CAConrad on MACRO (Soma)tics

Anticipating CAConrad and Frank Sherlock's upcoming workshop, co-sponsored by the Nonsite Collective and Small Press Traffic on September 12, 2009 (as part of "Aesthetics as Somatic Practice", an ongoing Nonsite curriculum), I asked CAConrad for a provisional definition of "Somatics" with respect to his current practices and poetics. His response is posted below, and it includes an interview CAConrad conducted with himself.

For more information regarding the workshop, stay tuned to "events".

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MACRO (Soma)tics:  an introductory note toward freedom

by CAConrad

The last large wild beasts are being hunted, poisoned, asphyxiated in one way or another, and the transmission of their wildness is dying, taming.  A desert is rising with this falling pulse.  It is our duty as poets and others who have not lost our jagged, creative edges to FILL that gap, and RESIST the urge to subdue our spirits and lose ourselves in the hypnotic beep of machines, of war, and the banal need for power, and things.  With our poems and creative core, we must RETURN THIS WORLD to its seismic levels of wildness.

We must encourage -- now more than ever -- that everyone cease their quiet, and ignite, or reignite our collective creative force to bring the needed changes to our world.  Without being as creative as possible we will simply slump back toward the known models which have created our global crises of the day.  One form I have been working with, and sharing with others is (Soma)tic Poetics, a form of process which aids in breaking free from the stale whimper garnered out of demanding routines of work and modern life.  The exercises are updated monthly, and are available for free at http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com

One of my first deliberate explorations into (Soma)tics was working on the collection (Soma)tic Midge, a series of seven poems, each written after consuming a single color of food for a day.  This is the introductory note to that collection:

I cannot stress enough how much this mechanistic world, as it becomes more and more efficient, resulting in ever increasing brutality, has required me to FIND MY BODY to FIND MY PLANET in order to find my poetry. If I am an extension of this world then I am an extension of garbage, shit, pesticides, bombed and smoldering cities, microchips, cyber, astral and biological pollution, BUT ALSO the beauty of a patch of unspoiled sand, all that croaks from the mud, talons on the cliff that take rock and silt so seriously flying over the spectacle for a closer examination is nothing short of necessary. The most idle looking pebble will suddenly match any hunger, any rage. Suddenly, and will be realized at no other speed than suddenly.

Since then I have been expanding the possibilities of (Soma)tics by including new forms to process, and collaborating with other poets, such as Thom Donovan.  Here is a self-conducted interview on the practice of (Soma)tic SOUNDWAVES:

(Soma)tic SOUNDWAVES:

CAConrad-1 interviews CAConrad-2

CAConrad-1:  Explain for us your idea of using music to generate language.

CAConrad-2:  It comes out of reading on Ernst Chladni's discovery that sound has ACTUAL form--

CAConrad-1:  --ACTUAL form?

CAConrad-2:  Yes, Chladni did an experiment where he put sand on a metal surface and ran a bow on the edge of the metal, causing the sand to form geometric shapes showing the nodal regions.  When I read this, the idea of sound's impact on the world suddenly became much clearer.  We've now seen images of sound traveling across the surface of water, for instance, right?  And since the human body is close to 75% water, how are we, as containers of moving water, affected by sound?  Then there're the bones and the metals and minerals in our body, and I wonder how they accept certain frequencies of sound as well.

CAConrad-1:  But you're a poet in this?

CAConrad-2:  I am a poet in this.  (Soma)tic poetry http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com is something I've been experimenting with for some time now, and in my first experiments I was eating a single color of food for a day, as well as having the color around me or on me before sitting down to write the poem.  It was when working on the BLUE poem http://www.coconutpoetry.org/conrad1.htm that I decided to attempt putting Chladni's information to the test, and I did so by playing Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet" on a loop from 6am to midnight.

CAConrad-1:  Sounds awful!

CAConrad-2:  No, it wasn't awful at all.  In fact of the 7 poems in the series, the BLUE poem came out of me with such ease, and as corny as this sounds it was like love, real, love, the kind of love where you know the truth of the experience as a purely exceptional moment in your life.  When I think about great sex I've had, love I've had, I think writing that poem will always come to mind.  Chladni's discovery ran its fingers through my body of water and plucked at my bones until my brain unknotted a string of lines for the poem.  But all 7 of these (Soma)tic experiments with color were published by Jack Kimball's FAUX Press out of Boston, and the book is called (Soma)tic Midge http://caconrad.blogspot.com/index.html#3694398499929925151 .

CAConrad-1:  Oh.  Well what else have you done to experiment with sound?

CAConrad-2:  My good friend Thom Donovan and I recently completed editing a much longer experiment we're calling ARTHUR ECHO.  We were in a friend's large house in Philadelphia, and we had Arthur Russell's "World of Echo" playing on five different floors of the house from 9am to 9pm.  We had other various maneuvers we both brought to the experiment that we would perform at each station on the five floors in order to compound the structure for drawing the language out of us.  It was a tremendous success, and I'm very pleased with both of our poems, in fact I'm quite proud of what we did together, and feel it further proves Chladni's information to be true.

CAConrad-1:  How so?  What do you mean by further proves?

CAConrad-2:  In both our cases we never showed our separate poems to one another until they were finished, and in both cases the poems leapt beyond the regular margins we write in.  I can't speak for Thom, but I almost RESISTED the poem coming out of me the way in which it did.  And THAT was a good lesson for me, to TRUST THE MUSE in that She knows exactly how, when, what, and is always correct.  But when I finally gave into both the mode and form, it became itself in a most joyous way.

CAConrad-1:  (coughs) Um, OK, but--

CAConrad-2:  --but I'm working on the notes for a new project.  Notes meaning working on the groundwork for a new sound (Soma)tic poetry experiment.  This time it's with the song made famous by Diana Ross and The Supremes "I Hear a Symphony," which was my boyfriend Tommy's favorite song.  It's a tribute to Tommy in that I loved him, and he died of AIDS some years ago, and I miss him, BUT, it's not a weepy, sentimental project.  In fact it's much MUCH more than that, it's more about exorcising -- so to speak -- the disease out of him, even though he's been dead for many years.  It involves time travel, it involves intense meditation, and stamina, and most of all a most empathetic love.  But my idea is to listen to the song for 24 hours a day for 7 days without stopping.  Each day changing the treble and bass slightly, as well as ever-so-slightly increasing the volume each morning at a designated time.  I can't wait to see what poetry will come out of me.

CAConrad-1:  Sounds like torture!

CAConrad-2:  It's not torture, it's poetry!

CAConrad is the recipient of THE GIL OTT BOOK AWARD for The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009).  He is also the author of Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), (Soma)tic Midge (Faux Press, 2008), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and a forthcoming collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled THE CITY REAL & IMAGINED:  Philadelphia Poems (Factory School Books, 2010).  CAConrad is the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift.  He invites you to visit him online at http://CAConrad.blogspot.com and also with his friends at http://PhillySound.blogspot.com