Gerald Majer ~ Vibranial Talons

1. VR with 360, with immer­sion, with imme­di­a­cy: it is the ulti­mate empa­thy machine says one practitioner/promoter. Thing is, the writer in Art Forum argues, it’s empa­thy for your­self, in your­self, with your­self. VR is stuck in its vivid­ness and what, its seem­ing­ly supreme ani­ma­tion or ani­mat­ed­ness. Incredibly vivid. Moved to be mov­ing. But it’s cin­e­ma of attrac­tions. It prob­a­bly means less empathy. 

2. Yeah, what, I can’t remem­ber the dream­ing. Something with big num­bers, I awoke at 4 gaz­ing at giant script on my alarm clock. 

3. not the words of land­scape but the land­scape of words–a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Celan’s poet­ry I agree and agree with

4. Oh you robin saw­ing off the ear­ly morn­ing half a city block away, some­where past the Marlborough Hotel, past the Pedestal Gardens pub­lic hous­ing, some­where past the Eutaw Boulevard medi­an with urn, some­where past McMechen School with its mod­ernist met­al sculp­ture over the main entrance door, some­where past songs and singers, all I hear is skip­ping, jump­ing, merry-go-rounds.

5. Whole Foods, Whole Foods: busy Monday night an hour before clos­ing, and the woman with long blonde hair, the ends in back trimmed exact­ly, and inside the folds and flows of hair that black­ness, that dark divide, part of the look, I guess, effect of col­or­ing, I guess: taupe booties with a short heel (in the dream last night I was going to school), fit­ted blaz­er jack­et, creamy and alpaca; snug­ging light­ly-stressed jeans; and some­thing extra, a turn about her, a way her eyes set­tle into them­selves like she’s lost her con­tacts and is try­ing it out unaided–I real­ize it’s Voda.

6. DRUID FOODS, com­ing home with your shop­ping bags, one in each hand, and heavy with goods, with fruit and cheese and nuts and breads, oh I feel good, my pow­ers shared, we grew it in gar­dens, they like us, we like them, our fam­i­ly on the Shore, our fam­i­ly in VA, Trilis mar­ried Staroo, even, we par­tied over a week hang­ing out with all, we worked on a vision-engine design, it’s work­ing now at the Jones Falls plant chew­ing up and break­ing down Whiworld rust and dust.

7. DRUID, we pick up the whole park, roads and hills and trees, now we’ve got the DRUID SCROLL in cloud hand, wind hand to the hilt, and it’s got us laugh­ing as it reads itself off and plan­et pharaohs come hov­er­ing by in a flock of orisas and vor­tex weath­ers we all got­ta go drum­ming to see which way lat­er to go home for supper.

8. High in the low 40s but last week there was one hard core out there, a sin­gle drum­mer going under trees.

9. Under trees, I need a refrain. Under trees, we’re talk­ing about Chicago and Baltimore, about the South and the Upper South, Baltimore a city of trai­tors, a city of have it both ways, in Chicago nobody ever owned anybody.

10. The scene­less­ness of Dickinson’s poet­ry, yes, Druid, Druid, I nev­er see you, it’s haunt, it’s ghost, it’s drain­ing out scene, seen, it’s brain­ing up vibra­tion, liba­tion, lus­tra­tion, it’s tak­ing on Vibranial Vibe.

11. I come around to Druid and the druid rules say, GIVE US THIS PARK and out whips the map, and I whip the map down with a green whip of old oak tree, and I whip the map down with a wind­ing roads trope snake, and the deer at twi­light are com­ing out cross­ing a bicy­cle and a djem­be drum­mer and YOU CAN’T HAVE THE PARK even as you think you get it.

12. BIRD COUNT, Druid Hill Park, 21 March 2023: spar­rows, 213; black­birds, 201; grack­les, 118; black­birds, 111; robins, 59; blue­birds, 11; owls, 23; vul­tures, 23.

13. Gofundme to fix his teeth, we do a video of his plea, he says, Man I don’t do that sort of thing, this is tricky. He’s Already Dead– LS and I are up and down the stairs, rick­ety, sort of, they’re open stairs, float­ing stairs, old ware­house stairs, they don’t offer much rail, we’re car­ry­ing instru­ment cas­es, per­cus­sion, portable key­boards and stuff up for the evening, lat­er, maybe pret­ty stoned and dazed and after sev­er­al hours of play­ing, we’ll head down again for a smoke with the steel alley door open, the kitchen guys from City Café are often out there, say hel­lo or don’t, last night a white car being pur­sued zoomed past, the Foxtrot right over­head, where did the phrase arise, LS is say­ing, Shit, they got me dead as Freddie Gray, I’m already dead I ain’t nev­er been alive–

14. OK they’re like, let’s play that, He’s Already Dead, and they make some pat­tern with the Volca Bass plugged into a Vox Boombox, too many LS is say­ing, how’s that, now? Geemo is ask­ing, it’s loud loop­ing now, a scrib­bly, scratchy line, LS already blow­ing up the clar­inet, Geemo the tenor walk­ing way back in the shop so LS and the Volca are about 4o feet off–

15. Voda Torun, Voda Torun–the two old trees out­side, 10 in the morn­ing this Sunday a real­ly swift song, com­pressed, it seems, I don’t remem­ber a robin going so fast, like the song is run­ning out of time for itself–

Outside the win­dow, the old trees with the upper branch­es lev­el with the view from inside here, I’m look­ing at the still-bare branch­es and I see blobs or bumps or lumps and I think, can’t be birds: not mov­ing and hypoth­e­size some ancient galls or insect trau­ma long grown over, and the two bumps in such sym­me­try, can’t be mov­ing: they’re ordered, plant­ed, and then sur­faces trem­ble and col­or blob erupts and the two fat robins fly off.

