CITY LIGHTS LIVE! Fred Moten with Douglas Kearney

Introduction hello everybody Peter maravelas here on behalf of City Lights booksellers and Publishers and the City Lights Foundation I'd like to welcome you to City Lights live the virtual extension of the city lights events calendar where we continue to celebrate the works of authors we know and love through readings discussions and forums I'd like to take this moment at the outset to acknowledge that we are beaming to you from the unseated ancestral homelands of the Rama to shiloni peoples also known as the San Francisco Bay Area we'd like to take this moment to offer respect to those who have come before us as stewards of the land tonight we are honored to have with us Fred moton celebrating his New poetry collection perennial fashion presence falling published by the wonderful wave books in Seattle Washington a new book by Fred moton is always an event of auspicious nature he is one of our country's great thinkers social theorists and poetic voices his work continually breaking new ground he has written numerous books of poetry and criticism these include all that beauty in the break black and blur as well as all incomplete written with Stefano Harney amongst others his work has brought him into collaborations with critic Laura Harris artist Wu tsang and musicians Gerald Cleaver and Brandon Lopez Professor Moten is a MacArthur and Guggenheim fellow working in the Departments of performance and studies and comparative literature at New York University and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences joining in this evening in conversation is Doug Kearney Doug is no stranger to City Lights as we've had the distinct pleasure of Hosting him before we're also huge fans of his work Douglas Kearney has published several poetry collections including most recently the book Optics subwoof which I am happy to add was named a finalist for the firecracker award just today additional titles include show the award-winning Buck studies amongst others he's received numerous honors for his work Mr Kearney teaches creative writing at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and makes his home in Saint Paul before we begin I would like to let you know we're going to be posting links in the chat function of your Zoom dashboard with which you may purchase books we'll also be taking questions so please post them in the chat function in your Zoom dashboard you may want to also switch to speaker view so you don't get that Hollywood Squares effect just a lot nicer clean cut so join us now in offering a warm welcome to Fred moton and Douglas Kearney such an honor to have you both with us welcome to city lights so much thanks man thanks hey Doug good to see Natural History of Inequality you absolutely so I mean we'll we'll get started I need to tell everybody out there that that uh Fred and I had like an arm wrestling contest about length of our respective reading so we gonna both try to hit 12 minutes and 30 seconds [Laughter] and it's funny because we actually had a chance to hang out for a bowl of soup and a drink uh just just this last weekend yeah um and I told Fred that one of the things I was most excited about about this reading is it's one of those readings where I knew exactly what I wanted to read um and I told him it's basically just going to be a bunch of Love Letters to him so um I'm going to start uh with a series uh a few poems from a series called a natural history of inequality and I first came across a natural history of inequality in an essay that Fred had written some time ago called black can't black copt however that essay is now called knowledge of Freedom um now this is what struck me about that um a natural history of inequality when I first encountered it was a list of 16 characteristics 16 qualities um that Fred listed and you know just like did a mic drop and then walked out the room and left and left that that list there and I wanted to engage that list um and so I decided to write poems uh referencing that list um and there's a weird ass constraint connected to it that I'm not going to get into right now but I'll just uh tell you what the list total was the stupid the irrational the deformed and or deformative the unfinished and or disruptive the driven and or transportive The Irregular and or anti and anti-regulative the Blurred and or blurring the curved the canted the Arabesque the Paragon the outwork and or mad absence of the work the outlaw the would have been outside the thing of nature that defies or defers rather than presupposes representation the social whose life and exhaustion of the given has often been mistaken for death Suspicious Activity The Irregular and or anti-anti regulative did not but did not or did not not did woke up a random hour and that old double bond suspicious suspicions of activity didn't not did didn't didn't not it no such thing as repetition didn't not not did no such thing as only insistence amplification of wicked please I've been in a steady residency studying doing Sans getting done in went abroad for the conference raid conspiratorial unsuspicious activity I insisted our syncopated metrics Tinder on the international measure exchange to the registration what data Titus [ __ ] Bobo toot sweet with my tote bag my lanyard Swang gzp Jesus PC as I crooked booty to the keynote I sat in the not doing of doing what I did not buy and buy came q a iq'd can self-discipline and inactivity be considered inactivity as the disciplining of the self is a practice and income security a rented rough shot all there they are double taken Where I Stood I stayed to rephrase my cue I believe this discourse security fixed to quantize my off conduct with big pops of batons I was the present Ruckus recused for actively inactivating Me by advice and Versa this collabo took the discipline to the next level Endangered Species the Blurred and or blurry some latinate Jurassic appellation would vest us against living this now and this here endangered species some Appalachian species like that's not us down the root of their mutter their father even so on occasion I Catch Me Harder humanizing ourselves pathological redundancy all man tantalists trying to link with the great chain of being test thusly in King laborious failure we appear both Striker and scab resistance Monty with acquiescence all day sucker an egg laying a chicken eventually insect math Chatters they'll be us how many systemic pleostocians and teapots they brew to stunt their growth burn now see what one that chain gets you low rating being being here the full moon expressed to monstrosities wanting that Fetter blessed to be Bond that's a person birthing up if they thought the answer time machine they ought to do their own damn remembering dreaming for one damn once at some sometime intervals some now is bound to seem of them curved broken English is gatorically speaking apparently English is speaking was a tongue in search of a mouth or mouth in search of a tongue became the combo featuring tongue and mouth duetting forehead tongue bow to the dust mouth