CITY LIGHTS LIVE! Nathaniel Mackey with Fred Moten

well buenas noches it is so beautiful to see so many faces in the zoo mundo with us tonight um i am broadcasting to you live from the third floor of city lights books in san francisco giving you a little send you a little bit of bookstore love people this is the offices of our dearly departed patriarch lawrence for lingerie so um for those of you that don't know you've tuned into city lights live uh city lights has uh made the transition to the zoo mundo during this pandemical time remember when we used to do the uh readings on the poetry room you know and everyone get all sweaty and we can only fit 10 people in there at once now city of lights live is a guy in the comfort of your own homes you don't have to wear pants you can enjoy yourselves eat noodles whatever but um tonight we are so very excited to be presenting uh i'm i'm so very excited i can't i can hardly contain myself that tonight we are celebrating the launch of maestro nathaniel mackey's much anticipated new book release it's called the double trio so uh make some zoom noise for this beautiful creation it's in the world now um yeah and joining uh maestro daniel mackie tonight as a companion reader is the one and only master of fred motin so give it up for mr fred moton and azumundo with us tonight um yeah both of these both of these amazing beings are going to be talking and dialogue and daniel's going to be reading some from this book and at the end of the session we're going to be taking questions from you the audience members so um during the conversation if you feel compelled por favor uh put your question in the comments and at the end i'll be reading it to the gentleman and we'll be having a nice q a at the end there so i don't want to talk too much i want to let these guys go so let me just quickly read a bio from each of them and then we'll get started on this amazing event um so for those of you that haven't heard master nathaniel mackey is the award-winning author of several books of fiction of exquisite rhythmic lyricism his book forum has called them he's also the author of numerous editions of poetry and criticism and has received numerous honors for his work including the national book award and poetry for splay anthem the stephen henderson award from the african american literature and culture society the bowling giant prize and the ruth lily poetry prize master omaki is the reynolds prize professor of english at duke university city lights books was honored to uh be able to publish numerous books with mr mackey's including a teddy d and what said surya as well as school of udra joining him tonight is the one and only maestro fred motin fred motin is an american cultural theorist poland scholar whose work explores critical studies black studies and performance studies he's a professor of performance studies at new york university and distinguished professor emeritus at the university of california riverside and the university of iowa fred moten's scholarly texts include the under commons fugitive planning and black study which was co-authored with stefano harney in the break the aesthetics of the black radical tradition and the universal machine published by duke university press in 2018. he's also published numerous poetry collections including the little edges the field trio b jenkins and houston's tavern so might post your questions for the q a at the end and uh there will be some links to purchase both master omoten and master mackie's books in the in the comment as well do that it's a great way to support the bookstore so now without further ado give it up for nathaniel mackey and fred modson thank you josiah um i'm very happy to be here and uh kind of returned to city lights where i used to publish and used to visit and particularly happy to be here with uh my good friend fred moten this will just be another installment in this conversation we've been having for what 40 some years uh something like that um so i i asked fred to um choose some poems for for me to read from double trio and um and he put together a a set list for me so he he's really the dj tonight and i'm just the vinyl uh you see him sitting up there with this you guys headphones on um so i i'm gonna ask him to um to dj um come in and say a little bit about um what he asked me to read and then i'll i'll read a couple of things and then we'll come back to something um something else he asked me to read and then we'll check and see what the time looks like and do what we can do in the time that we have fred uh well thanks nate i'm uh it's an honor to be here i'm i'm so happy to to be here to celebrate the you know the publication of this book which is the book's not the right word um this double book or this this trio of double books um which is so monumental um and at the same time um so much in the middle of this long trajectory that you're still on um and obviously you know it's a beautiful thing not only to to recognize what you've accomplished here but to but to realize at the same time that there's so much more so much more to come um and and part of what i guess i've been thinking about uh over the last week as i really tried to to to figure out how to open this book is i guess the the best way to put it to figure out how to approach how to approach the double trio um and and and to really begin to rediscover you know some of the most fundamental and elemental elemental parts of what of what you've been doing for for 40 years longer than that obviously now and um and so that maybe one of the phrases that resonated in my head uh or the a little a little uh a little resonance that occurred in my mind was the resonance between double book and double back um there's this doubling back that that feels to me like it's characteristic of of your sound um it it reminds me of a bunch of different musicians but the one i think i'm thinking of that it the the person who it really reminds me the most of i think is john gilmore and when i listen to gilmore i feel like i'm constantly there's this sort of really intense interplay between between recursion and extension um and and i i thought of it you know i wrote this to you the other day that when i'm reading when i'm reading your poetry it feels like uh it feels like there's an arm reaching into some both new and old terrain but the reach of that arm the reach you know the the extension of that arm moves by way of a kind of curl um i'll tell you what it reminded me of imagine