From: marek@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Marek Lugowski)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: blue funk / Marek (Re: asdf)
Date: 15 Nov 92 21:27:49 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.1992Nov15.212749.733
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois.

sheilah@wam.umd.edu (Frank), who really is Sheila H., after all, given the
extensive analysis of the original missive, writes with her usual beguiling
mix of surrealism and poignancy, and in apparently good mood, at least for
now:

>... marek@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Marek Lugowski) writes:
>
>>If anthropological considerations are white noise to you, you've chosen to
>>live in a blue funk of disconnectedness from your fellow human critters.
>>
>>Owning a bunch of words.
>
>
>
>I'm not pro-anysideatall of the argument. but I think this is a funny
>sentence. especially the blue funk part.

Thank you.  I agree.

>Anyway, is there any particulary reason for it to be "blue funk of"
>did you make that up or is it some obscure reference? much more fun
>if you just made it up. It is also very fun to visualize.
>Yep, I feel a blue funk of disconnectedness today.

I'd love to take credit for it but I learned it in high school from my
English teacher in between reading Hemingway and stuff.  Apparently this is
an old idiom, back before "funk" meant music and more "fear".  I used it
because I needed a counterbalance to white noise and it popped in.  Blue
funk connotes a state of extreme agitation or fury.  I suppose it would be
just opposite of serenity that comes from rootedness.

I will take credit for "blue funk of disconnectedness" because it's a
value-added product and could make someone a good poem title or element.

>Of course, any one wins my attention when they start hustling words
>like that. AND talking about disconnectedness IN THE SAME PARAGRAPH

*blush*.  that's "anyone", dear.

>	(i am very suspicious of this NeXT computer, because I don't
>	think it has a caps-lock key. must be some arcane unix joke)

NeXTs I worked on do have caps-lock keys but they are unlabeled.  Is there
a NeXT doctor in the house?, we need you...  P.s.  Everyone should know
that NeXT is not unix. :)  As Moonshine says to Louis Fyne in "True Stories"
when she is teaching him in her loft to assume the lotus position,
"it's close... no... no.. that's a _different_ yoga position..."

>Ha! A NEW TOPIC, disconnectedness and collage or juxtaposition.
>together. "discuss." (this last word here a quote.)

Count me in.  Juxtaposition is my middle name.  "Wojciech" in Polish.
>
>	side note, dear marek, I get very confused with my eyes when
>	i read your poem and you put punctuation everywhere. like
>	periods. e.g. like. periods. I get. confused.  Why? not me. you?

Well, a period means "Stop here for a bit, you dweeb."  So...  If Marek or
Marie put a period there it ain't a .sig decoration. Do you suppose we want
you to stop too much?  Chalk it up to disconnectedness.  We just haven't
mastered how to stitch our little versifi-frankensteins into seemlessly
flowing sonnets.  But I am taking steps in that direction by studying
Italian.  I think in Italian I could go through life without stepping on an
iamb or losing a single rhyme, even when ordering hummus at the deli at the
Oak Streat Market.  Also, the idea behind putting periods everywhere is to
slow down the reader.  We are selfish that way...  We want to be read and
read and read several times longer and slower, to the point of being
caressed by "your eyes" (there I go by the grace of dio).  Poets can be
like cats, you know.  (Very catty.. :))

>also, back to blue funk of disconnectedness.

Let's.

>I think it's common. I feel like this all the time. especially when
>I'm martin

Sheila, do you mean [Martin, Martian, Martini'd]?  Context matters.

>and don't understand the assumptions behind the use
>of all words, or everything starts meaning it's opposite, or specialized
>becomes too general to have any meaning, or people start talking to me
>in a different langauge even though they are using the same words I do.

This happened to me at a Paris airport when I was 16.  I was very annoyed
that this Frenchman accosted me, persisting in speaking in French even
though he obviously understood my English (and he was an airport airline
doobie).  But French are like that, especially at their own airports.

>I thinks it's very common.

Yup.

>God! but it's hard to explain. (not really, but that sounded like a fitting
>phrase to me. actaully it's not hard to explain but it would take a while
>and I'd like more time to think about it and perhaps I should get off my
>lazy but and go write something down!)

Give us a poem.  Be sure to put lots of periods in it if you feel like it.
Why let the reader glide scott-free, flushing the poet's hard work down the
pipe (so to speak) of read news, in record time.  These people should take
their time to Take It In.  Contemplate.  Digest.  Think.  Maybe even, Respond.

				-- Marek
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems