#134 … Yorick contemplates the gentleman’s tomb …

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Born before the mediated perspectives we now so cherish, Yorick the resurrected character of a noble’s jester, conjures – tomb lounging; a post-death activity presumedly common among the ruling classes. Fancy stuff deposited in the deep for infinity.

Yorick, a medieval skeleton [ or do you say “early-modern” ? early-modern seems a bit clinical, austere, academic don’t you think? ] … any way, a jester’s skeleton who imagined what ( he thought ) his late gentleman’s tomb ought to look like: the vast riches aggressively accumulated and laid to rest with pharaonic nobility.

Upon visiting, that tragic luxury seems missing, it is just a bit to vacant.

The story of those [ lacking ] bits of the material life are suitable fodder for a comic playwright. The historical perspective an archeologist might gain poking through this tomb, is limited.  But the post-modern world we are supposedly living in (and any playwright adapted to these times) might find these items less than violently raucous commercially-adaptable comic; they do seem slow, rural, even benign.  The tomb lacks the medieval shower of gilt and bronze and the modern proliferation of golf clubs, drones, and digital gadgets, so where would the story be found?  With Yorick?

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Historical tragedies and conjured comedies seem to agree it is probably best to reflect on them in the upper strata, here and now. Linked burdens and various (yet to be forgiven) vintage incendiary devices are the treasures of many a tomb.

 

#127 … Yorick’s Riddle, a love poem for a common THING …

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As usual, Yorick, (lacking the fleshy problem that leads to love poems) must utilize his romantic yearnings on utilitarian objects.  Being a jester by character and profession he will leave you, just for a week, as you ponder this riddle.

A week from today … the answer.

#110 … considering the winds of inspiration and coffee drips …

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Artists, this time of year, sit in garrets (if they can find one) or, more commonly, off in some corner table considering the splotched patterns of spilled coffee as the wind blows against the wall, just inches away .

It is March, the glum, gloom, precursor to Spring The Delightful and the most appropriate time for the poetic imagination (unfortunately often in the most prosaic pathetic pseudo-journalistic rant form).

Behind the cages of curled-up circus animals here at the tent and slightly upwind into the corners; the wail of the wind, grey of the sky, and general earthiness has encouraged poetic rants from those emotives who have wintered-over here.IMG_0011

 

 

While the jesters play with their jester’s sticks, taunting the winds and the windy-wise ones there are voices coming from the corners.  “But, I didn’t…(followed by indecipherable words) came several times.  “But, I didn’t…”.  But, I didn’t…” (“didn’t” what, or to what end is not clear).

 

 

 

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You have probably heard many similar expressions, repetitive, loud, hammered with an unceasing mechanical rhythm;  but these are presently unadorned by electronic amplification and overwhelmed by the prairie wind and animal snoring.

It might be some marvelous insight predicted by how the coffee got spilt.

 

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And so it goes, artistic inspiration. Oh, and the answer to last weeks riddle from Yorick?

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#106 … Yorick’s answer …

 

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Last weeks riddle answer – cartoon bubbles – what else would you think? Don’t you love ’em.

 

 

 

 

 

They carry the snippy-snippet word load, the work of thoughts from olden days, the morning pulp-print news and funnies. The bargain discounts, news, and obituaries all yellowed into past-time; but thankfully the cartoon bubbles hold ponderings and blunt statements, new for your perusal. And occasionally a bit of real humor.IMG_0001

But they lack the graceful, lyrical, thought carriers of Yorick’s times – banderoles – glorious gold and silken word captures in Latin, Greek, and oligarchy French (never sniveling crude and vulgar jokes).  But alas (“alas” is a wonderful word for exasperating times don’t you think [?] … alas), but alas, we can’t read or understand Latin, Greek, and Frenchy-fied words.

So maybe there were some unseemly lines, some dash-out bits of adolescent smart-aleck.

But now it is best, into the foreseeable future, to put the snideness in a cartoon bubble.

 

#105 … Yorick writes a love poem …

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On a different note. Yorick, five hundred years since love-poems would lead to a romantic consummation, still likes the form and applies it to riddles concerning commonplace things. Please enjoy the following and revisit next week to see if you have ascertained the right answer.

 

 

 

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#101 … considering Yorick’s greetings …

IMG_0001He and She, our volunteered docents here at the Temporary Museum of Enfant Terrible Culture, have returned following last years “stress”.  They are romantic and absurd, or (with some humor), absurdists grasping for that “romantic” ideal, ( the mainspring of their “stress” [?] ). All the while youngsters play, acquire skills; practicing with material portents of their own demise.

As this year begins, Yorick, has usurped the “greeter” role (a common occupation for the aging types), validating an anachronistic medieval jester’s anarchical behavior: loopy banderoles leak from his exoskeleton ( his soul … venting [?] ).