gripping it in aspirational cartography marking with indexical detail all the places they'd forgotten to look in order to hit a straight lick mouth and solidarity with tongue chose crookedness in solidarity with mouth tongue practice alveolar clicking and lisping with fine raspberry varietals nostalgic for a head that could At Last House their newness they cut a parabolic Groove into the wood breaking it down and laying in it it could have been them but they was playing they played dead as aspiration research one bit the other chapped the other a means to swell a way to Flay former the head might erupt from accumulated fluid latter it might help cracking the lip shell these were the available Logics they flogged the combo's desire for home they realize though that their movement was articulate a fugitivity that bent without breaking ain't nodding and we using they hit it off pursued pursuer Pursuit at once at dust cloud The Outlaws statutes had an esteresque capaciousness being outside them instead smack dabbed us in their intended order entropy brought to heal through an entropic Crackdown of act right on the regular we laid out interlaced pretty much anywhere unsteady sociality could be shimmed by us prone sometimes one time would shoot our athletic tit to run away at bullets something about this meat transmutes ammo to protocol one time the protocols didn't de-escalate us all the way we up and carried them into our outlandish inner city anatomies our bucolic innards and or contrary wise so the police were moved to accompany us in our upward down Drive I neither Envy nor pity popo whose ethos for ordering depends on embroidering or systematized fuck-ups what we're at's only legible while we riddled with protocols after all some people suggest our meaning justifies our end oh they never suggest that instead in order to write a sociality sometimes to protocol calls and or ordering depends on riddle meaning that they mean us to clarify a limit and hate that they are in it we tally their bullets like our names and one more from this series Ghosthood the social whose life and exhaustion of the given has often been mistaken for death [ __ ] that our lives collectively need struggle for mattering is we as we as we ghosts if so Passage through taxonomic walls should be categorical but I stay busting my unmattered nose on the margin meticulous in my essays come to pass these tests lay me levels a kind of plane of face my research done been undone lacking a working physics for immaterial contradiction onward despite no way what is too high to get over a leap at or too low I dig or what holds fast I throw us at many one more Gans the blood on my face seems my face shouldn't it under theoretical ghosthood conventions we lay down again though face down this time I aim to gain such insight into crime scene topography but then this isn't a priori versus a posterior knowledge that is if I stay a kind of working way to get blood we am such Insight that knowledge both a ghost toils at Haunting of where if you're there hearing chains Bojangle or no bet this this place was haunted prior are being born here as trespassers the wind that stutters Yonder curtains ain't nothing but us breathing together there ain't no ghosts here dead for dying Mysteries um and I'll close with a poem called Mysteries give me power I don't know I don't know if I said this one to you yeah Fred so maybe this is I'm now serenading you all right my brain at its son up it's some peace work it's some of holler it's Sundown and at its sundry movement among its thornfulness wind maybe maybe Vermin the scratching would cause itself presence that which draws flies and rot buku predation name it say fruit and then what invites itself an eyeball Reckless and or steady an object to regard but not of double flower [ __ ] rig up the still life that is neither the ethering of my slow other my dearest darkest Consciousness whose Feats don't fail to come to the place for which I work it a jungle Plantation for the grow jungles a terrarium of lush adders and leering spiders plump with yellow cautions the Poison Control Center on speed dial as is the tuxedo Taylor for my monkey suit all day early day my all black everything my fall black and backslide my Juiced full back roiding the backfield my backside shown drawers torn cause my greasy ad-libs the product of my deep listening to to to our side long enough could my feets come out my mouth running yo I hit the ground my slo-mo Atlantic beloved and aggressives there to lift and sing my every me my teeth kicked out in sights of slack who done it the black scratched off the mirrors Withers makes a window for the seed through the animal what Ace me ass backwards it was him each two bag and lettered for exhibit uh evidence proof of a concept B life C purchase this [ __ ] slippery slope should I have led with the dock passing ships like gallstones or a shout out to the Cross old man with the hungry [ __ ] and divine to go to ring this here it'll start epic a mock-up of a [ __ ] up underway underneath my understanding yay mosey's my precious tari ontology Safari guy through the spiky tangle by the dawn's early Enlightenment I mean to peep game the guy points scat the Beast come by near meanwhile back in wakanda and zamunta and sankonica and drexi huh I saw it long enough might my heart come out my mouth squads tooled up fool coming forward to carry those who got swung in breezes Southern compared to what whom where coming for to bury the Rope enthusiasts an armada of canoes ensuing the use of Schooners they cross whale roads Kenny should have started here but there's no return ah Wish my teeth tagged and bagged my heart up chucked with Mary and Nick fell at my puked up Feats on the one the spooky kills gaining on you come in for that a second Wish Upon a Polaris to never need no Polaris thus never need no first wish Jesus even my fantasies is paradoxical my third wish I hold Reckoning Freedom lanyap with second I waited to wake up off the chain I ain't unlocked and I mean no one's knew nothing thus no same old imminence instead I found me bound to not knowing how it feels to be free a black ass tautology [ __ ] parlay with birds and white children massless asymptomatics what was once white children zipped in RSVP with the US of a was stood up to get in the know but being Sons can I wouldn't mistake for mystery to spitball a pitch deaths to a Pit's depth one might number the dirt where it isn't that was no mystery but math Mysteries give me power which is to State causation which is to entreat to make to mean to say ambiguous but tongue ambivalent a slippage a bluing I noticed pieces strong or only aggro come a mouth growing out my neck red as a wheel from about I turn about to see what I'm saying but my mirror is still tampered ergotically Ergo wish number two I know it's there what I don't see what it do but it do what it does I chew on this a JuJu what's a root out my split level moves back back fourth and fourth swinging both ways this bifurcated intercourse I interlock me to me a snarl whenever we tangle or what is