On Thu, 8 Jun 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> In a message dated 06/08/2000 9:44:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>
> << "I told my dad I'd stopped raising hell and he called me a
> > quitter." >>
>
> I told my dad I didn't ask to be born and he said, "It's a good thing you
> didn't, you'd have been turned down."
>
He bought me drinks and took me to
Ev'ry place in town
Then words were said
And now he's dead
I just had to bring him down
from "(Time don't me a thing to me/I've got) LIFE TO GO
words & music by George Jones
based on story told to Jones by inmate of East Texas prison
after a Jones performance
actually, the phrase "I told my dad I'd stopped raising hell
and he called me a quitter"--is not from a song-- I found it on a book of
matches promoting the Winston Racing Team.
from WHEN LIFE WAS FULL THERE WAS NO HISTORY
--Chuang Tzu:
. . . (People) were honest and righteous without realizing
that they were "doing their duty." They deceived no one yet they did not
know that they were "men to be trusted." Thety wre reliable and
did not know this was "good faith." They lived freely together
giving and taking, and did not that they were generous. FOR THIS REASON
THEIR DEEDS HAVE NOT BEEN NARRATED. THEY MADE NO HISTORY.
Thomas Merton The Way of Chuang Tzu (Boston & London: Shambala,
1991. 114-5)
Was thinking about this in relation to ephemeral works,
gestures--which are made with the point/thought being that they rapidly no
longer exist--yet, often via documentation in various media, forms--become
as it were "narrated" and part of history.
Baudelaire discussed modernity as the eternal that is fleetingly
present in a passing moment--
Does Fluxus--and mail art--exemplify aspects of this as it were
yin/yang--the ephemeral/eternal, the no-longer-there/the document . . .
done intentionally--
(what intentions did the anonymous prisoner have in telling his
story to George Jones, a famoous songwriter . . . "George, have I got a
song for you!" . . . ? or George Jones in listening . . . )
(Mail Art, for Filliou, is the Eternal Network)
Australian visual poet Tim Gaze, who publishes two journals of his
and other's works wrote in a letter recently that he has come to regard
letter writing as self publishing . . .
--dave baptiste chirot
