It is wonDerful
I must acCept your Haiku
Let's botH move on now
;-)
Allan
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Rod Stasick
Sent: Friday, May 19, 2006 6:43 PM
To: FLUXLIST@scribble.com
Subject: Re: FLUXLIST: Mesostics
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
---
Now playing: Mieko Shiomi - Daniel Spoerri
