2.7 Anatomy of a Bad Poem and Neon Words in Galleries

Transcript

Hey, I’m Matt. G’day, I’m Aiden. Yeah, so we’re back in each other’s company once again, fucking joking about dolphins. And we actually saw a show together today, which was really cool. We’ll talk about that later. Yeah, so welcome to Hung Up. Cool. So yeah, the whole, or like what we want to talk about this week, it’s pretty broad, but we’re going to like zoom in a little bit. Like our overall theme is just words. Words in an art context, words in like a life context, using words to describe art, you know, kind of what we’re doing.

And just the kind of place and existence of words in galleries, where you’ll find them and how artists use them. And then we also want to talk a little bit just about poetry, because a very intentional use of words. That’s basically, that’s, that’s poetry, right? I think of the two of us, you’re more into poetry.

Sure. You’re a prolific reader and, and a writer of poetry, albeit a little bit insular, I think, like you don’t share your poems, right? Not really. I mean, I’m a prolific reader, and I did like a creative writing course at uni, and I’m still writing, but I kind of took the last year plus off. And yeah, I haven’t really shared anything, but I want to get to the point of yet, like performing it or publishing it, like that would be a really cool goal.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’d like to like to see that. So I think we’ll like, we’ll let you play defense for this. We were looking at some of the types of poems that people share on Instagram just before this episode. And yeah, I won’t lie, we had a little bit of a laugh about a couple of them. You know, sometimes it seems like a little bit indulgent or kind of formless, maybe.

There’s obviously some great poets on Instagram too, and it’s kind of an exciting place for it. You know, you’re sort of constrained in these interesting ways. But I think aside from the kind of like, like the theater crowd for our theater episode with Dino, like the kind of poetry and the art crowd, you know, poetry is experiencing probably like the opposite of a renaissance right now. It’s struggling.

There’s like a bit of a kind of poverty of poetry things to do and like, you know, poetry funding and stuff. Can you say like, with any kind of certainty, if there’s some forces at play, what, like what I’m asking you is what is so boring about poetry?

Yeah, it’s a good question. So I’d say like, I, you show someone who’s like, not familiar with poetry or not comfortable with poetry, and you will see them like, recoil. That’s basically the way that I would say it. Like, I’m sure you’ve seen that. Like, it’s very physical. Like, it’s all discussed. And it’s funny that like, something so kind of small and gentle could make people so uncomfortable.

And I watch people like, scrabble and scramble. And like, here’s some of the like, things I see on them. I see them feel like, they feel stupid, immediately. They have like, flashbacks, obviously, to high school, they feel like a deep, like, deep internal boredom. They just want you to like, shut your poetry book and go the fuck away. Like, it sucks. That’s how like, yeah, people feel.

And I’ve also noticed like, another common thing is like, really quickly trying to justify it in like an academic sense. Like this, same thing happens with contemporary art, right? You mean poetry fans will say? No, sorry. I mean, the person who’s like, not a poetry fan, you show them a poem or you send them a poem. And one of the first things they try and do is to like, like, rest it into order, like, like, wrestle it into order, rather, like, you know, they want to start giving

me like an academic reading of like, well, this, this illusion means this. Yeah, like, you know, try and jump onto what is concrete and what is like, Googleable about it. I’ve noticed that, like, that’s kind of thing. And it’s like the kind of thing where like, leaving the movie cinema, you’re like, to your friend, what, what did the end of that movie mean?

Exactly. Right. Yeah. And it’s the same thing with contemporary art. And then when, like, when you’re really comfortable looking at contemporary art, or really comfortable looking at poems, I find like, you’re like, wrong question, like, just sit with it. Yeah. But that’s almost like a pro level. Like we’ve said before, that’s like some pro level shit to just be able to sit with these things. You’re so familiar. Yeah, that it’s like difficulties have just faded away. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that’s, that’s the experience that I see people having. And maybe it’d be cool to get into some reasons why. But yeah, it’s funny, because it is really visceral. You know? Yes. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s like all of the stuff, all the kind of like cheesy, cliche stuff that people say about it, like, you know, we’ve found to be true.

In, you know, in one way or another. I think like, I, because I’m sort of posing you as the, like, the expert on it, but I also have some shit to say myself about it. Like, yeah, I think, you know, we were just, we were just chatting before this recording about like, the limitations of language.

And like sort of comparing, like a concept that you can communicate through words versus the type of concepts that like a photographer can communicate wordlessly. Um, and I think like, uh, you know, we, we sort of, uh, settled on how, um, yeah, like language does feel very one dimensional, but, you know, I think there’s, there is some beautiful, um, kind of third, like, it’s kind of like a harmonic produced by the, the limits of language that we really get out of great poets.

It’s kind of like how, um, when in uni I was doing study about, um, like the relationship between word and text. And one of the things was like, we looked at comic books and like good comic book, you know, sort of arty comic books. Um, good is whatever. I mean, sort of like people who are like, they’re saying it’s art or whatever. And, um, one of them was this really cool one.

