JULY 2010 Philadelphia workshop

REGISTER SOON

There are a limited number of participants for the July 11th (Soma)tic Poetry Workshop. ALL DETAILS ARE HERE.

Thanks, see you soon,
CAConrad

COURTNEY, thanks again!

Courtney Shumway continues an amazing (Soma)tic study through film. This is with Jordon Cecil, and is based on (Soma)tic Exercise #23, click HERE. Thank you for this!

#41 MOTHER TASTES FAMILIAR BECAUSE SHE'S MOTHER

for David Wolach & Elizabeth Williamson

Before taking a trip to San Francisco I purchased garlic and crackers from plants grown and harvested in California, then shipped 3,000 miles to Philadelphia. I asked the pilot to tell us when we were over California, and he was nice and did so. After millions of years of evolution we can fly thousands of feet above the earth. NO I don't want to watch a stupid movie during the flight, NO I don't want to read a stupid magazine, I'm THOUSANDS of feet in the air LOOK at those clouds! Don't be so stupid, look at the clouds! When our rotten bodies die and evaporate we will join them. Clouds are trillions of cells of water who were once dinosaurs, eagles, and many stupid and brilliant people. All rotten in the end, festering into a final breath, the final breath itself a wisp of vapor that rose to join our family of clouds. It's so disgusting it becomes its own special beauty! I want to vomit, a sickness the ultimate honor bestowed! Is there something wrong with the word "nice?" Well I like it, and the pilot was nice and announced when we were flying over California. Everyone around me was hypnotized by the stupid movie, the beautiful actors speaking the writer's boring script about relationships and dishonesty. It's true, as a species we are so narcissistic the planet stands little chance surviving unless it can prove to make us more beautiful and improve our love lives. And I pressed the garlic against the window, garlic that traveled 6,000 miles round trip, California to Philadelphia, and back again, what a ridiculous world! Little bit of garlic soaring thousands of feet above the fields where it was born, and I licked it and sucked it, finally bit it in half and chewed it. I brought it all the way back home to eat it and make it become my body, feed my cells. And the crackers. Chewing and slowly tasting the soil and texture of the land. Tasting the wind that blew its fingers through the stalks and stems, cricket songs, birds, all these vibrations are in the plants quietly growing with an enormous family of plants in the moonlight and rain and metallic scent of lightning. It's all in there, chewing it all in there. I chew it and chew it and my rotten body will die one day but I love it here. I love this world, I'm so angry that I have to die and leave it. Suicides irritate me the most, I wish I could take their unwanted leftovers, stupid fucking idiot suicides as though life isn't short enough. Chew this world, it's incredibly delicious. Fuck you for not paying attention. Don't speak to me if all you have is something stupid to say. I chewed the inside of my mouth, chewed some of my meat loose and mixed it with garlic and chips, went into the bathroom and spit it into the toilet, added piss, snot and semen. Then flushed it into the sky, rushed back to the window as the movie credits played and everyone told everyone how good the movie was. My notes from practicing this exercise became a poem.

#40 BETWEEN CORRESPONDING WAVES

for Jocelyn Saidenberg & Rob Halpern

Gather sand from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. When I collected sand in Atlantic City I meditated with the ocean for an hour, then dug a hole, placed a quartz crystal in the hole, covered it with sand and crystal-infused water (Fiji water). I repeated this ritual at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. During both rituals I was conscious of facing AWAY from America. East and AWAY! West and AWAY! Migration of senses, their capacities perceived and pursued. Back home, using a compass, I positioned the head of my bed north for 4 nights of concentrated ocean dream enhancement. Night 1: Atlantic sand in a cloth under my pillow with a continuous recording of ocean tides playing from the east. I drank crystal-infused water to better remember my dreams. As soon as I woke I took my notes DO NOT DO ANYTHING PEE CRY ANSWER THE PHONE MAKE LOVE until you have taken your notes. Night 2: Repeat ritual, except use Pacific sand in a fresh cloth under the pillow and play ocean tide from the west. Night 3: Repeat ritual, except have both cloths of sand under the pillow and play ocean tides from east and west. As you begin to doze, listen for when the tides match pace, your body between them, America between them. Night 4: Mix the sand in a fresh cloth for the pillow, then play ocean tides from east, west, north, and south. Set the alarm to wake in the middle of the night, move your head south, sand now at your feet in the north. Gather your four rounds of notes and sculpt your poem.

