Well, I made it home from Texas largely intact and largely hung over. A recap on some notable seminars: Bin Ramke on calculus, Beaudelaire and Beauty in writing. Beauty is a calculation in text, an expression in balance. Judith Johnson and Patrick Lawler were wonderful in Surrealist Landscape in Text. Johnson's insight into the difficulty of surrealist imagery in TEXT where no image can be recognized (the matter being non-text) was timely and well presented. Patrick Lawler presented a marvelous ficto-critical exercise in surrealist terms regarding the intertextual affair between a third-person Lawler, Duschamp and Magritte. "This is in the borders between what I had to say and what I didn't say."
The Canada contingent was brilliant in writing for failure: Nicole Markotic reading through Kroetch to show the importance of understanding the paradox of failure in disability writing. Christian Bok on why the poets of the Avante Garde are inescabably dependant on the failure of mediocrity, Clem Martini presented a fine argument for the necessity of failure to produce worthwhile theatre and Jessica Grant presented a muscular treatise on why ALL writers are failures - at life. If they could suceed in doing, they wouldn't write about it: if they could have faith, they would feel no need to talk about faith.
Then the drinking started. Met up with some folks from the hostel and went to the Victory Grill, where SXSW sang out in a series of alt-rock bands...notably the Happy Bullets who kicked out serious ass, horns and all...and where a plastic cup full of gin cost $3.00. 24 hours later and my brain still throbs. Since going to sleep was pointless in the eye of my 4:15 cab ride to the airport I am now....going....to....bed...
g'night all.
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