Day 4: Alice Walker, Hito Steyerl, Hera Lindsay Bird
Story: Alice Walker - Strong Horse Tea
This story is incredibly tragic for many reasons, though if I elaborated why I would reduce its powers to something dull.
Tonight in Perth there is supposed to be an apocalyptic cyclone coming like the one in this story:
Storms are nuts. They rock up and wreck stuff and there"s nothing no one can do about it. Everyone just have to deal with it. What else in life is like this? Okay, dictators, wars, economic recessions, mum's new boyfriend. But no one can overthrow or shoot or hang or dump a storm. Storms are just the wind blowing some air and water around. Thats crazy.
Essay: Hito Steyerl - Studies in Vertical Perspective
I read this for university, as I am drawing an isometric map of my city. In this essay on eflux, artist Steyerl gives a critical reading on the birds eye view, which for most of human history had been near-impossible to envision, but with the invention of planes, cameras, drones and google earth, we have become used to it. But Steyerl's article, concerned with surveillance, holds very little interest to me. The main problem I have is her style.
Finally, the perspective of free fall teaches us to consider a social and political dreamscape of radicalized class war from above, one that throws jaw-dropping social inequalities into sharp focus. But falling does not only mean falling apart, it can also mean a new certainty falling into place.
Gushing, abstract, vaguely revolutionary, the kind of speech that works as an essay but one never truly believes. I am sick of it. But I did not focus enough on connecting the breadcrumbs that brought Steyerl to this highfalutin conclusion.
Perhaps with a careful reread I might get something from it but I think her concerns about surveillance are far removed from my own.
Watch me all you want man in the sky, I don't care. You might think you've caught me sunbaking in the nick, that you've got one over on me, but face down on my beach towel, I am mooning you.
Poem: Hera Lindsay Bird - Children are the Orgasm of the World
A very zany prose poem that makes me smile. I really love the flow of her sentences (see the excerpt below).
Are children the orgasm of the world like orgasms are the orgasms of sex? Are children the orgasm of anything? Children are the orgasm of the world like hovercraft are the orgasm of the future or silence is the orgasm of the telephone, or shit is the orgasm of the lasagne. You could even say sheep are the orgasm of lonely pastures, which are the orgasm of modern farming practices which are the orgasm of the industrial revolution. And then I thought why not? I like comparing stuff to other stuff too.
I first heard of Lindsay Bird in a David Berman interview where he said she writes the same kind of poetry he used to write, but does it so much better.
Her poems are always funny, occasionally profound, but often they reach a point where they become too silly, even for me. I guess that is the aesthetic of the zany, where the excessive efforts to entertain become offputting or worriesome, like a friend in the midst of mania.
I have only read her poems from 2017, which for me read like they are of that time, when people boasted about being terminally online. But I really look forward to any new poems. I love reading Hera's weekly advice column for The Spectator. This is really good writing. Whenever I read it, I feel I am reading the funniest, wisest person on the internet.