The Rules (see Matt Fenton's first post) are giving me an unquiet mind. And I've been thinking about those three questions, the ones that Carl Sandburg made a life (or at least a living) out of (who am I? where am I going? where have I been?).
The other week someone said to me that we carry others around in us and that we carry landscapes and places around in us too (Of course; but at the moment of saying it felt revelatory). So there are lots of you already here, names that recur, voices. But this week I keep thinking about Carl Sandburg, no longer a who but a what, a set of ideas (or ideals), whose name was been given to a National Heritage site, two schools and a college. Carl Sandburg is unknown to me and I have little interest in meeting him any time soon.
I was looking old Carl Sandburg up and I found a poem, The Sea Hold, which I have re-edited:
The sea holds / an early sunset and a last morning star / five white dice / And to-day I lost nothing / except / my sea songs, sea cries, I forget so many sea songs and sea cries /the sea hugs and will not let go / knowing more about us than we know of ourselves (full text at www.bartleby.com/134/67.html)I found out that Carl Sandburg was born in landlocked Galesburg, Illinois and lived his last years and died on an estate named "Connemara," a 245-acre farm in Flat Rock, Henderson County North Carolina, (which is, I guess, about 400 miles inland, but I note that the etymology of the name Connemara refers to descendants of Con Mhac, of the sea.) I can't find any evidence of Carl Sandburg ever leaving America and I think his seas went uncrossed OR his seas, like mine, were imagined. A the moment I am thinking of waiting until week three, fairly late, until I go to Blackpool, on three consecutive days, on the 15th, 15th and 16th of April, eight hours a day. Nothing outlandish, or crazy. Just a routine. I am going to spend 24 (nonconsecutive) hours (or three working days) asking exactly the same questions as Carl Sandburg, to to quiet him. Shh / Carl Sandburg / Shh / There / There /
Janine Antoni, an American artist sometimes makes her art as a “wilful misunderstanding of how to know something” (FN1) Searching for a dead man who was never there seems like a reasonable attempt at productive misunderstanding of Blackpool. I'm questioning whether to even go to Blackpool. At the moment I would rather go to Flat Rock, or Fleetwood, of just stay in.
FN1: Antoni, conversation with Martha Buskirk, December 7, 2001 cited Buskirk: The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art, MIT Press, 2005, p252.
