my writing styles have changed in response to many things in the past 3-4 years. many of these changes are related to my thoughts about buddhism and veganism. this is a blog post outlining those connections and changes
how i got into veganism and what it means 2 me
in 2005 in high school, i listened to cattle decapitation, a death metal band that is all vegetarians. then i saw a video of slaughterhouses online and said to a friend, i will be vegetarian someday. i went vegetarian after my friend doug did a 30-day vegetarian challenge with my current gf and i realized it is not very difficult
i "became" vegan in 2007 after seeing a video online about egg production. it was the same month as when i read tristan tzara's dada manifestoes. my younger biological bro (biologibro) "became" vegan on the same day as me
in 2008 i read essays online by animal welfare groups such as vegan outreach, and i read peter singer. later in 2008, i felt i disagreed with a lot of peter singer and animal welfare, and i read about veganism as anti-oppression, which i still believe in. i read a lot of the vegan ideal and helped start l.o.v.e.
veganism to me is about not using others without their consent. many species of animals are here on earth. we can never get consent to use animals of other species, yet they experience the consequences of being used (confinement, fear, pain, etc), so i believe in not using them. for a fuller explanation of why i am vegan, watch this video i made
because it is often in opposition to the status quo, i also associate veganism with questioning things in general. to me veganism feels connected to other anti-oppression movements and aesthetic tendencies that question the mainstream (like dada, or most avant-garde movements). sometimes when i say “veganism” i am actually thinking of things that other people would consider lgbttqq, anti-racism, or feminism
how i got into buddhism, and what it means 2 me
i read walt whitman a lot in early 2008 and eventually identified with his non-duality. he said, “great is wickedness . . . . i find i often admire it just as much as i admire goodness” (whole poem). here are numerous unpublished excerpts from my 2008 poems in a whitmanian style... if you are not interested, just skip over it
! consider This moonlight
any moment
like Jesus could be coming down
, petting a Turtle
slowly in his arms
...
! the stars Tonight / also , They
remind me of Jesus
they do / but he has duct-taped
grandPianos on each leg this time &
caster wheels ! o babY i mean that !!
...
yes ! i 'm huge on hiLLS ! im on
The big EARth ! O
i come to her i'm so beautiful &
The BAth of
nooN is here It's yellow It's beautiFul !!
...
o HAPPINESS you have ended philosophy thank you
...
The morning is beauTiful
eVerything else
is beaTiful Too i am aLive i am aLIve
and FInally
aLL searches are dONE
! yOu
The bright Noon
...
"i love to hear you talking,"
that is a sentence
as well
...
a pOET tells us to LOOk at our Hands.
Then we do it, its wonderful.
...
Then i say good bye for all of my life.
...
if i Fall down to die
, Then grass will be a beautiful surface
...
i am like The squares of Hay
pLummeting
thru doorways of Barns...
i am like the Reliable hands of
Math
...
i am like the dogs
They are
happy to see out a window
i like it also
...
If Nobody Else Ever Lived
It Would Be Enough Anyway
Because I Am So Alive That I Make Up
For Anything Else That Happens Or Doesn't.
...
we might as well clap in all The rooms !
any rooms we can!
...
Everybody come here i love you
...
i stand along the lake.
ah.
I think there is nothing better than it
...
