"Drummer Boy Raga" and Cut-ups

Vehicule Poets at Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University
giving a group reading on 26 April 2018

Like a collagist, selecting and snipping, Stephen immersed himself in the text, emerged with bits and phrases words, even syllables. Sometimes, his selection was to introduce fragments of what was to come, sometimes a reflection (refraction) of what had just passed. His breaking up the text in this fashion turned the piece in on itself, its meditative aspect. The work was now reaching inward as well as outward. He did not add one original phrase, not one external element, yet his contribution was instructive. In visual terms, he zoomed in on the fabric, the material, offering the work as “object”, built with breaths, words, thoughts. 

                                                    —Tom Konyves on “Drummer Boy Raga: Red Light, Green                                                         Light” (Poetry in Performance, The Muses’ Company, 1982) 

By chance, I just reread Tom’s commentary on my participation in “Drummer Boy Raga: Red Light, Green Light”, a poetry performance we gave at Vehicule Art Gallery, on April 16, 1977. I believe the project was originated and coordinated by Tom Konyves; the performance included John McAuley, Ken Norris, Tom Konyves, Endre Farkas, Opal L. Nations, and Stephen Morrissey. My participation in writing the text amounted to cutting-up what others were writing. Then the cut-ups were assembled and returned to Tom who distributed the new work to the next person. These were my first published cut-ups. Finally, as a group, we performed the completed “Drummer Boy Raga: Red Light, Green Light”. Thinking back, this must also have been our first written group project as the Vehicule Poets; the next group collaboration would be A Real Good Goosin', Talking Poetics, Louis Dudek and The Vehicule Poets (Maker Press, Montreal, 1981). This was an interview or dialogue between Louis Dudek and the seven of us young poets. We were known as the Vehicule Poets because we all hung out and organized poetry readings at Vehicule Art Gallery. Our first group anthology, The Vehicule Poets (Maker Press, Montreal, 1979) wasn’t a collaborative work as such; it was an anthology of our work as individual poets, not work written in collaboration with each other. And now, here is Tom’s text, from above, cut-up: 

Like a collagist, selecting and snipping turned the piece in on itself, its meditative emerged with bits and phrases words, inward as well as outward. he did not add was to introduce fragments of what was element, yet his contribution was instructive (refraction) of what had just passed. His fabric, the material, offering the work as Stephen immersed himself in the text thoughts. even syllables. Sometimes, his selection aspect. The work was now reaching to come, sometimes a reflection. In visual terms, he zoomed in on the breaking up the text in this fashion “object”, built with breaths, words,

St. Patrick's Basilica, Montreal (two)

, S
St. Patrick's in Montreal.

Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver

The Vehicule Poets' last meeting, 2004

From left: Artie Gold, Claudia Lapp's husband Gary, Ken Norris, Ruth Taylor sitting beside Ken, Claudia Lapp (standing), Tom Konyves, and the back of Endre Farkas's head... This was the morning after the Vehicule Poet's performance at Place des Arts in April 2004, at La Brise Restaurant (now Starbucks) across the street from Artie's apartment. Copies of the anthology, The Vehicule Poets_Now (edited by Tom Konyves and Stephen Morrissey; published by The Muses' Company, Winnipeg, 2004) were distributed. I am not too sure why John McAuley wasn't present.

Ken Norris and Ruth Taylor.

Artie, going home...

A few days earlier, at St. Viateur Restaurant on Monkland, from left, Tom Konyves, Endre Farkas, Claudia Lapp, Stephen Morrissey.

Shamanism and Poetry

From Janet O. Dallett's When the Spirits Come Back (Inner City Books, Toronto, 1988); she writes:

Reflecting upon these events, I understood for the first time that a certain kind of work, resembling what Jung calls "visionary art," functions in much the same way as the shaman in tribal societies. That is, some art is shamanic in function. Formed from the collective unconscious material, it activates the unconscious of its audience and mobilizes the psyche's self-healing capacities. It opens a door to a different reality, the world of dreams and imagination, and "spirits" silently pass into the world of every day, affecting people in unexamined ways.

Shamanic art undermines unexamined cultural assumptions. For this reason it disturbs some people and may even arouse rage. Those who are open to it, however, often find that it sets their own creativity in motion.

Such art tends to be prophetic. It asks, even insists, on being heard, just as shamans are compelled to tell about their inner experiences when they begin to apply what they have learned about healing themselves to their healing of others. The visionary creative act is not complete until it finds an audience, coming out into the world and disturbing the complacent surface of collective consciousness. If the process is blocked, one outcome may be psychosis. Cancer may be another.