it reminded it was as if i kept thinking that there's a tree it a tree with the lamb that wraps around itself right and when the tree reaches out it reaches out by way of that that recursion it reaches out by way of us this kind of intense circle and um and of course that circling is is complicated um it made me think of the three terms that you that that are sort of fundamental to to your book from 2006 play anthem um you know braid fray and nub um this imagine a tree that reaches around itself to reach out and in a way it also is always eroding or cutting out cutting off that reach too so that um and then the loss of that reach becomes a theme um that you know so that there's always this yearning at the same time as there's always this reaching it's it's it's a it's an extraordinary accomplishment to to create that kind of topological confusion for a reader and that topological and topographical confusion can become uh it's just it's such an amazing terrain to find oneself lost in um anyway i i wanted to i wanted to have you you know to ask you to read a couple of different couple sets i guess and and the first set is from song of the and booboo 142 and moo 122 which are both from the first volume tagged back towards the end and um and i guess i was thinking really also about how these two threads how these two extraordinary lines these two extraordinary long songs go together how you put them together um how they're braided together how they rub up against one another um how they how they how they turn one another into into that that nub of yearning um and a hub of yearning too so um i don't know that's i guess that's the call um moment's omen uh moments omen which is song of biand boo 142 and all accruing to the one which is moved 122nd part so okay okay thank you fred uh for for mentioning john gilmore um who was a player that um i just couldn't get enough of i mean you know i still can't get enough of uh he's on all those on raw discs and you know but some others as well but as you would talk and i was thinking about one of the qualities that really um spoke to me in his playing which i think you get at you know right on you know with this business of the the tree limb reaching around the back of the the trunk uh before coming forward and what i heard in john gilmore's playing was this sense that um there's no guarantee of retention that you know like you say it's always eroding and you have to keep bringing it up and bringing it back and making sure that it's still there that you can't rest assured that you retain what has gone before so he would advance the solo but he would you know be doing this nervous thing or it sounded nervous like is the head still back there you know and he you know he reached back it makes you make sure it's still there you know and i i think that's you know so big a part you know of our tradition that you know uh we do have these you know retentions you know as melville herzkovitz you know called them back in 1940 talking about our connection to to africa but you know they're so constantly preyed upon and so costly eroded you know you know we have to keep looking over our shoulder you know uh uh you know to make sure you know that they're still there and i think that's that that's come into the stylistics of you know of so much of you know our expressive production and you know um it's infectious and you know i caught it too so yeah you know you put your finger on something that's that's that's salient and vital but uh but let me shut up you know and and and let me shut up and and let the work that we're talking about speak so i'm going to read the two poems that you mentioned from ted's bet the first of the books or double books in in the box um uh song of the unbolu 142 which is subtitled moments omen we were on a train somewhere on our way to california florida panama and the bahamas lay behind abandoned boys and girls again the band of us we threw our votes toward the polling place too far to reach southern arrest had set in we set our sights west sunset's chemical sky some new recognizance bomb the omens notice might be lone coast obliquity said come hither steeped in solvency bittersweet obliquity bend fit were at the end of it but not lone coast arrivancy lone coast obliquities behest we had just gotten started we were barely off a dream of outmost arrival obliged us the asymptotic parcel it was notwithstanding a blessing we were bent on boom beyond any lone coast rapprochement either we stood in the line wrapped around the world or we sat on a train headed west ids and see through ink either way we circumambulated unsure which the ballot box our kaaba stone black rock no way to look through or look into it no matter it lay broken or because it lay broken come from no sky we knew we were scared and afraid fear meant we knew something scared being scared was knowings omen moments gnosis the alone lay waiting the we we were afraid we'd be i knew there wasn't no we i knew i knew we less than wee's rumor i knew it was a feeling from before i knew there was the humming made at least i snuck a peek at where the alone were lone coast in taglio a grimace in the wind the it of it might only be the hum of it i saw heard what it made me imagine i saw an aggrieved omen we were a moan away from why they take it away why they tried to we were asking a lady dressed in black stood in the aisle and started dancing otherwise we sat with our refugee blankets tossed over us flags we later learned of the possessed why we the had we were asking wanting more to think of an earlier life some lifted sense something said getting out of a car when we were 19. so it was and so it went so we said and saw it come true this possession got hold of us possessed us got us happy lone coast abandoned woven into the blankets we wore now it was a bus we were on going backwards no matter we sat in front where was the ballot box we were asking where did they put it we soon saw the way the fae design of it away from lone coast while on it none of us knowing where none of us knowing when we were in the aisle now the lady in black our leader lone coast islander she intimated come hither gave the air a bump with her hips and gave it a grind give it all a don't care damn we took her to me she was the moment's woman frustration's main squeeze given to paradox don't care damn we gave it up to all of us only there not knowing why she made us admit she took it from juke to flamenco before we could blink back stiff head