and what is not if I was sick if I were to if I were entreating the some Mysteries I'd need me some cedar some miraculous hookup what wouldn't leave me Swinging Windward where I had a versa of Vice which is to say Rey say Ray causation some slash the Mysteries my littoral would swell with craft see my sign and eyeshadow the seaside but lifting my feet to the dark Hills for wince I saw long enough could my mouth come out my mouth a loop duet to death a toothlessness newly teeth ah makes a battle cross inverse a lamentation a genre a la moaning me mouthing the lyrics I both swallowed and vomited a dusk and a dawn if I was to if I was to make a third wish might it take a treble mouth to make it plain my other two shadily comping their Adagio riff the lyric upgraded with the speech act I wish I wish I wish the diphthong-led outcome of the two Mars chewing each other out whose duty to Grant numero three this is no mystery but math after it though number now I might could Unum my damn cells I might could not be to be thank you Rose Petals oh man oh man oh man you got you got you got this is all just setting it up this is sweeping the stage and leaving rose petals well I love it I love it and I love you too and um and I I'm uh I see so many other friends out here that I want to say hi to Manolo Kenneth Howard Taylor Sean Webster Evie shot me Evie shock shocked the house Shockley um so um Alex um a lot of people so thank y'all for for coming um okay so I I got I'm gonna read I'm gonna read a couple things for the from the new book at the end but I wanted to to to send some to send some love back your way John and there's a poem from all that beauty that I wanted to read Because hardly because it's totally inspired by you and and uh I think a mutual friend of ours Harry Dodge um and uh but it's definitely kind of moving in the wake of your great book messing mess and and um but it's also kind of moving in a direction towards which you know in a direction towards towards this new book perennial fashion um in which I'm kind of caught up in this deep ambivalence with regard to Art and and it's bound up with like I guess maybe you could call it like a caught between my hatred of the art world and my love for some artists you know um and uh and one of those artists is again Harry Dodge and and I think this poem kind of propelled me in the direction of of the newer stuff so so this is called mess and mass and um Mess and Mass for Harry Dodge making work means making a mess in celebration of mass therefore a catechism it's what it is to take pains separable from what it is to take pain is pain absorbed or reassigned or can art just take it all the way away would that be both a kind of bridge and a kind of break not in between the work and the witness but in their separations overflow which makes the maker join in the making having disappeared in curacy The Taking of pain become the taking of care we're taking care in the making working all the way through the works unworking is unbearable Pleasures uncountable continuum is the give and take of Pleasure and Pain what finally serially neither art nor artist nor audience can withstand there's a dispossessive empathy that makes me stop the world and Melt With You it crushes us turns our solidities into discharge such loss of composure is the work of Love The Works of Love composed consider the pain in the ass of watching paint dry which is boredom's metaphor of choice Harry takes on the pain of boredom for the sake of our excitement but he doesn't really watch paint dry rather in the painstaking shaping of the paints drying in the care infused and colors metastasis and the activation of surfaces dimensionality in the slow cultivation of surface Harry lets us watch paint dry forcing upon us some menacingly chromatic fun because he makes us watch it melt to our fun cut up with sub ecstatic fretting is the very idea of the work worried by this constant going over the edge or his mess messed up in this interminable edging this continual almost coming That Never Comes gone in the Perpetual ruination of arrival is a mess made or is this a mess in the making that's been still even in this ongoing coming then come and gone it's such a pretty mess pretty being close enough to beautiful to let the problem of beauty back into play in Sublime Emulsion though it's just pretend Emulsion play Emulsion Emulsion come again if you feel like giving it to me that this urethane resin shaped into active unshapedness voluptuously out of shape and unencampass in the pains taking taking of care and amassing of mess looks something like the real thing as Aretha Albus says they say and sings in North Detroit with Carolyn and William Robinson and Benjamin Patterson in them carefully painstakingly Harry makes you worry lining up all these worried dripping lines all but against the wall to let you worry the limits of some terms mess and mass and Care and Pain and make and let in line and melt and come and go and work and worry worry Care and Pain and paint it all reminds us in following colors materiality into the heavy terrain of something like Jay defeo's off-white roads and Harry's bright confection the casting pigment is a language problem the activity of paint is all but suppressed in the shift from verb to noun painting works or don't work this way as well work works this way too so that art and its terms are just replete with this Restless tendency to be still but if you say that hairy your things or if we call Pure [ __ ] hot dog cake which is where I'm looking out from to the rest of this world he works and messes up and cares for a urethane then you might move back into some sort of motion come mess the noun up so you can see what's happening if you've been inclined to call it a drip sculpture the movement wants to make you want to say dripping sculpturing while you go wandering like delgue the mountain man delgue was a mess his name even messier than glue in the I haven't been lifted out of it re-gifting the G to itself in extra purity not no grammar just messy grammar readable is mud or muck or [ __ ] the way a mountain man might read it into being attuned to the Natural mess in the name of the Predator naturally unnatural this is the [ __ ] and in this regard Harry is a doo-doo Chaser doing working all up on and after Pleasures irreducible nastiness it's essential messiness it's melting little mountainous massiveness like George Clinton and Doug Kearney in there pure [ __ ] is the [ __ ] in this regard but can messiness be Pure or in order truly to be itself Must messiness Fall Out of itself and into the all but absolutely fastidious the careful arrangement of the mess the pains taking taking care of it is a deviant Sacrament given in the transubstantiation of turds and dicks and hot dogs or drapes the mess and traps and buckets and also in the delicate balance with which Harry should be all off center on the pedestal all off center and rough hewn and strewn all over the room all thrown all over the place with extreme precision no Divinity shapes these thrown ends but they do be shaped with