Hey guess what!

Here's a Melville quote sent my way by Jim Keller after I posted Waveweave, a close-up of a detail from a baby blanket:

"Through the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver! – pause! – one word! – whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver! – stay thy hand! – but one single word with thee! Nay – the shuttle flies – the figures float from forth the loom; the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby have villainies been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din of the great world’s loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar."

One can puzzle over why the sun through the leaves becomes the weaving metaphor in Moby-Dick, a novel dominated by tropes of the sea, given that wave and weave share an etymological basis, and that Melville also, like the Dogon people, associates weaving with loudness --it's true that both industrial and treadle-loom weaving make a lot of clacking noise, creakings, etc. –while the romanticized version of the needle arts is of placidity and serenity. Trust Melville to see social relations in even the movement of the sun... Yay Melville.

Warning: Random Intrusion of Po-biz Girl-fun into Textile/Stooges Blog...

I was just tagged by poet and life-coach Arielle Guy to answer a series of questions on my blog. She had been previously tagged by poet and Dusie Kollektiv founder Susana Gardner to answer the same questions. So here goes. I don't usually talk about my poetry "career" (such as it is) here, and in fact there are quite a few questions that don't really resonate, as you may see in my answers. So here goes. So here goes. uhhh... So here goes: QUESTIONS: Q. What is the working title of the book? A. Book? what book? i don't think in terms of books, i create incrementally and then at some point look around and say, hey, maybe i've got the makings of a compendium here. What I envision most clearly now is another x-stitch chapbook like Meshwards, now that I've generated a number of new works. Another book idea is one on Stooges fan culture. The working title is "Stooges Fan Culture and the Glories of Failure." Where did the idea come from for the book? A. x-stitch chapbook: the idea came from doing Meshwards. B. stooges book came from 1. being a stooges fan and 2. learning that the University of Iowa Press has a series on fandom. What genre does your book fall under? 1. visual poetry chapbooks 2. academic/crossover cultural analysis cum storytelling etc. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition? B. Iggy Pop, James Williamson, Scott Asheton, Mike Watt, Dave Alexander (RIP), Ron Asheton (RIP), Natalie Schlossberg, Heather Harris, Brian Sg, Danny Fields, Heather Harris, Eric Rasmussen, Jos Grain, and me. What is the one sentence synopsis of your book? I'm with you, you're with me, we're going down in history. We're going down. We're going down. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript? Ask again in a while. Who or what inspired you to write this book? The usual cast of characters. A. Susana Gardner, mIEKAL aND, etc. B. See above. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? Lovers of visual poetry, folk arts, textiles, and the Stooges might nibble... Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? a. Dusie Kollektiv b. aforementioned press, we hope. Make up a question you think is pressing in way of poetry today. (put that question here) When will natural processes have an equal place at the table with humans who consider themselves poetry makers?

Re-entry

At last, I'm back. Much has happened in the text/textile world of text, textile, exile in the last year and a half, and i have finally retrieved my password so i can reconnect with this site. For now, I'll just post a very brief etymological chain of the word "lace:" lace (n.) early 13c., "cord made of braided or interwoven strands of silk, etc.," from O.Fr. las "a net, noose, string" (Fr. lacs), from V.L. *lacium, from L. laqueum (nom. laqueus) "noose, snare" (It. laccio, Sp. lazo), a trapping and hunting term, probably from Italic base *laq- "to ensnare" (cf. L. lacere "to entice"). Later also "net, noose, snare" (c.1300); "piece of cord used to draw together the edges of slits or openings in an article of clothing" (late 14c.). The "ornamental net pattern" meaning is first recorded 1550s. Sense of "cord for tying" remains in shoelace. As an adjective, lace-curtain "middle class" (or lower-class with middle-class pretensions) usually is used in reference to Irish-Americans. lace (v.) c.1200, "fasten (clothing, etc.) with laces and ties;" see lace (n.). Also "tighten (a garment) by pulling its laces" (early 14c.). To lace coffee, etc., with a dash of liquor (1670s) was originally used of sugar, and comes via the notion of "to ornament or trim." Related: Laced; lacing. Laced mutton was "an old word for a whore" [Johnson].

Knit a poem, everybody!