and chin high heels hammers face rationing pride and duress eyes elsewhere her hands bore mudras a sign from the east it seemed don't care damn a danced indifference dance don't cares tywheel heels hit the floor we'd had enough the lady in black's heels hit and ours followed heels hit the floor on the bus that had been a train the bus that again was a train when our heels hit a web staring growl went up as they hit ponte hondo's friend a breathy reed squawk behind each of us a kundalini black snake moan a buttress it seemed it was in back of us gravely strafe camaron would have blown had he blown a horn thus it was we spoke of clowns and kings each of us conducting our lone apocalypse nature boy before we knew it was on the box that wasn't there instead we spoke with our feet and early joy relived in the dream came next lone coast reconnaissance dreamt of intelliki hinted what a rival might be slogan it was was dance was a weapon for the weaponless would be some would have said it wasn't some next level stuff we'd have none of it a way of being away that brought out in was all it was frown line amenity a wrinkle in the wind noses up as though we took offense what it was was we did take offense ballot box absconded to your foot no one would not have deep song dances her tour was no shuffle all heal was what it was all stomp and uh here is mu 122nd part called all accruing to the one again we came to speak of the one an idea whose time had gone and come back on a balcony overlooking the hill sloping west sun we turned away from squinting there was the one we have by not having huff explained a lost or a secret someone stashed inside appearance put away there was the one half can't keep hold of split between it and the it of it one short for beautiful one next enuncia spoke so prim and so proper this go containment's avatar this time around the eloquent life huff held forth about she'd have none of philosoph against all odds it she said is all there is of it no such it as the is of it no it inside it held apart no split no one that's not one the one i'd have said we might as well stare at the sun had i spoken zeno pulled my arm as i went to speak and i said nothing itamar said i'll talk about the one gave him a headache anunncia kept at it even more let the one be the one she exhorted a theme she parsed and repeated not letting it be if letting go was what it meant no raw want no raw one which she abide albeit raw was the one that be no one but she cooked and cooled it no letting be the itch she said was all there was all she said accrues to the one no two ways about it had by it we have it she said no way out the balcony shook the building slid down the hill in the backs of our heads too prone to throw our hands up too in touch with collapse the one was our hands and our feet were the one and our bellies and our minds and everything was burning with it a coral keening rose up from the dunes that were not there the sahara so far from lone coast but also not we poured drinks all around and we called for more shabby all thought not of the one unwelcome world pivot a perfume like worry the strings quivered with our bodies leaving us or we them tell me about the one was on everyone's lips said so as to seem offhand albeit inwardly each of us begged so much having been said we wanted more tell me about the one i turned and said to zeno standing next to me tell me about the one he turned and said to zanette standing next to him so it went passed on by each of us tell me about the one planetary pitch pivot pure vicissitude risk we took telling taken back in the asking tell me about the one a kind of hurt put on us having to told as we were warned we'd be suddenly sophia stood next to me we needed to talk about it tomorrow's book of we needed to talk about itamar's talk of her book she said calling it her so-called book she would hear none of it the book he dreamt her spread legs would make was she to open them the lineage of win the lineaments of when such were she said now it's not the time i said tell me about the one something ominous began to build as we thought of the one lowercase o's nonchalance no matter the dead had come back for the day all their favorite food was on the table smothered pork chops pigeon peas and rice chicken and dumplings candy yams macaroni salad mustard greens on and on tell me about the one was the grease on their lips on ours the unchu was dead kissed us askew sloppy drunk tell me about the ones unanswered prayer we were waiting to see the one but were it the dead said water all around but thirsty the one the wet kiss they gave there was the one and there was the one that was tough was explaining not so much the one that got away as the one that was the one that it always wasn't as though he basted our heads with salmon fat he said it was wasn't no compunction tell me about the one we egged him on anucia 2 now not so prim this time no longer so proper huff's track tape braced us we felt our ears pierced by holy weak brass as we spoke no thought more worthy of the one we felt our sleeves tugged at by the dead as he spoke to have gone was no other than the one we heard them whisper they they called themselves the awaiting dead was it wrong not to know we wondered slick facade all the more slick with salmon fat head grease asking was it something we suffered for tell me about the one we exhorted again each of us meant we to mean us we repeated it tell me about the one without cease complete and one's a partner complete and one's apartments one took oneself to be one was not the one we stood reminded we the awaited ones sophia's disavowed stayed with me lineaments of wind was a book i knew to be real why the shot at itamar i wondered why call the book her so-called book why call it a book of what he took to be prophet loin mosque would-be book the lineaments of when misread allure did she mean to say did she mean to say he took her did she mean to say he took her to be the one secretly say she took him to be the one i wondered each the others unawares angel the one could be that way i knew what would made up gospel any of it all of it accruing to the one no matter what this the ones drop does a daughter desert desert dorada one with cling to one for all one by one limbo it might all have been only a bunch of stuff such talk of the one remote cosmological backdrop talk so near so far a replete proto-way-head politics it might have been sedentary woe me to all go not going not unbeknown to itself to