In Conversation, with Heller Levinson

Lurk

DC: How are you holding up, Heller? What’s new? What have you been doing to stay sane during the pandemic?

HL: Thank you for your interest, DC. The new = working on upcoming LURE which is expected to be released in Spring 2022 by Black Widow Press; = the  hybridic essay, jus’ sayn,’ (which you inspired) focusing on John Coltrane’s “One Down, One Up;” = the frequent alightments I’m privileged to attend to; = looking forward to further intercourse with the visual artist Linda Lynch as well as more dialogic engagement with Will Alexander. 

Interesting that you should use the term ‘sane’ as I have no idea if that is at all applicable to me. Recently I’ve been drawn to the notion of insane in a vague equivalence to Breton’s fascination with mental patients. If the dictionary definition of ‘insanity’ is ‘irrational,’ ‘utterly illogical,’ ‘absurd,’ then I’m all aboard. I seek to stretch, to flee the tyranny of causality, the demonstrable, the quotidian, to eke out new pathways where undisclosed nuggets lurk in mineralic mayhem.

I think one would be hard-pressed to attribute/apply the term ‘sane’ to our current global condition. 

Explorations in the Hinge domain keep me grounded. By connecting to the vigorously sentient restorative Lingual Power, Enlargement to a Vaster Potential ensues.

DC: You certainly count as one of the most prolific among my colleagues. Releasing 1 solo-efforted book every year for many years now. What does your ‘schedule’ look like? And if there is none, how do you manage to continue the prolific output of material(s)? What keeps you active?

HL: It always surprises me when others consider me ‘prolific’ as it does not feel that way to me. I mean, writers write, & if writing is one’s major focus, it seems natural that a rhythmic outflow would follow. I do not feel there is anything to champion about ‘prolific’ per se. Rilke produced roughly three books but the insights they contained were massive. How many does not concern me, how Illuminative does.

I keep active – I would use the term ‘charged’ – because I am drawn/intrigued/enchanted by the material I’m investigating. The beguiling activity of probing & fleshing-out terms such as Seep/Lurk/Lure & their constellates is ever-thrilling. I often feel like a mad scientist in his laboratory enthralled with the elixir of discovery. I view the terms I’ve been exploring – lurk, seep, lure, linger, meander, errancy, askew, bewilder, baffle, trespass, among others, – as the Resistance Fighters of today. They are all behaviorisms capable of eluding the blitzing technological suffocations, the gridded binary statistically loaded explanatory. 

I believe that if a reader attends to my applications (poems) with some attention, they will find strategies for avoiding the cultural momentum intent upon shutting down the human, of mangling the pure impulse. In this sense, they might even be considered survival guides.

Curious that in the second paragraph of Kerouac’s book the Vanity of Duluoz, he anguishes over the fact that “people have changed so much” commenting upon how the exuberance of walking has shrunk to a “slouching stroll  . . . is it because they’re used to walking across parking-lots only? Has the automobile filled them with such vanity that they walk like a bunch of lounging hoodlums to no destination in particular?” He remembers a healthy walk from 1935. I had to laugh when I read this because today even the activity of driving is being taken away from us as vehicles are becoming self-driven. Human shrivellization is occurring at an incredible pace. The shutdown is omnipresent, from dismemberment of limb to benumbnent of mind.

DC: Conversely, what do you think of capitalism’s relationship to productivity? 

HL: Not sure where the ‘converse’ in this question is unless you’re referring to poetic production in which case there is no parallel since, in my case anyway, there is no profit component involved. My books don’t sell enough to remunerate either myself or my stalwart & heroic publishers Joe Philips & Susan Wood of Black Widow Press.

I think it’s clear that capitalism’s relationship to productivity is a highly effective one. Capitalism has enabled hordes to be fed, clothed, & perpetually amused. Evaluating the benefits of this prosperity is subject matter for a separate discussion, but I would point readers to Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death which was published in 1986. I’m sure Mr. Postman could never have imagined the Pan-Screen Submit-Surrender-Succumb Syndrome infesting our lives today. Another source for evaluating the effects of the capitalist goodies-fest is Nicholas Carr’s well-balanced The Shallows: What The Internet is Doing To Our Brain.

I am leery of criticizing a system I don’t have a superior alternative to (untested envisionments, yes), but there is a pernicious element to capitalism which imperils any moral redemption & that ‘peril’ is the Profit motive. The responsibility of a Corporation (corporations control the majority of the planet’s resources) is to its shareholders. Shareholders invest with the expectation that their investment will increase in value. & the corporation’s enterprise value, as measured by its stock price, is a function of profitability. When ‘responsibility’ is defined by profit rather than any thought as to the ‘good’ or ‘sustainable’ or what negative planetary results could such an action cause, then clearly the planet is up for grabs & the result of this economic architectonic is what we have before us today: the dying days of the Earth.