My erstwhile collaborator and pal mIEKAL aND sent me this link from the British Poetry listserv: Turn a poem into a blanket! The British Poetry Society has gone craftsy! Calloo callay, I'm chortling in my joy.
http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/knit/

skein, skin

Skein: A mystery word! "O. Fr. escagne, of uncertain origin." Well, somebody must know, though it seems to have survived solely as a (fairly widespread) surname with no meaning attached.
The synonyms below are wonderful, building to a crescendo of hopeless confusion and multiplicity.
It is noteworthy that skein suggests confusion and entanglement, while "clue" comes from a ball of yarn that can lead someone through and out of confusion into clear knowledge and certainty. It's true that in the weaving or knitting process, one turns the skeins into balls of yarn (using a swift, another one of those marvelous words, or a little girl with arms held perpendicular to the floor, about a 16 inches apart, or the back of a chair), which then enables one to move forward into the next configuration: casting warp on the warping board or casting stitches on the knitting needles. But the two forms, skein and ball, don't really look so different, especially as most skeins I buy have already been looped and ordered in some kind of loose way, like those two snuggly littermates I got the other day (and why didn't I get a sensible color like black which I really know I can use?)
Skin, on the other hand, goes on and on, but in a somewhat confused way. However, this morsel–Ir. scainim "I tear, I burst"–is just what I'm looking for. No skin without being skinned. No surface without scarring. No border without transgression. Bursting out of your skin comes along with having skin.

skein
(noun)

-a length of wool or thread loosely wound into the shape of a ring
-a large group of wild birds such as geese

Etymology+Origin of skein (noun)
c.1440, from M.Fr. escaigne "a hank of yarn," from O.Fr. escagne (1354), of uncertain origin.

Synonyms for skein (noun)
jungle * , muddle , snag , labyrinth , coil , mat , jam * , thread , entanglement , mess * , mix-up , web , snarl , series , morass , strand , rummage , sequence , tangle , flock , twist , knot , maze , cat's cradle , mass , complication , mesh

Skin:
3 entries found adjective | noun | verb |

Etymology+Origin of skin (adjective)

c.1200, "animal hide" (usually dressed and tanned), from O.N. skinn "animal hide," from P.Gmc. *skintha- (cf. O.H.G. scinten, Ger. schinden "to flay, skin;" Ger. dial. schind "skin of a fruit," Flem. schinde "bark"), from PIE *sken- "cut off" (cf. Bret. scant "scale of a fish," Ir. scainim "I tear, I burst"), from base *sek- "cut." Replaced native hide; the modern technical distinction between the two words is based on the size of the animal. Meaning "epidermis of a living animal or person" is attested from 1340; extended to fruits, vegetables, etc. 1398. ~123~"Ful of fleissche Y was to fele, Now ... Me is lefte But skyn & boon." [hymn, c.1430]~123~Jazz slang sense of "drum" is from 1927. As an adj., it formerly had a slang sense of "cheating" (1868); sense of "pornographic" is attested from 1968. The verb is attested from 1392, from the noun. Skin-tight is from 1885; skin deep is first attested 1613 in this:~123~"All the carnall beauty of my wife, Is but skin-deep." [Sir Thomas Overbury, "A Wife," 1613; the poem was a main motive for his murder]~123~

Synonyms for skin (adjective)
starkers , unclad , nude

Definition skin (noun)

outer covering, especially of animate being

Notes to skin (noun)

Synonyms for skin (noun)

membrane , crust , case , jacket , fell , bark , surface , coating , casing , leather , slough , rind , exterior , husk , parchment , envelope , hide , bill , dermis , carapace , shell , sheath , complexion , derma , integument , outside , tegument , epidermis , sheathing , peel , fur , coat , cutis , shuck , vellum , film , pelt , chamois , hull

Definition skin (verb)

-the natural outer layer which covers a person, animal, fruit, etc.
Examples for skin

-dark/fair/pale/tanned skin
-skin cancer
-Babies have soft skins.
-Native Americans used to trade skins (= the skins of animals that have been removed from the body, with or without the hair).
-a banana/potato skin
-The bullet pierced the skin of the aircraft.
-Many electronic devices let you create your own skins.
-We had no umbrellas so we got soaked to the skin in the pouring rain.
-I don't worry about what he says - I have a very thick skin.
-I've got an old sheepskin coat.
-pale-skinned

Synonyms for skin (verb)

remove , knock , bare , abrade , scalp , decorticate , bark , strip , criticize , husk , shave , thwart , scale , denounce , exuviate , rap , scrape , condemn , gall , cut up , unclothe , cut off , undo , cast , shed , peel , blame , flay , pull off , cheat , rip off , defeat , exploit , lay bare , hull , maul , chafe , disarm , excoriate , shuck , pare , rind , deceive , trim , slough , graze

