PART II. THE BEAM IN MY MIND

Only the imagination is real.
- William Carlos Williams


And now?
Greedily as one we slurp these things down
we eat each other up
we eat knives saucers plates
we eat lamps tables chairs
we eat men women things.
- Theo van Duesburg


Surreal. Those words were probably Williams' and van Duesburg's take on being surreal. To which we beg the question: Which is stranger - fact or fiction, life or literature, surreality or surrealism?

Surreal. My focus goes surreal, running counter-clockwise; I now see Dali's paintings of flying giant eyelashes as truth, and my books and computer and keyboard and this blog as spurious; I am spurious, furious, curious; Who am I? Who are you? Am I you? Are you me? Are you mayumi? Are you you? Where am I? Am I here? Are you there? Are we there? Are we there yet? Am I typing this now? Is this this? Is this that? Is this thisthat? Or is that thatthis?

Surreal, the beam is in my mind. I don't have the capacity, much less the audacity, to talk about things I only have faint knowledge of; wherefore may I give the floor to Surrealism's Founding Father, the one and only Andre' Breton, be careful sir, lest you slip and fall and knock your surreal head off that polished and shiny floor.

A tres, tres blurry existence to one and all, you interesting bloggers. My name is Andre' Breton, a dead Parisian, and to all the unitiated out there, here is my manifesto.

Surrealism: (n) psychic automatism in its pure state by which one proposes to express - verbally, by means of the written word or in any other manner - the actual functioning of thought; it is a nonrational significance of imagery arrived at by the exploitation of chance effects or unexpected juxtapositions.

Surrealism, like Marxism, is a movement - a movement of revolt. But while Marxism's revolt is "only" against the ruling class in a capitalist state, Surrealism's adversary is reason itself, nothing is grander, you tell me dat!

Surrealists believe that the mind, in the attainment of reality, should be liberated from logic and all moral and aesthetic concerns. It is our great aim to reach that certain point, that certain plane, in the mind where beyond realism you and I will attain a new knowledge, and on this score we vow to develop the non-logical - rather than illogical - essence of our works so that the results represent the operation of the great unconscious.

In a classical sense, surrealism is a philosophy as it seeks to discover the mysteries of life; adroitly, it is based on the belief that our dreams are omnipotent and should be harnessed by way of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis and interpretation. We are interested in the study and effects of dreams and hallucinations as well as in the interpretation of the sleeping and waking conditions in the threshold of the conscious mind.

But to really understand the inner conveyance of a Surrealist, you may need to understand our precursors, the Paris' Dadaists, from the Dada in Paris, distinguished from de-doo-doo-doo, de-da-da-da of London's Police, that's all I want to say to you...

Dada was the work of poets who saw in poetry a liberating gesture setting it apart from ordinary Art. Liberate yourself by figuring out how a Dada work works; see this piece of a great Dadaist and analyze it as a manual, as a poem, as a poetic manual or whatever, and then you decide if Dada deserved to be endangered like a dodo.

To Make A Dadaist Poem
by: Tristan Tzara

- take a newspaper
- take some scissors
- Choose from this paper an
article of length you want
to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of
the words that make up this
article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting
one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the
order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.

I, cbs, neither a Dadaist nor Surrealist but an avid follower of experimental art like a veritable uto-uto, treated this poem as a manual and in the process came up with the piece, arrived at by following the steps mentioned above, the chosen newspaper article being found in page B17 of the 11/1/03 issue of The New York Times with this harmless heading: Lights To Return To East River Bridges - and now this piece, if it were really my piece, taken from the final two paragraphs of that article, I lengthily entitled:

This Is Not A Poem, This Is Not My Poem
If This Were A Poem, It Could Not Be Me
Or Could It? Oh Come O'En!

said River Brooklyn special
Representatives bridges the magic
O'Keefe for of the
the of now to connection
cafe they owner has felt
businesses the the the
back bridge New York
jewel its Michael said a.


To recap, from Paris Dada came the Surrealists to form a movement based on principles of consciousness and politics. The aim is nothing more nor less than to challenge and overturn logic and to express in art and literature the workings of the unconscious mind and to synthesize these workings with the conscious mind. The technical objective of Surrealism is to penetrate the deepest layers of the mind and in pursuit of this goal I conceptualized the secrets of the magical surrealist art.

- First, settle yourself;
- Have writing materials ready;
- Concentrate;
- Put yourself in a passive or receptive state of mind;
- Write quickly without any preconceived subject;
- Write quickly so as not to retain or be tempted to reread what you wrote;
- I assure you the first sentence will come of itself naturally;
- Thereafter, a phrase foreign to your consciousness will come out every second;

This, my friends, is The Surrealist Game.

Anything goes.


I drink my mountain rhine, I sit alone, it is 12:39 am and I am by my lonesome, football is dead, my team is dead, coincidentally it is the day of the dead and I have not lit the candles yet as I promised, I promised for my dead. My head is spinning but despite its spinning I think of you my sweet, I think of your ying, I think of your yang, I think of your Jung, your young, you are young, but my concern right now is this: did I spell conscientiously correct?

belle
jobert
jet
freude
ghost
anne
angela
rk
kengkeng
dosn't matter

you all do matter, thanks, thanks, thanks, this is it. This is it! I look forward to the next.

Right now I can't breathe and I don't want to light a candle for my breath.

Boink.