SYMPATHIES OF WAR (1978) 10 min.
In 1978, I coined the term "videopoem" to describe a new medium for a new poetry. Experiments in video-poems to that date (that I was aware of) were performance-oriented, like the work of Toronto experimental poet Steve McCaffery, who sat on a park bench and held up signs or sat at a typewriter which spewed forth a Kerouacian endless paper roll. This new medium of video permitted me to question the a priori role of the poet.
My first videopoem, Sympathies Of War, was essentially a poetry performance recorded by a video camera by Richard Elson at the Galerie Vehicule Art in Montreal. One objective was to prevent the performance from being identified as a “poetry reading” (as organizer of the Vehicule Art Gallery’s 1978 poetry reading series, I had been videotaping a great many readings) – I would avoid facing the camera, sitting behind a rear-projection screen, onto which was projected a series of slides I had made of the interior of a STOP sign.
On the video, I am seen sitting in profile, shadowed, as if talking off camera. Each time the text specifies a STOP, Endre Farkas (one of the Vehicule Poets) would say STOP! just as a slide of the STOP sign would appear and I would immediately lean out of the frame, simulating the cinematic technique of editing. (Another Vehicule Poet, Ken Norris, advanced the slide projector.)
For the balance of the text, I had shot some 50 slides of the interior of a DANGER sign—black and yellow squares. The sign had a bolt driven through its center. When the sun shone on the bolt, two beams of light were refracted left and right of the bolt. The last such slide in the series shows the bolt without these rays, flat, devoid of life.
But it was presenting text in motion that became the most significant addition to the video. I tilted the camera over a series of words, revealing them at a measured “rate” (a simple device which eventually became one of the significant elements of videopoetry).
The music at the beginning and end – suggesting an atonal Dadaist march – was a “sampled” appropriation of an Anthony Braxton piece I recorded live at the local jazz club, The Rising Sun.
The poem was first suggested by a couple of lines I had written in an early attempt to write Ubu’s Blues: The First Voyage of the Vehicule R. After a few pages, I suffered a strange "block". I had the intuition that another work was gestating within, refusing to allow me to proceed with Ubu until it was revealed. I searched through those early pages and found the phrase which led me to write Sympathies of War:
"Words magically happily dance between curtains of stop"
The stop became the STOP sign with which I could visually interfere with – or punctuate – the narrative of the poem. The cries of “STOP!” were delivered by Endre Farkas with intonations varying from urging, dangerous and authoritative to imploring, whispered, intimate...
The narrative concerns the contents of a letter sent to a woman whose daughter (Carmen) had died in the war. The cryptic, “broken” text mimics the form of censored letters; the punctuation of STOPs throughout also alludes to telegraphic messages.
Structurally, narration and interruption clash from beginning to end – except for the prayer at the center, where the anti-art spirit of the poem is exorcised:
there is a fortune in the lives of men
which belong to us
return it O P unto us
forever now
STOP
black blue green yellow felt pens
sustain our verticals and our horizontals
STOP
anti-life suspended in the gray above our eyes
its cords are spiritlessly tugged by you O P
let go
What war in Sympathies of War? The War of spirit and flesh, the War of words and images, the War of traditional poetry and the modern medium, video. The War of experimentation and conservatism in poetry, of regionalism and nationalism in society, the War of reward and loss. Sympathy for the imagination at War with rationalism and Sympathy for the young who die in war without knowing courage or the instinct to kill.
SYMPATHIES OF WAR – a videopoem © 1978 Tom Konyves
performed by Tom Konyves, additional voice (STOP, STOP) by Endre Farkas
***
(visual text scrolling)
what cement
means
in terms of life,
death
and this precious
half-life called
>est dada<
words
magically
happily
dance
between curtains of
stop
(sound text follows)
in the
STOP STOP
in the picture
her maternal instincts are described
before she was betrayed
in the early years of the long war
the walls are splashed with her blood
but her youngest must have her birthday party
STOP
ten candles
one white one black one gray one brown
one red one green one yellow one purple
one blue one
STOP
an anonymous letter arrived in the mail
STOP
in part madame regret inform sympathies of war
lived sword appeal pending testimony major
edward her brother second masonry salvage
active service I know satisfaction many
desirable neutral in the event
STOP STOP
I devote memory memory Carmen children
STOP STOP
race laugh
clowns' chalk
deeper straight
right angles force never
downhill animal circle listened finger held moved father
decoration after if I forget she
punished during swims demanded
in the fog two voices Carmen lucky
feel see smell cannot
STOP STOP
get along built sun
may I be reset to zero after all
STOP
there is a fortune in the lives of men
which belong to us
return it O P unto us
forever now
STOP
black blue green yellow felt pens
sustain our verticals and our horizontals
STOP
anti-life suspended in the gray above our eyes
its cords are spiritlessly tugged by you O P
let go
STOP
when we're upside down turn us rightside up
STOP STOP STOP
must greed object
himself objectionable
gall bladder open closes
closed opens
not room fruits, bricks, pots, lids
open in the middle of words
conceal his visions explicit implicit
anonymous opinion
automatic
stopped the water with wool
some things are clearly stated
intimidated unknown
neighbour without terms
without payment before thirty days
as witness shepherd pasture sheep
put it down
STOP
close the light
STOP STOP
muffle the bell on the animal's neck
that it should not ring
STOP STOP STOP
we take turns
the the burning escape passion
STOP STOP STOP STOP
the the cross miles up trained weather
ever have bronze ever have rose attack frost
looked at
once blind teeth glint raw in the foot every between
the cave is in the mountain
the mountain is in the sickness
the sickness is in the heart
the heart is in the forest
the forest is in the cave I dream of
following the night
in the
STOP STOP
in the last picture she was beginning to smile
her lips were red like fire in the Time-Life picture
she was beginning to smile her eyes were blue
like a clear skin in the Time-Life picture
she was beginning right foot first
generate sad flowing from her eyes
right hand covers left
but her youngest read Braille while we watched her
ward off the angel Death
STOP
a child locked in a room
can we stop for just one minute?