remote political backdrop as well we knew was possible deep way head resumption dead leg real and roulette there we go i'm not hearing you fred i think you're muted i'm trying to unmute myself and i guess i just did um i'm trying to unmove myself too i'm uh um i'm i'm i'm not quite stuck but i'm almost stuck in the in the joint between these two poems um which which for me is a joint uh a beautiful joint between the two longer poems from which they they come all heal was what it was all stomp and then we go right from there to all the crew into the one and and i guess in a way i wanna i wanna i wanna say that i want you to tell us about the two and i want there to be just one way about it right tell us about these two and how they go together um how they how they were put together maybe even a little bit of your secret of how the book is composed um how the book is called um how how you put together your so-called book [Laughter] yeah um well yeah the so-called is in the pudding together i mean you put it together um in the apparency of what we call a book um and you know as an old dj myself um i'm very attuned to to segways uh so you know when you pick up you know on that segway between those two poems um you know you're you're hearing a lot and you really get into um really kind of the you know the core of how i move uh through these poems and and so that segue launches into you know slightly different terrain from the one that precedes it but um it still has a foothold there and then at the end you know it comes back to this idea of uh you know of a political backdrop which you know the um the first one you know was more out front about you know because the lady in black is kind of this amalgam of with this you know a two in one a two for uh rosa parks rosa parks you know and the great you know flamenco's uh dancer carmen amaya had the two of them in mind and this idea of you know i mean that long-standing uh braiding of of uh you know of of spanish gypsy santi hondo and african-american blues you know which uh you know which miles davis initiated me into you know in my early teens today is his birthday uh but you know like sketches of spain and and that abiding um you know interweave uh that cross-cultural play uh you know it's one of the things going on in moments oman um and it comes up again you know it's it's inexhaustible uh you know you can't you know say that you're done with it you know because you you know you wrote you wrote your little poem you know so um so i expect that to happen and i expect there to be some fray um the edges are going to fray it's not it's never going to be neatly contained even though you know we have this beautiful active community in this this box set you know it's a beautiful box and you know and and the three the three books are beautiful containments of these two and ones but you know it all goes beyond you know those bindings and um and so when you really get back to it you know it's it's just that segway that you mentioned you know uh the all and and how you can pick up on the all and everything's in it so you can go anywhere with it well we're going to read these books down to enough or read them until they're gone uh and to have gone was no other than the one yeah so yeah that's exactly what it was yeah uh yeah yeah well i mean one i feel i feel bad to skip over seoul's notice um no disrespect to so but i but i wanted but i definitely wanted to hear you read a couple pieces from nerve church brother b's rump struck recital which is move 194th part followed by uh an amazing appearance from from sister c who comes along in song of the andam bulla 217 um so uh so spin those man please okay okay um let me get uh let me find him here yeah moo one uh 194th part uh brother b's rump struck recital barred at the gate where the music went no time soon he was loathe to admit he made right marred copy of what was true we scratched our heads looking at him scratching his sat making what of it we could was it over now we asked him could he let go let it go be done with it move on he said he'd long since cut it loose but no way we knew could that be so the tumbling out of it the it of it the it of it going on was it love or the longs was it love or the love song he cut loose but couldn't cut loose we wonder another enuncio in love with the sound or the song of it bart entry but entranced we wanted to know was it a state he could give up for he could give it up for some just an adjoined array of others wanting voice the we are cresting receive mused and made mention of the we he'd make real we hoped crepuscule and condom blade wrought the we we sorted what would not least of all turn out to have been governorable here's to have exacted his to have inspired all are bumped in brolio made worthwhile brother b had been speaking to that effect telephone poles whizzed by the dining car window as he let out a cry convinced it would all be ours now caught up in the cry and the calculi behind it the new next aim our trains bed toward it was now we knew the train we were on this was in the distant past and only a minute ago he sat holding fourth in the dining car as we sat holding forth the car a car the train long since no longer had so what were we we wanted to know and where and how so the heat we projected having something of an answer here's the we we badly want it back we were nothing if not of the moment alive to it declaring itself brother b was mr hot pot now he wrote as though he wrote the reads letter no mention made of his own low member no mentioning the stiff bouquet emanating from it he wrote in praise of andreanette's nether lips he wrote extolling her low beards accelerant musk all of it a dream of some kind he awoke from sweating nakedness newly doomed he thought he was truly mr hotpot now he wrote as though he wrote the reads letter his dream a dream of andreanette's jelly it was he wrote the world's one respite the world owning me old and mean said in its ways all this on a train that had been a bus that had been a car that had been a house a rant and a holding forth it was all we could do not to ratify i said some things it felt like life had rung out of me brother b announced back to himself back to being someone we knew or we thought we knew at home with him and him at home with us founding a new religion wasn't what he intended sound as though it was though he did a first church of jelly it might have been had he been intending it a new and old gospel of andrew and his perfume