I’m the editor of a zine called Infinity’s Kitchen. It’s a graphic literary journal of experimental literature, published independently, in print and online.
If you think that “experimental literature” is synonymous with “nonsense” you may be right, but you’re in the wrong place, with Infinity’s Kitchen. Nonsense has a place in writing, the way pepper has a place in certain foods. It is best used sparingly, sometimes never at all, and it should never be served up all by itself.
In 2001 I was a sophomore in college, with a bit more time on my hands than I can imagine now. I wrote a play called “Street Preacher”.
Nearing the end of my High School career, I took stock of the imminent future. At the time, it felt like “the future had yawned out before me into an abyss”. I felt unready, unsure about what comes next, but I decided to take a year as an exchange student.
I chose a destination with dart-on-the-map-board precision: Japan. It was as far from home as I could get without coming back, literally the opposite side of the planet.
These are my observations, written during that year.
Take a look at “Important Comics” by my friend Dina Kelberman. She posts them to Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dinakelberman/sets/72157601639807951/
This is a Fluxus score. Fluxus is a type of performance art. A Fluxus score, like a musical score, is a sort of recipe for a performance. For more information, read The Fluxus Performance Workbook.
This performance requires several telephones, preferably telephones of as many different types as possible. Ideally, each should produce a unique sound through its microphone, which can either be original to the telephone or added. The phones should be amplified, for the benefit of the audience. A mixer or an effects petal may be used to augment the sound from each phone. It might be nice to paint the telephones black and white, to recall the color of keys on a piano. The telephones need not be connected to a telephone line, although other scores for this musical instrument may desire such a feature.
A Fluxus MAchine
[ 1 or 2 performers]
There are two scripts. The first script is composed of the sort of stuff that a telemarketer would say on the telephone, like “You’re eligible to be entered into our fifty thousand dollar sweepstakes” or “How would you like to buy a subscription to TV guide?”. The second is a series of responses, like “What’s the catch?” or “I can’t talk now, I’m busy” or “he isn’t here right now. Can I take a message?”
[A slash or a break indicates a switch from one telephone to the next]
“Hey buddy: Whatcha doin’? Are you watching television?”
“I am. I am watching television! Oh my god! How did you know?” He is excited, and so am I.
“I’ll bet you would really like to know what’s on right TV now, wouldn’t you?”
“Good evening, may I speak with Benjamin please?”
“No you may certainly not speak with him. He’s dead.”
“Hello. Is Julie there?”
“If you call this number again, I’ll cut your balls off.”
“Hello. Good Evening. How are you? Fine, thanks. Yes, you have been selected / chosen / your name has been selected and entered / you are a finalist in our ALL CASH / our Fifty-Thousand Dollar drawing / sweepstakes / sweepstakes drawing.”
”Fifty thousand dollars! / What’s the catch? / I am so sorry I don’t speak the English. / What’s the catch? / Uh-huh I’m listening, go on. / What’s the catch?”
“Well, let me tell you about the fabulous / wonderful / cool / various prizes. Think of what you could be doing / you could do a lot of things with all that money / with fifty thousand dollars! I’m curious, I like to ask the people I call, what would you do with it?
“The first thing I would do is pay off my credit cards / I’m in debt so I’d fix that / Student loans, you know? / What’s the catch? / I would buy a house / car / vacation / new wardrobe. / What’s the catch? / I would move out of my mother’s / father’s / husband’s house / out of this fifthly city / the country / this town. / I would spend it all / save it / invest it / give it all to Jesus / never win anyway.”
“The money sure would help. My boy, he won’t help me. He cussed me and he left me. I told him, I brought him into this world, I said, but he won’t help me.
But you’re going to have to speak up a little, my ears ain’t so good no more. I’m sorry, I’ve lost my place. What, now? I’m afraid I have forgotten why I called. Did I call you?”
“Well ma’am I am with the board of utilities. I called to check if your telephone is working properly.”
“Oh well you’re a nice boy, thank you. Yes, it seems to be working real good, or else we wouldn’t be talking.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you for your time.”
I was one of the writers participating in the 23rd Annual Critics’ Residency program, at the Maryland Art Place. Along the way, I saw some great art, met some interesting people, and I’ve grown as a writer. Art criticism is a new “language” for me, but I think I’ve definitely learned some new vocabulary.
I’m about to release my first spoken word album! Its title is “Strange Punctuation”. All but one of the tracks are finished, and I’m working on a chapbook that will fit into the CD cases. It was an enjoyable challenge to create this album. Here are some notes about the process.
