wolcott for taking the initiative to throw this whole thing together at The Painted Note. My lone poem represents having condensed a larger body of work, forty four poems in all, down to one fourth its size. These are taken from my COSMOLOGOS manuscript, which I've collected together over the years. They consist mainly of poems of a cosmic nature or which attempt to make salient observations of our stellar condition in our present human guise. I am happy with the eleven poems in SOLSYSTEM because they represent an Ouroboros of significance to me, beginning with the conceptual alpha symbolism of ADAMITE and ending with the concrete omega title poem, in between which are nine various examples of presenting differing perspectives covering the state of our existence. The final poem is a recitation of all the known planets in our solar system along with most of the named moons and various orbital bodies, starting with the farthest named dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt and drawing inward toward the final pronounced word of the piece, THE SUN. SOLSYTEM is the result of many years of deliberation over my philosophical ideas about the universe and our place in it. It's an attempt at peeling off the skin from the ever growing Ouroboros Snake in the process of consuming itself across eons of spacetime in flux and laying it out in front of an audience like a page upon which the writing on the wall may be heard and torn off like leaves from the tree of life whose veins elaborate another hidden story becoming finely lost in a split decision network of nervous outcomes fading away beneath new cellular layers always in the process of reforming and decaying in a never ending revolution tracing the ongoing webbing of time after time upon the heaps and hills long left behind of compressed bones petrified into the ground below our feet and which eventually complete the mountainous planetary formations awhirl in this grand spiraling cauldron of electromagnetic radiation we call the Milky Way.
I assembled my eleven part presentation SOLSYSTEM for the Syzygy Cypher Poetry Cult, thanks to Beau Aaron Wolcott for taking the initiative to throw this whole thing together at The Painted Note. My lone poem represents having condensed a larger body of work, forty four poems in all, down to one fourth its size. These are taken from my COSMOLOGOS manuscript, which I've collected together over the years. They consist mainly of poems of a cosmic nature or which attempt to make salient observations of our stellar condition in our present human guise. I am happy with the eleven poems in SOLSYSTEM because they represent an Ouroboros of significance to me, beginning with the conceptual alpha symbolism of ADAMITE and ending with the concrete omega title poem, in between which are nine various examples of presenting differing perspectives covering the state of our existence. The final poem is a recitation of all the known planets in our solar system along with most of the named moons and various orbital bodies, starting with the farthest named dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt and drawing inward toward the final pronounced word of the piece, THE SUN. SOLSYTEM is the result of many years of deliberation over my philosophical ideas about the universe and our place in it. It's an attempt at peeling off the skin from the ever growing Ouroboros Snake in the process of consuming itself across eons of spacetime in flux and laying it out in front of an audience like a page upon which the writing on the wall may be heard and torn off like leaves from the tree of life whose veins elaborate another hidden story becoming finely lost in a split decision network of nervous outcomes fading away beneath new cellular layers always in the process of reforming and decaying in a never ending revolution tracing the ongoing webbing of time after time upon the heaps and hills long left behind of compressed bones petrified into the ground below our feet and which eventually complete the mountainous planetary formations awhirl in this grand spiraling cauldron of electromagnetic radiation we call the Milky Way.
Solsystem ★ Planet 9
was performed by yours truly on Thursday evening, January 21, 2016 at The Painted Note in downtown Salt Lake City for the Syzygy Cypher
Poetry Cult: the kickoff to a new weekly open mic curated by Aaron Beau Wolcott. The idea is to reboot the open mic back to three sets, and no slam style scoring allowed. First round: original works, Second round: excerpts from our favorite books, third round: Back to original works. Aaron encourages people not to just sit politely in silence but rather, to engage themselves with the speakers on the mic, letting them know what lines they love, or if they don't agree with certain sentiments. It's a reunion of dedicated creative writers on the level of the Dead Poet's Society, except I must say that it trumps that ideal by taking it one step further into a Living Poets Society right here in this thriving epicenter of cultural diversity hidden in the Blue Donut Hole.