Hand-dyed Silk in Basel

My first day in Basel was Thursday. I slept for a few hours, then went with my hostess, Kathrin Schaeppi, to an English-language poetry reading at the University. En route we passed the open market at Barfüsseplatz (named after the barefoot Franciscan friars, and not, as i first thought, after the discalc'd Carmelites...) and I spied a color-draped booth with skeins of all possible hues hanging in rows in sumptuous splendor. We made a beeline for it and I ogled the goods. The woman was French-speaking, from La Chaux-de-Fonds; she gave me her card: Holzart Atelier Hachem ("tournage et découpe de bois /soie et laine"); her son does the wood-turning and she does the dyeing of silk and linen. It was expensive, as is everything in Switzerland, but I couldn't resist, esp as I was vulnerable from many hours of travel and few hours of sleep. I picked out two skeins in somewhat counter-intuitive colors for me: yellow variegated and slate-blue/yellow variegated. Here's a picture; I'd forgotten my camera on the excursion so didn't get a pic of the booth and the beautiful artisan. However, she's there every second Thursday so I'll get a chance to revisit the scene. This picture is taken against the sheets of my cozy single bed on Bachlettenstrasse. The two skeins look so happy nestled together; it's a case of do-i-want-to-impose-violence-on-them-through-use or do I want to hang them on my wall when I return? The loom room at home is painted a compatible color, a dark blue-gray. Perhaps that's why I chose these colors. I'm not sure which of my friends would wear them, or what I can make: 400 metres per skein, she says.
Skein/skin. Almost too obvious, as in Stein's Miss Furr and Miss Skeene, who were so close, like my two lovely loopy skeins of silk, that they were "regularly gay." But a proper etymological romp remains to be romped.

A Reverse Waterfall

Here is a short video by the great Cecilia Vicuña at her Oysi site (listed to the right), a wonderful database of and resource for oral poets around the world. Gorgeous strands of dyed and carded but unspun roving hanging down from a well-like opening of light; in Douglass Library, it seems, at Rutgers University. The pure-voiced singing also echoes as if rising from a well. Women's labor re-imagined as unalienated in orange, tan, ochre...earth colors. A real delight.

Scarf-in-a-Box

Here's a shot of the Asemic Kill City/Raw Power scarf in its habitus at the Text Festival in Bury, England, in the art gallery's accompanying exhibit. Thanks to Nico Vassilakis for sending me the photo. And here, Ron Silliman tweets about it! The background of his Twitter account looks like a repeating pattern of artwork by the great collagist Jess, Robert Duncan's life partner: ornate, rococo and postmodernly lush. It's an honor to have the scarf displayed at this Festival, where a host of luminaries, including Ron himself, Christian Bök, and later on, Adeena Karasick, my collaborator, are reading their work. In response to my query, James Williamson has expressed a preference for a short fringe in accordance with men's fashion protocol, and to keep it secular (I told him the long fringe might make people mistake him for a rabbi). I will donate (!) the leftover thrums to the Minnesota Center for Book Arts for their papermaking mavens.

Danish Peasants

On Mothers' Day, thinking about my mother, who started life as a Danish peasant girl over 95 years ago. She's still going, but not so strong as before. I did a google-image search for "Danish peasants," and found this fascinating piece by Suzanne Bocanegra, in which she translated a weaving pattern into a musical performance. There is a series of photos at the site, as well as an explanation of the translation process. Anything that involves counting in the lower whole numbers, numerical patterns, etc., can be translated from one system to another. Well, I say that rather glibly, not knowing what I'm talking about when I say "anything." But weaving patterns can be transliterated into other forms of gridded figurings-out and then parlayed into another art form. Language too, if you assign numerical values to the letters of the alphabet, as in Kabbalistic methods of composition and wordplay. The surplus of suffixes and prefixes in the title "rerememberer," with the "b" as the only barrier to a pure palindromic reading of the word, functions as a kind of elaborate border around the core letters "memb," which can be in turn elaborated into other words like member, membrane (the connection with tissue and cloth here is obvious), remember, memorial, ember (the glowing core of a word, process, emotion, energy that is either dying or coming to life), and so forth. The letter M is "mem" in Hebrew, and signifies water. The letters on either side of the core hold in the water, the way a membrane holds bodily fluids or a basket, properly made, holds something viscous or even fluid. The way my mother lives in my heart, my heart lives in my body and my mind.

I wish there were a visual image of the Danish peasant cloth on which the piece is based. If I were methodical and patient enough, there might be some way for me to reconstruct the pattern retroactively (if I could see the musical score), but I'd not know the colors or the dimensions. And anyway, I am not methodically minded or patient in this way.

The x-stitch above is one I made for Mother a few years ago, after she said, in response to my query, that all she wanted for Christmas was respect. The crown and heart, as well as the red and white colors, are typical Danish motifs, and, as mentioned in an earlier blog entry, the materials I use are generally Danish, from the Danish Handcraft Guild flower-thread to the pattern-books, from which I got the heart and crown.

yarn bombing...

