SHELF LIFE #3B: OU SOUND POETRY ANTHOLOGY
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008I was doing a bunch of sound experiments for Mokinox. I’d slapped some analog synths together–some built from scratch, some cobbled together from boards. I wanted to purely process vocals. I hadn’t heard much that was pre-existing and anything like what I was envisioning, so I just built, screeched and recorded.
I made some cd-rs of the recordings for my friend, Jim. He in turn made me some cd-rs of Henri Chopin’s sound poetry. Chopin was incredible. I’d heard of sound poetry, but in a lot of ways, I’m pretty culturally retarded. I’d never actually listened to any of it apart from the stuff that Burroughs and Gysin had done. Anyway, Chopin had more or less done exactly what I was trying to do–and he’d done it better than I could ever hope to.
Chopin was the last of the three to die–last week actually. I meant to add this entry then, but found myself preoccupied with a big order of FORE (oddly enough, influenced by Gysin’s Pistol Poem) for the New Museum. Having delivered that yesterday, I’m writing this now. RIP Henri Chopin. You’re a hero.