THE AMAZING Courtney Shumway!!!!

CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO READ THE WORDS

This beautiful digital art is by Courtney Shumway, using a bit of my (Soma)tic text. Below is Courtney's (Soma)tic Project with video! ENJOY!

Thanks Courtney for making my day!!!!
CAConrad

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The first in the new series of videos is up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKAuTMk457Y&aia=true

For those of you who I haven't talked to about this project, I am working on a series of videos based off of poet CA Conrad's (Soma)tic Poetry exercises - more information on these works can be found here:

http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com/

For the videos, I am engaging in each of the (Soma)tic Poetry Exercises ( http://somaticpoetryexercises.blogspot.com/ ) with individual artists, in whatever way seems appropriate, remains true to the practice, and results in some digital poetic love.

Ideally, each experiment will result in:
1) a unique interpersonal experience
2) a poem
3) a video

As with the Four Seasons piece, this project is being organized in an "Object-Free" manner, so if you are interested in participating, however you choose to interface with it will work. For example, here's a link to a video my friend Narayan did to kick us off a few weeks ago:

http://www.youtube.com/user/narayanr#p/u/88/-XBY1dL-0lI

Does it fit the structure of the piece? Not a bit. Is it part of the experiment? Obviously...

I hope all of you will consider joining this project as participating artists. There is room within the structure for all manner of performers, artists, dreamers, and risk-takers, even if you have never identified as a poet. Keep in touch regarding scheduling over the next several months. If you are out-of-state...whatever...let's work something out...we're creative people, right?

Incredible, abundant love and thanks to Quinn Myers, for being the first to offer up his time, experience, and poetry to my digital machine.


Let the new cycle begin!
~ Revolotus

#39 EVERGREEN SENSES

This new (Soma)tic was created by THE AMAZING students at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington. Students who created it include Camille Euritt, Maren Anderson, Jane Rubinstein, Ally Simmons, Will Owen, Franny Waldear, Zoe Hosmer-Dillard, Erin Tanner, Paige Clifton-Steele, Brian Fligner, Alexa Carson, Maryam Gunja, Kate Robinson, Nicky Tiso, Nicolas Lofredo, Adrienne Wilson, LeiF NePstad, Alex Dreyer, Maxamia Codella, Zach Fraser, Aba Kiser, Philip G. Taylor, Sean Ray ariel Caining, Duncan Wold Marsh. Many thanks to professors David Wolach and Elizabeth Williamson for inviting me to conduct the workshop.


Find something in your fridge. Smell it. Listen. Find a sound. Get as close to the sound as possible. Imitate the sound as you smell the object. Take notes. (Notes should mimic the sound. Continue taking notes until the smell has faded completely.) Leave the object, go to a familiar place with grass in an urban environment. Think about how it would taste. Now taste it. Lie on the grass and look out through the grass. Slowly tilt your head upward – expanding your horizon. Close your eyes and chew the grass slowly. Spit the grass out and look carefully at the grass, the dirt, the grubs, the sky. Alternate between seeing and tasting, tasting and seeing, both, neither. Taste the grass at a variance of altitudes. Standing, sitting, kneeling, prone. Taste all the parts of the grass, leaf, stock, root. Clutch the grass in your hand while concealing your left eye. Migrate the grass from your navel up to your pupil and then exchange the role of the hand from covering to embracing the object. Take your notes and using the THE FILTERS "Crystal" and "Altitude" write your poem.