burnt profanity or maybe this is where divination and provination converge not just to see but to materialize the stinking future and occult practice and arranging [ __ ] A mile a minute so you can see and walk around in it talk it so to speak with a gaudy common spiky swerve what if the future is just as coming to refuse the difference between what you see and are and walk and talk around then all caught up in the [ __ ] the thought that emerges is more and less than computation it's not that information is processed here as much as it is that food for thought is digested Cosmic slop come Cosmic birthday cake is a divination engine not a Difference Engine in this regard though difference is preserved in thick layered flatness walk around in it what is a regard that you can walk around in it you ever wish you could walk around in a painting which is as they say a higher plane of regard you can walk around in a gallery but you want it to be flat because you want the tangle even more than you want the air or you just want the air to be real close so close they're getting bumped or broken into Falls to burning melting everything that kills us we want to celebrate the flagrant Crush we need to take messy care of our [ __ ] let's sculpt dripping let's walk around through painting let's talk it all around till we find the truth which is the [ __ ] in messy messy messy urethane installations literal dimensionality having been rendered immaterial in leonelion in rampant dribbling the gallery was supposed to be more crowded so the flatness which could only be given pictorially could at least be felt by flatness let's mean this absolute proximity the palim cystic Embrace of the half-closed book almost propped up in incomplete rub and absolute hold Beholder see the song called exactly what it is to be close out in the open to reveal these animatophysical longings we'd be reveling in past the point of non-belonging divination is a matter of the mother of God in this regard and proximity Is flow and flown having run on through the end and escalated and eschatological scatological [ __ ] scat you better get on away from here which is all you can do when you all caught up in all this [ __ ] and all that beauty now can you do it colorfully can you make the Sausage Factory seem like a studio can you make all that beauty beautiful and give it away Harry makes it beautiful and gives it away he gives away a factory of making so you can make your own groupings and compositions in the room that then you make and then you give away you can because you must angle being everything and it's absolute tightness which is Angelic insolvent in position were you sure you want some you really want to come in here it doesn't really matter you're being caught up in the general sculpture a congenally non-congenital machine walking around in it as if it were a park or leaking dripping from piece to peace having been both shaped and randomized by careful derangement you're already making angles in new one-dimensional sculptures where the pieces and whomever you come here with or find there block and Pierce one another it's a hall of complex mirrors and you're not yourself when you look in them and yet you do walk around as if in the Deep flatness of a painting you walk around in the curvaceous pictoriality of Harry's drawing or drawing or directing towards something culminating in assemblage and non-performative relief some jamming together of bits and Bots and bites into an Earthly complication of the world in this impeccably incontinent terraforming Harry put some luscious sign on all that melismatic mess that can't nobody tell him how to use that's why you all messed up now these are works of Love after all and messing you up is the work love does all that making and unmaking that infuses the object falling off and away from itself in degenerative Genesis held among other objects all falling off and beholding one another fall away all playing moss on mass on the way to mass being on the way being the mess we in and the mass we celebrate that's just how we do all coming all up on where we at and always gone with some lazy ass tracks to lay we Dodge but we can't get the hell out of Dodge so we sound like we generally surround Dodge Main in some general striking Harry having taken such pains and such care that we know what we want to want to want and uh I'm gonna read uh let's see I think I'm already running Tiling out of time but here's a couple you're doing great from the new book um kind of a little matched pair tiling lining notes a river is Studio agitation through one window Aloft and rock bottom soft support and Rumble a room a cell a light in the way the walls walk off in jubid Pat and tiling the pattern on the river floor all absolute and indiscernible unless you walk it in the river as the river as all this rotary soar of the Damned and held sous-vide and second linearity creating in this tube and lining out of the basic line all and against itself in black and blue switch black and Bear tree Chase smiling seeing all our little differences together in the venereal collection areas serial editing of how we taste and feel inseparably there's just so many ways to keep going along the way the miraculous influence is dealted in Floridian Branch or Mangrove double silt Coahoma County moaning or Swan Oklahoma a Gap Band or a gap in nature kind of sounding drowning burning is continually Caribbean being on fire of the River from River to River on Canal and torn to another bleeding place we from in our Lenape shift our Delaware Gap Band sending geography through a cigaractic horn chart of the natural City in and out of its broken window Cadence still cruising Mobile Studio unnamed and Making Waves and Making Waves is what it sounds like lining tiling moaning smiling drowning bleeding burning seeing sending sounding just like Joseph Daly Thurman Barker Dave Holland and Sam Rivers I think that's my 12 and a half so two more minutes [Laughter] Interdisciplinarity uh so man I I what's up man man I'm I'm just sitting here thinking about I mean I think I told you this at one point but you know I was I I taught at Cal Arts Pro for a while and and uh um yeah let's get let's like the chat's lighting up giving you giving you Applause and and uh and love so let's ask let that scroll um but you know we we talked a lot about interdisciplinarity and there was an interview you did for callaloo back in uh 2004. I think um and uh and in that interview you can't you you said what I thought was the actual definition of interdisciplinarity you know as distinct from collaboration or multi-disciplinary and the quote goes something like I hear I hear a song and it makes me want to write a poem I hear I hear music and it makes me want to write a poem now my poem is not going to be that music and if my poem Only seeks to imitate that music it won't be worth much but if my poem can approach the secret of that music I might I might approach something essential to that music re-performed by its poetic reproduction um and that to me has been the the definition that I