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AV Festival/International Festival of Art, Technology, Music and Film: As Slow as Possible.
March 1-31, 2012
My somniloquies are being streamed as part of the online stream component of the festival, called the Radio Boredcast.
Click here for the Radio Boredcast full schedule
Go to this link to find the Radio Boredcast stream:
http://basic.fm/radio/
I have listed Eastern times for the airing of my work. For Greenwich Mean Time (or London Time, which confusingly, is not always the same thing), please follow the link to the festival website.
Here are details on the pieces being included in the Radio Boredcast:
http://basic.fm/radio/
I have listed Eastern times for the airing of my work. For Greenwich Mean Time (or London Time, which confusingly, is not always the same thing), please follow the link to the festival website.
- Thursday, March 1, 7:43 PM EST,
- Somniloquy Cycle - Red Rowboat
(See Day 2 of the festival program, Friday, March 2, 2012 London Time) - Sunday, March 4, 7:00 PM EST,
- Somniloquy Cycle - Different Kinds of Marks
(See Day 5 of the festival program, Monday March 5, 2012 London Time) - Monday, March 5, 2012, 8:18 AM EDT,
- "Radio Boredcast Presents... Boring." My daughter Ada is interviewed with other young people about boredom.
(See Day 5 of the festival program, Monday March 5, 2012 London Time) - Tuesday, March 6, 2012, 7 pm EST,
- Somniloquy Cycle - Into My Story (the raven of which, well, I hope she starts quothing)
(See Day 7 of the festival program, March 7, 2012 London Time) - Sunday, March 11, 2012 at 12:20 am EST,
- Somniloquy - I'll Will It
(See Day 11 of the festival program, Sunday, March 11, 2012 London Time) - Sunday, March 18, 2012 at 10:36 pm EDT,
- Somniloquy - Simpleton
(See Day 19 of the festival program for Monday, March 19, 2012 London Time) - Tuesday, March 27, 2012 at 4:57 pm EDT,
- Somniloquy Cycle - Friends, Sometimes
(See Day 27 of the festival program for Tuesday, March 27, 2012 London Time) - Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 1:07 AM EDT,
- Somniloquy Cycle - Fairy Tales,
(See Day 29 of the festival program, also March 29, 2012 London Time)
Here are details on the pieces being included in the Radio Boredcast:
THU MARCH 1: 7:43 PM (Eastern Standard Time)
FRI 2 MARCH: 12:43AM (Coordinated Universal Time)
SOMNILOQUY CYCLE – RED ROWBOAT
1. [TITLE] ROW, ROW, ROW
Opens with a lot of goofing around, followed by a singing somniloquy using the lyrics of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."
2. [TITLE] OVER TO UNCLE BOB'S ISLAND
[SOURCE TEXT]
A dream: Until very recently, people didn't get across on boat, so I would ferry them in my rowboat, which was called The Red Baron, which was not the name I gave it. My dad named it. This source text is itself a somniloquy that came out of a session in which I was reading the following text excerpted from Ervin Laszlo's A Systems View of the World: "Until very recently, contemporary western science was shaped by a mode of thinking which placed rigorous, detailed knowledge above all other considerations."
3. [TITLE] THE FEROCIOUS LAND OF THE BEASTS
[SOURCE TEXT]
A dream: Ada is out in a rowboat without a life jacket heading into the big lake. It is starting to rain. Her hair is short like mine was when I first got my rowboat. I am worried about lightning. She is heading into the big lake even though I've called her in.
SUN 4 MARCH: 7:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time)
MON 5 MARCH: 12:00AM (Coordinated Universal Time)
SOMNILOQUY CYCLE – DIFFERENT KINDS OF MARKS
1. COMMA
And what does a comma do, a comma does nothing but make easy a thing that if you like it enough is easy enough without the comma. A long complicated sentence should force itself upon you, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma, well at the most a comma is a poor period that it lets you stop and take a breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know yourself that you want to take a breath.