#38 RADIANT ELVIS MRI

for the psychic legacy of Hannah Weiner

Don't be afraid of the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine, it's an amazing opportunity for a poem. I created this exercise after my knee was injured by a homophobic bus driver in Philadelphia. Astral travel is possible with some dedicated preparation. The MRI machine needs our water molecules in our bodies for the imaging process, the electromagnetic field literally shifting the alignment of the protons of our body-water. Drink only crystal-infused water for a week before your MRI, drink no other water, and drink it as often as you can. Look at the label for "silica" content, found in such brands as Evian and Fiji. It's important to saturate the body with as much crystal water as possible leading up to the day of the MRI. Choose a place you will visit for your psychic or astral visit (a room in your home for instance). For the week leading up to your MRI, each time you enter your chosen space STOP at the entrance, and take a long look around. Then close your eyes and imagine what you saw. Open your eyes and notice what you missed when imagining what you saw, for it is the missing things you will incorporate each time you repeat this exercise until you have gathered the entire space in your mind. The space I chose is a street in Philadelphia, a place I know more than any other place on our planet. For years I have been gathering the minute details of this one stretch of street: gutters, glass, bricks, trees, newspaper boxes, all the many details. Every time I walk to this street I prepare myself to STOP and drink it in, and notice something new to add to this growing landscape in my mind. On the day of your MRI sit and listen to music by Elvis Presley for an hour or so. Elvis Presley is being used ALL OVER OUR PLANET for healing. When I wrote my book Advanced Elvis Course there were many people I met who use Elvis to heal bodies and spirits, and when you listen to Elvis you tap into that collective use of His powers. The song I listened to on repeat before my MRI was "I Got A Feeling In My Body," with the refrain, "I got a feeling in my body / This will be our lucky day / We'll be releasing all our sorrow / Leave it layin' along the way." Elvis assists in setting the crystal-infused water molecules right for the MRI machine. Take notes take many notes all week long leading up to your RADIANT ELVIS MRI. Depending on the type of scan which is needed you may have as much as half an hour in the machine, and this is good! Let yourself relax for a few minutes. Take some deep breaths and relax. When the pulse of the machine amps up and begins to shift the alignment of your crystal-laden water molecules SEE the space you have been memorizing for the past week. SEE IT. Look at all the details you have been studying. The longer you keep inside this space the quicker and easier you will GO THERE. Go, and don't be afraid to leave your body behind you to do so. Make yourself sit, stand, jump, float, BE in that space in all ways. Find words if you can, like Hannah Weiner found on foreheads, look for words to remember. You'll know how to come back, don't worry yourself. Make sure you have a notebook ready to write in as soon as you get out of the machine. Leave the office and find a place to sit and take notes about your experience for your poem.

#37 TOUCH YOURSELF FOR ART

for THE AMAZING Penny Arcade

(this exercise's poems are a chapbook from MONDO BUMMER)

(the photo of Penny by Jasmine Hirst)

There must be a piece of art near where you live that you enjoy, even LOVE! A piece of art that IF THERE WAS WAR you would steal it and hide it in your little apartment. I'm going to PACK my apartment TO THE ROOF when war comes! This exercise needs 7 days, but not 7 consecutive days as most museums and galleries are not open 7 days a week. At the Philadelphia Museum of Art hangs the Mark Rothko "Orange, Red and Yellow, 1961," a painting I would marry and cherish in sickness and in health, have its little Rothko babies, hang them on the wall with their father, and a portrait of my breasts to feed them at any hour. For 7 days I sat with my dearest Rothko. The security guards will think you're odd when you come for 7 days to sit and meditate. Never mind that, bribe them with candy, cigarettes or soda, whatever it takes to be left in peace. Bring binoculars because you will get closer to the painting than anyone else in the room! Feel free to fall in love with what you see, you're a poet, you're writing a poem, go ahead and fall in love! Feel free to go to the museum restroom and touch yourself in the stall, you may not be allowed to touch the paintings but they can't stop you from touching yourself, fantasizing touching and being touched by them. And be sure to write on the restroom wall that you were there and what you were doing as everyone enjoys a dedication to the details in museums. And be certain to leave your number, you never know what other art lover will be reading. When you return REMEMBER THAT there is no museum in the world with rules against the use of binoculars, information you may need for the guards if you run out of cigarettes and candy. Map your 7 days with extravagant enhancements: mint leaves to suck, chocolate liqueurs, cotton balls between your toes, firm-fitting satin underwear, things you can rock-out with (in secret) for the art you love. Take notes, there must be a concentration in note-taking in your pleasure-making. Never mind how horrifying your notes may become, horror and pleasure have an illogical mix when you touch yourself for art. Once you gather your 7 days of notes together you will see the poem waiting to be pulled out of a long and energizing dream.

...in Scythe Literary Journal...