Shamanic art brings eros values to the healing of the psyche. That is, unlike traditional clinical psychology and psychiatry, it is more concerned with connecting and making whole than with the logos values of dissecting and understanding. It is related to a form of psychotherapy that interprets rarely, seeking instead to set in motion a symbolic process that has its own unforseeable healing goal. Understanding of behaviour is important only to the extent that it serves a living relationship to deep levels of the psyche. . . The soul of the shaman lies equally behind the visionary artist and the therapist who works in this way. If the shamanic type of therapist ceases to live her own creative life, the capacity to function in healing ways becomes lost and may even turn destructive. (36 - 37)

Shamanism and Poetry, some definitions (One)

(from) Earth Household, by Gary Snyder: 

The Shaman-poet is simply the man whose mind reaches easily out into all manners of shapes and other lives, and gives song to dreams. Poets have carried this function forward all through civilized times; poets don’t sing about society, they sing about nature—even if the closest they ever get to nature is their lady’s queynt. Class-structured civilized society is a kind of mass-ego. To transcend the ego is to go beyond society as well. “Beyond” there lies, inwardly, the unconscious. Outwardly, the equivalent of the unconscious is the wilderness: both of these terms meet, one step further on, as one. (122) 

Notes made around 1968 from televised lectures by Allan Watts, On Living: Religious man of hunting cultures is a shaman. Magic from going alone in the forest. The priest, Brahman, has a guru; the shaman is alone with animals & trees, knows rocks are alive. Watts is a shaman, an Anglican minister “I gave it up.” Offended at the notion of telling God what he already knows— that I’m a miserable sinner. No religion or society, but sympathy for all. 

(from) Letters of Arthur Rimbaud: May 13, 1871: …I want to be a poet… I am working to make myself a visionary…To arrive at the unknown through the disordering of all the senses, that’s the point. The sufferings will be tremendous, but one must be strong, be born a poet: it is in no way my fault. May 15, 1871: … The first study for a man who wants to be a poet is the knowledge of himself, entire. He searches his soul, he inspects it, he tests it, he learns it. As soon as he knows it, he cultivates it: it seems simple: in very brain a natural development is accomplished; so many egoists proclaim themselves authors; others attribute their intellectual progress to themselves! But the soul has to be made monstrous, that’s the point:… like comprachios, if you like! Imagine a man planting and cultivating warts on his face. One must, I say, be a visionary, make oneself a visionary. The Poet makes himself a visionary through a long, a prodigious and rational disordering of all the senses. Every form of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he consumes all the poisons in him, keeping only their quintessences. Ineffable torture in which he will need all his faith and superhuman strength, the great criminal, the great sickman, the accursed—and the supreme Savant! …kindly lend a friendly ear and everybody will be charmed… So, then, the poet is truly a thief of fire. Humanity is his responsibility, even the animals… Baudelaire is the first visionary, king of poets, a real God!

Cut-ups, series 1.6

A SEAS

Forward! The march

weariness and anger.

To whom shall I

should I adore? What

hearts shall I break?

what blood tread?

the intractable convict

are always closing; I sought

houses he would have

with his idea I saw the blue

of the country; in the cities

more strength than a saint,

a traveler—and he,

glory and his reason.

nights, without roof, with

a voice gripped my frozen

Still but a child,

on whom the prison doors

the inns and rooming

secrated by his passing;

sky, and the flowery labor

sensed his fatality. He had

more common sense than

alone! the witness of his

On highroads on winter

without clothes, without bread,

_________________________

Cut-up of Arthur Rimbaud

Cut-ups, series 1.5

Let me sleep! Eat the pebbles that one breaks,

At the altars of Churches’ old stones;

Broth run over Gravel of ancient deluge taste,

And mix with and loaves scattered in grey brakes

ON IN HELL

At last, O happiness,

the burden and the desert,

sky the azure that is dark

of pure light. Out of

myself? What beast

clownish and blank as Poly

image is attacked? What

lies should I uphold?

_________________________
Cut of Arthur Rimbaud

Cut-ups, series 1.4

Paul Verlaine, on left, and Arthur Rimbaud.

law— The hard life,
Howling beneath the leaves
with withered fist

The wolf spits out the lovely plumes
And thus no old age, no
Of his feast of fowls:

Like him I am consumed.
forsaken that to any divine
my impulses toward

Let me seethe
Solomon.

Rather steer clear of the rust
brutishness,—to lift the Cedron.
fin’s lid, to sit, to suffocate
dangers: terror is not

O reason, I brushed from the
—Ah! I am so utterly, and I lived—gold spark
image whatsoever, I took on an expression as
possible:

Salads and fruits
O my abnegation,
O Await but the picking;
below, however!

But violets are the food
De profundis, Domine, Of spiders in the thicket.

_________________________
Cut-up of Arthur Rimbaud

Cut-ups, series 1.3

Rimbaud (on right) with Verlaine, 
Paris, 1896

Gospel has gone by!

I am of an inferior race for

shore. Let the towns light

day is done; I’m quitting

my lungs; strange climates

to trample the grass, to

to drink liquors strong

my dear ancestors around

A SEASON

and liberty?
Alas! The Gospel!
Greedily I await God.

all eternity.

Here I am on the Bret

up in the evening. My

Europe. Sea air will burn

will tan my skin. To swim

hunt, and above all to smoke

as boiling metal,—like

their fires.

_________________________
Cut-up of Arthur Rimbaud

Cut-ups, series 1.2

Your white

The cradle

The sparse

This year or next year

Art criticism is as imbecile as Esperanto

Brindisi Goodbye goodbye

I was born in this city

And my son too

I’ve never liked Mascagni

Nor art nor artists

I’ve envied a woman

to be a woman

Bon voyage!