This spoken word album began as a manuscript of poems. After I had finished collecting all the poems together into one printed set, I had grown frustrated with the manuscript. Then, Curt Seiss at Magnanimous Records called and asked if I had any material for a recording. I brought my new manuscript to the recording studio, along with some very old notebooks.
In the first session, we recorded words only. Between readings, Curt left the microphone on, and captured a lot of random conversation. The original idea had been to dissect this conversation, for its miscellaneous syllables, and to use those syllables as though they were musical notes. This, of course, would have removed the sounds from the context of language. They wouldn’t be words anymore. We abandoned that idea.
In the subsequent sessions, we edited the original recordings by adding layers of other sounds to them. At first, this felt to me like “illustration”, although Curt encouraged me to think about sounds in an associative way, rather than to find literal sound effects to accompany the poem. I guess one exception to that rule was “Clouds”. With that piece, we added all the sounds of an open mic night at a bar. At the end, we added a heckler who laughs at me. It really does sound like this was a live recording!
Along the way. I discovered my favorite part of the entire process. Editing sound is very much like editing printed words. You can add, subtract, rearrange the sounds in very much the same way that you can do that with the characters on the page. With sound, though, there are some new ways to edit. You can revise the speed, pitch, volume, echo and decay of the sounds of the words themselves. It was this discovery that prompted me to title the album “Strange Punctuation”.
Now that most of the studio work is complete, the final piece of this project is coming together. I’m going to print a small chapbook to accompany the spoken word album. To illustrate the chapbook, I’m collaborating with a photographer – a lifelong acquaintance of mine, Molly Humphreys Aguilar. Again, the goal here is not to illustrate, but to associate. We had a brainstorming session last week at a coffee shop, and we discussed the thematic elements in the various pieces, and wondered what sort of imagery should accompany each one. Molly’s photo studio, Piccadilly Posh, specializes in natural light photography. Of course, most of her imagery comes from the outdoors. I can’t wait to see them.
I’ve included one of the tracks in this post. Take a listen, and please tell me what you think.
I’m the editor of a zine called Infinity’s Kitchen. It’s a graphic literary journal of experimental literature. It is published independently, in print and online at www.infinityskitchen.com. Now, the third issue of infinity’s kitchen has been printed and you’re in for a treat.
Cover of Infinity's Kitchen no. 3
We’ve included a paper boat inside the printed publication. Assuming that all the folds are in all the right places, you should actually be able to float this boat, at the park or in your bathtub, and I hope you will. I hope you’ll first take the opportunity to unfold the boat and read Hao Cheng’s delightful story, “Paper Boats”. I also hope you’ll try to fold the boat yourself, because it’s fun!
The story “Saved” presented an interesting creative problem to the editor and designers of this issue. For a publication that is online and in print, in an issue about objects, it seemed to fit perfectly. It is a hypertext, in that it is a nonlinear composition, but it is also a collection of objects: a receipt, a printed chat log, and a newspaper clipping. We tried to present the story in that light.
“In Absentia” is intended to look like one of those old publications that you may have held in your hand at one time, the one that is a guide to the programs on TV. Anymore, those guides have been redesigned or replaced by digital listings, but this was a story about memory and about “channel-surfing” through the memories. The story has been illustrated with the typographical conventions of those channel listings, to highlight that aspect of the story.
The objects in mind here aren’t always of the paper variety. The concrete poem, “A Few Weeks of Light Principle” is one of many excellent concrete poems that have been submitted to Infinity’s Kitchen since the previous issue, which was devoted to the form. In this poem, the text is “frustrated” as one would be when trying to make sense of the instructions that often accompany the furniture that comes from the store inside a box. You have to assemble it yourself. The directions don’t always make perfect sense, in any language. The mind wanders.
You are invited to encounter these objects in any order you like and to make of them what you will.
A friend and fellow resident of the CopyCat Building has released her first album, under the name Talitha’s Dream. The title of the album is The Album That Will Never Be even though, finally, it is!
Download the entire album, The Album That Will Never Be.
Here’s a sample song from the album. There’s More.
Download the entire album, The Album That Will Never Be.
The first sequence of chapters of Dreaming Methods’ latest digital fiction project is now online to experience – with future chapters to follow. Told through a series of semi-interactive scenes and video sequences where narrative fragments have to be “found” in order to progress through the story, Consensus Trance begins with a protagonist who has just returned from a school reunion where strangely none of his old friends remember the same things he does.
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