As Dubuffet said, “Everything has to be reinvented,” or The Mother: “We must wage war against everything established.” 

Capitalism’s aim is ‘wealth’ production & what we (principally speaking for U.S.A. where I am a citizen) have been fed regarding what is wealth contributes to the “State of the American Mind Address.” Americans have been fed the notion that Wealth production, amassment, is the supreme Happiness & the pursuit of that happiness has been promised them in the constitution. But the concept of wealth that’s been disseminated as the Holy Grail is monomial & limited. Wealth in the capitalist system is countable, it can be calculated, measured, smelled, fondled, & spent. We can google the net worth of Elon Musk (156 billion as of 6/21/21), but how do we calculate the Wealth of a poet in their garret, an artist in their studio, a scientist in their laboratory, where the buzz bazooka bonkers eureka of creative exploration infuses their beings with rapturous jubilation. I believe it was Blake who said “Talent is Joy.” How do we measure Jubilation? The Hinge Institute has offered a course on Bafflement 101 & I think I will suggest we add Jubilation 101 to the curriculum. When speaking of ‘productivity’ how do we measure the quanta of Insight.

It is in the area of interior wealth that I feel Hinge is uniquely able to prosper. When persons discover the sheer thrill of the Hinge Encounter, trips to the mall will become boring, alcohol & drugs will be deemed deficient stimulants, Hollywood entertainments will appear dull, & consumption derided as an insufficiency cover-up. Those who feel Space Travel is the ultimate kick are the imaginatively deprived. That will be another course to add to the curriculum, Imagination 101. The majority live binary lives: 1). what can I sell 2). what can I buy. They are constricted to an unrewarding nothing-is-ever-enough transactional consciousness which is well-suited to burgeoning the American economy. The Hinge Universe, which emphasizes reveling natural capacities, eschews purchasing power as a viable launching pad to the Ecstatically Reverberant. Neither actively selling nor buying, the Poet is a threat to the national economy which in turn threatens the state of the union.

DC: In Hinge Theory, of which you are the originator, a posit is made that language is alive. Do you see language as a separate organism from the human organism? Or is it more so a part of our human being-ness? A combination of the two? Would language be alive without human beings?

HL: I see language as being part of the sentient universe like trees, clouds, frog, sprout. So yes, language would be alive without human beings as other pulsations can & will exist without the human animal. I believe it was Heidegger who said: “Language is the house of dwelling.”

DC: When I think of your work with Hinge Theory, I am often mentally drawn to William S. Burroughs, who posited something similar to what you’re doing with Hinge Theory. Although seemingly at the other end of the polarity. Where he estimated that language is a virus. What are your thoughts on this? When I hear “language is alive” my first thought is definitely not that it is alive as a virus. What are your thoughts on WSB’s observation? Do you agree? Disagree? Why?

HL: From what I remember from my Burroughs’s reading, which was many years ago, there is some overlap in our views on language. I think we both share the notion that language was here before the human being, that it arose out of the original gases & vapors, that it is primordial, reproductive, & sexy. As far as his thinking ‘language is a virus,’ that is his entitlement. For myself, language is language & a virus is a virus. When one attempts to reduce something to something else, you risk obscuring/diluting the something you’re transferring, robbing it of its indigenous integrity. Additionally, I don’t believe language requires a host as a virus does.

Recently I’ve been focused on what I call the Linguistically Undocumented which refers to a word’s under-recognized, marginal, border-line status. By submitting a word like LURK to multiple modules/formulations thereby provoking multiple exfoliations, the word appears fleshified, muscularized, densified as it evolves & matures. Hopefully, after a reader experiences over fifty LURK behaviorisms, they will become more intimate with the term. When they hear or see the word a bell of recognition will go off, their rapport with LURK will have enriched their world much as a birder studying a cardinal for months will feel that they now have a rapprochement with the cardinal, with their song, their mating & nesting habits, their postural dispositions. 

This is part of the campaign. To awaken persons to the Universe, to free ourselves from the culture of measurement & classification, to embrace the Immeasurably Incalculable.

DC: You also study animal behavior. Which sounds quite fascinating, and I imagine there are many parallels with your work away from and with the pen. Could you please elaborate on some of these parallels? Differences?

