Cross Words

As antidote to morning fury at the endless hyperbolic spin of Bliarite apologetics for Israeli aggression, where he presents his alibi-making as a concern for peace – go figure, that old peace by war routine yet again – I was just reading about the Oulipo group in the new issue of the Compendium. Raymond Queneau’s 100,000,000 poems kind of disfigured the book when I cut the lines, but this is part of the fun – they do have some fine (mad) notions. Like rethinking the exquisite corpse idea of the surrealists – you know the game where you write a line of a poem then fold over the page and the next person writes the next line and so on, till the page is unfolded and you have a group surreal poem… well Oulipo have this subsequent game where you take a phrase, then add letters in a N+7 or N-7 way to get new meanings. So ‘Exquisite Corpse’ becomes ‘Expressionless Corporatism’. (n = noun plus 7 letters – but its not obeyed to the letter, so a bit of a scam). Anyway, the point of this, Oulipo says, well Jacques Jouet 1990 says, is to show that the surrealists already ‘subconsciously’ knew that their ideas were bankrupt and they were flogging a dead creativity as a part of the culture industry. This is as unfair as it is funny. Well, maybe its not all that clever, but I like the degree of bitchiness between the rival groups. Raymond Roussel, as lauded by Foucault in ‘Death adn the Labyrinth, was an Oulipo hero. Crossword compiler George Perec was another (elected 1967) – a guy who wrote a novel without the letter e ever being used, as promoted recently by Don Miller. Italo Calvino has affinities on a winters night with them too (elected 1970). So – how can I mix this in with my interests in music and reverse messages in rock and all that - so that I can talk about the message in the work of Fundamental… (new album download from 7 August)… yes – here I am trying to think my way into writing again, transmuting anger into lyrical ramblings on blogspot would probably a better waste of my time, but the urgency remains. Demo August 5th in London…
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