This made my day: a yarn-bombed bike-rack in the Bay Area. Here is the full story by the yarn-bomber on her blog: http://streetcolor.wordpress.com/2011/05/02/yarnbombing-the-berkeley-public-library/
And here's a whole website/blog on yarnbombing. Those intrepid Canadian ladies ride again!

I really like this new trend, graffiti with a fiber twist; how can it help but brighten people's days? It seems a non-aggressive, distinctly gendered form of stealth street art that is gaining sway. Its ephemerality is part of its appeal; one of the comments on the boingboing article said that this beautiful clothsnake will start to rot within a week or so...and perhaps that's true, but that makes the collision of art for art's sake and exuberant anonymous subversive (quasi-political, even) gesture all the more touching. And the colors bring to mind Rosa Luxemburg's and Emma Goldmann's desires for a whole self revolution that included eroticism, joy, physical movement, and everyday beauty. The bike-rack shape, too, ensheathed this way, suggest the Uroboros and other primal and mythically foundational serpents, bringing just the right pleasurable instability to the Garden of Industrial Order.

100 Thousand Poets for Change...

The piece I posted a couple of weeks ago, SOS, has been published on Anny Ballardini's fieralingue site, in the Poets' Corner section. She and Obododimma Oha co-edited a division of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, something started by Michael Rothenberg, editor of the online journal Big Bridge.

I got a nice note from Obododimma saying "Thank you for identifying with our project."

In other news, I was lucky enough to attend an Iggy and the Stooges concert in Ann Arbor, their hometown, on April 19. It was a tribute to Ron Asheton, their founding guitarist, who died in January of 2009, so there was a lot of emotion and history packed into the evening, which was both a moving memorial with family in attendance (and on stage: Scott Asheton aka Rock Action, the band's drummer, is Ron's brother) and an intense display of rock and roll at its rawest and realest. In terms of textiles, black denim and black cotton were, of course, the leading indicators, but there was a young woman in a purple lycra body suit who got up on stage (as did I) during the de rigueur, Iggy-instigated stage invasion, and my FB friend Amy Verdon sported some really great gold lamé boots with her blue jeans. Afterwards, I asked James Williamson, the band's current guitarist for whom I made that Raw Power/Kill City scarf, to autograph my dress. "You're kidding, right?" he asked. No, I said. I'd seen a girl ask Richard Hell to autograph her skirt a few years ago at a reading he gave at the Walker Art Center, and I'd been struck by it. So a few helpful folks steadied my silky (rayon) dress against my ample leg, and he provided his signature with a Sharpie. My friend the ace photographer Heather Harris later suggested getting a fixative at an art-supply store to make sure the signature didn't wash out.

Are the Situationists the first movement to write slogans on their clothing as a political/artistic statement? Certainly writing surfaces and clothing have been interchangeable throughout history; witness the haunting trope of Sappho's poems written on papyri that were then used as winding clothes for the dead.

There are West African traditions of stamping slogans and sayings on women's wrap garments; they'll have a variety of wraps so that they can match their feelings to the saying on the wrap when they go out...

I'd be happy to learn of other such traditions.

Mail Art Show Update & Ruminations about Writers vs Embroiderers

Here's the blogsite for the mail art show I sent something off to recently. It's nice that they make everything available for viewing online, though many of these call for touch as well. Haptic/synaptic.

I've been thinking of the seeming decorousness of textile arts, especially as feminized as they are in our culture, and how this often displaces, or plays a strangely adjacent role, to inner wildness. Adrienne Rich's "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers" hints at this but in a compensatory, diminishing way; Aunt J is clearly less than she should/could be. Why should this be? The sock-yarn named Iggy Pop (see, for example, http://www.flickr.com/photos/berthacrowley/2341363413/) seems sorta ridiculous, but then think of the lady knitting far into the night, listening obsessively to Raw Power, as i did when weaving at the IAS a few years ago; it's trance music for a trance activity. It's creative and violent in its own way. The dark night of the soul becomes the cute baby socks or the dangerous punk fashion style accessory, lovingly made with artful design. Tragic histories are hidden behind sumptuous textile creations. The drama of rock and roll sublimates as much as the lace, linens and embroideries of altar cloths and torah covers...