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Containing the wit and wisdom of a half-millenium of experience, Yorick is given to pondering: arthritis remains  whilst spewing and scribbling (a singular complaint living as a jumble of bones) however, poetic intellect enjoys the leanness, the empty aura of all flesh.

As with so many others who ponder and spout, ponder and scribble; Yorick is incomprehensible to those still fleshed out – and trapped in – glandular, hormonal, and sensory tangles, hours, minutes, and who “verily doest much stress”.

Riddles and romance poems were the joy of his bawdy troubadour youth, little valued in this age of cynical utility. With that joy, Yorick is modernizing love-poem riddles as an entrance challenge to the tent. Riddled words about common (sometimes loved) things.

You know what this is… just try…

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#45…comic bubbles…

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We have just had a mixed media poetry performance ( or endless vitriolic political rant with celebratory cliches ), here in the Temporary Museum of Enfant Terrible Culture.  The poet just wanted to add some colorful beauty to surround and lift the words. Apparently not so elevated as to be pushed into awe, just some run-of-the-mill beauty.  But the bubbles were destroyed; there was little hope, they wouldn’t quite stay in the air, sorta just crashed, unnumbered.

After the first thousand attempts, there should have been an outpouring of communal joy.  The happiness of seeing the not-so-good get smashed, and then the succeeding attempts;  watching a human ( poetic to be sure ) enclose words that resonate, sing and harmonize, and pulsate enlivening other words.  That shoulda been a party, it would unite.  It seems like a happy haptic public poetic sequence, but we missed it. There should have been a holiday marking the thousandth failure. But it is so long ago and didn’t seem then like a notable event, and now no ceremony is likely.

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Yorick, who ponders both the comic and the tragic, would be happy to help the poet.  He knows that first there is pain (more than a smashed finger), sometimes then, clawing; that inability to reach beauty, not to mention Awe ( the overwhelming).  But anyhow, there is pain, then the reality, something has to be done,  then the hope that something may improve the originating pain, then the effort (scribbling), money (if lucky ), then stuff, the manipulation, arriving at – the imperfections.  Followed by maybe enclosing all in modern media bubbles,  for safe keeping.

Yorick, being born of “olde”, doesn’t quite get the isolation, no matter the utility.

The bubble may be the modernist’s  most significant enterprise.  That ability to enclose things, quotes, economic plans, political slogans; separating deeds and words.  Bubbles, bubbles make people happy, don’t they?  But bubbles, real bubbles, happy bubbles don’t need utility: they just are –  floating away in the breeze.

Some bubbles don’t even have air, they are built, big expletive markers helping the poetic anarchist emote.img_0001

They replace having a touchable community in completing the poets deeds.

Next Saturday we begin to celebrate something easier, the Season.

 

 

#40…considering cannon-fodder and pundits….

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Cannonfodder, alas, young men… punditfodder.

Fodder (horse food of the coarse variety) various leaves and stems some grains and grasses, digested.  It’s the fuel to propel a horse ( and presumably an anarchistic unicorn).  Its’ the sole ingredient of horse-puky,  depositing nutrients back in the soil, and, an attractive home for flies and the attention of dung beetles.

Pundits, emotional fodder feeders, have been giddy servers of hysteria.  The vulgar and the purists here at the tent have gobbled it up: diatribes to return the anarchistic emotives a greatness here at the reunion of enfant terribles.    We thought that the anarchical enfant terribles would remain expressive individuals, unaffected by, and even resisting, nativists groupings.  But deposits of the pundit’s fodder provide nutrients for young men and giddiness for old-school women, toady breeders for the bullys, remnants of the golden-age of clans, mother trolls of the shadow-world.

img_0003Once again the punditic heralds bluster calls for others to risk their valiantry (and lives and money) on the fields honor is unified by an incessant “drumming”.  Rim-shot/rim-shot/rim-shot/rim-shot—those driving snaps on the edge!  There, wap! wap! wap! the pundits coarse syntax obliterates personal melody and destroys by distraction any moving harmony.  The reunion of anarchists promises individual artistics doing their own thinking, but alas, the narrow clan is more tempting in its’ call to belligerence and irresponsibility, and slow-moving coup d’tat.

 

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If today we view military as missiles, microbes, drones, and hackers we still need the pundit’s fuel to commend our valiantry to actions (with costs no higher than a violent video game?).

Since art lost its’ nativity emotion (when artists freed artists), that nativist-will seems to return when the driving-drumming-staccato blares ever louder;  obliterating artists in favor of emotives and dull forces, and pundits.

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Yorick mocks the pundits speaking for the dead. Nonetheless marching re-commences among pundit-fodder, awaiting a bit of fame or infamy.

 

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Up to the vultures, then gravity arcs spent shadows,

 

 

 

 

 

…with lots and lots and lots of blood on their boots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Join us next Saturday…for a big rock rising.