HL: That’s actually funny. When I moved to NYC from Los Angeles about 15 years ago, surrounded by a preponderance of human animals, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to learn more about my fellow creature, so, somewhat flippantly, I added that to my bio. No one has ever asked me what animal(s) I was studying.

Less flippantly, I have had some deep experiences with canines. In L.A., I helped train dogs for the sheriff’s department, principally in the area of scent & protection work. I also competed in the German dog sport of shutzhund. In New York I worked with a 2 dog team in protection training (there is a video of this on youtube with over 1.4million views…ironically, my poetry readings average 100 views).

My work with canines has indeed been one of the deep privileges I’ve been gifted. I will shy from your word ‘parallels’ as parallels do not ‘touch’ & substitute fuse/intercourse with. The animals taught (& continue to teach) deep humility because they are so sensitive, emotive, & canny. It exacerbates that Universities spend millions of dollars measuring (again that ‘measuring’ reflex) a dog’s intelligence with testing, calculations, studies, etc. What a waste of time & money! Anyone with any experience with dogs & animals know they are intelligent. One study shows that a mature dog can understand as many English words as a 7 year old. My experience indicates that a dog can pretty much understand whatever you have to say. With my 2 dog team (Emily & Nietzsche), I had only to think a thought & they would react. I did not even have to issue a command. I have rarely experienced that level of telepathic intensity. Who are we to rate a dog’s intelligence? How do you rate their olfactory intelligence? There are multiple intelligences & to try to format intelligence in accordance with our scale of values is to demean the universe around us.

A great Hinge event is cross-species intercourse. Intercourse here is used in the large sense of communication & mutual dealings. Dealing with animals is a wonderful spiritual exercise in excising the ego, . . . you can’t approach the essence of the ‘other’ if you are still self-entangled.

DC: Through our discussions over the years, it has been made clear that music has an important role in your creativity. What are you listening to these days? How has your relationship with music impacted your relationship with words, with language?

HL: The second part of your question elicits differing response-approaches. The normative reflex would be to list & delineate the various ways in which music has impacted my poetic practice, e.g., ‘Trane’s use of the augmented triad in the first chorus of  “One down, One Up,” shifted my imagistic relations while Elvin’s cascading triplet patterns suggested new possibilities for how line disjunction could enhance percussive power.’

This would be a slight response. By parceling & peeling-off slices of influence I would be betraying the enormity of influence. Sure, I could itemize & say that I consider Eric Dolphy  my poetic mentor, as I tried to emulate his sonic with my linguistic, that musicians such as Dizzy, Brownie, Jackie McClean, Horace Silver, Blakey, Bill Evans, Pharoah Sanders, Jim Hall, Wes, Trane, among others, changed my world as well as tunes like ‘Three Blind Mice,’ ‘Delilah,’ ‘Love Supreme,’’Passin’ Thru,’ ‘Kulu Se Mama,’ ‘Song For My Father,’ ‘One Down, One Up,’ & I’d just be getting started.

But rather than  pointing to an A/B causal relationship, e.g., Blakey’s press roll taught me how to develop line sustain, a vaster more fusionist approach asserts that I am my assimilations. From this perspective, all my life events  inter(mingle)(course) fecundate rotate & flux in creative ekstasis. I use the term ‘event’ rather than ‘experience’ because ‘event’ permits amalgam & does not preference a subject as having undergone the ‘experience.’

The short answer, then, to “how has your relationship with music impacted your relationship with words, with language?” would be: Yes, it has. But more precisely then ‘impacted,’ which sets up a binary division between music & my poetry, would be to say that music has fused/merged been assimilated/absorbed into my self, the being that I am. Included in that assimilation would also be artists – Giacometti, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Soutine, Agnes Martin, Pollock, Franz Klein, Linda Lynch, to name a few – as well as canines, certain oak, cherry & birch trees, the brook in my backyard, thunderstorms, twilight & so forth. Nothing is alien. This is the Great Cosmic Smooch. The intercrackling rainbow warble fluting from whale brow. To isolate & sort so I can say this relationship produced this result is simply not applicable. To simplify through reduction sucks out the Savor, destitutes Sapience.

Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of 50’s & 60’s jazz as well as songbirds. I live in the woods & the birdsong this year has been unusually fertile.

DC: What was one gratifying thing that was said to you, in relation to and/or following the release of LURK?

HL: One gratifying comment that was emailed to me:

“I started reading LURK out loud, as is my wont, and my Polish sweetheart’s boy said to me ‘what is that, some sort of incantation?’ You see how attuned youth can be!”