The people writing such texts as "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers," or Henry James, who, in a devastating last sentence, condemns a "spinster" to disappointed, bitter life-solitude (""Catherine,... picking up her morsel of fancy-work, had seated herself with it again — for life, as it were."), are writers. Maybe they see their own activity as superior to, or more expressive than, these women's "fancy-work," in a typical gendered division not only of social prestige (writing is "head-work," needlepoint is "hand(i)work"), but of the permission or assumption of the right to express anger or any powerful emotion. But perhaps I'm being unfair and it's more the case that there is a positive–or, more likely, ambivalent and ambiguous– identification at work: that Rich and James understand themselves and their subjects as involved in the same kind of sublimation that constitutes this kind of hobbyist, minor manual labor, concentration, freeform improvisation, cultural expression.

velvet, vellum, veil, vulva

These words are not related, though I wish they were ... there's enough overlap with other cool etymologies I've posted earlier, as well as with compelling textilic words with wider resonances. And the Sanskrit WAR, to cover, protect, clearly seems related to veil; or to weave... The notion of concealment, covering, enclosure whether as an in-spiraling shell (vulva) or a shaggy fleece (velvet), emerges repeatedly. The need for shelter and the need to be known are intimately related to the mysteries of concealment and revelation at play in writing and textile practices.

Another element comes to mind in the practice aspect of this nexus of need and mystery: the rhythm of the practice itself, whether it be the clack of the loom (the Dogon myth of origin ascribes creation to "the creaking of the word," i.e. the sounds of the loom creaking and clacking in the weaving process) or the gentle click of the knitting needles in institutional meetings, the reassuring movement of hand and pen across paper in the kind of self-soothing relationship attributed to children's feelings for their various transitional objects, the typewriter's thump or the muted sound of the computer keyboard, or the visual rhythm of etymological dictionary entries, the lists of abbreviations, symbols, varied fonts and cases, the iterative spell of wordlists on the page and in the mind's ear.

VELVET, a cloth made from silk, with a close, shaggy pile; also made from cotton. (Ital.,—L.) 'Velvet, or velwet, Velvetus;' Prompt. Parv. Chaucer has the pl. velouëttës (four syllables), C. T. 10958; whilst Spenser has vellet, Shep. Kal., May, 185. β. Again, the form vellure occurs in Holinshed, Descr. of England, b. iii. c. 1 (R.); which is borrowed from F. velours, 'velvet,' Cot. γ. But velvet, velwet, velouet, vellet are various corruptions of O. Ital. veluto, 'veluet,' Florio; mod. Ital. velluto. The word is interesting as being almost the only Ital. word (in E.) of so early a date; it may have been imported directly from Italy. The Ital. velluto answers to a Low Lat. form villutus*, shaggy, allied to Lat. uillosus, shaggy; whilst F. velours (O.F. velous, the r being unoriginal) answers to Lat. uillosus directly.—Lat. uillus, shaggy hair, a tuft of hair; so that velvet means 'woolly' or shaggy stuff, from its nap. Allied to uellus, a fleece; orig. 'a covering' or 'protection.'—✔WAR, to cover, protect; cf. Skt. úrna, wool, lit. a covering, from vri, to cover; and see Wool. Der. velvet-y, velvet-ing.

vellum
early 15c., from O.Fr. velin "parchment made from calfskin," from vel, veel "calf" (see veal)

veil
early 13c., from Anglo-Fr. and O.N.Fr. veil (O.Fr. voile) "a head-covering," also "a sail," from L. vela, pl. of velum "sail, curtain, covering," from PIE base *weg- "to weave." Vela was mistaken in V.L. for a fem. sing. noun. The verb (late 14c.) is from O.Fr. veler, voiller, from L. velare "to cover, veil," from velum. Figurative sense of "to conceal" (something immaterial) is recorded from 1530s. To take the veil "become a nun" is attested from early 14c.

vulva
1540s, from L. vulva, earlier volva "womb, female sexual organ," lit. "wrapper," from volvere "to turn, twist, roll, revolve," also "turn over in the mind," from PIE base *wel- "to turn, revolve," with derivatives refering to curved, enclosing objects (cf. Skt. valate "turns round," ulvam "womb, vulva;" Lith. valtis "twine, net," apvalus "round;" O.C.S. valiti "roll, welter," vluna "wave;" Gk. eluo "wind, wrap," helix "spiral object," eilein "to turn, squeeze;" Goth. walwjan "to roll;" O.E. wealwian "roll," weoloc "whelk, spiral-shelled mollusk;" O.H.G. walzan "to roll, waltz;" O.Ir. fulumain "rolling;" Welsh olwyn "wheel")

Meshwards...

Yesterday I made it to the post office right before 5:00 closing, to send out copies of my chapbook (Meshwards) to the Dusie Kollektiv. I'd spent a few happy hours with the wonderful poet Beth Workman stuffing and labeling 85 envelopes with our two books; we then split the goods and each mailed out half.

