Received, in the mails, from the kindly MJ Stevens (cartoonist), a cd of the work of Ivor Darreg. Regarding Mr. Darreg:
Ivor Darreg was born Kenneth Vincent Gerard O'Hara in Portland Oregon. His father John was editor of a weekly Catholic newspaper and his mother was an artist. Ivor dropped out of school as a teenager because he had a series of illnesses that left him without teeth and with very little energy. He did have energy to learn. He was self-taught in at least ten languages that he read and spoke. He had a basic understanding of all the sciences. His real love was music and electronics. Because of his choice of music, his father cast him out and he and his mother set out on their own with little help from anyone. At that point he took on the name "Ivor," which means "man with bow" (from his cello-playing talents) and "Drareg" (the retrograde inversion of "Gerard"), soon changed to Darreg.
Ivor's life with his mother was a huge struggle, and Ivor's health was poor until his mother died in 1972. Part of the reason was that they lived on canned soup, and the salt kept his blood pressure sky-high. Being poor in health and wealth, Ivor became resourceful. He picked up stray wires that were cut off telephone poles and other things on the street and from friends. He said he learned to "pinch a penny so hard, it would say ouch." Ivor created his first instrument, the Electronic Keyboard Oboe, in 1937. Following the current history of electronics and reading from the journals of the day, he learned circuitry. He made the instrument, which still runs today, because the orchestra he was playing in needed an oboe and Ivor took the challenge. The Electronic Keyboard Oboe is not only one of the first synthesizers, but a microtonal one at that. It plays the regular twelve tones, but there are eight buttons that move the tone in gradation from a few cents for a tremolo effect to a full quarter-tone.
Meanwhile, I'm deeply involved with The Pound Era which contains too many treasures to refer. I'm also getting pretty jiggy with Pound's poems, as well as those of Rumanian Gherasim Luca, with whom I'd dallied before:
Dream in Action
the beauty of your smile your smile
in crystals crystals of velvet
the velvet of your voice your voice and
your silence your absorbent silence
absorbent like snow snow
warm and slow slow is
your walk your diagonal walk
diagonal desire dusk downy and floating
floating like plaints plants
are in your skin your skin
tousles it tousles your scent
your scent is in my mouth your mouth
is a thigh a thigh which takes flight
it flies toward my teeth my teeth
devour you I devour your absence
your absence is a thigh a thigh or
a shoe a shoe that I kiss
I kiss this shoe I kiss it on
your mouth for your mouth is a mouth
it isn't a shoe mirror that I kiss
just as your legs just as
your legs just as your legs just
as your legs your legs
legs of sigh sigh
of vertigo vertigo of your visage
I step over your image like one steps through
a window window of your being and of
your mirages your image its body and
soul your soul your soul and your maze
amazed I am amazed maze of your
hair your hair aflame your soul
aflame and tears like the toes of
your feet your feet on my chest
my chest in your eyes your eyes
in the forest the liquid forest
liquid and in bone the bones of my screech
I scratch and I screech my distressing language
I dissever your arms your arms
delirious I desire and dissever your arms and your socks
bottom and top of your trembling body
trembling and pure pure like
the shower like the shower of your neck neck of
your eyelids the eyelids of your blood
your blood caressing throbbing trembling
trembling and pure pure like the flower
flower of your knees of your nostrils of
your breath of your stomach I say
stomach but I am thinking of the shade
of the shade of the shadow shadow of
the secret the marvelous secret marvelous
like you
you sleepwalking under the umbrella and shadow
shadow and diamond it's a
diamond which swims which swims swimmingly
you swim swimmingly in the water of
matter of the matter of my spirit
in the spirit of my body in the body
of my dreams of my dreams in action
-Gherasim Luca
Last weekend I made a new friend, a Rumanian in Seoul, name of Julian, who approached me on the subway having seen the Pound book in my lap with the smooth come-on, "I've read that book." Julian is a visiting professor and is writing a book on Kafka. We talked about Deleuze, Zizek, Lacan, American colleges (he did his MA at Columbia), art, poetry, music, and irregular verbs. It reminded me of my friend, Ovid Uman (born Fratu), in Portland, and his crony and fellow artist Horia Boboia. This, aided and abetted by a nasty bout of bronchitis last week and a phone call from Lilly, put me into my first homesickness.