—Gertrude Stein, "Poetry and Grammar"
2. FETTERS Stories are just words. And words are just letters. And letters are just different kinds of marks.
—Crockett Johnson, Magic Beach
3. DUCK TO AVOID BEING CHOPPED
So long as the words keep coming nothing will have changed, there are the old words out again. Utter, there's nothing else, utter, void yourself of them, here as always, nothing else. But they are failing, true, that's the change, they are failing, that's bad, bad. —Samuel Beckett, "Texts for Nothing 2"
My daughter Ada is one of the interviewees in this segment produced by Radio Boredcast curator Vicki Bennett:
MON 5 MARCH: 8:18 AM (Eastern Standard Time), 1:18PM (Coordinated Universal Time)
RADIO BOREDCAST PRESENTS | BORING
Radio Boredcast asked a bunch of young people how they felt about boredom...
Thank you – Valerie, Alisha, Ada, Molly, Eve, Holly, Lila, Lia, Babycall Rechargeable
TUE 6 MARCH, 7 PM (Eastern Standard Time)
WED 7 MARCH: 12:00AM (Coordinated Universal Time)
SOMNILOQUY CYCLE – INTO MY STORY (THE RAVEN OF WHICH, WELL, I HOPE SHE STARTS QUOTHING)
Based on excerpts from Samuel Beckett's "Texts for Nothing." Undertaken as a collaboration with Michael Ruby, who chose different excerpts from "Texts for Nothing" and worked with them using a different process, also on the edge of sleep.
1. SORRY BODY
What possessed you to come? We walked together, hand in hand, silent, sunk in our worlds. I could have stayed in my den, snug and dry. I say to the body,Up with you now. Home. My dwelling place."
—Samuel Beckett, "Texts for Nothing"
2. NOW THAT THE TREES HAVE ROTTED
Where would you go, now that you know? Back above? Creaming off the garbage. Nothing terrible, nothing showed. Slowly in the head the ragdoll rotting. That's it, that's it, the bright side.
—Samuel Beckett, "Texts for Nothing"
3. FALLING BACKWARD
I'll will it, will me a body. Far from the days, the far days, a ray of sunshine and a free bench. No political opinions, have silence, get into silence, into my story in order to get out of it, no. To brew poisons. It's all I ask. What's wrong with that?
—Samuel Beckett, "Texts for Nothing"
4. WHAT A RELIEF TO KNOW I'M NOT A MATRIARCH
I'd go into the forest, I'd try and reach the forest to tell another lie. That must be the voice of reason again. I hear I have a kind of conscience under various assumed names. It's a game, it's getting to be a game. What a relief to know I'm mute forever, listen to that, what a relief. Ah yes, I hear, I heard, it's noted. When silence falls against my lips where they meet, bringer of rest, let the last desert me and leave me empty, empty and silent, an infant dead in its dead mother.
—Samuel Beckett, "Texts for Nothing"
5. NIXON'S ALIBI
the trees were witness
complete with joys and sorrows
seeing the immensity to measure and that heads are
only wound up once,
bristles waiting to depart or let fall to the ground
in the great limpness of sleep, perhaps dreaming
it's in heaven, alit in heaven
—Samuel Beckett, "Texts for Nothing"
6. I HEAR VOICES
Moments of reasoning, they draw one another back, that's how it goes, it must be supposed. Never was like that, is like nothing, moments of hesitation, not so much rare as frequent.
—Samuel Beckett, "Texts for Nothing"
7. A BED IS SOMETHING TO EMBRACE
But peekaboo here I come again, foaming at the mouth, and chewing, friendly shadows, friendly skies, but what is this evening made of and he, what did he want never saying a word, as if he didn't know, deep in this place which is not one.
—Samuel Beckett, "Texts for Nothing"
8. MONSTER
...but who can the greater can the less, and somewhere a hand, it wants to make a hand. A trace, it wants to leave a trace, yes, this pity that is in the air,tears in its eyes before they've had time to open and wonders what has become of the wish to know.
—Samuel Beckett, "Texts for Nothing"
SUN 11 MARCH: 5.19AM
NANCY O GRAHAM: I'LL WILL IT
"I'll will it, will me a body. Far from the days, the far days, a ray of sunshine and a free bench. No political opinions, have silence, get into silence, into my story in order to get out of it, no. To brew poisons. It's all I ask. What's wrong with that?"
—Samuel Beckett, "Texts for Nothing"
From a series based on excerpts from "Texts for Nothing", a collaboration I did with poet Michael Ruby, who "drops" text into his thoughts as he falls asleep, then writes the words thereby "displaced" onto the page.
