Bedtime Story Conservatory 21 16/04/2020

Hello 'ello 'ello,

For me this mailing list has turned into a ritual practice, for me it feels like self-care, it feels like i'm warming myself up and feeding myself. I hope that it somehow does something positive for you in any capacity. No stress if not, sometimes the waters warm sometimes the waters cold but you can dip in or dip out.

Today's reading is a small section of Bob Kaufman's Does the Secret Mind Whisper? 1960. The small book according to Kaufman the prelude to a longer novel, and acts as the scene-setter for the atmosphere in which the characters of the novel are to appear in. Kaufman was an African American writer and surrealist from the Beat generation.

"Kaufman was a jazz-inspired street poet who adhered to an oral tradition—he proclaimed his poetry in coffee houses and on the streets, seldom writing his poems down."

"During an eventful, sometimes troubled life, Kaufman ran afoul of the law, was imprisoned, underwent electroshock therapy, and suffered from drug addiction. He was included in the movie The Flower Thief (1960) about the San Francisco Beat movement. When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Kaufman took a personal vow of silence and did not speak until the end of the Vietnam War. He eventually became a practising Buddhist. He died in 1986." - PF

Quick warning- the text briefly contains some mention of prostitution, violence and suicide. 

The text is quite intense, it contains no punctuation and takes the form of a sort of automatic writing. For me, the constant toing and froing from subject to subject forms a currently relevant portrait of frustration and inner mania.

Link to reading-

https://drive.google.com/open?id=13R24UWbHdEFsg3Wy-hZ_tHWmZd2IUPUq

Link to previous readings-

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1t4v042zpGgwI7KN6_ST_tAthqm63J22V

Warm wishes, and with love,

Sam