basically have used every time I talk about a disciplinary or and when I think about it which is it's not that you want to write a poem about uh LaBelle singing you know going down the river makes me shiver you want to write the poem that does what LaBelle's going down the river makes me shiver does and I've always thought about that as like one of the Locust and most dynamic ways to listen to or consider art um because it requires you to find out what you think the secret is right what you think is essential to that and then you do this sort of transmutation which I I find really striking and so as I and so it's like you know thinking about that and looking at the kind of shaped page and how the work of your frastic work is like building this kind of relationship between the art it's practice and then how that reminds me of something you said once in a discussion about how you wanted to do on the page what James Brown does like when he corrects the band and has them hit again and I'm just like thinking about that secret that synthesis that approach and you know I'm curious like like have you have you have you have you found that moment of like that James Brown moment that moment it's addiction uh interjection into the piece and like you know you know does it live for you on the page or is it living more in the musical work you're doing these days well it's funny man it's like um Thaddeus Mosley I mean a lot of what I think you're talking about is is this is this relay or this this thing we're all in you know at the at the level of some kind of coordination between our hands and our ears and our eyes um uh and and I say that I wouldn't have said the reason why I say hands today is because I ain't even tell you about this but I had the chance to to visit the studio last week okay great artist great sculptor named Thaddeus Mosley yes from Pittsburgh from Pittsburgh man yeah he's 97 years old yes he he works in his Studio every day making these amazing sculptures these sculptures that the the phrase he uses is weight in space wait in space yeah but and of course the weight is both w-e-i-g-h-t and also w-a-i-t and the waiting of the wait angels waiting for you to come and ain't just waiting for you to get there but it's also waiting on you in that sense of service right right like he he's engaged in these these modalities of service and of care and the care it comes out in his hands you know and he Pittsburgh is such an amazing Jazz town and I'm there with my old buddy re Judy we were there in the studio and then he took us back to his house you know and he gave us something to eat you know he he didn't want to he didn't want to let us go you know and he didn't let us go he didn't let I mean we left but he didn't let us go you know right right right and uh and yet he released us right you know somehow but but he was talking about his old friend that he grew up with Ahmad Jamal who just passed away and and I kept thinking about touch in relation to to my Jamal yeah um yeah and so now of course so there's a story right I used to be they had the Charlie Parker jazz festival in uh in in Tompkins Square Park in New York and we used to go every year you know when we were here and um when we you know when we lived there in New York before and I and they would set up these bleachers and if you got there early you could get a seat I remember it was like noon one day you know first man it was uh it was Kenny Barron right it's great great pianist and it was nobody sitting there but me and and my partner Laura and these two old dudes who were sitting on the very top of the of the Kenny bear played something and it's one dude man he he was just in Rapture he was just and Kenny played just this phrase and he was and the dude said oh what taste and it was like this amazing moment in which you saw the interplay of taste and touch and you're talking like so much of optic subwoof is all about this beautiful coordination and accompaniment of eye and ear right what it means to see a buzz right what it means to hear a kind of visual Echo and this taste and touch and sight and sound right and and and there's this Ensemble of the senses that's being activated and and and my sense of it I guess is that you know when we when I when I listen to when I read your work when I when I listen to James Brown when I look at Thad Mosley's work when I and it and it wasn't just looking at the sculptures it was looking at the shavings yes yes on the floor right yes somehow he hadn't been able to transmit the feel of his hands in through this tool so that the wood it was caressed yeah yeah the wood had been CR and and it was this amazing thing where he was work you realize that what it means for him to do work is that he's working both with and against the wood absolutely absolutely like Bob o'meally calls it antagonistic cooperation in relation to bearden's work you know he yes oh my gosh and against it and yeah and I guess what I'm trying to say is all of that maybe all of that could be rolled into the word of company and and what it is that we do is we try to a company you know one another we try to keep each other company we try to be try to accompany you try to sit in with with the Godfather you know and hope we don't get fined you know exactly you know and they get replaced like me Taylor you know we just yeah we've been tweeting a long poem to each other for four or five years now you know company one another you know or yeah hanging out with I see Pete just came hanging out with Pete or like I know for human's out there and they probably don't think I'm I'm with them but I am they send me emails and letters that are so deep that I can't answer them till school is out but but I'm sitting with them and I'm thinking with them and and and we and we work together and we we we we accompany each other in a way that allows us to find how we've already been accompanying each other like I don't know it's fun I mean I don't know man I'm just I think maybe poetry is just like this cool way of being with your friends you know um yeah so it's kind of great in moving to see my boy Pete you know and uh everybody out there you just that's what it is you know you you wanna anyway I'm just blathering now no no no Ed Roberson I mean you know and it's not it's not even vamping it's it's just it's you know it's moving deeper into it I mean I think about that a lot like I mean I you know there are definitely poems that when I'm writing them I am literally thinking to myself what's Evie gonna say about this one yeah like like you know what's what's Yona gonna say yeah um you know when I when I when I finished that that series and I sent it to you I was like you know I was like here like like here it is um you know here's what I did here's what I did with what you what you laid down you know and and it's funny how you bring up that mostly because you know that is mostly because like you know Ed Roberson and him also have a very deep friendship yeah and you know what something that's really important is like you know like he's 97 now but I mean up till maybe seven years