Thematic Concerns

Magic Stories, Beats & Wire Music
In the context of the 3 Poets, my improvisations draw first upon daily experience but also upon my long experience as a performing artist and my academic studies in symbolic anthropology. I’ve been around some and as Kenneth Patchen once said somewhere, “Hell–we’ve all been around”–& that I guess is as good a place to start as any. We’ve all been around, we’ve all done this & that & we’ve all experienced some of the good & some of the bad, we’ve all won a little & we’ve all lost more than we wanted to. 

These then are the existential themes that come most to the fore: What it is to be around these days in the world–a world full of media hype, glossy magazines, a world in which the atmosphere is saturated with TV & radio signals, where “security” is the watchword & nobody’s quite sure whether they should learn to accept death or whether they should subscribe to the latest new-age spirituality with it’s instructions about how to live forever.

I am not at all “up” on the news–I don’t have a TV & I rarely listen to the radio. I do pick up the occasional magazine–Vanity Fair, Details or the New Music Express just to see what the “culture” is up to. The themes that seem pertinent in the context of my improvisations tend to focus on abiding existential issues & dilemmas: the problems of human identity & responsibility, the problem of deceit, the issues stemming from self-expression, the need for self transcendence, all that.  I am also very interested in animals as symbolic elements in the historical development of our sense of ourselves as humans. I’m also interested in Fairy stories & all the tricks that get played there–who gets to eat & who gets eaten. I am very interested in diverse kinds of boundaries between one thing & another–how it is that we create certain sorts of boundaries, how we learn to cross them or fear them or obliterate them. I am also interested in language & symbolism in general–how the symbolic element in our lives impinges upon our bodies & minds. I guess I’d have to say I’m interested in most things pertaining to the human predicament on this out of the way planet in a dark corner of the universe & every couple of weeks it’s great to get together with the other 2 poets & rattle on about it. Notice the sun, the way it slants through the window & how the yellow leaves glow, like that.