I think I’ll see if I can link to the PDF in our show notes, but it was basically a sort of pro comic book artist explaining how comic books work, how the, how the visual language works in a comic, you know, in a comic form. And a really interesting thing that he pointed out, which I still think about a lot to this day, is that all of the action in a comic happens in between the frames.

So your brain kind of fills in the rest of that. And that sort of feels like the kind of harmonic that I’m talking about. It’s like a sort of third resonance built up from outside of the actual words on the page that we get from good poets. And then like, you know, in, in that, if we’re looking at it like that, it’s like the kind of the sort of plain old meaning of it, just what it means sort of falls down a little bit in the, in the sort of hierarchy of what’s interesting about it.

Right. Yeah, for sure. If we talk about that, like as a skill, like understanding and appreciation. And it’s interesting because it’s like the same word understanding, but it’s kind of like a deep down gut understanding. Yeah. You know, the way that like things that just are pleasurable don’t need to be comprehended. Like you don’t need to say like, why was that sex so good?

Why was that burger so good? You can talk about that. But like, you know, we had breakfast with a friend this morning. We ate these like big fatty, like drippy egg sandwiches. And no one was like justifying why it was so good. We’re just like, just, you know, eating fat. It tastes good. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the end of the story. Yeah. True. And there’s a couple of things that I just want to say about like what I think has led to, you know, poetry being particularly uncomfortable for people.

And I think it really is that skill. So, if we even go back to like, I don’t know what, 50s, 60s, like poetry was just way more in the culture. It just was more, you know, prevalent. You would have had lots of lessons in school probably about it. So, that’s one thing. It was more in the culture. So, people just kind of like learn to deal with the form, like as kids.

And also, I think poetry was more formal. Yeah. Like pre-free verse. Sure. We had like rhyme. We had like, you know, measures. And that’s like a framework that I think makes like comprehending and feeling poetry a lot easier. And then like, you know, whenever free verse was around, I don’t even know when it started.

But like pretty much today, you know, it’s 95% free verse. You know, it’s not a sonnet. It’s not whatever. It doesn’t usually. Rhyming is kind of taking the backseat. Rhyming is taking the backseat. But like we should talk later. Like obviously, like all of rap, like the most popular genre, one of the most profound genres.

Yeah. A genre of poetry, like you could say, that everyone understands. Yeah. Like in rap, like, you know, or even like any songwriting, like the, what do you call it? Like the next line rhyme. Like in poetry now, that’s so like childish sounding to like have like couplets. Yeah. Makes it sound like really like.

Really simple. Yeah. Simple and like old fashioned. Yeah. But then like you’ve got like a rapper like rapping about like some serious shit. Yeah. And it’s like couplets. It is couplets, but they have very interesting like rhyme schemes. And like there is some complex shit going on often. Like, you know, there’s websites where they analyze like every single like intra line,

like within the line rhyme and stuff. And it’s like, whoa, you know, some very complex shit sometimes going on, which is cool. Yeah. Hip hop is a really interesting like place to talk about word as well. It’s, it’s, I was talking about this last night. We had a few people around and a couple of us were talking about music.

And I was kind of saying how it seemed like, okay, so I’m a musician, right? And I write songs. And I was kind of saying how it seems like a lot of people have reported to me that they don’t really hear the lyrics until they really love the piece of music. So it’s like, you’ve got to, you know, absolutely fall in love with a song and then you go and

look up the lyrics or something, or you then sort of maybe pay attention hard enough or whatever to discern them. I guess it’s funny because what I’ve kind of said so far is, you know, this is like my, I don’t know, like teacher kind of mood. Like I’m kind of past the age of like being angry at individuals for not liking poetry.

It’s not going to further my cause. Do you know what I mean? Like there’s no point blaming people for thinking that it’s stupid. Like it’s like any other thing. Like you just got to, you know, really mine the value for yourself. Like, I don’t know, whatever it is when you’re into niche things, like you don’t get the pleasure of sharing with like the rest of the world. Like hungup.au on Instagram.

Like fucking sweet, like hyper local art podcast. Yeah, but it means so much to me. And then I guess what I’m getting at is that I’m kind of more interested now in like the structural, cultural and structural reasons that poetry like, and, you know, we’re kind of talking about like academic printed,

you know, in a small poetry book poetry, the kind of shit that’s in a journal or, you know, published by like Vagabond or Giramondo, like one of the local Aussie publishers. Yeah.

And I guess like what’s interesting to me is it is at once really unpopular, but its form, I think, is like really rife for being hugely popular. Like I actually saw like a poetry Instagram with like 300k followers called Poetry is Not a Luxury. And they just repost like popular poems.

And the poems are not like that good, but they’re good enough. Like they’re academic published regarded poems. So like, you know, as someone that cares about poems, I’m like, okay, good. Like it’s not like trash with 300k followers. It’s like a rupee, what are they called? Yeah, a rupee cover poem. Like it’s a real quote, real poem. Yeah. And like, you know, lots of people like it.

And that’s something that I’ve always kind of been fascinated with is not people using Instagram to share their own stuff, the kind of quote, bad stuff that doesn’t have a reader in mind. But Instagram, like even just the grid being a really, really good way as you’re scrolling, like you scroll past your fucking mate’s dinner and you scroll past like a new outfit and you scroll past an ad and then you stop for a second and you read a poem.