ago he was like carrying these gigantic logs and these were logs that were left by the by like the Pittsburgh Park service so like he wasn't going out on top these were like this was waste yeah yeah so like he's taking this stuff that has been laid down you know it's been and he's picking it up you know you put it down and I'll pick it back up and that moment of of of of of of of of the gouging that he's doing that's creating those shavings I remember um it was it was me Francine J Harris Erica Doyle and Ronaldo Wilson were like doing like a residency with cat and so we were there to interact with that is Mosley's work and I just remember going through his studio and like I I'll send this to you because I did a sketch of the entire Studio of all of the pieces in it because I was thinking about it as a stage for kind of an opera yeah and that feeling that the walls are like coming down to like hold you carries over into his house that house is like it's like a romare beard and collage really like it it's exactly like a Bearden collage because it's like no reason these angles should hold these candy and candy leopard bigs and yet they're all there arcing towards you like like uh trees following a sun that's flinging low but it's just something about that space this like the visual sound of it you know like like it reminds me of that moment in a in a a theme to yo-yo right where they just collapse and yet they still manage to land on that moment like that moment like it feels like the house and the space in the studio is constantly sort of cascading but landing precisely yes and that is something like the kind of feeling that I get sometimes when I'm like in the midst of the writing of somebody like Aquila Oliver or you or there's this poem that uh oh after Michael Weaver had uh that wrote Oh and I can't I can't remember the title of it right now but it was in one of the old economy anthologies and I just remembered the kind of density the indexicality [Music] another thing that you talked about is like even if you're not tracing each line don't you recognize something yeah and that sense of recognition has been a really important part for me in terms of like how I'm reading work that doesn't necessarily say you know like okay I'm gonna unbutton myself and give up all my goods but I'm all right here I'm all right here yeah what do you recognize do you hear that calling it and there's something about that kind of work that creates just reading it creates a sociality well this is the well he's like he lives in this cosmological experiment that he's conducting right it's just constant making of a of a of a of a cosmological of a cosmological alternative right even under the most severe duress and and it's funny because you know when when you what when the the secret is is open he he holds it out yeah in his hand but but the but the secret of the secret is that you can have it but you can't steal it right right right if you steal it it ain't it's you you you you you didn't get it right right you didn't get it you know and now you know look I mean [ __ ] we live in a state of emergency at this point and and and we're in the midst of this recognition that that is horrific as the genocidal conditions under which we live have been we have to recognize that what has what was genocidal turned out to have always been geocidal right and and so I don't wanna you know it's like even though it's all good it ain't all good you know right right but The Open Secret but on the other hand you know this the secret that that people like him share that you share Keila Oliver you know John you know Keen I mean I mean this this to me like you know punks is just this amazing flowering of the Open Secret you know and um so I you know I mean you know I mean at some point it has to turn into a into a common practice right um and it doesn't feel like I don't think we have an infinite amount of time to work that [ __ ] out but but I uh you know but yeah there's a you know going to his studio and going to his house was like going to church you know yeah um for heathens you know shirts for you but he is a trifling mother and yeah it was him and and you know it's funny being there you know you feel like you're yeah you're in this process of accompaniment and and like Ed Roberson what nabity was there and Nate Mackey was there Ahmad Jamal was there you know Stanley Turrentine was that you know I mean it was my mom was there man it was like you know I I lived in Pittsburgh for two years when I was you know my first two years of high school and I remember I went in there I was like man you know my mom used to go to this club in Homewood you know it's black neighborhood in Pittsburgh and she used to listen to this singer named Tiny and I can't remember Tiny's last name but my he was like Oh you mean tiny Irving and he had two nervous albums just sitting on top of the stereo you know it was like that man it was like yeah so that's recognition right there yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you know um but but you know this this practice of Growing Ass Man accompaniment I it's not about trying to foreground or the music or or in a way that that that eclipses or or occludes all the other moralities of of making that that that you know they sort of animate art and black art in particular but on the other hand the music becomes a kind of place where maybe it may we we can the the the very specific practices of it you know are bound up with this revealing the secret which is this in the secret is is accompaniment you know yeah and um and this is what I always so like this is what I learned you know from you and studying you and studying like I told you the other day I got I got two I got two I got two two two uh uh what do you call them playlists on my phone you know which my kids make fun of me one of them is called grown ass man and because it because and what growing ass man means is is that like if if I want to have a Fleetwood Mac uh song on my playlist I can because I'm a grown ass man dog that's right and I doubled down on this [ __ ] so I got an extra another one called extra grown ass man you know and um and and and that record that you made with Val Jean T is like I got half of it on one of those lists and half of it on the other and it's just continual curriculum you know this open curriculum about accompaniment um and and what's cool is that's what you can learn I think playing with musicians and I've been learning that playing with with Brandon Lopez and Gerald Cleaver and um and you know the best thing we were talking about this the best thing I learned is I'm sitting there I'm trying to read I'm like trying to figure out where do I come in I don't have to read all these words no no you know no right just because I wrote them don't mean I had to read them all exactly and I I found that [ __ ] out too from great great poet from Vancouver named Cecily Nicholson I she gave a reading in New York one time and she read her whole book okay but she just was moving from she was just flowing she remixed her whole book yes from