Voicings

Besides reading it at a poetry event last week, I videoed 3 rehearsals, and memorized it for this videopoem of 'Voicings,' a prose poem that I wrote some years ago and revised recently. This poem also made it to the top of SoundClick's Poetry charts in 2007.

While I but dimly understand the 'cult of personality,' I find even with my own work that when I perform a piece it garners more views than my videos of imagery with a voiceover. I cannot do it - show myself - without a sense of humour, though.

My aesthetic is multiplicity, multiples. Nodes, modules, events, thoughts, memories, everything is intersecting, widely missing the connection, intwined, separated, in the flow together or opposing each other. Vectors pulse everywhere in an ongoing processes of embodiment, momentary materializations.

We are layered, enfolded. I am composed of at least two, and usually more. My dopplegängers often show up in my videos; sometimes they get carried away and dance the words of the world. Ventriloquist, yes, but the main figure speaks and she, the double, explains. Like captions. Or perhaps she is the emotion within the words. The spirit fighting to get out. Anyway, she takes over at the end, dancing, and some of the colours and shapes remind me of ancient Sumerian myth, and Polynesian spirit charms.

She is Semiotic, rhizome, an off shoot of the woman speaking of words in a worded world.

That is a solid silver Sari wedding belt that I am wearing as a necklace. I only wear it on special occasions.

To read the poem, go to my blog: http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2011/12/video-poetry-voicings.html

(Also, I composed the background soundtrack in GarageBand. On January 29, 2012 Rumblefish put in a claim on my work, which shocks me. I believe they are trying to make money off my creative work. Here is a screen capture of my GarageBand file: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-SJO1qUkZfsg/TyVfy9fA8PI/AAAAAAAAOng/mOnXqf... I have not violated any copyright as far as I know. Small GarageBand loops are legal; the poem is mine and I can prove it, and the midi file was generated from the text in my poem.)

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Video Poetry
• Voicings
• videopoetry
• performance poetry
• woman reciting poetry
• poetry reading
• silver Sari wedding belt
• Poem
• Spoken
• Words
• rumblefish

[Boudouardsreaction]

Why is that I am aging and you are not? ;)

[brendaclews]

@Boudouardsreaction Laughing, Jay, that's a sweet comment, and good to know what those who've lived as long as we have think about ... but did you like the poem? :)

[johnfwalter]

Really innovative use of the contrapuntal doppelganger dancer self to comment on the poet speaker in this video poetry reading Voicings, Brenda. I especially like the way you somehow manage to make what initially appears to be a poem about the levelling out of all voices into a grand monad of The Human Voice build gradually into an intensely personal, intimate statement of one voice--to pun on a Victrola slogan, "the voice of the Mistress"--that is nothing without your body's gestures.

[brendaclews]

@johnfwalter John, You have the motion, the swirl of the words of the poem exactly. As ever, you make my work sound so much better than it is. I love "all voices into a grand monad of The Human Voice" and then the intimacy, yes, yes.

To receive a comment from you - your astute intelligence, kindness, critical acumen, and deeply poetic sensibility - is such a gift.

Very grateful, thank you, love, Brenda

[femmecorbeau]

incredible... a great work. xoxoxoxo

[brendaclews]

@femmecorbeau you're beautiful, Laura, thank you so much. xoxo

[LIBRATION100]

Oh! my Brenda big kiss baby

[LIBRATION100]

Oh! my Brenda big kiss baby

[brendaclews]

@LIBRATION100 Dear Pascal, I love you!