In return, I've been getting chapbooks from other Kollektiv members. It's really thrilling to see this alternative poetry gift/exchange economy unfolding. There's a wide variety of work and imaginations and they come in different-sized envelopes making a tantalizing pile on my stainless steel kitchen table.

The cover image, reproduced above sans text, is a close-up of a section of a baby blanket I made for Omi Tinsley's baby, Baia.

etymologophilia

tantra
type of Hindu religious book, 1799, from Skt. tantram, lit. "loom, warp," hence "groundwork, system, doctrine," from tan "to stretch, extend," from PIE base *ten- "to stretch, extend" (see tenet).
tantric
1905, from tantra + -ic; used loosely in the West to denote erotic spiritualism.

sutra
"series of aphorisms," 1801, from Skt. sutram "rule," lit. "string, thread" (as a measure of straightness), from sivyati "sew;" cognate with L. suere "to sew" (see sew). Applied to rules of grammar, law, philosophy, etc., along with their commentaries.

As in suture.

thread (n.)
O.E. þræd "fine cord, especially when twisted" (related to þrawan "to twist"), from P.Gmc. *thrædus (cf. M.Du. draet, Du. draad, O.H.G. drat, Ger. Draht, O.N. þraðr), from suffixed form of base *thræ- "twist" (see throw). Meaning "spiral ridge of a screw" is from 1670s. The verb meaning "to put thread through a needle" is recorded from mid-14c.; in reference to film cameras from 1913. The dancing move called thread the needle is attested from 1844. Threads, slang for "clothes" is 1926, Amer.Eng.

spinner
early 13c., "spider," agent noun from spin. Meaning "person who spins textile thread" is from late 14c.

purl (v.)
"knit with inverted stitches," 1825; earlier "to embroider with gold or silver thread" (1520s), from M.E. pirlyng "revolving, twisting," of unknown origin. The two senses usually are taken as one word, but this is not certain.

clue
1590s, phonetic variant of clew "a ball of thread or yarn," with reference to the one Theseus used as a guide out of the Labyrinth. The purely figurative sense of "that which points the way" is from 1620s. The verb meaning "to inform someone of the important facts" is attested by 1934.

mitosis
1887, coined from Gk. mitos "warp thread" (see mitre) + Mod.L. -osis "act, process." Term introduced by German anatomist Walther Fleming (1843-1905) in 1882. So called because chromatin of the cell nucleus appears as long threads in the first stages.

Found in the Debris

Cleaning the debris–books, papers, paper clips, cds, etc.–off the floor in my study has had its share of delightful revelations, if not the two cross-stitches I seem to have permanently mislaid and was hoping to unearth. I found some notes I took a couple of years ago, some of which overlap with material i've posted earlier on the blog, and thematically of a piece. Forgive the redundancies; I'll try to prune.


History/Weaving Terminology
(See Derrida, Dissemination…)


histology
"study of organic tissues," 1847, from Gk. histos "warp, web," lit. "that which causes to stand," from histasthai "to stand," from PIE *sta- "to stand" (see stet). Taken by 19c. medical writers as the best Gk. root from which to form terminology for "tissue."

history
1390, "relation of incidents" (true or false), from O.Fr. historie, from L. historia "narrative, account, tale, story," from Gk. historia "a learning or knowing by inquiry, history, record, narrative," from historein "inquire," from histor "wise man, judge," from PIE *wid-tor-, from base *weid- "to know," lit. "to see" (see vision). Related to Gk. idein "to see," and to eidenai "to know." In M.E., not differentiated from story; sense of "record of past events" probably first attested 1485. Sense of "systematic account (without reference to time) of a set of natural phenomena" (1567) is now obs. except in natural history. What is historic (1669) is noted or celebrated in history; what is historical (1561) deals with history. Historian "writer of history in the higher sense," distinguished from a mere annalist or chronicler, is from 1531. The O.E. word was þeod-wita.

Loom:
ME lome, AS loma/geloma/gelome, “often-used thing” –(that old familiar thing) orig. used for a plow or a loom, etc. from “frequent”…”tool.”
Loom as a verb, LG lome, loam, SW loma, to come slowly…orig nautical? Or is it possible, as some etymologists propose, that it’s a reference to the slow becoming of the cloth on a loom as it’s loomed, or woven…?

Text/ile: from “texere,” to weave. A very basic connection that’s built into the language. In fact, like the word “texture,” these words have the connotation of a “basic structure,” as in “the texture of society.”
What does it mean to be “basic” in a field where ornamentation and baroque extrapolation on the one hand (i.e. the “riff”), and ever greater deconstructive depth on the other (i.e. deep analysis) hold sway? To be basic is to be thick, stumpy and low; to be at the ground floor, in the abasement, just barely hanging on but also holding the structure for everything else: it’s a sine qua non, what’s essential.

