When We Vacation, It is to Museums. (See also senior project of same title, seniorprojects_2016-021.)

WHEN WE VACATION, IT IS TO MUSEUMS Senior Thesis APRIL 28, 2016 RILEY WOODS Riley Woods 1 When We Vacation, it is to Museums: Supplemental Paper “The giant’s ring is lucky because it has survived, because it marks the transference of origin to trace, moving from event to memory and desire.” Art is shaped by many things, the most influential being its creator, the artist, whose being plays an undeniable role in the art itself through stylistic choices and individual nuance— both of which point toward a particular origin. What creates the creator, then, is of the utmost preeminence, as it is reflected in the artist’s body of work, intentionally or not. Due to the prominence of personal style that exists in most pieces, it is no surprise that many thinkers who express themselves creatively confront the idea of identity in their artistic endeavors. Whether this confrontation manifests itself in the evolving self-portraits of Pablo Picasso or in the challenge issued to language through Theresa Cha’s Dictee matters little: the expression is only a symptom of an underlying question— what is identity? This question is, of course, over-simplified and could be broken down into many sub-questions, such as: - What forms identity? - Can identity be chosen? Riley Woods 2 - What most heavily influences the formation of identity (the age-old question of nature vs. nurture)? - Are we bound to a single identity? - How do we confront the identities that are assigned to us by outside forces? These are all topics that have been addressed and argued for much of recorded history, seemingly without any conclusions being agreed upon. Despite this, I decided to delve into my own insights on the matter, and, armed with a list of readings, I jumped in with little focus. What I soon discovered, however, was that my inspirations were examining the social implications of identity, something that I could not probe for several reasons— I am not a minority like Cha, Monica Ong, or Claudia Rankine nor have I ever been uprooted or thrust into a foreign societal system like Cha and Ong, and as such, I have not spent a great amount of time pondering identity in such a context. Instead, my work evolved into an investigation of self-history— what in my personal past molded my current self— and became more focused on specific moments than on the macro-perspectives of the previously mentioned authors. So, though the original thoughts that blossomed into When We Vacation, it is to Museums can be traced back to the profound work of Cha, Ong, and Rankine, they were merely launching points for my own ideas to push off of. In examining the microcosms that formed who I am currently, I was forced to come to terms with some hard truths regarding the significance of these events and their place in my life— both in the moment and in the spectrum between when they occurred and now. This sparked a natural progression of challenge, resistance, and eventual acceptance. What I learned Commented [RW1]: Comma? Riley Woods 3 was that the instances I considered “big moments” in my life were no longer perceived as they were initially, prompting me to contemplate the concepts of perception, memory, meaning, and how they interrelate and evolve. From this meditation, I drew few conclusions, instead discovering that, just like my perceptions changed with time, and with them, the meaning of certain moments, my thoughts on this matter were in a constant flux. As such, there was only one course of action that was plausible— attempt, through poetry, to capture that which cannot be condensed into a cohesive set of statements. Once this realization was made, Cha and Ong’s influence became an integral cog in my creative process. In order to embody an idea of consistent inconsistency, a collection of poetry should manage to be both transient and constant, creating an environment of stable confusion that a reader is able to grasp while simultaneously being off-balance. To achieve such a paradox, I embraced the techniques incorporated by the authors who had this effect on me, adding my own experiences and unique stylistic choices along the way. I was first exposed to asemic writing (writing that cannot be read) by Cha’s Dictee, and quickly identified it as an ideal method for establishing a feeling of impermanence, especially when incorporated into the ideas of water (brevity, destruction, rebirth) and soundwaves (poignancy, fleetingness). What better way to challenge perception and meaning than to defy the traditional presentations of language as Cha does? Ong’s impact on When We Vacation, it is to Museums manifests itself in a less experimental manner— through image-text and image-image relationships, whether they be overlays or juxtapositions. Ong executes this to perfection in her Silent Anatomies, seamlessly melding anatomical depictions with photographs from her personal history and poetic pieces of Riley Woods 4 text that integrate effortlessly to create moments more powerful together than they would be apart. In an attempt to utilize this technique, I chose to focus on personal memories, merging images pertinent to the memories being challenged with text confronting my perceptions, both past and present, of those memories. When this strategy collided with those inspired by Cha, something interesting happened— text became voice, voice became image, and image became text. This threefold transformation of language acted as a visual representation of the ever-changing concepts of perception and significance challenged through the lens of my work. Where Cha and Ong examined their roles (micro) in relation to the social systems they experienced (macro), I examined my former self and his experiences (micro) in relation to my present self (macro). In doing so, I was able to create a world that blurred reality, blending separate iterations of myself into one semi-omniscience viewpoint (it cannot be entirely omniscient, as I am still living and aging), and replace integral parts of both with objects and semi-fictional characters as a form of distancing and becoming objective. These placeholders act much like souvenirs, the majority of which