My performance took about nine minutes presented en masse, my preferred delivery for this particular piece. There's an effect I want to preserve which involves engaging the listening audience. The 1st poem sets the conceptual stage. The 2nd poem establishes a lyrical preface. The 3rd is a reflection of a short story I'm currently writing, and provides a visceral and succinct description of our Earthly proximity to our nearest star system. It is the 4th poem--Tempest Redshift--in which I resolve the so-called Fermi Paradox to our satisfaction. The 5th poem--the centerpiece--plays out in eleven stanzas and is called True Sense, it's a condensed dictionary of elemental concepts, a scattershot crash course in the word's history (and thus the world's). There follows a small cluster of poems--four of them--the first of which dares to describe the sound of a tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it, followed by three lyrical evocations compressed into short verse. My poem LEVITY becomes a mantra planted within the whole. The 8th poem RESCUELESS reaches closest to the firm ground upon which the listener's own feet are planted (and will be cut from my performance to bring my time down to seven minutes max, if necessary). The 9th poem leaps behind my parabolic vision and translates what I've seen into the dream of reality. There's one more in this cluster, the 10th poem HAMMOCK, originally dedicated to May Swenson and therefore eternally dedicated to her and by extension all the poets and dreamers of the world. I end with the eleventh and final title piece, [SOLSYSTEM], which is a recitation of the bodies found within our solar system, paying extreme devotion to pronouncing the named moons of all the gas giants as well as describing the clusters of Trans-Neptunian Objects and various cosmic infusoria to be found swarming there, eventually ending in the four terrestrial planets and their three popular moons ultimately ending with the pronunciation of + THE SUN - . A huge and heartfelt shout-out must go to Alex of Arrows Inward, a lo-fi ambient performance artist who drifted in from Cali recently. Thanks for daring to step up and collaborate with me by providing the perfect cosmic tonality for my reading of Planet 9. You really helped me take it to another level, giving it the perfect atmosphere it needed. ★
My performance took about nine minutes presented en masse, my preferred delivery for this particular piece. There's an effect I want to preserve which involves engaging the listening audience. The 1st poem sets the conceptual stage. The 2nd poem establishes a lyrical preface. The 3rd is a reflection of a short story I'm currently writing, and provides a visceral and succinct description of our Earthly proximity to our nearest star system. It is the 4th poem--Tempest Redshift--in which I resolve the so-called Fermi Paradox to our satisfaction. The 5th poem--the centerpiece--plays out in eleven stanzas and is called True Sense, it's a condensed dictionary of elemental concepts, a scattershot crash course in the word's history (and thus the world's). There follows a small cluster of poems--four of them--the first of which dares to describe the sound of a tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it, followed by three lyrical evocations compressed into short verse. My poem LEVITY becomes a mantra planted within the whole. The 8th poem RESCUELESS reaches closest to the firm ground upon which the listener's own feet are planted (and will be cut from my performance to bring my time down to seven minutes max, if necessary). The 9th poem leaps behind my parabolic vision and translates what I've seen into the dream of reality. There's one more in this cluster, the 10th poem HAMMOCK, originally dedicated to May Swenson and therefore eternally dedicated to her and by extension all the poets and dreamers of the world. I end with the eleventh and final title piece, [SOLSYSTEM], which is a recitation of the bodies found within our solar system, paying extreme devotion to pronouncing the named moons of all the gas giants as well as describing the clusters of Trans-Neptunian Objects and various cosmic infusoria to be found swarming there, eventually ending in the four terrestrial planets and their three popular moons ultimately ending with the pronunciation of + THE SUN - . A huge and heartfelt shout-out must go to Alex of Arrows Inward, a lo-fi ambient performance artist who drifted in from Cali recently. Thanks for daring to step up and collaborate with me by providing the perfect cosmic tonality for my reading of Planet 9. You really helped me take it to another level, giving it the perfect atmosphere it needed. ★
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