Scythe Literary Journal has just published 2 (Soma)tic Poetry Exercises and their resulting poems. Click on "Scythe Volume 1" and then you can click on my name to read. MANY THANKS to the editors and publishers of Scythe Literary Journal

#36 CONFETTI ALLEGIANCE

Is there a deceased poet who was alive in your lifetime but you never met, and you wish you had met? A poet you would LOVE to correspond with, but it's too late? Take notes about this missed opportunity. What is your favorite poem by this poet? Write it on unlined paper by hand (no typing). If we were gods we wouldn't need to invent beautiful poems, and that's why our lives are more interesting, and that's why the gods are always meddling in our affairs out of boredom. It's like the fascination the rich have with the poor, as Alice Notley says, "the poor are more interesting than others, almost uniformly." This poem was written by a human poet, and we humans love our poets, if we have any sense. Does something strike flint in you from the process of engaging your body to write this poem you know and love? Notes, notes, take notes. The poet for me in doing this exercise is Jim Brodey, and his poem "Little Light," which he wrote in the bathtub while listening to the music of Eric Dolphy, masturbating in the middle of the poem, "while the soot-tinted noise of too-full streets echoes / and I pick up the quietly diminishing soap & do / myself again." Take your handwritten version of the poem and cut it into tiny confetti. Heat olive oil in a frying pan and toss the confetti poem in. Add garlic, onion, parsnip, whatever you want, pepper it, salt it, serve it over noodles or rice. Eat the delicious poem with a nice glass of red wine, pausing to read it out loud and toast the poet, "MANY APOLOGIES FOR NOT TOASTING YOU WHEN YOU WERE ALIVE!" Take notes while slowly chewing the poem. Chew slowly so your saliva breaks the poem down before it slides into your belly to feed your blood and cells of your body. Gather your notes, write your poem.

#35 ANOINT THYSELF

for John Coletti & Jess Mynes

Visit the home of a deceased poet you admire and bring some natural thing back with you. I went to Emily Dickinson's house the day after a reading event with my friend Susie Timmons. I scraped dirt from the foot of huge trees in the backyard into a little pot. We then drove into the woods where we found miniature pears, apples and cherries to eat. I meditated in the arms of an oak tree with the pot of Emily's dirt, waking to the flutter of a red cardinal on a branch a foot or so from my face, staring, showing me his little tongue. When I returned to Philadelphia I didn't shower for three days, then rubbed Emily's dirt all over my body, kneaded her rich Massachusetts soil deeply into my flesh, then put on my clothes and went out into the world. Every once in awhile I stuck my nose inside the neck of my shirt to inhale her delicious, sweet earth covering me. I felt revirginized through the ceremony of my senses, I could feel her power tell me these are the ways to walk and speak and shift each glance into total concentration for maximum usage of our little allotment of time on a planet. LOSE AND WASTE NO MORE TIME POET! Lose and waste no more time she said to me as I took note after note on the world around me for the poem.

giant HTML webpage!

THIS MADE MY DAY! Blake Butler's GIANT HTML site just featured this page of (Soma)tics, click HERE!