And like this morning, like I just went to Gould and picked up like a William Carlos Williams poem. And he is awesome. And he writes these like hyper minimalist poems. Like he’ll have like a nine. He’s like an old guy from the 30s or 40s. And he writes like nine word poems. And like that would be so perfect on the grid between your fucking ad and your brekkie.

True. And you just read it to yourself and you keep scrolling. And like it just kind of, it’s really interesting because I think that’s like one of the things I love about poetry so much is it’s so like digestible. Yeah. Not digestible. Obviously, it’s very difficult for us, but like it could be so digestible, you know? Yeah. There’s some interesting like sort of minimal artists in that space.

Maybe I’ll bring up Mitchell Cumming, who I’ve been like sharing you some of his like poems for a while. And it’s, I don’t even know if you could call, I don’t know if they sort of sit in their own genre because some of them are one word, you know, two words or something. And like interesting sort of separations, like a place to put a comma, you know, or just

tiny little micro poems, which kind of get at this kind of dissective, microscopic kind of nitty gritty thing in poetry. Maybe it’s for, you know, poetry heads or something, but I think they’re kind of successful in many ways in that they’re so digestible, like you said.

Yeah. I think Instagram is a really interesting place. Like, and also, I don’t know if what you, I don’t know if this is how you meant it, but you know, it’s sort of, it gives this kind of middle ground to people where it’s like, you could see a Sylvia Plath poem on a, you know, who’s a total rock star of the genre

of the, of the medium. You could see a Sylvia Plath poem on a feed, but you could also see, yeah, someone that you’d never heard of before who was actually quite accomplished, but you know, just, you just didn’t run in that circle or whatever. You know, that’s cool. I think like even just seeing your friends, like, let’s say like, you know, kind of annoying

poem or whatever, it’s kind of cool just to, just to have some kind of like ascent to that type of content going on. Maybe I’m just riffing here. Yeah, no, I really like that. It’s really interesting. It makes me start to think about conversation we’re having earlier, just about like, yeah,

the word versus the image. Obviously Instagram is like, you know, it’s an image platform. So it’s kind of funny to have, you know, you know, there’s a big proliferation ride at one point where it was like text-based posts everywhere, like big blocks of text, like, you know, in the square where there’s meant to be a picture, there’s meant to be a face. And now we’re just filling it up with words. Kind of tiring, actually.

One thing I want to say just here on, you know, the reasons why people find it difficult is like, if you have a book of poems at home, how many people do you think are reading those out loud, like to themselves? Very few, I would say. Very few, right? Yeah. But, and this is just a guess, but I feel like back in the day, like 50s, 60s, 70s,

poetry’s heyday, people would have felt a lot more comfortable reading them. Because as far as I’m aware, like the poetry, poem doesn’t really exist until you voice it. So you sort of outlined the kind of gut reactions that people have when maybe you show them a book of poetry or something. I think another thing that they feel is like this kind of self-consciousness, you know,

that kind of like empathetic embarrassment for someone displaying so vulnerably a part of themselves. You know, it feels like the thought of reading my poem to even my close friends is so shatteringly embarrassing that the thought of someone else committing words to paper or even reading it aloud, just it gives me that sort of projected embarrassment.

Do you think that, does that sound true? That tracks like, that’s completely true. Especially when so much poetry, like I was just saying, I joined this like poetry discord because I was craving more poetry chat. And it has always the breakdown of like a cool discussion and sharing good poets. And it’s like all these people that know a lot about poetry and do all the things that

you’re meant to do. But then in the sharing channel, like it’s shocking. Like it’s really bad because it’s really hard to write poetry. And also, yeah. To what your point, like it is so sappy and you can tell, like, I guess what’s embarrassing about it, like either writing it or reading it or a bad poem, the like really sad thing

about a bad poem is that you realize that there’s this like really visible disparity between, you know, the intensity of the emotion, like the kind of beautiful human, like engulfing experience of being emotional, whether it’s a good emotion or a bad emotion, like how fucking complex and tough those emotions are.

Like I keep saying now, I’m like, why are emotions so strong? Like what’s going on here? What’s happening to me? And then you see like this, it’s like almost like drawing, right? Like if you get an average adult to draw, they’re embarrassed because it’s so silly. Like it looks like a five-year-old. And that’s kind of what these poems look like.

It’s like a five-year-old’s rendition of an emotion. And you see and feel this huge disparity between like this complex world that you know they feel and then this just awful expression of it. Yeah. It’s interesting because like part of, I guess like there feels like a bit of like conceit or premise at play, which is like, you know, if someone was, for example, they wanted to

express that they were sad, you know, if you were at the pub with your mate, it would be actually quite easy to show, to walk them through what’s going on, you know, but then just to put that, write that down line by line, you know, it would just be a really boring report for a stranger to read, you know? So it’s like, there’s this kind of like, um, the sort of unfortunate, oh, not unfortunate

though. Like the, the kind of like barrier of entry, you know, for it being interesting is actually like, I think higher than people might expect, given how like fluent you might be at expressing yourself to someone in just normal prose conversation where like, you know, if you start to write it down, it sort of just looks boring immediately.

