Pataphysical Grab Bag: Mobius Strip [poetry]
ISSN: 1712-7219
"I can read as long as"
During my third year at the University of Windsor, I learned that it was fun to do bonkers things, not only as a dirt-bag 20 year old, but creatively as a writer. My professor at the time was Karl Jirgens (as much as we didn't see eye to eye, he taught me to appreciate the critiques I didn't like) and under his tutelage, I became acquainted with the term "Pataphysics," which very simply put, pertains to the imaginary happenings beyond the metaphysical... I understood what that meant a lot more clearly at the time.
What was so special about pataphysics in poetry though, was that the pataphysical realm existed simultaneously with the metaphysical in full contrast. Where writing was concrete, the imagination that housed its fervor was fluid. My experience when it came to reading creative writing (prose) as a young adult was relatively 1:1 -- with words, came guidelines; I took what was written on the page and simply filled in the sensory details in order to understand the narrative moving forward.
But this cohabitation of the imaginative and the real in the same inky space, it's a relationship I've come to be very taken with, mainly because of how it persists in the realm of music. In each phase of the creative process (including consumption), a dialogue is created between the beatsmith, the wordsmith, and momentarian.
The first two are self-explanatory, but the momentarian, that's a term I scribbled down to describe us; the ones who make the moment preceding the sound.
I still remember the first time I listened to "Suspect" by Pro Era (iykyk). I was in Grade 10, cooped up in my room one night playing Bloons TD5. I was decidedly aimless, underachieving and over-performing with little regard to the implications -- teen shit.
Then my boy Oli sent me this little ditty, it might've been Waves or Survival Tactics, and I was like "DAMN, this.... this exists." I'd never heard anything like that before. The blend of boombap with new-school flows and references, it was a somewhat spiritual experience.
In my home, Mom held Motown and Soul close all my life, and while I was growing up my siblings were teens in the time of Heartbreak Drake, Luda, and T.I. So that spread of sound plus the (repeat) radio consisted of my variance in sound.
But Pro Era though, I'd never felt so captivated by a love for language; a rebellion for life.
[Back to Bloons TD5] I caught that Disney brand flow from Soul and forgot time. I couldn't tell you if that first xylophonic-piano key on Suspect hit a moment or an hour later, but when it did... It felt like that cutscene in FFX at Macalania lake; tranquil. For a cool 11:46, I felt humbled in the presence of mastery (to drop blimps as a Sun God should).
I believe that was my first conscious experience with pataphysics. Consequently, I believe that's the first step I took as a writer.
Thank you,
negative.q
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