#34 Seance Your Own Way

This particular exercise is meant to encourage everyone to find their own way to communicate with loved ones who have died. A month before my friend kari edwards died she gave me a packet of incense made in the community in India where she and her life partner Fran Blau had lived for a short time. It was a sampler packet with 14 different scents. When kari died the incense developed a force field of psychic barbed wire around it for me, sitting on my desk. She gave this to me just before hugging me and saying goodbye before getting on an airplane which would fly her away from Philadelphia for the last time. After news of her death, burning the incense, even TOUCHING the incense would seem an extraordinary event for me. Then I decided that there was NO BETTER WAY to communicate with a dead poet than through the process of creating poetry with them, and for them. I chose 7 of the 14 different incense flavors, wanting to use the number 7 because as a symbol, it's designed for energy to rise up the stem and fly off the top, the top serving as a psychic catapult. This is why 7 is considered very fortunate, as it sends messages, wishes, whatever's put into it STRAIGHT up into the air. For 7 days I would meditate with each of the 7 scents, and chose the order of the scents for a communication magic spell. For instance, Day One: CEDAR is a scent associated with the god Mercury, and used to close the gap of time and space between you and the one you wish to contact. Day Two: FRANKINCENSE is a tree resin used to purify and to honor the divine. Day Three: MUSK, a scent belonging to the planet Saturn to aid in making inquiries about evolutionary spiritual responsibilities on planet Earth in this life-cycle. Day Four: EUCALYPTUS is used for many things, but in this case I was using it to firm my own resolve to become macrobiotic again, telling kari that I wanted to and needed to return to total health (it worked as I've been macrobiotic for 6 months now). Day Five: LEMONGRASS is used to dispel negative charges left behind after the healing invocations of eucalyptus. Day Six: OPIUM invokes Binah on the Tree of Life, and Binah helps the questioner understand information, and in this case understand more clearly what the messages from kari for the poems mean. Day Seven: MYRRH is the scent for the goddess Isis, the High Priestess, and I could think of no better way than to honor kari with the scent of Isis, She the great patron of nature and art, and She who puts the dead back together to live again. Each day I would UNPLUG THE PHONE, create a quiet space, then put kari's music CD on (experimental electronic music she created), then burn the incense, and WAIT IN THAT SPACE for the words to come. In my essay MACRO (Soma)tics published by Rob Halpern I discuss the uses of sound in (Soma)tic practice. The resulting poem from this communication with kari is called "kari7" and can be seen here, and was published as part of the anthology NO GENDER: REFLECTIONS ON THE LIFE & WORK OF kari edwards (edited by J.T.Brolaski, e. kaufman, & E.T.Grinnell, published by Litmus Press/Belladonna Books).

#33 ANTENNA JIVE

for Ben Malkin
Find a small tree, prepare the ground with blankets for you and your partner on either side of the tree. Get undressed, completely, get on your blanket, your partner facing you. Have the flats of your feet pressed together, the tree in between your pairs of legs. Both of you rest on your backs, and press your feet, press them with legs raised, then lowered. For a little while work together in this meditation of pressing and moving legs and feet with the tree quietly growing between them. Take notes about how you're feeling. Make it clear ahead of time that he or she working with you is free to do, say, sing whatever they want, so long as you keep the bottoms of your feet connected around the tree. My boyfriend Rich did this with me, singing, humming, and finally masturbating, sitting up and smearing his semen on the bark. His orgasm PUSHED our feet together at a critical moment of note taking for me, good for my note taking. Let this (Soma)tic exercise have as much freedom for the two of you as possible, the frequency given and taken and shared with the tree between you, a living antenna between you, pulling nutrients from the earth and sun rays. The tree between us is where the notes came most clearly for me. WHATEVER YOU DO please do not give any additional instructions to your partner, let THEM do EXACTLY what they want to do once you're both on the ground naked together with the tree between you. THEIR freedom to express themselves depends upon this poem as much as your feet pressing together between the tree. But take notes, take many many notes. Now take all of your notes and use THE FILTERS "Handful" and "Overtone" to shape your poem.

(Soma)tic Reading Enhancements

THIS JUST OUT from Attention Span 2009, My enhancements, click HERE

MACRO (Soma)tics

NON SITE COLLECTIVE posted this HERE
MANY THANKS to Rob Halpern!

