“And the great problem presented by such historical analyses is not how continuities are established, how a single pattern is formed and preserved, how for so many different, successive minds there is a single horizon, what mode of action and what substructure is implied by the interplay of transmissions, resumptions, disappearances, and repetitions, how the origin may extend its sway well beyond itself to that conclusion that is never given – the problem is no longer one of tradition, of tracing a line, but one of division, of limits; it is no longer one of lasting foundations but one of transformations that serve as new foundations, the rebuilding of foundations. What one is seeing, then, is the emergence of a whole field of questions, some of which are already familiar, by which this new form of history is trying to develop its own theory: how is one to specify the different concepts that enable us to conceive of discontinuity (threshold, rupture, break mutation, transformation)? By what criteria is one to isolate the unities with which one is dealing; what is a science? What is an oeuvre? What is a theory? What is a concept? What is a text? How is one to diversify the levels at which one may place oneself, each of which possesses its own divisions and form of analysis? What is the legitimate level of formalization? What is that of interpretation? Of structural analysis? Of attributions to causality?”

– Foucault, The Archaeology of Knwowledge, p. 5-6

It’s paragraphs like these that remind me why I am doing a PhD.

born the son of a barge man, “I was six
for my first dead bodies”. active in a theatre
of war during 1939-45. the concept of the
parasite – Like a maggot in a turd he hid within
the word. Neil Young talks about Pocahontas. X
feels sad = X feels something, the history of corn
or gold-minding. I am interested in his opinion on
rationality. With my poor English it’s hard to
describe what I am up to: And now I am eager to
prove THAT and show it in detail! Thank you!
Orderly, dispassionate, and rational Europeans.

a note on the composition of these poems: last year, nick, fred, pat, george & i started a project in which we each recorded our voice for a full day — our waking hours — & then transcribed all the language we spoke. recently, nick & i used each other’s sound recording & transcriptions to compose a series of poems — both written & sound-based — for a collaborative performance at a night called ’semaphore’, curated by jes tyrell & kathy gray. the following are eleven poems that i wrote, using nick’s language as source material. some syntactical & grammatical liberties were taken, such as altering verb forms & in some instances adding or removing prepositions, but other than that, the language is as-is.

**

i.

but surely – if there’s no democratic resolution
– they’ve got more chances of getting chicks.
bodily memory: you know, just, the continual,
ongoing fucked up-ness of the world. is the issue
with the language, or with what he’s saying?
fuck fuck fuck! fuck! cunt! I always, I always,
sort of, need spinach, really.

ii.

or you tend to always fail. but what do you die of
when you get hung? after my second dark ale, I
push it into that category of being, you know.
you should have that threshold too. ‘shut up with
your nationalism,’ & ‘if you don’t want to, call this
number.’ it’s ridiculous, the absolute archetype of
the rightwing do-si-do. trying to start some
guerilla-vandal thing, a sort of famous new line of
cistern toilets, I think I said, that I, just, by the
end of it, I absolutely despised it.

iii.

and oh, I just crumpled inwards, inwardly,
you know: but it’s been so relentlessly
propagated that everyone else propagates it
as well. you know, and like, you forget it,
you know, because, well, I mean, some people
don’t forget it, sometimes I forget it, but every time
you see him you just recognise – you can’t have a
maverick anymore.

iv.

I’m just wandering around like a spare testicle.
that’s why I don’t have a special pen, because I
never keep a pen for more than five minutes. so
we’re going to have horseradish cream? jesus
christ. we’re going to recolonise an island for the
pièce de résistance. I always look for you up this
alleyway, it’s only natural for it extend across all
of the options (I’ve got a few ASIO connections,
I could make a few calls.) pho is really pronounced
‘fa’.

v.

so are you going to have to go back & confront
these gangsters? yeah, you know, bow ties, yeah.
um, ‘eat my pussy and suck my dick’. I would say
a contingent factor in a dynamic system, because
I’m an irrational being. it’s that manipulation that
successfully manipulates the middle-class liberals.
nice theory, not sure it really works in practice:
it’s much more serious than jerry bruckheimer.

vi.

eggplant & coke? I might go to the pisser.
you know what I like best about being scruffy
& unshaven? we don’t leave our pants in the
lounge room. after you enter the world, you
get a complimentary pronoun: it’s a reverse
tadpole type of thing. headlights turn off when
you turn off the engine, you can’t drink &
talk at the same time.

vii.

a blender goes in handy, when I go home.
you have to change the way it looks to meet
the function, just absolutely critique the shit out
of commercial industrial design. the train line
goes under it, or next to it, & they aren’t automatically
linking to all of the pages. ‘call for writers’ – piss off.
there’s definitely an edith piaf in there, white wine
& chicken stock & then heaps of olive oil. that kind
of, almost, hyper-intimacy that you can get
with animals, & with humans, I suppose.

viii.

he’s worried he’s getting too much oestrogen. this
is something you’ve got to work at, I see torrents
of water running down a road, literally shot by a
sniper. & then some smart arse journalist goes,
you know, ‘oh,’ & ‘gangsta I’m the only authentic
thing in hip-hop.’ feeling like a pork frenzy right
now, I just found one & had my way with it. I
scoured town, for that, for my sick little baby.
yeah, yeah, that’s right – I’m amazing at the gallic
shrug. I don’t mean your dad, I mean the collective
dad. they have to change the direction they’re moving.

ix.

& then lachlan lee throws his burger at you. you
should never underestimate the role of the catholic
church: it’s all fandangle & shit. ‘women are not
goats?’ anyway, so no potato, no capsicum. mute
that shit. get your priorities right. I’m going to burn
some of his books in retaliation. I wouldn’t
burn the Erotica book, though, it’s howard’s
most valuable mythology. I saw jesus in a sugar
beet field. he said, he said, he was out in auburn.

x.

rudd & gillard just played straight into a new
language; I have to say that I can think of
another way of reading it. they go there &
then they leave, & then they start attacking
& being really combative & saying ‘donnez-
moi,’ ‘give me.’ it’s obscene. that’s why need more
people like wet, silly cat, some sort of cartoon
character frown, ball & chain. that’s standard
rhetoric, you know – it is just a small bullet wound.

xi.
it’s a long way between sending people an email
& raiding them (I wasn’t referring to us, baby.)
he stood there & very calmly whispered in his
ear about a copy of machiavelli. we been shakin’
our hips together, using film conventions, sitting
& licking, there’s nothing better. self-satisfied,
smug emotions? I love you too, but I mean, who
are you talking to, what were you expecting? it’s
just a funny sounding combination of two words.