But then, yeah, I think that’s the gift or that, or like the, um, that’s the, uh, the, the, the sort of trick or something that a good poet has where they’re, um, you know, it, it, it tricks you. It feels like someone talking to you at the, not necessarily at the pub. We use that often as like a standard for just all the conversation. Um, but you know, it feels like someone just talking very, very plainly to you sometimes

when actually the trick is that, no, this is highly constructed language with very specific chosen words. It took me half an hour to find that word. And it’s like the, or it’s an or something. Yeah. Um, yeah. You mentioned before, like the word like microscopic, who is it? Oscar Wilde has like, uh, like little like quip around writing poetry.

Someone asked him like, how was your day? Like, how did it go? And he’s like, I spent all morning, like, uh, inserting a comma into the poem and then all evening taking it out. That’s the, and that’s what it’s like. Yeah. That is what it’s like. Yeah. As you get like closer and closer with the poem, like you start to find things like, you

know, a breath, like the, the poet, the poem and the poet will make you pause like with the selection of words. And that’s why it’s so important to voice it. That’s where it lives. Like it lives in the voice, in the spoken, in the projection. Yeah. For me, like the, the speaking, it makes you feel more comfortable with it.

It makes you really allow, like makes it yours. Like I said to you sometimes, almost as if like you were being the ability, like given the ability by your favorite artist to like sing as they would. Yeah. Cause you already have the capacity to speak. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s the other thing that we haven’t even really gotten into, which is, you know, that, that sort of level of ownership that you can have of something, like even more than

a song where, where I can sing along to my like favorite Stevie Wonder song. But if I could read one of these poems, you know, out loud in my room, it’s sort of, it’s enacted. It’s like the room is the gallery where it’s shown and it’s my space and it’s, I’m surrounded by my stuff and it’s on my bed, you know, it’s really, it’s on my terms.

And I can kind of, I can sort of, I think with some poems, especially, you know, more kind of far out modern poems, I can sort of do my own interpretation and stuff. But, you know, at the end of the day, when you sort of, when you’re finished, it’s like you really did get to hold it in your hand a lot more, I think of an intimate experience

than so many other works. You know, I could take home a printed picture of something from a gallery and it would, it would, it’s now surrounded by my things and it’s not in a gallery, but you know, it’s still like, it’s sort of been removed from somewhere. Whereas this poem is kind of sprouting out inside my room, let’s say. A hundred percent. And you are like, if we agree that the poetry, it’s kind of like the death of the author thing,

like the poetry poem is only alive when it’s voiced. Like you’re an essential participant in, in the poem’s existence. True. Like you’re really part of, part of it. And I’ve had moments, like I remember like, yeah, sitting up late at night and like, honestly feeling like, and it’s only happened like, honestly, twice, like once with a portrait of

Anna Akhmatova, where I felt like I was like communing directly with the person, which was really powerful. I was at like a, like Russian socialist exhibition in the UK. And that was crazy. Like, like I really felt like I was standing in front of her. Wow. And then once with a poem, I think it was just by Langston Hughes.

And I felt like, yeah, I was speaking with him and that was really wild. Mm.

There’s this famous, um, like Frank O’Hara recording. Frank O’Hara is like one of our favorite poets, a very like conversational, like he’s in the so-called like New York school. Um, and he was super into art. Actually, he worked at the MoMA for ages. You should totally check him out. He’s, he’s a really good entry point for this kind of snappy, um, you know, chatty poetry

that, that we love. But yeah, um, he has this really cool like recording online, just on YouTube of like, um, he’s at some kind of like lecture theater in Manhattan or whatever, or, and yeah, everyone is just like cackling. Like you can hear like all these young people and like, you know, a whole room full of them

and everyone’s fucking laughing at all of his poetic jokes and listening silently as he reads them. I wouldn’t be able to stay long anyway. Maybe we could go somewhere nearer. I’m not wearing a jacket, just like you weren’t wearing a tie. Well, I didn’t say we had to go. I don’t care whether you’re wearing one. We don’t really have to do anything.

Well, all right, let’s not. Okay, I’ll call you. Yes, call me.

The next poem is called Poem 2. So I just feel like if it was that, you know, in the fabric of life back then, I don’t know if it’s so much like this capitalist thing or a platform thing. It’s just like, it was more normal to read poems. Like it’s super normal to listen to music.

Like I guess it always has been, but like, I just almost think like reading poetry would have just been normalized. Yeah. And now it’s unusual.

I kind of need to pee. You just need to finish the podcast. Do you want to just go pee? Let’s hit pause. Let’s do the podcast. Okay. Now we’re in an art gallery. So this is kind of a different world to what we were sort of talking about, but I think they’re connected and they definitely have overlaps. And some poets, I bet you, write poems and do artworks.

Can we just get it out, like right at the top of this section, talk about neon, words in neon. It was on the, I think it was like a 2018 white pube post that they reposted. They’ve been doing like TBTs.