16. A man­i­festo of sorts, what do they call their turn on the­o­ry, it’s naïve, it knows all that, Voda’s pro­file, Hong Kong Baptist University, University of Basel alum­nus, it says, is she even real, a hoax, and her school­girl hair falls across the cor­ners of her eyes, her eyes look bril­liant and huge, Envenoment, they call it, the pre­sen­ta­tion has snake heads and snakes in pieces and ref­er­ences to Francois Laruelle’s non-phi­los­o­phy where you start from here, start from here, you’re just fuck­ing liv­ing in a world and you can’t pre­tend you’re com­ing in know­ing some­thing and then everything

17. Already dead, I want you so much, Voda, we’re smok­ing hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry com­pounds, I’m way way old for you but some way it does­n’t mat­ter, how long does any­thing last, we can’t help our­selves, Let’s just enjoy, but no recur­sions, you say, and we’re in Genova, the uni­ver­si­ty plant­ed in the mer­can­tile-cap­i­tal­ist ruins, the 1400s palaces and the back­streets behind and around up and down the hills, we kick back and make out a while in one of the old pub­lic foun­tains, spig­ots and troughs, where every­body went to the get their water in buck­ets to car­ry upstairs, already dead, LS I can’t car­ry water for him, he’s talk­ing about a Baba L’Salaam, my teacher and col­lab­o­ra­tor, he is sound­ing some­thing like me when all this time I’ve come around to some­times sound­ing like him, I took up the clar­inet a year ago so we could snake togeth­er reedy sonori­ties, cer­tain tracks there’s no telling which of us it is, and the night cool­ing off fast as it comes on and Voda and I are wind­ing our bod­ies up and down the Genova back­streets and steep stone stairs, far­ther up the hills there’s pub­lic hous­ing, clos­er to the water the food mar­kets and restau­rants and cloth­ing stores, I want to buy shoes, she wants to walk in bare feet, we don’t know where there’s a beach, we’re lovers with­out organs, we’re lovers in the grand emp­ty style of the city with its already dead feel­ing of launch­ing an epoch, exter­mi­na­tions and colonies and pri­va­teer­ing, out­pac­ing east-fac­ing Venezia, flat city, sunk city, Genova instead foot­ing the Maritime Alps, foot­ing itself with steep stone stairs, I can’t for­get the life­time when she and I had a tiny apart­ment halfway up and trav­eled for part-time lec­tur­er one semes­ter posi­tions, our Italy of trains and bus­es, late-night drinks when the bug­mo­biles with san­i­tary police inside a lit­tle glass box beep­ing and flash­ing lights, every turn of the bot­tom alleys swept and rinsed, I want to be only your pros­ti­tute, I say to her, and she laughs, just like me, and the ways we fuck upstairs leave us hiss­ing like pagan snakes know­ing noth­ing but the turns of their trop­ics, their sins, their holi­ness­es, Anglo-Saxon crit­ics, she writes in a review of some Speculative Realism book, Graham Harman who says, Girls Welcome!!!, and calls some­thing I can’t remem­ber the girl nobody wants for the dance, I don’t like phi­los­o­phy, Voda says, and as she makes love to my fini­tudi­nous body she says all posh and arch, and so what is this?

18. Singing, singing, LS lets me sing, I don’t sing, I want to sing, we’re singing, he’s doing La-di, la-di all through and lyrics are com­ing, yes­ter­day, yes­ter­day, and mid­night and come down to her throne, we lis­ten to it after, Six min­utes, LS says, Thanks for that, I say, putting down the girl book, I keep look­ing out the front win­dows at Morton and watch­ing the Saturday groups, they look like well-dressed coun­ty-liv­ing cou­ples, they look like city-dwelling thir­ty-some­thing mar­rieds, the Hippo is gone, it’s changed this street, I say, it’s so dead, and LS says, that’s all gone now, and I say, so much for rad­i­cal gay cul­ture, and I get how queer every­thing we’re doing comes out to be, we stal­wart old men, we queer birds all over the branch, the sky, the rise of the note, Saturday night and we’re up here scrib­bling love let­ters, LS says he’s doing a phoenix with sev­en pri­ma­ry col­ors, the talons are great claws hold­ing the fire, he’s sketch­ing it out and then he’ll make it with crayons, and I say, Alright, man, thanks, we’ll call it even, and he looks at me like, what, and I say, Sorry man, that is mer­ce­nary, I’m being extrac­tive, you know how I am, and I gave him the car­ton of Native brand smokes, only avail­able on the rez, he did­n’t ask for the gift and I say, Baby ain’t I good to you–

~

Gerald Majer’s poet­ry, fic­tion, and essays have appeared in Callaloo, Chicago Review, Georgia Review, Puerto del Sol, Quarterly West, Yale Review, and oth­er jour­nals. Their book The Velvet Lounge: On Late Chicago Jazz was pub­lished by Columbia University Press. They recent­ly com­plet­ed a book on a Baltimore music col­lec­tive, The Vibe Notebooks, and also last year the exper­i­men­tal poet­ry book Fountainous. They live in Baltimore and New Mexico where they pur­sue a range of the­ater and music projects, includ­ing the sound-art duo Vibranium Experiments and the spo­ken-word per­for­mance project One Thousand Jicaritas.