lapsus linguae

Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment

Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment, an illustrated essay, appears in the Fall 2005 issue of ARS MEDICA, A Journal of Medicine, Health and the Humanities, a new quarterly literary journal that explores the interface between the arts and medicine, and examines what makes medicine an art.

Writing and healing have always been intrinsically linked. ARS MEDICA seeks to provide the reader with vivid examples. Content includes narratives from patients and health care workers, medical history, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, illustrations and photography.” http://ars-medica.ca/

Ars Medica - Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment I began writing Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment as a response to the discourse of disembodiment that was prevalent in early days of the Internet. I never believed that the physical gendered body would be subsumed in an idealized information age. Even in our attempts to externalize and expand upon the processes of the brain through the computational and storage capacities of the computer, the precariousness of the biological body persists. It seems to me that somewhere along the way cultural theory veered away from body politics. In Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment I have tried to examine, from the inside, not just ‘the’ body, but also ‘my’ body in particular. I have focused on the storage and retention of bodily memory in order to explore the relationship and/or disconnect between body and mind that has preoccupied philosophers for generations. In Ethics, Part II: Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind, Spinoza writes: “The human mind is capable of perceiving a great number of things, and … is cable of receiving a great number of impressions… If the human body is affected in a manner which involves the nature of any external body, the human mind will regard the said external body as actually existing… Memory is simply a certain association of ideas involving the nature of things outside the human body, which association arises in the mind according to the order and association of the modifications of the human body… The human mind has no knowledge of the body, and does not know it to exist, save through the ideas of the modifications whereby the body is affected.”

An earlier version of Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment is available for viewing online at: http://Luckysoap.com/notions/

Thank you to: Alison and Ian at Ars Media, for their attention to detail; Elise Moser, for telling me about the journal; OBORO, for supporting the production of the online version; Dave Liss, for including an installation version of the “Nails and Hair” portion in “L’Entrespace II” at the Saidye Bronfman Center; and to Barbara Layne, who instigated the project way back when I was …

“suddenly far from my brain and naked without it”
Notions of the Archival in Memory and Deportment
J. R. Carpenter, http://Luckysoap.com/notions/

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CARVE Vol. II

(A little lit mag that prints the good words of Montreal-area writers.)

Featuring…

The poetry of Maxianne Berger, Ian Cant, John Lofranco, Catherine Paquette and Tom Pokinko

Prose by Emily Anglin, J.R. Carpenter and Ilona Martonfi

A tour of Papeterie Saint-Armand by Andrea Belcham

Reviews of David Solway’s *The Pallikari of Nesmine Rifat*, and Julia Tausch’s *Another Book About Another Broken Heart*

And lovely line-drawings of Montreal scenes by Tom Pokinko

…With a snazzy bookmark insert, letter-pressed by the folks at Papeterie Saint-Armand
Carve - The Cape
Pick up your copy today at The Word Bookstore (469 rue Milton), Local 23 (23 rue Bernard O.), Librarie Clio (Pointe-Claire Plaza) or TWIGS Café (85 rue Ste-Anne, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue)

Or… send $7 to Andrea Belcham, 96 Parkdale Ave., Pointe-Claire, Quebec H9R 3Y7 >>>>> carvezine @ gmail . com

*(Copies of Carve Vol. I still available! Includes the fine literary stylings of Katia Grubisic, Maeve Haldane, Angela Leuck, Scott McRae, Dimitri Nasrallah, Catherine Paquette, Sonja Skarstedt and Sherwin Tjia, with pretty pics by Sarah Robinson)*
. . . . .

The Cape – A Very Short Story

My very short story The Cape has just been published in the new Fall 2005 issue of Carve, a delectable morsel of a magazine published twice a year out of Montréal.

You may also visit The Cape online at: http://luckysoap.com/thecape/

“These events happened so long ago that this whole story is in black and white.”