And it was like one of their like art biennale fucking bingo cards, like bingo little points was like, you see a work that is words in neon. Can we just get like, can we just try some fucking hot takes on this for a bit and just see what comes out? Yeah, sure. Yeah. I like in like a visual culture way.

I just want to say like at my fucking jujitsu gym, we now have a sign that says the name of the gym in neon. So like, it’s been kind of taken by everyone. Well, okay. There is an older precedent of like, because people were lighting up neon stuff, like just the chemist, you know, drugstore in 1900 and something like, you know, so there’s that.

Yeah. So, but you’re saying that that they’re, you’re saying that they’re, they’ve gotten their aesthetic, not from the old timey, like Hong Kong, you know, and drugstore in the 1800s or whatever, because it’s an old technology. You’re saying that they got it from like Instagram and galleries. I think they definitely got it from Instagram. I think they definitely got it from Instagram.

I remember too, like so many fucking cafes and like upper market burger shops. And like, it’s just always the neon words. So that is kind of where like, I don’t, like I have seen some of that Hong Kong stuff. I don’t really know about the history, but for me, it’s like this very 2010s aesthetic. Like you put your words in neon and like, it makes people hungry and it makes art.

Yeah. And then in the gallery, it’s kind of just feels like, I guess what we’re complaining about is it feels like just, you’ve selected all the text in Google docs and hit like Apple B, like make it bold. Yeah. Well, I’m not going to say what you’re pissed about, but like what I think it makes sense to be pissed. I’m mad, dude. I’m mad. Yeah. You’re fucking mad. And let me tell you why you ought to be mad.

Tell me. This is why you ought to be mad because it feels like a default. Like it feels like, it’s just like, if I’m an artist, not a poet, if I might, I inhabit contemporary art spaces and I want to show some words, they will be shown in neon. And like you were saying like about the white poop, white pube, it was a fucking bingo board.

Like words in neon. Like the beautiful thing about contemporary art is you basically have no restrictions. You can use like any material or medium and you can like, you know, do words in any way. Yes. And it’s like nine times out of 10, just like, we’ll do words in neon. Yeah. As we started this, I thought like maybe it sells well.

Yeah. And maybe that touches why it’s like so used in fucking. People are literally setting these up in their homes. Like, hey, can you come and fucking install my, my fucking neon artwork in my fucking mansion? I don’t fucking know. Maybe it’s just like, it’s just so safe. And there’s something like the fact that it’s so popular in like, you know, six out of 10, like small chain restaurants speaks to it’s like blandness.

Yes. And it’s just, I think it’s offensive. Yeah. Like it’s kind of the reverse. Like it’s offensive to us to walk into a gallery and see something so bland. Yeah. Like deployed again and again. It’s like, bro, I drove all this way to fucking Paddington to see this show. Yeah. And you’re giving me fucking words in neon. Yeah. Like it made sense in that show. Yeah.

So like Brandon Van Heck and like there’s some really beautiful like glass works. Sure. And then in the next room, there was like some really like, it was just pink neon and like a little like, I don’t know, phrase about the ocean. Yeah. And a rug that we got shouted out for sitting on. Yeah. Yeah. Did we ever talk about that on the podcast? I think so. I think we’re separated now enough that we can tell the story.

Yeah, we can. So basically we, two young, sweet, young, innocent looking lads. We went up to the Brandon Van Heck exhibition. I think it was last year or maybe before this most recent lockdown. And we’re in there. We’re taping a beautiful episode. All the art stuff, all the sort of art adjudicators, what are they called? Invigilators are usually like cool.

People are like interacting. People are talking about it. And these guys were pretty into it. And then we were in the room with like the rug and the neon sign. And that was where we decided to set up camp and tape a significant segment of the episode, you know, sitting cross-legged on that. And then after about half an hour, someone came in and like, I think we could probably

run the tape, but it’s like someone came in and she was like, can you like absolutely fucking get off that right now? She was like, I’ve just sold it. And I, you know, I’m like terrified about your dirty, like, you know, civilian shoes touching it. And it was so funny. We had like the dog on, on it too, like slobbering all over it before she came in.

I don’t know. It was a funny little like, oh, okay. You know, we were a little bit like, what the fuck after that? Yeah. Well, and I remember the word she used was, I need to keep it virginal. Oh yeah. That’s right. Do you remember that? Yeah. And there was one other thing about like the room is like, one thing that I’ve like learned to do is like take up space in galleries because if you don’t let yourself do that, it becomes

really hard to enjoy them because you’re scared of them. And that’s like what you see when you see people crowding around like the corners of a room, like almost hiding. And the way this room was set up was that the rug took up the entire room. Yeah. Like 80, 90% of the floor space. Exactly. And so it was like, what are we going to walk on a little board walk around the outside, shimmy around, you know?