waft he'd laid way laid by it was all an immaculate odor no scent but the sound of it a run he went off on what always in a non would lie underneath up from under he whispered i need bottom something else life wrung out femi took it the train approaching a tunnel the train going into the trunk tunnel the train coming out of the other side something seen in the face we'd long been chorusing something seen in andrea nets behind he now held forth about of late come to ask what that al was that all it was tale he not so much announced as expelled spat as he extolled it who dried mints and remit it was only a word a word he drew down only as if to say deal with it a rump struck recital was what it was all it was at odds with himself we'd have said of him himself caught in his wandering eye caught looking wondering where else it might rest song of the andumbulu 216. we sought refuge decapitism at us wherever we looked they were starting the next war they were stealing the sky's ozone it must have been we were in rome it must have been we were in myrrh more and more talk of a wall going up more and more moving backwards crater more and more dug in sister c looked in of a sudden she wanted to know what was on the box we lived on a bubble of sound not to be messed with the box we said had gone out to see the box had been ours we thought but wasn't this or that intuitive book our box we thought sweet reason itself we thought crater was calling itself cradle words now words collapse we were all the more the hood right phallics we'd be to speak as with the new tongue we were seeking tongue tip to tongue tip tongues up on each other the new tongue a double tongue it seemed that the word be on itself and be one with itself tongue met demanding tongue a slow lingering kiss was all we had could we have been said to have that spoken for already inimical words put on lips all with at the end what i'm talking about a fickle sonnet announced as much could we have heard it a leak or a trickle of sound from far away neptune some would say some would say jupiter space was our claim to kinship static must our radio compensative light lit our way that was no way trill i dreamed we lay savoring the small mercy love was andreanet and i down to it at last it was a dream we all had sister c and the women included a dream not having to do with whose body had or didn't have what andrea net might have been andre andreanet might have been annette andreanette might have been ornette andreanette might have been andrea we lay in flight from whose body had what sex polis taken over by haystack and wind straw in everyone's hair straw on everyone's clothes we were on this or that electrical contrivance they were saying something about an erectile college slavery lived on some said a closer look took us deep into nur backwards walking nubs new low new limbo our reaction to which again was to run we lay running rabbits come after with shotguns and boots we lay regaled sprawls rendezvous with sprint or restitution she of the rumpled peacoat mia of the letterman's jacket dreamed silliness ruse regret all bets it wanted to say were off armor the way of the world we were in the two of us in bed fully dressed we lay still moving through the world at our leisure run's quintessence abstracted seeing a music made of squiggles massaged us the box not having left was back we lay in our clothes knowing what lay underneath who had what no concern grab was now the name we knew nearby not no matter we lay without hands having none of it but it's foil hands dipped in freezing water ritual ablution ablution we just absorbed it with we lay on handed we lay in flight from grab and grope nurse twin principalities we lie choked in our tuxedos i blurted out unclear why unclear what it meant we like chuck choked in our tuxedos andrew neck blurted out in turn why were we in this place we wondered prone to say who knew what tongue's autonomy law we lie choked in our tuxedos we repeat it again and again we were in the palace of the peacoat housed under andreanette's ex's drab cover their two cats were in the sun room basking a domestic scene long since exploded she clung to all of it come to nothing all as if it never happened all of it wracked and repeating nothing ever was leave it all to them this ball of dirt we were now saying the nurians give them their fill we imagined a we beyond all calculation the billowing peacoat a tent we congregated under reckoning loves more than one we opted out no matter ends illusory offer the it of it expunged and it outside its proffer possible we thought and it who's it we lay and whose umbra give it a don't care damn we were saying now kiss it away knowing why knowing what we meant we opted out no get no grapple we were knowing it would be all right not being all right would be all right cameron sat us down as we wondered what next that the box floated away told our despair hearts broken by politics again nubb's facelift had nubs face lift had fallen nubs facelift had never been we heard a hammering in our heads and we wanted to hear more we were post post something it said it wasn't clear what the something was comb over was all scrape scratch claw post face itself pure post bits of straw stuck to our hair were bits of sounds we leaned on this or that eeked out silence the surge of one or another more than we could hope for mercy's wards again mendicans again camaron's voice was all strafe a stray corona sunspots parking the air it carried came through how could that ha how could how could it have happened we milled around gasping how could hair look so much like hay we were asking how could white be such a bright orange we trudged up a foothill workers leaving work voices caught in the ground audible again attenuated wide mouth sound roofed in static sonority domed and static hollow inside how could the options they were calling history be so dread we were asking the end of it against its ism no contest the myth of it the reel of choice we trudged up a hill of dry brush our stomachs taken out it felt like how did um how did it happen man that i i don't want to act like the work wasn't always both deeply political and deeply erotic but how did it come that the deepest political poetry and the deepest erotic poetry in this long trajectory got so entangled here in in these in this book and in these poems um was it just strictly under the duress of having to come to grips with how it is that white had become so bright woman combed over and [ __ ] up as it was um it was definitely part of it i was definitely part of it uh another part of his age you know um to see how um you know how deeply um the fate of the body is tied up in in politics you know as you get older and um you know one's on doom booleas-ness you know the frailty and mortality of our being our humanity our human condition um you know becomes pressingly real and um you know and and what got us into this uh state of terror under the sign of orange in the name of white but a black man offering health care to all and you know having it named after him you know um and just the whole politics of finally who lives and who dies who lives longer and who doesn't live quite that long who gets their bodies taken care of their ailments taken care of and who doesn't and um you know the um the erotic um you know one of the most joyful indexes of having a body of bodily life um that possibility um predicates a you know a certain degree of uh of uh bodily viability health and care for health health care and so you know um again as you get older and the precarity of bodily being becomes depressingly real um you see how um you know this this this was a this was a fight and the opposition to it you know went to the very heart of things yeah and i stress hard but you stress bottom too and the need of bottom and uh man i guess i thought where you began you know with those first two poems and the throwing of votes and of course it made me think also of the throwing of voice you know um that that that vocal trick in which the voice is sort of elsewhere than where than where it is um but also the the double voice the double tongue you know and uh and they made me think man that the the first church of jelly or the first church of jelly jelly jelly is a juke joint um in mississippi too you know that's like i kept thinking man this is those last two phones are like that's that's that's nate's wang dang doodle right like i'm reading those phones and and and the snuff juice was everywhere um and it's it's such an amazing thing um like i said the the the the intensity of the of the political content is like matched and braided you know in in the intensity of the erotic contact and it's a it's a beautiful it's beautiful it's just beautiful thank you thank you thank you we we i think it's time for maybe um josiah to come back in and maybe got some questions and stuff so i asked those i don't i don't even want to interrupt you both if you feel like talking until 7 15 we can do the q a then honestly i don't think anyone's going to object if you both keep spinning records all right i feel like talking to 7 15 tomorrow but you you you need to you need to reign me in it's time for me to be quiet but um but but i'd love to hear what what you know it's it's a lot of there's so many everybody's here everybody's here so everybody should say something man at least rachel's here all right well that's uh joe everybody's here we can do the questions that's no problem we have a lot we have a lot um i see i see i just been looking down at the page but i see that uh let's start with david g uh david g wanted to know um maestro mackey how do you view the interplay between emotions and a collective gnosis gnostic individualism can easily be associated with despair turning away from the broken world the personages in your poems are always on a journey this is a form of resistance or an attempt not to be dragged down into the negative frames of mind and spirits yeah well you know they they uh you're quite right that you know that's uh you know that's a danger that um the we uh of the poems is um you know quite aware of and i'm quite aware of and and throughout my writings in the pros as well you know with the you know the band that i propose um you know i you know i look to music um as a way of you know being one and the same um the ensemblic um possibilities that that musical groups present us um is something that gets over you know the possible solipsism or isolation of gnostic estrangement i mean the way in which you know um you know these you know group like uh i don't know any of them really but arnett's prime time just dropped and it just just you know came to mind you know the way that they you know they're all sort of uh looking out through this gnostic window each of them has their own but they and they create in the process a collective gnostic window or or window of windows that's deeply moving and that could be mobilizing um so that's you know that's that's one of the things that you know the music that i so often refer to is both the tropa a trope for and the truth of and you know you know the way that you know we feel lifted by that i think it happens in the other arts as well um trying to make it happen in poetry but it has happened in poetry for for centuries i mean um you know and the visual arts and and and what have you i think that to give expression to gnostic apprehension uh you know is is to join hands in some ways and um and to come together i mean it doesn't have to be um and and in the traditions you know uh uh you know the historical traditions of gnosticism you know have often been uh communal um you know bands of uh um of knowing uh folks um banding together and um you know dealing with the exigencies of you know of of of life in one way or another so um that's you know i think the the the the pronoun we and my work does a lot to try to answer that question all right and uh matt how god last story he want he wants to hear more about the one matt is asking uh can you tell us more about the one [Laughter] can i tell you more about the one um well uh i could be cute and say if you have to ask you know you're in trouble you know pull one of those uh ellington you know armstrong lines on you um it was the you know it was the it was the positing of the one that i would that i was really caught up in you know when i was writing that poem it wasn't it wasn't the one it was the positing of it i wanted to you know i wanted to linger in fact i couldn't do anything but linger in the positing of the one you know and the uh exigent season precarities of that you know um you know what what can you tell me about the one you know talks in that poem um um keep asking you know uh and um i was i was cracking up as i was as i wrote that poem i was laughing you know um depositing of the one seemed really you know at that point it just because you know i you know i started reading philosophy in my team that you know there's all these