Patricia wrote: >Btw, I got your story and enjoyed it. I am altering it today - who do I send >it to, was it Alex Cook? If so, Alex, what is your address? Do we keep >documentation on this? Does it go back to you, Josh, at the end? My story is, as they say, out of my hands. Does it go back to me? Well, I would prefer to see the changes in a New York Times story entitled "Online Artists Alter Texas Short Story: Is Nothing Sacred?" I am very curious as to what will happen to it. Scared, nervous, apprehensive, reluctant: but what is the worse that can happen? For people lost by this exchange: last week I wrote an improvised story in 5 minutes while waiting for something to print at a copy shop. It is by far, and I do not think I am vain or prideful or dishonest, when I say it is the BEST improvised story written under 5 minutes in a copy shop on 3rd street in Austin, Texas that mentions Aldous Huxley. I am sure Patricia, as well as future readers, will attest to this fact. Unless it is deemed to the WORST improvised story written under 5 minutes in a copy shop on 3rd street in Austin, Texas that mentions Aldous Huxley. I suppose it could be that as well. Robbert asks me (in the Josh/Robbert confusion which affects many): >Are you horrible in some way? I will leave a definite answer to this to my future biographers. This question is very funny to me. I have recently finished translating some 30,000 words of interviews from French into English with Romanian composers Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram. The beginning of the interview starts along the lines of: GILLES PEYRET: I wondered: "What manner does a type like him have? Is he courageous, cowardly, horrible..." From where comes your courage to tell the truth? IANCU DUMITRESCU: Well, if you had to be acknowledged something about me with courage, I would say it to you in the manner of Ionesco... I would say to you that I am... horrible! The rest of the interviews can be found at http://home.flash.net/~jronsen/mmpp/mmpp7id1.html They might be inscrutable to anyone who is not already familiar with their music, or with terms like "acousmatic" and "phenomenological." Now, Mr. Dumitrescu (whom I can't imagine being "horrible" in the typical sense of the word), has composed a piece for string orchestra and magnetic tape called FLUXUS. There is an unusually powerful version of this piece that appears on a CD that came with the English magazine Resonance. I don't think his title has anything to do with our Fluxus, I think he using a Latin word for his title. I should have asked in the auxiliary questions to the interviews, but I am pretty sure this is the case. I get the impression that Dumitrescu's drive and spirit are not, and perhaps cannot be, aligned with any sort of Fluxus aesthetic. People write about a plurality of meaning in Fluxus, and Dumitrescu seems to strive for a singular ("phenomenological reduction") thrust to his work. -Josh Ronsen http://www.nd.org/jronsen