And you know what? If you had to put money, I’d say most people did shimmy around or they entered the room, realized there was an art rug. Yeah. And didn’t feel comfortable taking another step. So yeah. Yeah. But I mean, we came out of that show, like realizing that that gallery, I think it was Sarah Cotier. Yeah. That’s right. Like that’s a moneyed gallery. And it felt like, you know, when we were there, our experience was that, you know, the people

that were there were like there to buy work. Like it was super wealthy. They were literally showing someone around, kind of trying to fluff them up to buy something while we were there. That’s true. It’s not like fucking- It’s almost like a shop, you know? Yeah, exactly. And you know, that is what it is. It’s fine. Yeah. It’s cool. Artists need, you know, outlets for it, you know? 100%. And we kind of get to, we get the benefits of, you know, those rich ass people buying the

work. We can go see it. Yeah. And you know, then the space isn’t completely for us. But like- We have to take an everyman commission. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. But yeah. And if we were at like a fucking Ari, like that would have probably been met with like, you know, a bunch of young artists, like I think in airspace. Yeah. It was super like that. It was like, look at this fucking cool work. And then the like gallery host was like, yeah, that’s my work.

Like, you know, it’s like, that’s the opposite end where it’s like, you sit on that rug and you can. Yeah. It’s cool. Yeah. And then at Parry, you know, maybe we could afford one of those works as well, you know? Yeah. Hmm. Okay. We’ve sort of, we’ve diverged a little bit. All of that was because people insist on putting words in neon. So just- It’s his fucking fault, dude.

But yeah. Yeah. Anyway. So after our big fatty salty breakfast this morning, really tasty by the way, we went over to the corner shop, our local window gallery just down the road from my place. And we saw, what is it?

Like 10 photos in the window by Daphne Nguyen.

And the show is called Windpipe. Yeah. We actually didn’t really talk about the show that much. It was the opposite to if you have heard one of our season one episodes where we’re in there sort of really experiencing these works live on the mic. It was kind of the opposite to that experience this morning.

We kind of went there, we looked at it and we didn’t say anything. And you said something really interesting to me when we got back here about it. Do you want to like repeat that for the audience? Yeah. Like I was saying to you, like, it was so nice to not have to explain it. Explain how I felt. Like I knew I was seeing something special.

I knew I was seeing something that I was really getting a lot out of. And I was glad that you didn’t ask me like, what do you think of this? I was just like, I like it. And you’re like, it’s cool, huh? And it just felt so like leisurely and comfortable and like without an end, like just to stroll up King Street in the sun and just be like, hey, you want to see this?

Sure. And spend five minutes like on our own terms. And yeah, it’s just this whole thing of like, yeah, words. So beautiful, so powerful, so interesting, but also tiring. You know, like sometimes you just want to see stuff. And it’s kind of like the poetry. Sometimes when I feel a need to ask people like, what do you like about it? Like, you know, what do you like about it? What did it mean to you?

Like you’re asking them to, you know, to justify it in a sense, like in words. And I see sometimes that makes people uncomfortable. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. So me and my flatmate last, no, two nights ago watched this really cool documentary called,

we watched this movie called By the Ways, which was, oh, okay. So this was the second William Eggleston film that I’ve seen now, not by him, but about him. And he was a photographer that I kind of tuned into for the photography episode, but I was very well aware of him.

Like before that, he was one of my sort of early, he’s every fucking white guy photographer’s early hero. And I just, what fascinates me about him is two things, which I’ll get into in a second, but I just want to talk about the film. It was, it was so much more satisfying than the first one I watched, which was as much about the director being cool as it was about William Eggleston being like fucked up and old.

Basically the subject of the film was the person that they painted in that first documentary that I watched was this kind of like fucked up old drinker who doesn’t understand what he’s doing and doesn’t want to get deep about it. But nonetheless, he’s a genius, you know, it was kind of sort of told as a kind of like a log, like, you know, travel log in a sense is this director following him around.

The one we watched last night, on the other hand, was so refreshing. It was much more than a sort of boring old documentary. It was like, you know, art about an artist. It was, you know, interesting and it had these musical decisions and moments and it had like funny, totally incongruous combinations of sound and vision and interesting little micro interviews.

They interview some of the really important people in his life and all I get to say is about two sentences, which don’t really have anything to do with his life. It’s almost more about a kind of second order reflection of the kind of impression that he’s had on people. And it was so much more satisfying to watch. It was the way, you know, it’s a cool way to just experience, you know, an artist’s like output and an artist’s personhood in that kind of abstract lens.

Like taking artistic liberties to make a better point. Yeah. Making art. It was a lot clearer, I thought, because of that. It was a bit more sort of, maybe a little bit more sort of non-traditional and a little bit crunchier than the first one I watched. But yeah, that’s of the two, I would recommend that one. And, but what was really interesting was they had this kind of funny moment in it where they had, I think that the like little, it was made up of 12 like mini chapters.

And I think the chapter was called The German Journalist. And it’s this journalist probably from like a sort of art magazine, you know, maybe in Berlin, trying his very best to get a deep, like deep, you know, uni level lecturer answer from William Eggleston. And asking him questions like, I feel like when you are walking around and you see a picture and you take that picture, what you’re feeling is represented exactly and what you’re seeing.

And, and all of his questions were these kind of convoluted, sort of self-defeating, weird, like basically like almost language play. And all William Eggleston said basically in response to all of them is, I don’t really understand what that is. And, you know, I don’t really think like that, you know, and he basically just had one word answers for all of it.

And it kind of got me thinking about how, you know, for example, in the visual arts, like just having a visual thing to say pretty much like easily defeats the power of language to express that same thing every time.

It’s like just, it cannot be trumped, you know, it’s like that famous quote about writing about music is like dancing about architecture. I’ve heard that quote a lot of times, but unfortunately it’s very true in this case. So, did you have anything to add to my TED talk about vision versus, you know, I think what I wanted to get across was that, you know, I really do believe that this artist Eggleston is, you know, I think today it’s a bit like played out and boring.

I’m sort of interested in it almost in a historical sense, but, you know, he was totally worthy without having to understand what he was doing from an academic standpoint. And even how him trying to explain it would just be boring and limited, you know? So, do you have anything to add to that? I agree big time.

I think, yeah, it’s a really cool take and it’s a really important thing just to, like, I completely agree with the documentary thing, just as a quick aside. I hate the aesthetics that we’ve agreed upon for like the standard documentary. I think it’s a lie and I hate it. And it needs to be fucked with for the truth to make sense. Yeah, right. I think like the whole Netflix docker thing is just, it’s such a trash, fucking wanky, manipulative form that we’ve agreed on.

It makes you feel, yeah, anyway, not a fan. Yep. But, yeah. Yeah, but like, it’s slightly, like, the point stands, but it’s slightly different when we talk about an artist and their own work than when we talk about like an audience member and someone else’s work. Because, yeah, the audience, the artist can always say, you know, it’s all in the work, it’s all in the work.

Stop interviewing me. And that’s like a common trope and that’s fine. But it’s still like the overall point is completely true. It’s like, what is the, is it because, I think maybe it’s because with poetry and contemporary art, because we don’t have a huge natural audience, what we have, especially in Australia, is a academic, like there’s a, you know, you look at the poetry journals and everyone’s a poet editor, a poet critic, you know, a poet professor.

Yeah, because to sustain yourself and have like a decent middle class existence. As an artist. Oh, yeah, especially as a poet and often as an artist. As a poet, even more so, yeah. Yeah, poet and contemporary artist, less so with music, but let’s look at poetry and contemporary artists. Like you pretty much have to get back into some kind of teaching or, you know, that’s the common career trajectory, right?

Totally, yeah. And you look at the skills that you’re teaching students and the way you’re measuring students, it’s essays. Like even at our school, it’s essays and words and speaking. And I know there was some interesting, I wish I remembered his name, but he did, is a well-known Aussie artist who did some really interesting stuff. I think it’s David Capra, does some like social practice stuff.

And his like thesis, I don’t even remember how it was presented, but it was really non-traditional. But most of the time, you’re not really allowed to challenge that. And you are forced to like, what do they call like statement of intent, that kind of shit. And so, I think the academic world has become so intertwined with like the art world that the skills that you’re learning and the kind of unquestionable way that you’re learning to consider art, like even to conceive of art and think about it and analyze it is through words.

Because they’re measurable. It’s like you have to now operationalize your feelings as an artist so that like you can function in the system. Because if it’s all chaos, like what’s going to happen? But maybe that’s what art school was more chaotic back in the 60s, 70s. And I know like it must be frustrating to be like, you’re like, I’m a fucking painter and I need to write a thousand words essays.

Yeah, now you’re asking me to write. Yeah, yeah. But from the audience perspective, it’s just like, damn, it’s boring sometimes, man. And it’s funny because like this whole podcast is us talking about like art and like shit. But sometimes it’s just boring to like have to use this, you’re saying it’s an inadequate tool. Or, you know, like I just want to like look at you. Like we’re looking at each other right now.

And we were sitting here on your bed the other night like drunk and kind of just looking at each other and smiling at each other. And that was something, like that was something really cool. And yeah, sometimes it’s like words are not going to get you there. Yeah. It’s, I think, you know, it’s, there is definitely some like deep, we should talk to a fucking psychologist about this. But there’s some deep like brain structures about language and they’ve proven basically that you have like a network of neurons in your brain that just handle grammar, you know.

And there’s other ones that just handle vocab. They’re these like big structures that, you know, from birth you’re granted, you’re sort of born with these capabilities. And I just think that, you know, the same is true of vision, you know, and of sound and so many other things. Like, I don’t know, like exactly, you know, I’m sort of just like getting what I’ve gotten from like new scientist type writings.

I’m not an academic by any stretch of the imagination. But I think, you know, the voice above all else is, has been, you know, it’s just in our whatever evolutionary shakedown, the way the sort of state of things that we have is this super accessible and everyday thing.

You know, we have built our whole society on words, really. You know, we don’t, we don’t like, you can’t just like take a picture of your income in some kind of non-numerical sense and send that to the tax man, right? Yeah, that would be cool, man. That would be cool. Complete abstract reality. Complete chaos. Yeah. But yeah, words order things for us.

And, you know, they always say humans like categorizing and we like that stuff. But I think if humans are into art too, which I think they have to be to feel sane, to feel anything in this book.