harken back to the time I spent at Florida Southern College (the period on which the project is founded), carrying stories in the now missing locations and people they capture and represent. This strategy is essentially my way of embracing the object theory that Susan Stewart presents in her On Longing when she writes, “we need and desire souvenirs of events that are reportable, events whose materiality has escaped us, events that thereby exist only through the invention of narrative.” Selecting which memories and accompanying souvenirs to include in When We Vacation, it is to Museums required that I consider how they would act as individual pieces in the context of a larger, more substantial whole. Further, I had to make stylistic choices in how Riley Woods 5 the segments were written and presented. So, just as the project focused on the micro composing the macro, I had to focus how the parts (individual works) made up the body (completed poetic movement). In doing so, I reflected not only on the structure of Dictee and Silent Anatomies, but on the diction and syntax of singular works from poets I admire, namely Denis Johnson and John Berryman, with less significant tinges of influence from the likes of Erica Bernheim, Saeed Jones, and others. Johnson’s poetry and prose has impacted my writing significantly since I discovered him. He has a natural fluidity to his writing that allows him to be both narrative and abstract at once, or switch seamlessly between the two. The trait I admire most, however, is his ability to blur reality by melding an almost gritty realism with a dreamlike surrealistic touch, then shed light on the abstruse through statements that often toe the line between being true and being outlandish— The simple cure for everything is to destroy all the stethoscopes that will transmit silence occasionally. (excerpt from “The White Fires of Venus”) —often leaving the audience enlightened yet pleasantly dazed. Due to the substantial amount of time I have spent studying Johnson’s poetry, my own has absorbed many of his techniques and transformed them to more adequately fit my themes and style— a fact that can be seen several times in When We Vacation, it is to Museums. Take, for example, the conclusion of “1213: March,” which reads: Riley Woods 6 Most light is memory dusting eyes. Johnson’s prose also contains a surrealist element, though it is expressed through different means: where his poetry is typically made up of a series of intuitive leaps between themes, ideas, and images, his prose often reads like stream-of-consciousness, leading to moments that likely are not understood until the third or fourth time through the work. This strategy allows Johnson to weave complex plots while shifting some of the work to the audience, leaving them to make connections for themselves (much like his poetry does). Perhaps the best example of his masterful madness exists as the collection Jesus Son, a series of interconnected short stories that are doused generously with drug-related themes— a perfect fit for the convoluted and often unexplainable twists Johnson’s prose takes. It was after this collection of short stories that I based my brief moments of prose in When We Vacation, it is to Museums. Just as Johnson creates and presents a dreamlike world full of half-truths and fantastic distortions for his drug-addicted character to inhabit, I attempted to accentuate the unreliability of one’s own perspective by molding a dreamscape for my memories, souvenirs, and characters. To farther the feeling of distortion, I incorporated a tactic used by John Berryman in his series “The Dream Songs”: the use of multiple half-fictional characters. By skewing the nouns and pronouns used in the poems and prose present in my project, I hoped to create an environment of both instability and possibility. It is possible to trace Timothy through the entirety of When We Vacation, it is to Museums, yes, but pronouns such as “you” are fluid, allowing the reader to fill in certain portions of the work with their own imaginings. Using Riley Woods 7 Berryman’s strategy also provides an important buffer between writer and content, allowing me to distance myself from the material and write more objectively. The effect of this separation is two-fold— it permits me to be less biased, which is vital for a project of this nature, and removes the ultra-personal, letting the audience more-freely relate to the broader ideas being confronted. While much of the project revolves around what is present, replaced, or combined, perhaps the most significant aspect is the one most likely to be overlooked: what is absent. Ong uses a similar tactic in her Silent Anatomies, emphasizing the gender-based laws of China through what is whitened, what is left out, and what is muted. In When We Vacation, it is to Museums, this strategy is not used to highlight culture discrepancies and how they contribute to a person’s identity formation, it is used to contextualize periods of time in one’s own history— how relations and coming of age events mold an identity not only in how they occur, but also in how they pass. In “(darling),” which also acts as the title page, the sound waves that make up the colorful abstract art cannot be interpreted, yet speak loudly in both their lack of traditional meaning and their repetitious nature. The effect is, if executed as intended, a simultaneous cheapening and valuing of the mysterious word or phrase being portrayed, as repetition can signify both importance and commonality. In “end here:”, the sound wave is again displayed with no explanation of what it represents, muting the one who spoke it. It also takes on the task of support, replacing the spine of the woman who has become nothing but an anonymous sketch— she no longer has the physical traits necessary to be seen as an individual, and must therefore be identified by the unintelligible soundwave running up her empty back. Riley Woods 8 The twin to “end here:” is “rain,” a piece that takes the removal of the female character a step farther by erasing not only the outline of the body, but also her identifying soundwave. The poem, whose shape indicates the process that has taken place, captures the concept of absence by