Citation tomorrow, I promise (or the next day, or the day after…)

An excerpt from the paper I am typing:

The Oberiu theater, as described in Zabolotsky’s article, is at its base, a resurgence in the importance of the subordinate elements of theater. These elements, of which include the movements of a man on stage, a canvas with a town painted upon it, and a shepherd playing a pipe, have traditionally been subordinated by dramatic plot, often through the story told by the stage actors. He goes on to define any action, even if it does not advance the dramatic plot, as theater, saying, “The scenery, the movements of the actors, a bottle thrown down, the hem of a costume are just as much a part of the action as the people who are shaking their heads and speaking words and phrases.”

My citations are missing, and I apologize, but I believe this is from Daniil Kharms and the Poetics of the Absurd: Essays And Materials, edited by Neil Cornwell. I have to dig through my notes tomorrow morning to find out which essay specifically, but I promise you, I’m not making this up.

This paper is slow going, mostly due to my not working on it.

UPDATE: I am loosing my mind. The quote is from The Oberiu Manifesto, translated by George Giban (I think that’s who translated). It was more of an article than a real manifesto, and it is only believed to have been written by Zabalotsky, there is no definitive answer.

This is more a to do list than a post…

Reading list for this afternoon: Ionesco’s The Future is In Eggs, Jacques or Obedience; Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (excerpt); Genet’s The Blacks: A Clown Show (excerpt). After the reading of such things, I will be extrapolating from the texts a skelington framework of absurd theater, with which to contrast a similarly erected skelington framework of Oberiu theater (based largely, but not solely, upon Kharms’ Elizabeth Bam and Vvedensky’s Christmas at the Ivanovs’. I also have to e mail Mr. Hoover at SFSU to inform him of the dates of my visit in April (4th to the 8th, anyone know of any relatively safe hostels near the university? Assuming there are readers, that is). If I get this stuff done sometime, I will also be reading some poetry later (hah, like I’m getting all this done), and writing and/or revising some of my own poetry. All in all, the plan is that today will stretch on for another week, or so, otherwise, I won’t get all this done. But, just in case, I also need to bake a loaf of bread, get more basil, apples, kale, broccoli, leeks and a few other odds and ends, (more) reading, this time for economics, read some poetry for writing workshop, this is starting to sound like a list for the rest of my life, and this and that…

I promise there will be art, music and literature stuff, I’ve just been busy with school things, so bear with. The one person (possibly including myself) who reads this.

sky rockets in flight

Went to The Twig last night. Drank beer and whiskey. Then watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, drinking more whiskey. It was like a party. Today I have to run and get strings and a new pitch pipe so I can try playing my guitar again. Seriously, I am very bad at it, and should probably pay for lessons, but, I refuse. Over the course of the next week, I will be writing 2 or 3 papers, one on the Oberiu, exploring the absurdist label, and how it fits them, another, a linguistics literature review of some sort, and the third, an economics paper (I am an English major, and a Business minor, for a few more months). I will quote interesting bits on here, specifically, from the first one.

I would like to point out, now, at the beginning, …

I would like to point out, now, at the beginning, that I am aware that the term is Avant garde. The title is, you know, one of them word play things. So don’t say a damn thing about it. I will be posting time and again, from time to time, occasionally. I don’t do MySpace or Facebook, so don’t ask. This blog will mostly be my take on art and art related things, mixed with stuff from my life, and so on. It is certainly and absolutely a politic free zone, however.