J. R. Carpenter, The Cape
Montréal 2005.
. . . . .

Reading Martial

When I’m invited to dinner
these days, I don’t get paid
the way I used to. So why
don’t you serve me the same dinner
you eat? You get oysters, fattened
in Lake Lucrine. I cut my mouth
sucking a mussel from its shell.
Mushrooms for you. Pig’s fungus
for me. You’re busy with turbot,
I with brill. You stuff yourself
with a golden turtle dove’s
fat rump. I’m served a magpie
that died in its cage. Why is it,
Ponticus, when I dine with you,
I dine alone? Now the dole’s gone,
you owe me the courtesy
of letting me share your dinner.

Martialis, Epigram lx, Book III
. . . . .

Epigram, after Martial

Recently my résumé was invited out to dinner
and graciously extended the invitation to me.
In that case, our hosts said, miffed,
please also bring a hot side dish.
My résumé roasted, carved and consumed,
I was left to pay my own cab fare home.
. . . . .

Hennessey’s High Pasture

The New Quarterly has accepted my short story Hennessey’s High Pasture for publication. It will appear in Issue #97 (due out January 2006).

“Most nights the dogs and I walk up to Hennessey’s high pasture. You can see the whole King’s County from up there. Even when it’s dark you feel it, the earth curving away from you. But I’m not ready yet. I smoke a cigarette. No matter which way I hold it, the smoke blows toward Earl.” J. R. Carpenter, Hennessey’s High Pasture

. . . . .

Entre Ville, Commissioned by OBORO

I am pleased and honoured to announce that I have been commissioned by OBORO (Montréal) to create a new web art project to be presented in conjunction with the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Conseil des arts de Montréal in January 2006. As a result, this autumn I will once again have the great pleasure and privilege to work with the fine folks at the Oboro New Media Lab.

Artist’s Statement: My studio window opens into a jumbled intimacy of back balconies, yards and alleyways. Daily my dog and I walk through this interior city sniffing out stories. Poetry is not hard to find between the long lines of peeling-paint fences plastered with notices, spray painted with bright abstractions and draped with trailing vines. The result is Entre Ville, a web-based project presented in the vernacular of my neighbourhood, where cooking smells, noisy neighbours and laundry lines criss-cross the alleyway one sentence at a time.

Saint-Urbain Street Heat

. . . . .

Broken Things on Drunken Boat

How I Loved the Broken Things of Rome has been named a finalist in the Drunken Boat PanLiterary Awards – Web Art Section. The final results of the competition will be announced later this fall. Broken Things will appear in the next issue regardless. DrunkenBoat.com is an international online journal for the arts featuring poetry, prose, photography, video, web art, and sound.

How I Loved the Broken Things of Rome was created between 2002 and 2005 in Rome and Montréal with the generous financial support of the Oboro New Media Lab artist in residency programme and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

Milli gazie again to Barbara Catalini in Rome and Stéphane Vermette in Montréal.
. . . . .

Francis Bacon, meet Anne Carson

Francis Bacon, Essays, Of Travel (1625)

“He that travelleth into a country, before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel. That young men travel under some tutor, or grave servant, I allow well; so that he be such a one that hath the language, and hath been in the country before; whereby he may be able to tell them what things are worthy to be seen, in the country where they go; what acquaintances they are to seek; what exercises, or discipline, the place yieldeth. For else, young men shall go hooded, and look abroad little.”

Anne Carson, The Fall of Rome: A Traveller’s Guide, 199?

[Excerpts]

I.
By this time tomorrow I will be a man of Rome.

VII.
Who I am doesn’t matter.
As you see me

fighting to survive,

fighting to be esteemed and honoured
(so that my past vanishes),
you will dismiss me as nothing terrific.

Fair enough,
but there is one thing about me:
I can take you to Anna Xenia.

VIII.
She is a citizen of the ancient republic,
historian of its wars

and ravishing

in
her
armour.

IX.
Now although I hate to travel
I go a lot of places

and have noted

certain recurrent phenomena.
A journey, for example,
begins with a voice

calling your name out
behind you.
This seems a convenient arrangement.

How else would you know it’s time to go?

[…]

Anna Xenia has studied at Oxford.

Maybe
she can explain
some of this to me.

XI.
What is the holiness of the citizen?
It is to open

a day

to a stranger,
who has no day
of his own.

XIV.
There is a wonderful lot of talk in Anna Xenia.
She cocks her head like Cicero
and pretends

I am someone talking back.
Good afternoon.
I am well thanks how are you?

XV.
From deep within
my traveller’s clothes

I watch these conversations take place.

XXII.
What is the holiness of the stranger?
He has none.

XXIV.
A stranger is poor, voracious, and turbulent.
He comes

from nowhere in particular

and pushes prices up.
His method of knowing something
is to eat it.

XXXIII.
Rome collapsed when Alaric ran out the dawn side.

XXXIV.
A stranger is someone who comes on the wrong day.

XL.
A stranger is someone desperate for conversation.

Then why is it I never have anything to say?
We perch in our armour
at the kitchen table.

XLIV.
A stranger is someone
who sits

very still at the kitchen table,

looks down at his knuckles,
thinks someday we will laugh about this,
doesn’t believe it.

LIII.
What is the holiness of conversation?

It is
to master death.

Anne Carson, The Fall of Rome: A Traveller’s Guide
excerpted from Pequod.
. . . . .

Bacon, meet Goethe

Francis Bacon, Essays, Of Travel (1625)

“It is a strange thing, that in sea voyages, where there is nothing to be seen but sky and sea, men should make diaries; but in land-travel, wherein so much is to be observed, for the most part they omit it; as if chance were fitter to be registered than observation.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey, Sea Voyage from Naples to Sicily (1787)

At Sea, March 29. Throughout the night the ship made its quiet progress. The cabins below deck are pleasant and furnished with single berths. Our fellow passengers, opera singers and dancers with engagements in Palermo, are gay and well behaved.

At Sea, March 30. The sun sank into the sea accompanied by clouds and a streak of purple light a mile long… I was not to enjoy this gorgeous sight for long before I was overcome by seasickness. I retired to my cabin, assumed a horizontal position … and soon felt quite snug. Isolated from the outside world, I let my thoughts run freely on the inner one, and … set myself forthwith a serious task … the first two acts of Tasso. These, though roughly similar in plot and action to the ones I have now done, were written ten years ago in a poetic prose. I found them too weak and nebulous, but these defects vanished when, in accordance with my present ideas, I introduced a metre and let the form dominate.

At Sea, March 31. I remained in my horizontal position, revolving and reviving my play in my mind.

At Sea, April 1. By three in the morning, it was blowing a gale. Half awake, half asleep, I kept thinking about my drama… By noon we could make out the promontories and bays of the Sicilian coast, but the ship had fallen considerably to leeward. Now and then we tacked… Once in a while I ventured on deck but kept my poetic project always in mind – by now I had almost mastered the whole play.

At Sea, April 2. By eight in the morning we stood directly opposite Palermo. I was in high spirits. During these last days in the belly of the whale, I have made considerable progress in planning my play. I felt so well that I was able to stand on the foredeck and devote my attention to the coast of Sicily.

Palermo, April 2. Instead of hurrying impatiently ashore, we remained on deck until we were driven off. It might be long before we could again enjoy such a treat for the eyes from such a vantage point… For an artist, there was an inexhaustible wealth of vistas to me seen, and we studied them one by one with an eye to pointing them all.

Palermo, April 3. Here are a few more notes, hastily thrown together: If anything was ever a decisive event for me, it is this trip. No one who has never seen himself surrounded on all sides by nothing but the sea can have a true conception of the world and of his own relation to it… Forgive my scribbling with a blunt pen dipped in the sepia which my friend uses when he retraces his drawings. It will come to you like a whisper while I am preparing another memorial to these happy hours. I shan’t tell you what it is, and I can’t tell you when you will receive it.

. . . . .