detailing the transitive nature of a relationship now existent only in what is not present. To continue this theme of omission, the next poem is purely visual, with streaks of soundwaves appearing as rain: an example of asemic writing. The poem represented by the rain waves follows this trend as well, embracing the idea of transience by condensing significant happenings into the time of a week— a representation of the fleetingness of noteworthy moments and the changing perspectives that accompany the increasing distance from them. The last line of the poem, which reads: : some wave distantly & collapse into themselves embodies the temporal nature of not only human relationships, but of the instants contained in them. It also ends without punctuation, indicating the ongoing nature of such transitory topics. Following perhaps the most abstract piece in When We Vacation, it is to Museums is the first example of (almost) traditional poetry: “night beach (natives).” This poem, while laid out in a fluid manner to evoke similar sentiments as the preceding pieces, is one of the more straightforward works included in the project. In fact, it could be considered the first true “clue” to unlocking what the collection is working toward, as it relies more solely on language to communicate with the audience. Lines such as “in the foamy moments,” “& emptied like a river,” “beneath discarded moon,” and “bed (thoughtlessly rippled)” provide a strong indication of the elusive subject matter, while the pronoun “our” gives the piece (and subsequently, the Riley Woods 9 project) feelings of sentimentality, loss, and even nostalgia— qualities that continue into the next work. It is here that the protagonist, Timothy, is introduced. It is also the first example (with the exception of the title piece) of text and image being presented on the same page, integrating previously introduced strategies into a new format. The image itself, which is manipulated and spliced together with unreadable text, shows a hand holding a flower— a visual representation of Susan Stewart’s theory that “the photograph as souvenir is a logical extension of the pressed flower, the preservation of an instant in time through a reduction of physical dimensions and a corresponding increase in significance supplied by means of narrative.” Considered in context with the name “Timothy,” this mixture of image and text leads to the implication that the unidentifiable person in the photo is, in fact, Timothy. The language in the poem and the facelessness of the photo again capture the temporal nature of experience, describing them as “moments planted/to not-last.” To this point in When We Vacation, it is to Museums, the individual poems have focused on two parts of a whole— instances and ideas. Once Timothy is introduced, however, those two halves begin to meet, allowing moments to evolve into broad philosophical thoughts and inclusive theories to devolve into single pinpricks in time. In the second Timothy poem (beginning with “timothy hay reducing”) this can be clearly seen through a recount of a specific night that slowly transitions into a childhood memory, signifying the fallible nature of time, experience, and perception. It also shows how an early experience (before birth, even) can permanently affect an individual’s perspective, even if their conscious perspectives change with time: Riley Woods 10 twine tickled, unborn indoctrinated w/ an insatiable itch for weaving objects into sounds— hurry, timothy, This ending is meant to both slip through the fingers and inspire a feeling urgency, as it ends with an incomplete command. In fact, these three lines could be singled out as the basis for soundwaves being included in poetic movement— they summarize not only what is being done (“weaving objects into sounds”), but also the origins of that process (“unborn indoctrinated/w/an insatiable itch”). “1213: March,” a piece made of short, matter-of-fact statements, not only contrasts the preceding poem, but continues and concludes it. The first line— “the faster you unravel/the faster you can be kept.”— picks up where “hurry, timothy,” left off, completing the command and farther answering not only the question the poem presents, but the questions the audience might pose to the project. The more quickly a moment expires, the more quickly it can become souvenir— no experience is permanent, but the memory associated with it is (even if it’s fallible). Imagery again plays an important role in the meaning of the piece: the branches appear to be dead and shedding their foliage, and the background is fluid, washing away what little lastingness the word-leaves might cling to. This tree-related imagery continues into the next semi-traditional poem, as the map-less route the poem is centered around ties in subtly to the shape of branches. “learned, never met” also continues the freshly-introduced use of numbers, this time as subheadings that could be interpreted in two obvious ways— as a method of expressing time or as a manner of identifying locations. Because of the dark-tinged childhood imagery present in the poem, either reading of the numbers is effective (especially Riley Woods 11 when the visual is considered). If “timothy reducing herself” introduced youth distorted by time and an overarching aura of loss, “learned, never met” saturates the audience with the theme— a necessity if the project is to be understood in its entirety. “1516” returns to the abstract origins of When We Vacation, it is to Museums by presenting an image that has been mirrored and separated by a mostly unreadable (and also mirrored) strand of vertical text. The only words that can be deciphered are “happens twice,” a reference not only to the up-for-interpretation visuals of the piece, but to the thesis of the project: every experience is perceived multiple times— when it happens and when it is remembered. This is a thought that is reiterated differently in the next piece, “First North,” which combines a forearm in a vulnerable position with the tree limbs found in “1213: March.” The minimal text reads “language rising to meet static,” arguing the dynamic nature of experience, language, and, more literally, touch. To continue the theme of essentially mapping