It’s so necessary to forget the word, you know, and just to think visually. That’s the other thing that I loved about that documentary was just to see, you know, a pro thinking visually, you know, he’s walking around a paddock and just seeing him hold his camera and sort of approach different scenes and walk up on stuff and framing and reframing and like, no, I’m going to abort.

I don’t like that. I won’t even hit the shutter button. And just seeing someone think so visually made me kind of mourn for that absence in my life. You know, I am a photographer. I carried a camera around with me today and I’m obsessed with it. But I still feel, I mean, we run a fucking podcast for God’s sake. I’m so chatty and it’s like, you know, I love how deep that world of that non-verbal world is.

One thing that occurred to me as you were speaking was like, yeah, language is this way of like ordering the world. Let’s take that like back to our earlier poetry discussion for a minute where we’re talking about, you know, why is it so tough? It’s like, okay, words is the structure that we’ve given everyone to comprehend the world. And now I’m showing you this fucking dinky little page where the poet, where the words are all over the place and they’re stopping and starting in weird spots.

And the, you know, the order and safety and like what you expect words to be able to do for you, words on a page, it’s like instructions, it’s a novel, it’s a book, you know how to handle them. And I’ve completely broken it. And the words don’t mean what they say they mean. And it’s hard and there’s weird references and the words are all over the place. It’s like this thing that you fundamentally use to like navigate the world in a very, you know, utilitarian way.

Also a very like, you know, with emotions and so on. But yeah, for the most part, it’s used to order the world and a poem is kind of, you know, chaos. And that’s like one of the joys of it is that you’re using the everyday, the word, this everyday like useful unit and you’re like bending it into like, you know, artistic and powerful non-utilitarian ways.

Yeah.

I like one thing, I don’t know if we’ll use it or not. Yeah. But just about John Ashbery because like we’ve ended up getting to a pretty cool spot.

Like where we’re talking about, yeah, like the nature of poetry. Okay, cool. I want to read this bit. So yeah, this is just like a Poetry Foundation article on another like New York school poet called John Ashbery who kind of, yeah, was in that world. I mean, they were contemporaries. I didn’t realize that. He just sounds like one of the like old American ones. Yeah. No, they’re mates.

Because his name sounds old. Yeah. And he’s great. Like he’s one of my favorite poets and yeah, Poetry Foundation, like if you’re looking to get into art is a really nice way to get into it because it’s got like scans of the magazine. It’s got like just lists of poems and then it’s got like little bits of context if that’s interesting to you. But it’s a really nice way to just like go and explore. It’s awesome.

And it has a really nice like UI and stuff. But I just read like a bit from like the sort of chunk on him. It says, although even his strongest supporters agreed that his poetry is often difficult to read and willfully difficult to understand. Many critics also commented in the manner in which Ashbery’s fluid style conveys a major concern in his poetry.

The refusal to impose an arbitrary order on a world of flux and chaos. His poetry is open-ended and multivarious because life itself is. This is a quote from him. I don’t find any direct statements in life. My poetry imitates or reproduces the way knowledge or awareness has come to me, which is by fits and starts by indirection. I don’t think poetry arranged in neat patterns would reflect that situation.

My poetry is disjunct, but then so is life. And yeah, that really like reading that like really like meant a lot to me because whenever I share these poems there, like yeah. I forget how difficult they are because I’ve lived with Ashbery like in my brain and my body for- On the dome. So many years now, since uni, like I took an English class.

So it’s like 10 years that I’ve like been reading these poems. And yeah, I just, and I wanted to read like one other piece, like a chunk from one of his poems that’s been coming up to me now, both like when I write poetry, but also when I work, like work as a coder. And this is kind of how it feels to, to like be a programmer.

So this is the end of a poem called, and Pictura Poesis is her name, which is kind of cool for the podcast. It’s like, I think it was like a Horace article and it’s like Latin for like, as is a painting, so is poetry, like kind of making them the same in some way.

And yeah, so I’m just going to read you like the last kind of chunk of this poem. Something ought to be written about how this affects you when you write poetry. Yeah, that’s beautiful.

Some classic Ashbury shit. Yeah, great. Yeah. Great. Okay. Let’s go to Artist of the Week. Artist of the Week. Artist of the Week.

Our Artist of the Week this week is Daphne Mouyan. Daphne is an accomplished fashion photographer who has shown in magazines like Harper’s Bazaar. You can see the show called Windpipe at The Corner Shop in Newtown. Go and check it out.

All right. See you later, dude. Latest. Bye.

Show notes

This episode's hit list: Why is poetry boring?  Anatomy of a boring poem Harmonic resonance from the limits of language! Reading poems aloud 😡 Neon words in galleries 😡  Artist of the week is @daphnenguyen__ and you can see their very clever show called Windpipe at @tcs_windows in newtown.  Listen right now at the link!  Xoxo Matt and Aiden  Links:  Frank O'Hara Lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9Jn1zQIeDY Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/ Custom neon text generator: become a renowned contemporary artist, fast https://flamingtext.com/logo/Design-Cash-Out