I think i will put
my hand
in This place
( it's good i just stay for ever
in summer 2008, i repeatedly watched the ending to the activist/conspiracy documentary zeitgeist. actually, i embedded it on my myspace page. i really liked the quotes by richard alpert, so i looked him up and watched some talks by him on google video
in the fall of 2008 i read be here now by ram dass (the name richard alpert started using later). it was pretty cool in my opinion, like hippie self-help with drawings. i emailed my vegan activist friend victor about buddhism because he is a buddhist. victor recommended two books to me
in february 2009 i read zen mind, beginner's mind by shunryu suzuki, my favorite book ever since then. there is audio of it on youtube (get a taste). i have practiced zazen/shikantaza (zen meditation) with various amounts of consistency since 2009
buddhism for me is about sincerity and feeling ok. it is about having integrity and doing what i feel is right, but not being dogmatic, dramatic, or attached to my ideas
buddhism overlaps with veganism for me. my ideas about veganism are more easily understood in the context of buddhism. with both, i am trying to find/create a way of life that is calm/enjoyable for me and good for others and society
poetics of liberation, dada, and pushing against
in 2007 i read poems for the millennium volumes 1 and 2 cover to cover. a lot of the commentary helped me intuitively understand modernism and postmodernism. i think the commentary shaped my writing and life philosophy a lot
i came to understand modernism as questioning or pushing against the establishment. i understood postmodernism as a simultaneous pushing against the establishment and pushing against dogmatic or restrictive versions of modernism (or any dogmatic countercultures)
my understanding of modernism and postmodernism as “pushing against” relates to an idea my friend victor wrote about: the importance of criticism. in our vegan blogging, our group l.o.v.e. has questioned other activist groups as much as questioning speciesism and non-vegans
i developed an idea of veganism as questioning the mainstream, other vegans, and myself. this fit well with buddhist attitudes toward growth and change (suzuki’s talk on beginner’s mind)
my writing style illustrated “pushing against” by doing what other people said i shouldn’t do. people say you should use a normal font, for example, so i have used large helvetica, unusual capitalization, and the lowercase “i” that people say is immature. this tendency in my writing has been a way for me to assert freedom
my inspirations in this area have been dada, some flarf (see below for more on flarf and buddhism), youtubepoop videos, and some tao lin
ron silliman, lyn hejinian, and experience as a series of separate events
in 2009-10, i read from various language poets. the writings i disliked seemed to be more intellectual, scholarly, and dense. the writings i liked usually had simpler sentences and images with a fragmented form
in ron silliman’s ketjak (pdf), the first poetry book to make me really smile and read more than 20 pages in a row in 2009, there are a lot of sentences and fragments that are not connected to each other
Red shingle roof. I’m unable to find just the right straw hat. Primal soup. Pineapple slices. Extra paper money was kept in the closet, rolled by my grandmother into the shade of the samll window there, behind the coat hanger heavy with old ties.
i like the feeling of reading these fragments and encountering separate images. there are sentences about reading before dawn, eating oranges on a balcony, and rain in the summer. i feel nostalgic and appreciative when i think of these things, and the lack of continued plot emphasizes the feeling for me. instead of focusing on a larger theme or message, i just appreciate individual events and images
ron silliman said in an interview that the message of his writing is to “be here now,” and i think i feel that message from his writing. for me that message is connected to my ideas of buddhism. he also said, "you can just read what's there and that will tell you everything you need to know about my work"
lyn hejinian’s my life has a similar effect for me, and so does robert grenier’s sentences (which emphasizes plotlessness even more because it is 500 notecards with no order). fiction by tao lin and zachary german haven given me a similar feeling when the scenes are not clearly connected
tao lin, bell hooks, and direct statements and minimalism
this is similar to the above section, but also adapted more to sentence-level tone. about a year ago, i read and really liked shoplifting from american apparel (sfaa) by tao lin (and later, ellen kennedy's prose and zachary german's and timothy willis sanders'). the minimalist tone makes sfaa feel clean and calm to me. this excerpt is from sfaa, and the characters are at a bar:
Kaitlyn and Sam went upstairs into an outdoor area and each did a cartwheel. Kaitlyn broke a glass and covered her mouth with her hand. Sam covered his mouth with his hand then tried to climb onto the roof.
“You can’t climb that, someone said. “And this area is closing.”
another writer that influenced me with minimalist tone is bell hooks. i read feminist theory: from margins to center, which i recommend. i liked how she acknowledges both sides of a debate without using rhetoric to dismiss other people's ideas. bell hooks has been referred to as a buddhist, but i haven’t read any writings by her on the subject
influenced by sfaa, bell hooks, and maybe other things, i started writing in more minimalist styles (including for chapbook revisions and my blog) in spring 2010. my writing process now includes cutting over half of my drafts usually. in late april, i wrote something to a teacher about this style, which was maybe also influenced by haiku:
I try to remove extra lines until only the core remains. I try to remove evaluative bias, rhetoric, and adjectives. The line is just there. “This is the case. This is also the case.” One of my poems is, “oh, you have a smock on.” The reader is given a phrase and no context, no explanation, no “good guys” or “bad guys.”
