(This is Kantô I.2. To participate, riff/comment below)
Alas again,
in the middle of life’s journey…
Or some such thing!
Better shout: The American in Paris is an Iranian in New York!! The American in Paris is an Iranian in New York!!! The American in Paris is an Iranian in New York!!! Add more exclamation points!!!! And more!!!!! And more…
On street corners, from rooftops and in dark alleys, arms thrust open in the middle of boulevards bracing for the oncoming traffic even, in the middle of life’s journey, carry on and shout and whisper and murmur and even turn to some dude sitting on the stool next, at the local bar (not frequenting them much anymore!) turn and say, without much intro, hey, dude, the American in Paris is an Iranian in New York, you know, the American in Paris is an Iranian in New York…
In the middle of this, life’s journey, will they heed the call! How this is not a gratuitous call. Not a random howl in the great void. How… This is the poet, the poet of the new world. Presence and absence abolished. Here and there, simultaneously. Throw out the words: identity, exile, politics, situation, writing, home, land, language, mother… and the others… we know which… throw them around and sequence them in some fashion… get sentences… some coherent, others less so… and then…
No: all over and goodbye to all — that. New frontiers and new techs. New ways of being/writing. New ensembles… But… also… The tensions… This, then: the chronicle, the theory, is not so much the espousing of one or another realm, but the exposing of how the tensions, the possibilities, fashion such anxities… for us, the children of the book — children of the book AND the revolution… Future of the book, too… and whence…
The performance of the anxiety, of the indecisions, of the uncertainties surrounding the multiple directions one can go… A text, one, and all its reconstitutions, its rewritings, reinventions… Ruptures and reconstrucitons…
Performance of the tension between modalities of scriptance… If scriptance is a way of existing with and through writing, there must be a place, a framework, a space, for the chronicling, the putting in motion of an unfolding theory, of this new scriptance. Not one, actually, many. New modes of circulation. New methods of creation. New modalities of notation. New manners of scription. New networks of dissemination. New ways of public-ation. New ethos of existation…
The American in Paris is an Iranian in New York. The American in Paris is an Iranian in New York. I know, hesitation seeping in… Taking out the exclamation points… Wonderings, whispers… Will they heed the call… Will they…
The first canto then carries on… Always the hesitation, always the restarts… always the relaunchings… OF course… In the middle of life’s journey…
I saw from above the passersby in the streets of dimlit cities…
How the whisper… The American in Paris is an Iranian in New York…
(The American in Paris is an Iranian in New York.)