poem to plus she read like four lines and come back you know it was it was so I don't know I kind of feel like man it's like um it's like there's well let you know we we work on these poems and we work on them really hard but but there's no reason to let a poem get in the way of poetry you know what I mean exactly that is there it is right yeah right yeah like because all that's registering in the moment that you feel like you gotta read all the things it's two things it's like Duty I I must and it's and it's this feeling and it's this feeling that you don't have anything else to give to this moment besides well this is why I'm here these these po these words so if I'm supposed to be in this room I'm supposed to deliver all of that and I think that that's when when I think the way I started learning about that was probably through Wanda Coleman who would do that that kind of medley work like she leave them from book to book and you know there's something there's something that you said earlier about the move from the genocidal to the geocidal and to me that is a chiasmus of if I can't have it no one can yeah right that that impulse is this dilation it's it's that like broken back out and yeah I think that that I think that that's just that's so that's so key and so on point and I was also thinking about how like if you went into uh you know that is mostly Studio to Steel you know you take the sculptures but the secrets and the shavings yeah right the secrets and the shavings that's that's there as well right so you wouldn't be taking the right thing because you don't know where it is even though it's right there yeah and so I think that that's yeah I just think that that's a amazing but but yeah yeah there's so many there's I mean like I so I see I see in the chat you know at some point we're supposed to uh have a q a and and I feel and I feel selfish I feel uh uh greedy right now um oh somebody put yes remember Wanda Coleman no no dang um no you don't you don't forget one of the Coleman um you know so I mean I guess I guess if people want to want to have want to put some questions into the chat I'll I'll pull them up pull them out um and and and and share them uh but yeah just just man just thinking about sound and remembering that where I met you was Giovanni Singleton yeah had an event for nocturnes she had a recording for the blues issue that we hosted at Cal Arts yeah and I remember you know and I haven't think about this but uh uh yep yep Dr Giovanni Singleton yep yep [Laughter] yeah yes doc um but thinking about after we did the recording the first thing I did was give you a copy I think it was of a book called Quantum spit you were like you're like hey let me you know and I remember giving you that so like the letter passing back you know like started as a relay that started in the in the first first encounter that uh that album called Quantum spit no I remember that night so well because because without our play right you know and um and he said Davis was there I mean it you know he's Scott Miller I'm Its Not A Matter of Greed at the point now where I'm filled with all of these memories you know um and and they feel good it feels good to have them but but it makes you greedy you know or I don't actually no that's not right it doesn't make you greedy it makes you I just I don't think it was I don't think it's a matter of greed to to raise the question of how come it can't be like that all the time you know right um it's not a matter of greed it's actually a matter of necessity you know and um and obviously that's going to be that's a matter of work right that's yeah that's something that you know we have to work for but but um but yeah Giovanni did that work that night to to make that possible and um so we try to go and do likewise you know wherever wherever we can wherever we can but well where if anybody has any questions um we'll be glad to try to answer them we we don't want to keep y'all up too late so yeah um maybe maybe um maybe maybe if nobody has a question man you want to read one more thing I could read another thing you want to read another thing because yeah let me I'll I'm gonna read one more thing and then and then you can take us out okay okay all right I'm this is this is for I wish I had something for all my friends for everybody personally out there and I'm working on it I promise but but this is something I've been working on for for John um for John King it's it's a thank you note so Dear John I've been reading 10 things I do every day every day now I don't know anything anymore but the sacred ordinary protocol have to do with knowing anything or with knowing nothing anymore when what common irregularity what regular surprise is there an anti-epistemology of the open field or the open road behind the open door see that mirror in the open window painting is required when it seems like seeing comes first you say beard and seams in my burning ears and I'm still learning not knowing leaning yearning I can't see around the corner but here comes sound and all as you see through painting I want to be where you are as nothing's ever left your mind it's not that the erotic and the energetic haven't always gone together is that the ways they get together stay more thick more desperate more abandoned New World in World's End are breathtaking in your eyes the truth of the kiss ain't true if it can't bear drowning if it can then it ain't true insofar as you see all that you see how to say blue solitude you do 10 things 17 ways in 15 ways in one of those actually I can't count the ways you go through actuality but by way of your beautiful ways of bending of all your leaving and partying and valid beginning the way your method of Truth against method is a way I wanted to take this chance and learn the ways of love all wrong in the generous margin of your spine can I say that I'm Your Shadow don't take back all this withholding and the failure to redeem and to redress something forgetive is born born by the unbearable something comes of the Unforgivable out of all this defined divining out of all this diving out of rule out of all this lining out of worried line remember to remember is to investigate demonstrations of presence such demonstrations often show in hiding your punctuation undiscovers colons don't explain they just describe they don't describe but lie between description and recounting not in between they count off rough and realign all non-aligned in three or in three four all bent all slid all indicating stumble all over the edge and being slid inside Sicilian and prepared and out strung lubricant and stroll and stroll top lifted into the instrument and double strum and Catalan caressive Anna crucis open mouth turn took to fall in stammers unknown names of drift and angle anymore I know of the open body I don't know what paths for lack or wasn't needed the fluid secret of the scar ex-voto and the sound itself dissolved and folded in the Vivid hole in the vanishing point in the sound of love in the square in Plaza and arms and Resident garage and penetrant refrains beautiful Horizon