currently...

at work digitizing a lecture delivered by Robin Blaser at Naropa June 27, 2001. Blaser's talk is focused on what he terms "cultural despair."

Blaser spends a lot of time discussing a bi-polar forgiveness vs. awareness poetics/philosophy...if you're aware of Blaser's recent preoccupations you'd know this has a LOT to do with Agamben...see his chapbook from Nomados, The Irreparable...not to be too histrionic but i remember reading The Irreparable a couple summer's back and nearly weeping my eyes out...i guess the vodka could've had something to do with that as well...whatever...

also a bunch on Arendt on Nietche with regards to the etymological pathetic...that is, in it's original meaning, to have "strong emotion"...this all has to do with Blaser's libretto in which he re-tells the story of the last supper and esp. Judas in the 20th century...

...and then a bit on Artaud's Theater Of Cruelty with regards to "shit of the spirit"...

a fantastic story of Blaser, Duncan and Spicer soliciting Laura Riding for poetry for a magazine during their Berkeley years...and Riding summarily writing back to the big three "give it up [poetry], it's a dead end," and then Blaser's "and she wouldn't even let us publish that!!!"...

and then coming at the end of the lecture, directed at Chip Delany, an obliquely weird quote "glossolalias are like raves i guess..."

i love Robin...i've never met a man so comfortable in his own skin...or someone so genuine he literally radiates love (see his wonderful essay/lecture "Language Is Love")...seriously, the man fucking glows with compassion...

...check out my interview with him in The Poker #5 (http://www.durationpress.com/thepoker/5.htm)...


...currently listening to Blaser and audience listening to a BBC recording of Blaser's libretto...