i have written some minimalist fiction that is kind of like zachary german's, but i don't know if i will publish it. my vegan video has narration that is mainly straight-forward statements, as well
another aspect of minimalist tone for me is trying not to be dramatic. whenever i feel embarrassed of my older writings, it is usually because i was being very dramatic. my minimalist tone on my blog was partly an effort to be less dramatic
just making statements allows you to convey things like your beliefs, or tell a story, without being obsessive or dogmatic. it is just there, and it seems accurate because it is just the fact and nothing else, and it feels like you are less worked up about it
i have used a direct minimalist tone to write clear helpful blog posts, but unless you are interested in learning the information, the writing style can be boring i guess. this may be a reason why i am shifting more to flarf styles (see below), especially for my twitter and facebook updates
irony, flarf humor, and laughing at the seriousness of humans
in spring 2010 i read the front by k. silem mohammad and a couple other flarf books. flarf is a genre/school based on a method of making collage poems from search engine results. however, i think there is a kind of “flarfy” tone and flarf style of humor, so for me “flarf” signifies a voice also
check out the following lines from the front:
“damn I wish the Garden State soundtrack didn’t kick so much ass” (71)
“Get it through your head: your government doesn’t give a fuck about you.” (9)
“She had a big ass then, she’s got a big ass now.” (9)
“To the farmhouse, fuckboys!” (9)
“So I have determined that Myspace is creepy. / You may ask how I have determined this. / Well I will tell you.” (10)
“Rocking the Sprint Campus” (14)
“oh no, brother, you won’t score” (14)
“why in blazes would a man walk down a hot road / with his private parts hanging out” (98)
“it was basically high noon and I was jogging” (98)
“as my eyes were closing here were these amazing lines / ‘a frozen path / a path in autumn’ // may you write many more beautiful poems and songs” (98)
“it was like heaven to have those shade trees” (99)
“I must do things ASAP / (most people have heard of ASAP)” (78)
“let me just finish by saying that yes sometimes I am offended” (59)
“and I am offended by some of your comments” (59)
“I avoid a lot of rap music because I am offended by the words they use” (59)
these lines made me laugh a lot, and they have influenced my style in my recent poems. many of my recent tweets have a similar voice, as well. mohammad was also my original source for “boing boing,” a phrase i have adapted and used frequently, and which poncho peligroso has also taken up
for me, this style of humor makes me laugh at people who present themselves or some thing really seriously
in my helvetica poems, many of the cultural references are to things i actually like, and yet i am laughing at the speaker a little for how they think they are being clever, awesome, or badass. for me it is a loving and playful kind of humor, not meant to be really scathing satire, and my source is often older writings by myself (msn messenger history)
i think i am most relaxed/sincere when i am laughing, and i think laughing at yourself and your own beliefs suggests detachment for me. the worldview suggested to me by this kind of humor feels incompatible with dogma or violence. it is playful, goofy, and ridiculous
some of my other favorite sources for this kind of humor/style are hipster runoff (tweet, tweet); zachary german (blog post); tree_bro (tumblr, tumbr, tweet, tweet); and marshall mallicoat (tweet and his blog title youtube.com)
shunryu suzuki and warm, simple, detached writing tone
my minimalist and flarf styles are also shaped by a warm tone. i like to address writings to “my friends,” use simple words, and sign off emails with “warmly” or “sincerely”
shunryu suzuki has a tone that i think is simple and warm in this way. here are excerpts from zen mind, beginner’s mind, my favorite book:
“our approach is just to be concentrated on a simple basic practice and a simple basic understanding of life.” (65)
“There is no secret in our way. Just to practice zazen . . . is our way.” (57)
“when my talk is over, your listening is over. There is no need to remember what I say; there is no need to understand what I say. You understand; you have full understanding within yourself. There is no problem.” (55)
“I do not feel like speaking after zazen. I feel like the practice of zazen is enough. But if I must say something I think I would like to talk about how wonderful it is to practice zazen.” (47)
another example of a warm tone is peter orlovsky, especially due to his misspellings. i recommend his book clean asshole poems and smiling vegetable songs, although it can be hard to find (out of print)
andrew topel usually has a very warm tone in correspondences, and i also got this feeling in some emails from tao lin beginning “Dear Steve." also here is a quote from poncho peligroso's manuscript the romantic
hey pretty girl
i like you
i like being around you and talking to you
for me, the warm tone suggests a simple innocent persona and outlook that is not involved in much intellectual or rhetorical banter (a post by tree_bro that illustrates and maybe exaggerates the simple tone). this tone feels kind to me, which for me also relates to a simple idea of veganism as trying to be nice to others
ok my friends, that is all.. i want to bask in your love for eternity
as i posted on my tumblr, i will be announcing info about my collection of helvetica poems later this week
thank you for reading. if you like my blog, please subscribe/follow or remember to come back
related posts /
+ introduction to dada and the relationship to zen buddhism
+ aesthetics and identity
+ 'you can help stop this' (vegan video)