MON 19 MARCH: 2.36AM
SOMNILOQUIES - SIMPLETON
Uses as its repeated text a line from a fairy tale. I did a number of these, taken from a book that I can, sadly, no longer find, but I believe it was the same one that I used captions of illustrations from for my Fairy Tales cycle, the Reader's Digest Book of Fairy Tales.
TUE 27 MARCH: 9.57PM
NANCY O GRAHAM: SOMNILOQUY CYCLE – FRIENDS, SOMETIMES
Based on texts from A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You, by Joan Walsh Anglund.
1. [TITLE] HERE A CHILD CYCLES IN SLEEP
[SOURCE TEXT]
The wind can be a friend, too. It sings soft songs to you at night when you are sleepy and feeling lonely. Sometimes it calls to you to play. It pushes you from behind as you walk and makes the leaves dance for you. It is always with you wherever you go, and that's how you know it likes you.
—A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You, by Joan Walsh Anglund
[INTRODUCTORY REMARKS]
This recording was done in bed with my children. It opens with me reading a Halloween story called A Very Scary Ghost Story, by Joanne Barkan. Then I read the full text of A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You by Joan Walsh Anglund, choose an excerpt to use for the somniloquy, and begin the somniloquy.
2. [TITLE] IS OR COULD BE
[SOURCE TEXT]
A friend is someone who likes you. It can be a boy... It can be a girl ... or a cat ... or a dog ... or even a white mouse.
—A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You, by Joan Walsh Anglund
3. [TITLE] ADEQUATE TO THE JERK
[SOURCE TEXT]
Sometimes you don't know who are your friends. Sometimes they are there all the time, but you walk right past them and don't notice that they like you in a special way. —A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You, by Joan Walsh Anglund
4. [TITLE] A BROOK TALKS TO YOU
[SOURCE TEXT]
A brook can be a friend in a special way. It talks to you with splashy gurgles. It cools your toes and lets you sit quietly beside it when you don't feel like speaking. —A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You, by Joan Walsh Anglund
5. [TITLE] A TREE FRIEND
[SOURCE TEXT]
A tree can be a different kind of friend. It doesn't talk to you, but you know it likes you, because it gives you apples ... Or pears ... Or cherries ... Or, sometimes, a place to swing.
—A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You, by Joan Walsh Anglund
6. [TITLE] AND THEN YOU THINK
[SOURCE TEXT]
And then you think you don't have any friends. Then you must stop hurrying and rushing so fast ... and move very slowly, and look around carefully, to see someone who smiles at you in a special way...
—A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You, by Joan Walsh Anglund
7. [TITLE] WHERE DID YOU FIND YOURS?
[SOURCE TEXT]
Sometimes you have to find your friend. Some people have lots and lots of friends ... and some people have quite a few friends ... but everyone ... Everyone in the whole world has at least one friend. Where did you find yours?
—A Friend Is Someone Who Likes You, by Joan Walsh Anglund
THU 29 MARCH: 6.07AM
NANCY O GRAHAM: SOMNILOQUY CYCLE – FAIRY TALES
The texts used in this series of somniloquies were the captions of illustrations in the Reader's Digest Book of Fairy Tales.
1. [TITLE] We climbed up a tree to escape the terrible snake.
2. [TITLE] Herrings and puddings streamed out of the house.
3. [TITLE] They rolled a snowball and shaped it into a head.
4. [TITLE] Suddenly she was sitting under a Christmas tree.
5. [TITLE] The boy read the conjuring book secretly.
6. [TITLE] The fox swam into the river with the gingerbread boy.
7. [TITLE] What has brought you here? asked the witch.
8. [TITLE] He galloped up the hill as if it were no hill at all.
9. [TITLE] A monster stepped noiselessly onto the rocks.
10. [TITLE] WISH SACK
[SOURCE TEXT]
One day, Ben met a funny old man with an old, black sack. "Good day," said the man. "We men of the woods want to give you this wish sack. You can wish things into it. Wish for something, then say Abba dabba, and what you wish for will be in the sack." Thank you, said Ben. "Well I do wish I had a new hat. Abba dabba."
—Benjamin Elkin, The Big Jump and Other Stories
Unless otherwise expressly stated, all original material of whatever nature created by Nancy O. Graham and included on this website is free for NON-commercial use with attribution under a Creative Commons License. Email me about other uses. This does not pertain to works linked to this page from other websites, which have their own agreements with the author. Thank you!