problems of the one and the mean many and stuff like that and and i just i don't know in my 60s 70s i just i just started laughing you know so you know what can you tell me about the and all accruing to the one i mean that i mean that title just just jumped out at me i didn't know what the hell i was either talking about what it was saying all accruing to the one and so it was the positing you know that uh you know i just wanted to you know i just you know i just want to be with that you know and go with that and you know i could tell you a lot more about the one if we got started you know if you would come up if you were to come over or something like that you know we could but but what i l but what i was doing in that poem was was showing how dialogical it was you know that it was that it was a dialogue about the one paradoxically or ironically you know or uh oxymoronically you know you know you know what can you tell me about the one i mean why would the one be subject to inquiry at all you know like this question i just got right so you can't even you know you can't even you can't you can't posit the one without violating it and so i was you know i was it was one morning you know and i was you know trying to see what the day's music would bring i said in the preface to the to the to the box set you know i got in this thing called all day music and uh and i just started you know i i i didn't have the feeling that i you know that i had anything special to say about the century-long the centuries-long human occupation preoccupation philosophical preoccupation you know with the question of the one but um you know i wanted to you know to abide you know to dwell to linger uh like i'm doing now um although you know the cadences may not be quite what they were in the poem uh but that's and then you know i didn't even get to where i get later you know and some of the more recent ones i've been doing you know where the one is specifically more referential to music you know on the one on the two that kind of stuff um so it's just interesting to me um and and compelling that um the one you know can sprout these multiple discourses and these multiple claims depositing of the one there it is matt there it is okay paul nelson has maestro uh you nathaniel you said you were a slow improviser what changed with 1 000 plus pages in six years thank you paul glad to know you're out there i don't know um like i said before you know age maybe or you know maybe uh you know after a certain amount of time in in the shed you know you can improvise a little faster um i mean i've been practicing um [Music] you know for decades and um you know i i think that might be it and it um you know this sense of recursive advance or recursive extension that fred talked about you know make for a certain certain momentum certain accelerant and if you give yourself if you allow yourself the liberty of reaching back in order to you know to go forward then you find yourself moving much faster than um you had been you know when you thought you know that every beginning had to be truly new and every you know new extension had to be truly new so that's part of it you know and and just finding out that you know you you've got a certain uh set of obsessions a repertoire um you know it sounds oxymoronic that you would have to find out that you have obsessions because obsession should be self-evident and obvious but um maybe it's just a matter of owning up to them or accepting them um letting them be but that has a partner but it has has something to do with it but you know again age sense of urgency um you know a sense of having you know uh um not a lot of time to to waste um so you know becoming a faster improviser you know you know uh for those reasons you know is part of the profusion uh you know represented by um you know the double trio and uh i think also coming to uh devote more of my writing attention to writing poetry uh the other genres that uh i've i've worked in um being let lay fallow uh for this period as there just seemed to be this um upsurge uh in on the on the on the poetry side so um i'm sure there are a lot of factors you know that i don't know about uh i can't really say i would just you know kind of um you know happy to let it happen you know and so here we are nice nice okay uh eva eva i'm sorry if i mispronounced your name eva uh shotgun yes she has a uh she has a comment on the question uh nate your syntax is like is yours like a fingerprint unmistakably uh at times reading you over volumes and volumes i feel like you've used 10 sentences to articulate 10 million ideas and emotions it is is it the durational aspect of your writing it keeps the sentences the language of the sentences the images of them new i.e that the world keeps changing beneath our feet or is renewal within an all too familiar scene the heavy lifting of your practice the sifting of sounds and semantics for a way forward yeah i like that you know the the renewal you know within the familiar um the heavy lifting of it um and you know the the the attempt to you know see possibility rather than fatality and finality in the sentence i mean there's that pun that people have especially poets you know been playing off for years you know decades uh centuries you know sentences this grammatical unit but also you know sentence as uh uh you know an imposed fate finality you know you were sentenced to to life in prison or you're sentenced to capital punishment or your sentence to 10 years so um the sin taxes is kind of a you know a struggle to open the sentence up you know uh to um thinking back to my uh my model and mentor wilson harris um defined pardon in the sentence sentence um and so those signature you know acrobatics if you want to call them that you know and you know the the or calisthenics whatever um the recursive extension that fred talks about um is is that seeking of of of a pardon uh in this all too familiar sentence that just gets pronounced again and again and again and again and we found i find ourselves you know in you know places that we thought we had moved beyond you know i mean i the stuff we're dealing with now you know the return of all this stuff that you know i mean i'm i'm in my early 70s uh you know i thought we'd put this stuff away in my late teens and early 20s i thought we had dealt with you know all this uh recidivist racism and white nationalism and you know uh neo fascism you know that that we're back at having to fight you know um and you know i