Loom/book: a sort of basic resonance in the gutteral simplicity of the words. But “book” comes from beech tree, a fully organic entity, whereas loom is a tool for changing and ordering an aggregate of things (yarns or threads) into something else: cloth that can be used for a covering.

Warp (to throw).
weft or woof (wefan, to weave), web, and weave all share a root.

Write,
from scratch, engrave, tear, wound… like “writhe,” from IE wer- to bend, twist, tear, wound…to cause to twist or contort… wreath too comes from this.

Shuttle shares a root with “shot” –AS scytel (missile) and sceotan, to shoot), which led me to wonder if weapon and web/weaving were related, but not so, or not directly.

Heddle, like needle. From hebban, to raise (heave, heft, heaven???, have, heavy, etc). OHG habig


It appears that if we look deeply enough and broadly enough, every word is related to every other word (though not always directly) every thing is related to all other things, and as Wallace Stevens said, everything is like everything else. There are no two things that cannot be placed into relationship, and that relationship is not random, in fact we are not doing the placing; we are simply uncovering a relationship that has been implicit. Language offers historical evidence for the connection between these different tools, activities, ideas, tendencies; language is, as others have pointed out, an archaeological system but it’s not static, and it’s subject to imaginative interventions. Literary language is suited to this kind of uncovering, though all language does it.

What am I hoping to gain from an experiential stint with textiles in this exploration of the historical linguistic and also heavily metaphoric relationship? The sensory immersion in the smell of unprocessed sheepswool (IE base wel, hair, wool, grass), the sound of the loom clacking and the treadles and beater (batten) thumping, the rhythm required, the necessary listening (music or NPR), the body’s involvement (backbreaking back-threading), is of an hypnotic condition far removed from the alertness required of textual production. In fact until this project swam to the surface of my professional life the two activities–writing and weaving–had complementary but opposing roles in my life; the weaving was a break from the writing, a place to go where creativity was mindless, automatic, untroubled by intellect or the seductive madness of words.

What I had been calling metaphoric, i.e. the obsessive recurrence of textile metaphors in literary criticism and writing about texts, is not really metaphoric after all, because of the etymologically overdetermined connection between the two realms. But in terms of experience, most text workers don’t really use their textile knowledge, being knitting, sewing or other (weaving, embroidering, shopping, wearing clothes, decorating a house, etc) to really lead them in their textual thinking, though they often use a textilic vocabulary as a resource for figurative language to describe this thinking–not only weaving, webs and networking, but knotting, interlacing, etc. So, if there is such profound overlap, why are the modes of textual scholarship so different, and keyed to such a different regime, not to say hierarchy, of knowledge (somewhat like Patricia Smith’s topic of the scientization of craftsmanship; the craftsmen were trying to close a gap that had developed btw Enlightenment style of knowledge –science v art– and the previous understanding of science/art)? But there are many such examples of estrangement from etymological kinship; perhaps one glaring one is the word “labor,” childbirth and industrial factory work; we can see the relationship but the two have such different resonances that women in the early days of second wave feminism claimed a desire for reformed childbirth as the ultimate unalienated experience and a site of deep personal and gender empowerment, etc., blah blah blah. This terrain makes me a bit uncomfortable because of the clear limitations of these kinds of grandiose and utopian desires for proximity with a presumed natural state, and the ways in which this type of feminism, which also turned to crafts like weaving etc., strike us as intellectually dated. Metaphor, too, has gotten a bad name for good reasons (it’s a mystification of relationships rather than a clarification, as is metonymy, etc.), and there is certainly a way in which the use of textile imagery by feminist criticism in the 1970s and 80s displayed what Renato Rosaldo has in a very different context termed “imperialist nostalgia,” so I’m not especially trying to revive an earnest but sentimentally corrupt critical idiom. In fact, I find myself rather defensively trying to define my project against that idiom, to what end I’m not sure, since it’s not an issue in the profession anymore.

It's in the mail...

The (Asemic) Raw Power/Kill City scarf is in the mail to Bury, England, UK. Whew.


I asked my colleague Michael Hancher to scan in a piece I'd made for him back when he was the chair of my department. He did a great job of being fair, even-handed, non-defensive and intellectually engaged. I called it, obviously, SOS. He salvaged the department. It looks a little psychedelic, with a central mandala and smaller "bubbles" around it, and it looks to me as if it were floating past on a river of linen drifting off to the viewer's right. I made the Iggy piece, "Open Up and Bleed," after this one, and I can see the resonance: the big circle (O) in the center and the other letters swirling around it. I've read that the shape of the letter O comes from the eye; some ancient alphabets have a dot in the center for the pupil. That works for TV Eye in Stooge-speak.

