Evocations of the Urban Creator: When No Stars Appear, Voices Are Heard

Evocations: Cyclical Wordplay (album art)

“So, dear state, you are a very nice word from a dream. There are fine sounds in the word, much comfort and much freshness, you grew up in a forest of words…ashtray, match, cigarette butt, an equal among equals, but why state do you feed on people. Why has the fatherland become a cannibal and the motherland his wife…If the states be truly bad then who among us will lift a finger to prolong their dreaming under the blanket forever?” Allen Ginsberg reading the work of Paul Klebnikov’s Manifesto of the Presidents of the Terrestrial Globe

After hearing many songs and stories of the dramatic sights seen by survivors of the great natural disasters of the early 21st century; the tsunamis and earthquakes that buckled cities and civilizations to their knees, I have heard many refer to the reversion to a clear sky.

The clarity of sky is an enduring metaphor for the wildly obscuring potency of modern technological electro-civilization. What has been more subtle, and more dramatic a transition, is how the skies under our human settlements have become opaque and starless over the past century. In my mind, this is more traumatic and in need of reflection.

The stars and constellations are being called into the blinding stretches of the ephemeral; of human memory, abstracted through an archaic imagination. Beginning with the wealth of ecological terror that might strike any human being living in a modern Western city, who looks up to see that not only have they left the stars, but the stars have left them.

We are without higher purpose, the signs directing us to a sense of greater belonging in the universe have since faded into the mindless wash of electro-magnetic consumerism and the ecological disturbance of human egotism; a symptom of our technological worldview.

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Lost by RK

Shadow of Mother Earth by RK

Gutless City by RK 

Wormhole Cafe by RK

Parting the Starless Night by RK

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The voicing, "When No Stars Appear" is an excursion through the faded mind, a search for meaning in the depths of human language, abstracted and diluted by the hotbed movement of inorganic noise, and the harmonious serendipity that emerges with the simple act of listening; the inception of self-knowledge, wherefrom the fog clears to reveal novel human experience, metaphorically illustrated by the final lines in the voicing. At the narrative resolution, a fugitive of modernity emerges from a waterfall consciousness of humility, as a child in a traditional Mayan home, looking up into the vast network of a more universal light. And the sounds of the starlit sky become a nightly renewing gift clarity, humility and strength. "When No Stars Appear" was originally published online by PressBoardPress in September, 2012.



Also featured in this post is the release of the chapbook, "Creating in the City" from the Cyclical Wordplay collection, to commemorate the release of another sound evocation! Enjoy!

Creating in the City by Rusty Kjarvik

When IT'S AHHH-LIVE, IT'S AHHH-SCRIBED to our Dreams

"Epcor Centre for the Performing Arts yycARTS CoLAB is a free program that provides an opportunity for the public and artists of different disciplines to collaborate in real-time and be inspired to interact and explore in a welcoming and inclusive environment, embarking on a journey of artistic discovery."


Source

As Vi An Diep artist facilitator of the event, writes:

"the action, the movement, the expression, the animation of thoughts and feelings, the conversation, the interaction, sharing, common need to continue thriving and dreaming!!!"

More Media: Calgary Herald & Avenue Magazine & Lonesome Cosmonaut

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In the starkly lit, opaque backdrop of darkness behind the closed curtains at Jack Singer Concert Hall, I sit at a piano bench with a local classical percussionist in Calgary named Malcolm Lim. He offers me tickets for free for my wife and me to see an upcoming show. When I return home, my wife tells me she can’t make it that day, so I leave the tickets with my parents. Curiously, I am in my mother’s house, where, with my stepfather, they endeavor to take the tickets and see the show. That night, at my childhood home alone, I am visited by Allen Ginsberg. I am exceedingly enthusiastic to receive him in my presence. He tells me that he is in some kind of rush, though we speak about my writing only in passing and continues on about his needs, he seems as a spiritual vagabond of wandering ghosts. He sits at a computer, where he tells me to fish out some of my writings. Excited as ever, I return back down, where he is in the exact same position. I give him my writings and proceed to tell him that William Burroughs appeared to me in a dream not too long ago. Ginsberg emits a refreshing glow as he announces quietly that he must leave. With flighty humor, he asks me for twenty dollars. I am so distracted by the fact that he is reading my work that I can't seem to get his joke, referring to a recent Egyptian official I had to deal with in New York for my immigration to Canada. Without a word more, he saunters off into the edgeless yonder. A few moments later, my parents return. I let them know the true origin of the tickets, at which time they seem exhausted, and apologetic.   

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Community Arts Manifesto

écrit par anonyMO’us

All People of the One, and Only Earth:

Clear your names in the sky!

Listen to others. Hear dreams in the subtle nuance of each letter voiced by our fellow artists, visionaries and seers of creation. Come to know the role of the artist. They hold many keys to our creational origin and our final undoing. In brotherhood and sisterhood, through respectful listening to our fellow artists, we may understand the cyclical flow of sacred continuity and the mysteries of Life.

- Opening Paragraph of "Community Arts Manifesto", the first contribution to "IT'S AHHH-SCRIBED" an Impromptu Weekly Community Arts Literary Journal (to later appear on online in full)