mean it's it's depressing to look back over the span of a lifetime and see stuff that you thought had been dealt with and that we were advancing beyond uh come back with the vengeance and you know you knew better than to get too optimistic but you know optimism feels good it's hard to re you know it's hard it's hard you're sorry not to um get sweet on hope get a sweet tooth for hope you know so um i mean this this work of of expressive culture is one of the ways in which you know we bully our spirits in in the face of this heavy heavy um regime of the same or the the recurrent same you know not the changing saying you know that baraka talk about talked about but but the recurrent um um reactionary shame so but you know there's something in there about um about that syntax that you know um you know i think i i think you're hearing and asking about and that's what it makes me think about all right all right jay cameroon carter has a really beautiful question for you um is it fair to say that there's some relationship between the positing of the one and all accruing to the one and the work of another kind of we working across all of your work nate going all the way back to eroding witness i mean nerve church yeah i mean it's it's um um it's a life's work um and you know it extends beyond my life the community of lives that um are working in poetry and in other media and in other modes and locations and occupations i um you know it was early on that i kind of moved away from the idea of the isolated poem the single poem even in any wroting witness seriality begins to assert itself and that's my first book and the sense that um a sense of ongoingness and um the incompleteness of any one poem any one book any one author's body of work that this is in a very profound way uh something that we're all doing and something that all the poems are doing together however many of them you are would suggest that it's going to be a group a set of seven poems but it ends up being a set of eight pawns so that's already suggesting just in the um the wobbly relationship between septet and the number eight already suggests that there's not going to be any um anytime soon any nice final fit you know if uh if seven turns out to be eight eight is probably not going to be eight and then nine is not gonna be nine so you've got these numbers that are more than themselves calling for more than themselves [Music] more than themselves uncontainable so um so yeah i mean so it spreads out over a whole body of work and and you know um my work like the work of you know the various artists thinkers etc that that uh that you know that that i've been nursed by and tried to learn from and um you know deeply recursive you know it keeps coming back you know it's it's um um it's of a peace uh but it's uh it's a halting uh and some sometimes ragged piece and um it you know it doesn't arrive at some point of final statement and um yeah jay you're right to here you know to hear um echoes of you know just come right from back at the beginning you know double trio quite consciously you know verbatim in some cases is pulling is reaching back again you know um the precarity of retention you know reaching back to eroding witness just to make sure that that phrase is still there and that there's still some use in it you know um i was talking to fred was i talking to you fred the other day was all right i must have talked to you one time about that that thing that carlos santana says about um when he how growing up as a kid and and eating sugarcane the influence that has uh on his playing where you know it and it spoke to me because i remember this from from you know uh being a kid in in miami but you know you get a piece of sugar cane and and you'd eat on it you know and it's sweet at first and stuff and you keep you keep chewing on it and sucking on it and stuff and carlos was saying that um his playing is very much informed by that by that that that experience of you know getting down to the last of the sweetness in the cane and you just you know you're just getting into it and sucking on it and making sure that there will be no sweetness left that you have not gotten and you can hear that in the way you know you can hear that in the way he he holds a note you know pulls that note you know um and sometimes it's not even sweetness that's left in fact it's not sweetness that left that's left you know but you're not gonna let it go until you've gotten all or you know or most of the flavor that's left in it you know um and something is to be said for that for that flavor you know being an exit of sweetness and the truth of that you hear that in this playing too so you know i just think that i'm doing something like that you know i mean you i hope i mean i mean i don't want to stupidly flatter myself but you know saying i'm you know carlos santana or something like that but um but that's the model you know is to is just to you know to get as much you know is to go in and just keep going in um to get what's in there left out you know to to to keep you know to keep to keep drawing from it um that's the long song you know and that's why in some ways it gets longer the longer you live wow unfortunately uh we're out of time i i we're gonna have to have a whole other event and have all these other questions answered i apologize to the audience for not being able to get to everything but please y'all give it up give it up give some love in the zoo mundo for uh nathaniel mackie and fred mochin in this beautiful profundo evening uh celebrating the release of this divino libro double trio put out by new directions oh my god this is this book is gorgeous um and if you haven't had it i haven't purchased it yet please purchase it in the link peter's been posting the link to buy the books and also uh check out city lights this whole inventory it's online now we have several of fred's amazing libros as well as several of uh master nathaniel mackeys as well as this one here so uh it's a great way to support the bookstore please me gente buy some books um and if you can come visit us at the bookstore and live in person like you did back in the old days give it up for maestro fred moten and maestro nathaniel mackey in this beautiful celebration tonight um nathaniel fred muchas racist for being with us and sitting with us and schooling us and blessing us it was a wonderful evening very nice everybody have a good after evening i guess i should say you know bye bye good night that was not just