...I mean poetry and poetics as a way of thinking in, around, and through 'the real', and in particular, a way of going beyond the deafeningly deceptive representations of 'reality'...
—Charles Bernstein (post 9/11 thoughts)
My main purpose when I craft pieces of writing that make virtually no apparent sense is to challenge myself in how I come to make conclusions. Conversely, I also find it fitting to explore the areas that I may not arrive at a conclusion, the juncture that would provoke sensible meaning in whatever possible form. I am content with either avenue of writing, particularly pieces that do not necessitate certain formal forms of conventionality. In my free-write, I allowed my mental processes to take me where they wished, rather than imposing automatic and quick-readied barriers and blocks—leaving me (I) to my own creative spontaneous endeavor engenders my ability to frame ideas in a way that I truly think, aloud—textually.
For this particular piece, taking an idea or word, such as ‘sense’ and beginning to answer the arching question: “What is involved in making sense?”, I toyed with the various capacities of creative-writing available to me and set about forming my thoughts and concepts, words, and playful banter, onto text. It is one frame of mind to verbalize pieces such as these but then that negates the purpose of taping into another modality that is free from phonetic rules, syntaxical structures, and expectations that are inherent in speech. I wished to step away from this mode and move into a space that can come alive through the use of one concept or word and literally, run with it. Arriving to a satisfied ending was not my pursuit—again, I was content upon seeing where I ended and in which direction my juices took me.
The driving question that instigated this piece what I posed in the second paragraph. How do we make sense and, conjointly, in what ways do we make sense? With these lines of parallel thoughts, I reviewed comments and ingrained sentences or words that have floated about my head for years. I also delved into different areas of spaces that I perhaps would reserve for different circumstances and situations. For instance, I recall my mother telling me I had a curfew. Thinking about other teenage children who experience the restrictions on venturing out for the night, I framed the emotive-reaction by invoking the phrase, “Mother and Father, you are making no sense!” Hence, with this track, I experienced several sets of possibilities of experiences between multiple pseudo-conversations and circumstances. Lastly, the overall motivation for taking this type of work on, was and still is, to push for the idea that we as a collective must begin to consider other ways of thinking and thus, other ways of communicating. Breaking perceived, antiquated barriers established to originally reinforce hierarchies that subscribe to a certain population or group, is required, if any social justice is to begin framing itself into a healthy state.
(Sense, Sensibility, Non-Sensical)
She asked: “What is involved in making sense?”
Who says sense is sense. I didn’t. Did you? They did.
Well, after all, sense in a sensible way isn’t very logical now is it?
Mother told you to use your head. Now, THAT is weird and useful.
Sense. S-E-N-S-E.
I smell that and wonder how it makes sense…to smell means to use my head, is that how I make sense of the world? Could I please, possibly, make any sense of my world? Just this once.
Hejinian couldn’t make sense so deferment to her authority means my world (and THE world, presumably) has to come to sensical senses of sense, making sense.
Oh, now we are “making” sense!
Mixtures of which ingredients, good chefs? This and a pinch of that. Yes. Throw—no, dump into the bowl.
BOWL OF SENSE.
I must confess, this truly escapes all conventions of how they told me to make sense of anything. Did they lie? Sure. It made sense to them when they concocted such a scheme. The bowl, please.
You need to stir it well, let the liquid seep through the others.
(Others!)
There’s more. Yes, sensibly more. A joke runs amok the conventions of defined reality. Is reality made up of sense?
Hejinian surely jumps the barbed window and mixes ingredients. Sense, you recall. Mother and Father, you are making no sense! Why.
My head is jammed and jostled and I can’t go out for the night.
A curfew?
It is a sensible, responsible thing to do.
I wish you,
we,
they,
I
could bake the liquids into a very nice form of sensibility.