you write non-local histories of the neighborhood the hole in the hole feel like portals for one another the playhouse is a funny house in a rocket ship in a tea room in a monastery no one left intact in the alternate bar in the other Woman's Club in Hamilton Terrace Andy and Alternate Harlem low and East in the various Piedmont everybody talking everybody gone about the way you do in the variant March like something like work or like something offline or playing all this love all sung as if son might then pursue no overriding all overthrowing they played all that tomorrow as your thing is old school no such thing as the new school really no such thing if you remember stop erode in no ligature just bone on bone and blow and breaks and leaps and these broken Suites and endless plotless just off right on time after the election in the wake of the elect the exit of the darkest man is a particular thing we feel at these songs for the Betrayed through this proximity's exhausted Prelude can never Echo their fragrant explosion the return of the question of remembering and remember and of binding something but I'm not sure becomes clear in blocking an uncountable thromb I want you and I want all murmur on the edge of murder arder churn as we feel and fade or phase no phrase no concept no Mirage just murder murmur John I hear you asking ain't you heard you say beauty is especially dangerous under pressure and I hear you but I also hope so I too am committed to the Carnage of song All That branching and tearing and all that Crush hood hood looms huh in the human instamatic in the dark angles of the angels of light in the diggers coming back in the postcards in the rough care of uncurated energies and scenes in travel questioned in the precinct in the territory in The Coincidence of the block all up under the official Island in bearden's Open Secret Martin Wong and all up on that open bridge in open subrimage you show the shed is open too I believe in your delicate violence but I also hope so John John I just want to sing your name yours Fred um [Laughter] all right so um at uh MLA this year I am had the pleasure of catching part of a talk that you be Shockley gave um about the kind of I don't know the the longer lie that is the lyric um and um it was one of those sort of things that you know that made me just think about the I made me think about um the kinds of things that I do in in the work that I find myself where I feel like I'm really in a Groove With It what that made me think of though was what happens when I'm not in the groove that feels like the place that I'm accustomed to being and I had the opportunity to write upon [Music] um that for no other way to call it was a quasi-nature poem quasi-nature because it's a park and so you know sort of like nature of the sort of cultivated in a particular sort of way and I turned in the poem uh but after that I sent it to Evie and was just kind of like not only is it lyric it's a [ __ ] nature but it's all the [ __ ] and uh she wrote something back that felt like it gave me not just you talk about getting permission all the time it's not just permission it's like Tailwind um so I'll read this poem here a park is a ghost of interruption frenzy of green soon though black trees now and brown red too though fewer more the air on their limbs invisibly the clouds satchels full of water waiver back off the surface of Silver Lake where peering there I become a creature of dead fish and Disturbed reflection when I turn from the shore I leave the water and Sky to their Union here in lower air which sheets my limbs invisibly the clouds Roses full of water hover should this sound like threat I cannot provoke them so far below them a twig breaks under my foot mud Smothers Winter's last fever my feet sheathed in mud visibly deeper at times than I expected I Disturbed the Earth the insects stop I stop till they resume serrating a high wine I am no conductor but an interruption a park is a ghost of interruption the cities I find me stymied by the concrete fauna and trees the names of things they're etymologies I find me coming to describe rather than find my app can't tell which die cut I see my go on my mobile Avail between me and daika daika a veil between me and trees are shared respiration I seek an abstraction to enter a mutuality I mean to mean then a gaggle of scout swoops pass loud and bright sashes and patches scavenger hunting I am sewn back into my skin stitched into the riddle of what I can share with them their cheeks red as the jacket I wear which sheets me visibly and invisibly should this sound like threat they hollered to each other flushing the woods their calls ring to the cops hunting the high wine stops then starts again why don't these insects called device device device device device device device I make them an abstraction our shared is quiet insect sounds blur with car sounds blend with wind blowing asphalt paths cut through the Park trails and shades stitched wounds I am Crimson cutting through the park tracing these scars the air chills me well by the beach a Swale in the Swale a sign reads if location of this marker is endangered should this sound like thread to be here is to endanger it appear around me my muddy feet the distant call of scalps we share the Peril of being here we interrupt the insects High Wine I know so few names I make of us an abstraction I deny a form only a metric to measure quiet to measure shared Solitude is to endanger it that which we share that which we discard like corn chip packaging littering unmoving schools of winter kill fishes we breathe in cold we breathe out wow um some big love in this room tonight man this is what I do call Soul Food the truest sense uh such a gift and much respect to you both um it has been such an honor and and I mean very deeply moving uh Fred moton congratulations on this amazing collection Douglas really ever grateful to you for doing the honors always always a joy having you in the house my quest uh big shout out to Catherine bresner at wave books for all that she does they just do amazing amazing work up there and we are just ever happy to to be doing stuff with them on a regular basis fantastic stuff so I've posted links with which you may buy perennial fashion presence following as well as other books by Mr Moten as well as Mr Kearney uh better yet you know if you're in the hood come on down browse our Stacks we're located in San Francisco's historic North Beach District we are open seven days a week and now our new hours are 10 a.m to 10 p.m we are slowly getting back to pre-pandemic today's event has been made possible by support from the city lights Foundation continuing the legacy of our Founder The Late Lawrence for lingetti through public events like this one or publishing program and educational Outreach all dedicated to sustaining a Vibrant Community of readers writers and independent thinkers so so long everybody please take care we hope to see you all again soon all right thank you so much friend good night thanks everybody thanks Doug man thank you thanks all of y'all all right