#32 YOU IN YOUR SOUP

for Juliana Spahr & David Buuck

First we must gather ingredients for the soup. It's whatever you want, but my soup included: carrots, onions, beets, burdock root, celery, kale, mustard greens, chard (4 roots, 4 stalks and greens, or, an even exchange with yang underground and yin above-ground), salt and water. Before chopping, sit with all the ingredients in your lap, or at least near you while you meditate however it is you meditate. But try to meditate on how this FOOD SOURCE is about to become your body. Chop and cook your soup. After soup has cooled, place the soup in a deep bowl, deep enough that you can submerge your hand. Unplug the phone, ignore the world. If you are right-handed then your left hand will be submerged into the soup, or the reverse, if the reverse. Sit for awhile with eyes closed, FEELING the soup with the submerged hand, pinch bits of carrot, or whatever is in there, FEEL it FEEL it, feel IT before IT'S eaten. Take notes about your body and the soup in the bowl before it becomes your body. The roots have recently been HUMMING underground forging themselves; stalks and leaves stretching into the light, and rain, and slight flutter of insect wings, ALL have now COOKED TOGETHER to become YOU. Take notes, take notes, many notes. Use a HUGE spoon if you have one, this to reduce your sense of your own size. Take notes about what THIS MEANS TO YOU to reduce your sense of your own size. Dip the spoon into the soup, scraping your hand, eat. Take notes about how this tastes, take notes about YOUR marinated hand-soup. Are the ingredients organic? Take notes, take notes, source of THE SOURCE is for the notes now. If ingredients are not organic, were there labels at the store telling where they were from? Take notes. Were any ingredients GMO? How do you feel about GMO foods? Notes, notes. Cup your submerged hand and eat from it. Run your tongue along the surface of your hand, and lick your fingers clean. Put your hand back in your soup. Can you feel the soup in your body, in your blood, coursing through you, can you feel this yet? Eat your soup with your HUGE spoon and cupped hand eat it eat it eat it all, licking the bowl and licking your hand CLEAN. Take notes about ANYTHING that comes to mind, pressing your now SOUPLESS hand to your forehead thinking thinking thinking about ANYTHING at all running your now SOUPLESS hand ALL OVER YOUR HEAD while thinking and writing. Now take all of your notes and use THE FILTERS "ACCENTUATE" and "ENGINE" to shape your poem.

Click HERE to read (Soma)tic Poetics Outline
Click HERE to see the book (Soma)tic Midge

#31 WHITE HELIUM

for Sharon Mesmer

Take a white helium balloon with a red string into a private room where no one can see you or bother you. Don't even let them know you have it, and hide it in a closet when it's not in use. You need four consecutive days for this exercise. DAY ONE chew your favorite gum while naked in bed, or on the floor, but on your back, arms behind your head, legs spread apart, relaxed with your balloon on the ceiling above you. After your gum is sufficiently chewed and soft, stick the end of the red string into the gum, then shove the gum into your navel. WORK IT IN THERE. Relax again with the balloon above you, now attached to your navel. Navels are scars from birth, scars which are the center of gravity. Take notes about your navel now filled with gum and balloon string. MOTHER FED YOU through this before you were born, chocolates, spaghetti, tangerines, mayonnaise and turnips and cashews and pickled beets! You processed shit and other excretions through this YOU LIVED THROUGH THIS HOLE WITH THE BALLOON NOW HOLDING ON! Take many notes. DAY TWO sit naked on the floor while holding the balloon to your forehead, rub it into your third eye, bouncing your head gently into it over and over. Hum into it while thinking about your day, especially something that might have irritated you, hum LOUDER when irritating thoughts come to mind. Take notes. Now tie the red string around your penis, if you don't have a penis tie it around a dildo inserted into your vagina, or around your thigh, then walk around with your balloon bouncing above you. Read a favorite VERY FAVORITE book of poetry, stopping from time to time to take notes about reading this book naked with your balloon attached to you. How is it different reading this book naked with your balloon? Now read your favorite poem in the book backwards out loud, last word first, even read the title backwards. Take notes. DAY THREE cut a little hair from your head and pubic hair, and tape it to your balloon. Let the balloon rest on the ceiling while you sit on the floor naked, looking up at your bits of hair above you. Bring your balloon down slowly and study the hair and let it float back to the ceiling. Bring it down again and WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT WHAT TO DRAW draw spontaneous drawings with several different colored magic markers. Let it float back to the ceiling. While it's on the ceiling take notes about what you've just drawn. What does it look like? How do you feel about what you've drawn? Take notes about each color and how you used each color. Bring your balloon back down by the string and study it closer. DAY FOUR smear snot or blood or semen or pussy juice or ear wax or piss or vomit or shit or spit or sweat or whatever excretion you have available onto your balloon. Hold onto the string as it floats above you. Relax on your back on the floor. Hold the string by your toes with your legs extended. Look at the balloon with binoculars. What emblem is this? What Jolly Roger? What letter of love or apology is this? What declaration? Take notes, take notes. Slowly let the air out and put the balloon with all the hair and drawings and secretions into a sock, and put the sock under your pillow. In the morning take notes about dreams you had, especially if the balloon appeared. Your excretions had just been floating above you the night before, what was in your dreams? Take notes. Now take all your notes and use THE FILTERS "River" and "Basket" to shape your poem.

Click HERE to read (Soma)tic Poetics Outline
Click HERE to see the book (Soma)tic Midge