Let me carry you off

You who laugh at red

to the childbearing future

I envy your ease

Ocean liners of factories

At anchor

April 1914

_________________________

Cut-up of Blaise Cendrars

Cut-ups, series 1.1

Cutlery placement

BOMBAY EXPRESS

Ah! what’s more: They rush out of their cells

red clearing with old courtyard

I can remember They kidnap the young prisoner

land and Christianity. I get into a carriage which

myself in the past. But They leave at top speed

; and even the langue While the guards empty their

I cannot see myself

Some of the guards jump on horses

convicts

__________________________________
Cut-up of Arthur Rimbaud and Blaise Cendrars

St Patrick's Basilica, Montreal (one)

Exterior and interior photographs of St. Patrick's Basilica in Montreal.

This plaque celebrates the baptism of one of Canada's greatest poets, Emile Nelligan.

St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal (three)

The fountain behind the Oratory.

St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal (two)

St. Joseph's Oratory is not only one of the largest churches in North America, it is a dominating feature on the Montreal skyline.

This small chapel was the original church at this location. It is a short walk to the present-day, much larger Oratory.

St. Joseph's Oratory, Montreal (one)

Montreal's St. Joseph Oratory seen from Cote des Neiges Cemetery.

Inside the small chapel adjacent to the Oratory.

The Cut-up Technique

John Cage poem by Stephen Morrissey

The process of making cut-ups is fairly simple. Take a page of someone’s writing—for instance Arthur Rimbaud or Blaise Cendrars—and cut the page into four, eight, ten, or whatever number of pieces one chooses. Then, randomly assemble the cut-up pieces of text by gluing them onto a fresh sheet of paper. Now, you have a new piece of writing by the same author, but changed, the words altered, a new voice speaking through the random assemblage of fragments of their work. The linear writing you began with has been re-visioned in a non-linear way, often producing surprising new phrases that contradict normal rational logic. As a variation on this process, you can take two authors, cut-up their writing, and assemble a new, single, and combined page of, for instance, Rimbaud-Cendrars.

I learned of the cut-up method in William Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s book Minutes to Go that I read in the early 1970s. I was just beginning to read my work in public and the cut-ups made a huge impression on me at the time. Indeed, the writings of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and William Burroughs, and others, spoke to many of us in a personal and relevant way. Writing poetry was our journey and these older writers were our mentors. I also read all of Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, and other writers that Henry Miller recommended in his The Books in my Life; indeed, that’s where I first heard of Blaise Cendrars and, possibly, J. Krishnamurti. At the time of these early public readings and performances, I was also involved with the writings of John Cage that emphasized silence, randomness, coincidence/synchronicity, and non-linearity in art.

I have always liked several things about making cut-ups: For instance, 1) the physicality (or non-cerebral aspect) of the cut-ups, using scissors and glue to create new writing; 2) the relationship of the cut-ups to making collages, which are really visual cut-ups; 3) I have always been intrigued by the randomness of the cut-ups, allowing a new voice to emerge from the writing; 4) the connection to visual art (painting, film, etc.) interested me; 5) avoiding the imposition of the ego in the writing, always seemed to me one of the objectives I was attempting to achieve in my experimental writing; 6) cut-ups can be performed using several voices, or a room full of voices, or the reading/performance can have several cut-ups read simultaneously.

The cut-ups remind us of a serious ambition in poetry, in sound poetry, in visual poetry, and in printed poetry. In my writing since the cut-ups—writing concerned with redemption and witness—the context has always been living in an existential world in which insight and affirmation of life has been hard-won. The cut-ups affirm life, they show meaning and creativity in randomness and coincidence.

A final note: you can't escape the jester archetype in all of this. The idea of new, intelligible poems coming from the cut-up remains of someone else's poems suggests a supreme act of jesting. Are our poems so slight, or so dense, that a new and possibly significant text can be found after its cut-up pieces are randomly assembled? Is the cut-up up technique also some kind of jest or put-on? Of course, the jest is a part of the process...

SM, 30 October, 2008

The Shaman’s Tune

Shamanism is as old as primeval sea life that has not yet been thrown onto the distant shore of consciousness—consciousness that is about to experience an evolution that takes more years than we can imagine.

A Walk on the Lachine Canal

The Lachine Canal extends from Old Montreal to Lachine; these photographs were taken in Lachine. The early explorers thought they had discovered China, and gave the area the name "La Chine," China...

St. Agnes Church, from the Lachine Canal, in winter.

One of the oldest Anglican Churches in Quebec, St. Stephen's Church is just off the canal.

Molsons at Mount Royal Cemetery

The rusted doors to the Molson mausoleum with their famous, once rather erotic, depiction of naked women angels just above the Molson name. The Molson family mausoleum, located at Mount Royal Cemetery here in Montreal, is modelled after their original brewery. The Molson family is prominent in Montreal and Quebec history, now including the endowment for the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University. (Note: Last week I noticed that the old ornate doors of naked mermaids, or are they angels? have been removed and plain steel doors installed.)