On 2006 May 19, at 3:46 PM, Allan Revich wrote:
The point that I am trying to make is not that I am right or that
you (or anybody else) is wrong. The point is that the beauty in
Fluxus is that it thrives on diversity and difference rather than
on dogma and rigidity. I think that Cage was a genius and that his
methods, means, and maybe madness were all beautiful. Getting hung
up on pointless minutiae is a waste of time and energy.
I have no problem with the way that anybody here decides to write. We
can all be as totally goofball as possible...and we can give any kind
of name that we want to our writings. BUT it is not "pointless
minutiae" to point out that a form of writing is NOT what it claims
to be. If we decide to go in that
direction, then I'm going to call this text that you're reading a
"haiku" - OK, so let's call it that - after all, this is Fluxlist and
we're just a bunch of CrAzIeS influenced by Fluxus and we're all not
"hyper-technical" here. If people want to put a bunch of words on a
page and capitalize any letters to spell out some word they want,
then call it something else - you know...uh,...."Fluxmiddles"
or..."textmiddles" or...whatever...but they are NOT mesostics.
Why does this matter? Because, by incorrectly calling something a
"mesostic", you're advancing
the lazy-mindedness that so many people possess as well as
perpetuating an untruth for no real reason other than convenience. To
stop asking questions is death to the soul, death to the imagination,
and death to progress - whether personal or social.
To answer your question; no, I don’t suggest that you “follow this
guy's examples even if they don't fit with what Cage stated”. I
suggest that you accept the work of other people as inspired by
whomever or whatever they suggest was their inspiration.
This guy's statement implies that he's not willing to listen to any
criticism -
criticism is not welcome. You are asked to "do something better."
What is this better? To accept that he was influenced by someone
else, I can accept this...BUT to incorrectly represent that person
when he shows you an incorrect example of THAT person's work is, at
best, a misunderstanding and, at worst, a lie. Maybe I'll start a
website that says that John Cage said that, in music, "anything
goes"- oh, wait, I think some people have already beaten me to that.
Your suggestion that I accept other people's work and their inspiration:
I will certainly listen to what they have to say, but if a guy puts
up a webpage to tell
me that 3 + 2 = 7 and that he'll accept no criticisms (Bill O'Reilly:
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP, I SAY!")
then I most definitely will have something to say about it.
What does the place of birth of Maciunas have to do with John Cage
or Mesostic poetry anyway? Do you need me to tell you that you are
very clever? OK. You are very clever. The sources that I have
located to date suggest that he was born in Lithuania, moved from
there to Germany, and from Germany to the United States. If you
have more accurate information you could probably share it without
losing any of your cleverness.
My comment was in reference to this statement of yours:
2) Don’t get so hung up on minutiae Rod. This is the Fluxus
Fluxlist after all, lighten up. If you feel the need to get hyper-
technical than you also need to accept that the word “mesostic” is a
neologism in (inconsistent) use by a barely significant percentage of
English speakers. As such there is no accepted definition.
In other words: Oh well, so what if it's wrong. It's just minutiae.
I'm just "hyper-technical" by pointing out a fact. OK, so let's just
say that Maciunas wasn't born in Lithuania. According to your
reasoning, and like I said above, we're just Fluxus folks and we
shouldn't concern ourselves with such trivialities should we?
...and there's your reasoning that because "a barely significant
percentage of English speakers" are familiar with or actually use
something that it's OK to be imprecise because there's no "accepted
definition" is something I just don't buy. The "accepted" definition
is Cage's definition because no matter how many other variations
occurred thru the uses of the average unknown artist or the
heavyweight variations by well-knowns, he still made it clear
throughout his life what the two forms were (the 100% version, he
adopted later). The texts done by others were still *variations* -
Mac Low's "Diastics" to give one example. At least Mac Low didn't
call them "mesostics" because he knew that they weren't.
end of haiku
Rod
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Now playing: Mieko Shiomi - Daniel Spoerri