moments, locations, and body parts, “+/-,” the final lengthy piece in the project, echoes the structure of the first substantial poem— both in its construction and in the partial image present in the upper-right corner. The poem’s content, though still metaphorical, is more straightforward— a slight contrast to the majority of the project. This more direct approach was intentional, as was the placement within When We Vacation, it is to Museums: it allows the audience an opportunity to more firmly grasp not only what literal events are being confronted in When We Vacation, it is to Museums, but also the philosophic undertones present throughout. Riley Woods 12 To achieve revelation without losing the veil of symbolism, a large amount of theory, both personal and borrowed, is incorporated in “+/-.” An assertion found in Susan Stewart’s On Longing, for example, makes a blatant appearance in the lines: the future— a portal to paranoia, body turned object. A fear of loss is expressed here, as is a fear of the organic becoming artificial— the process through which souvenirs are created. To compound the lack of permanence found in locations, relationships, and experiences, the poem then enters a world where a museum is rearranged each night, causing the displays to deteriorate, blend together, and even damage the museum itself. This emphasis on the ephemeral quality of all aspects of experience— the fact that they cannot be recreated, recaptured, or even remembered without decay and inaccuracy— continues to evolve as the poem nears its end, concluding with a description of what occurs when one attempts to return to expired moments (“think of density, a museum changing w/ each visit. start foxing, removing edges to stitch them back into new shapes—left arm a notebook, torso a field of punctuation.”), but also presenting a possible solution: “never-last in-between w/ me (curved vertical incision).” The first (and only) inclusion of prose appears in the next piece— a page-length block of text overlaid with a partially transparent image. Here, the concepts of change and transience are taken a step farther: the girl in the photograph has been removed, leaving blank space that is filled with language. She has, in essence, been replaced by the ideas born from her person Riley Woods 13 (and possibly more, her absence): a reflection of “end here:” that allows the project to come full circle. Because the majority of the text is hidden by the opaque portion of the image, the audience is only able to read a fraction of the story— refusing them the ability to fully grasp what is being said, but also allowing them to construct their own narrative from what is visible. What can be read is not random, however, but purposely selected to set an intentional tone— one that matches the rest of the project. Words such as: “revelation,” “looked for… girl,” “loved her,” “the sound of… eyes,” “fell asleep,” “the answer,” “he killed,” “beautiful,” and “away, far” appear in the void of the girl’s body, creating a distinct feeling of impermanence and loss. The words amongst the trees at the top of the piece also play a role, specifically “cowboy,” as it leads into the final poem of When We Vacation, it is to Museums, “4248.” The visual in this piece incorporates several elements that have been established through the rest of the project— nature (limbs), absence (the white space created by the limbs), and an avoidance of showing any defining physical traits (the face is obscured)— allowing it, when considered with the text, to act as the knot tying the threads of the poetic movement together. The words in “4248” are perhaps the most blatantly sentimental included in a single piece, reflecting on the drastic evolution of perspective that comes with time. In this case, the text is almost surely applying to the smiling boy in the image— leaving the audience to connect the dots between Timothy, the female-related imagery, the locations and maps, and the mystery child. By allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions based on fragments of experiences they have not personally endured, When We Vacation, it is to Museums embodies the transient nature of perception, memory, and even significance. Riley Woods 14 While the questions posed at the beginning of the process that became When We Vacation, it is to Museums remained unanswered, I consider the project a success because it expounded on those questions, challenged both personal and universal applications of them, and created a space in which the audience could freely reflect on such topics. The formative stages of identity were examined, as was the contrast of nature versus nature, as various “coming of age” moments and childhood memories were deconstructed and reconsidered. The idea that identity can, in part, be chosen was also taken into account and displayed through the process of accepting particular aspects of my personal history and removing others. Even the concept of possessing multiple identities came into play, as the mixture of pronouns and semi-fictional characters allowed me to embody former iterations of myself, and assign new hybrid identities to key individuals from the time period on which the project was founded. Finally, and perhaps most obviously, the progression through which we confront identities given to us by outside forces was embodied in the making of When We Vacation, it is to Museums, and is echoed in the finished product. So, though I did not have the background to theorize on broad societal truths, I was able to utilize my experiences in a manner that made them applicable to subjects and audiences beyond myself. Riley Woods 15 Works Cited Berryman, John. The Dream Songs. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969. Print. Cha, Theresa. Dictee. University of California Press: Los Angeles, California. 2001. Print. Johnson, Denis. Jesus' Son: Stories. London: Picador, 2009. Print. Johnson, Denis. "The White Fires of Venus." The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly: Poems, Collected and New. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Print. Ong, Monica. Silent Anatomies. Kore Press: Tucson, Arizona. 2015. Print. Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993. Print.