Cake or Death.
Pete and Repeat. Pete and Repete were sitting on a fence, Pete fell off. Who was left? Repete. ?...! Pete and Repete were sitting on a fence...
Now that its October. WFMU comes out with its fall schedule. Though I had been warned it was going away, I still find I miss the Intelligent Design show on Wednesday afternoons hosted by KennyG. I may be the only one. While KG is off on this radio sabbatical, I figured maybe this is the time to take a moment to figure out who this guy is. A man who would talk-sing Sun Tzu over Ravel. Play all of Budwisers pseudo-ironic Ordinary Heroes ad campaign back to back, and unleash cake-a-thon on the world. He is Kenneth Goldsmith and he is a poet. A former text-based sculptor. I suppose those may seem similar, but I recall in the recesses of a folded and forgotten past being tasked to read portions of Gottfried Lessing's Laccoon. I will etch my thoughts upon an egg - with a laser beam (that's how its done) and this will lend them considerable shape and drama. I will answer to the authorities for this when they come. It's not the plastic arts I fear so much or particularly, as much as all the polymer based arts.
I had KennyG pegged as a performance artist, of some sort. I'd like to think I wasn't far off. He's about my age too. This doesn't surprise me, it's been easier than it ought to be understanding what he does. He knew who David Grubbs was. Not just the guitarist for Bastro - I saw Bastro play once - this guy I knew, Mark Robinson, played with them on that occasion I believe. Grubbs was taking classes at Georgetown then. More specifically Kenneth knew (or was able to determine) Dave Grubbs was before that guitarist for Squirrel Bait. Hammering so hard. He was airing a recent recording of Grubbs playing a John Cage piece, Variations, I believe. Ken on his weekly radio show demonstrated a fascination for word play maybe more soundplay, he is, I see, a sound poet. Manipulations of the human mouth, dipthongs and frictives and all things labeled labial. Particularly leaning towards the grand gesture, the tour de force. What Helios Creed, I'm sure, would consider half-machine lip moves. Or is it Rich Meltzer I'm thinking of. There are two simple roads into the public realm of Kenneth Goldsmith poet etc. You can follow the trial from WFMU's pages visit his archive and station home page
Kenny G's WFMU Homepage, or the nearly parallel route of the page for him on Wikipedia
Kenneth Goldsmith - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Either way you end up at Ubuweb, the EPC site, and Pennsound which are all full of things to consider. He's not just a poet of the internets either, he's published. Things with ISBN numbers, covers, pages. Material objects imprinted with symbols, such as commas and the like. In a short investigation I was able to discover that he is in a book housed in McKeldin Library where I work
john cage uncaged is still cagey. The book has resided there for several months. He seems to have contributed the jacket blurb, introduction, and a poem to this book. It would be nice to be a published writer but if I did that and someone accidentally paid me for it I would have to turn this web log over to a continuous series of photographs of me attaching barcodes to library books. Avocation is irreducible. The Dark and Stormy Night. It was a dark and stormy night. Three guys were sitting around the campfire. "one of them said. 'Tell us a story, Jack'". "Allright. It was a dark and stormy night. Three men were sitting around a campfire..."
Cake or death which I titled this post is a line from the British comedian Eddie Izzard. I suppose I'll take cake. If the choice is cake or death, then I love cake. Eddie Izzard I've read is a fan of the Goon show, Bluebottle and the rest. Maybe someday I'll take a moment to come back and explain why Dartmoor prison today is a mere replica of its former self. But for now remember "If it doesn't exist on the internet it doesn't exist."
11:45:17 PM  ;;
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