IAS Psychotic Reaction: Not What It Sounds Like

And here's the other piece I did in my IAS residency. It has that flamboyant name because there's a great protopunk, garage song, "Psychotic Reaction" that bristles with energy and was inspirational for a lot of rock writers (esp. Lester Bangs) and later musicians. I was also thinking of the pun on "I" as...psychotic reaction, because of the formation of the "lyric I" as a (sort of sane, or at least understandable if somewhat misguided) response in the history of poetry to industrialization.

The weaving really has nothing to do with that, though. It's just meant to be a fun title. Also, Susannah L. Smith of the IAS aided and abetted my punk enjoyment during that spring by talking about her pogo-ing and Ramoning days. She gave me the dark green yarn that appears in the piece, so I thought I should at least obliquely acknowledge her influence and our garage-rock bond. She is also the cousin of guitarist Nathaniel Braddock.

Psychedelic White: Bollywood Ringtone Suicide –Not What it Sounds Like.

Here're a couple of photos of one of the two pieces I wove for the Institute of Advanced Study here at the U of MN during my residency there in Spring 2008. I called the piece Psychedelic White: Bollywood Ringtone Suicide, after the projects of my fellow Fellows. Arun Saldanha had written a book called Psychedelic White: Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race; Jigna Desai works on Bollywood beyond Bollywood; Sumanth Gopinath is writing a book on ringtones and globalization; and Hoon Song was working on teen suicide clubs in Korea (the link, though, is to his book on miners and unemployed pigeons, I mean the other way around). One of the patterns I used (again from Marguerite Davidson's pattern book) was Blooming Leaf, because Rachel Slocum works on farmer's markets and race, and is an ace gardener.

I like the fluffiness and magical properties of the fleece mixed with the gold metallic; I'd like to be enveloped in such a cloud without earthly substance but lots of sensation. And there's a textual dimension to the patterning as well, reminding me of sheet music to be sung, a score made of tactility. And that group of IAS residents also had magical and fluffy properties. They were a great posse. I had hoped to make my weaving projects somewhat more communal: have my office door open, invite people in, have them weave bits of the pieces themselves, because community is one of the things I really enjoyed about the IAS, and it's one of the key elements for me in poetry scholarship and practice. In fact it didn't really happen in exactly that way, because everyone was busy, and i wanted to blast Stooges music while I wove, which inhibited my open door policy. But we did other stuff together, like going out for a drink/nosh after the Thursday talks, and now Arun and Rachel are neighbors. I felt enveloped in a cloud of creativity, intelligence and expansiveness that spring, after a few weeks of initial awkwardness that apparently accompanies every new cohort's semester-long course of togetherness.

(Asemic) Raw Power/Kill City

Here're a few more shots of that scarf I made for James Williamson to acknowledge his rejoining the Stooges after a 30-year hiatus. I'm sending it off to one of the exhibits connected to the Text Festival in Bury, England, UK from May to July–overlapping with the time the Stooges will be touring the UK and Europe. I won't be seeing them, as they're doing the festival thing and that's just too many people for me, but I will be at their Ann Arbor benefit for the Ron Asheton Foundation in April. Very happy, not only to be seeing Iggy and the Stooges, but to meet some of my Facebook friends in the Stooges fan community.

The "asemic" element in the title refers to the reverse-side shots, the back view of x-stitching. You can sort of tell what it says but it's not fully clear. Sure enough, that's what those hotshots at the Text Festival were interested in when they contacted me. It was through the shots I posted on Facebook. How do you like that.

For the patterned part of the white scarf, I used the Undulating Twill pattern from The Handweaver's Pattern Book, by the great Marguerite P. Davis, which is a sort of bible for weavers of my generation who learned to weave in the 1960s and 1970s. This is my third copy, and it's already getting torn and frayed. The pattern is one of my favorites, because it has a slightly hallucinogenic, swoopy wave effect, resonating well with the swoopy, slightly hallucinogenic 60s and 70s. The patterns all work for a four-harness floor loom, which is what I've got.

I've never packed up anything for an exhibit before: I've let mIEKAL handle that if it needs handling, or just sent snapshots or scans to be exhibited in lieu of the real thing, which has often already been given to its intended recipient by the time an exhibit opportunity comes up, so I need to get some "tissue paper" which, I assume, is not the same tissue paper as Kleenex, then some bubblewrap (how I wish I hadn't so virtuously thrown all mine out a few months ago), etc. All the little steps of this new medium are annoying and exciting at the same time.