number 2, getting started...

why so late???? no idea...

Trying to get it out, making Instagram, doing a first print, making books. From the 4^th to the 11^th I did 3 readings in the course of one week. I wanted them to be events that I introduced this “small press” project to people but that didn’t really work. On the 4^th me, Cole and guitar, and Lior on sax did our outdoor Emotional Maturity set. On the 8^th I did UT’s Poetry on the Pond, taking the zines and a long, ripped, dharani-pillar CVS receipt with a poem I finished in the grass before I went on. And on the 11^th I tried taking the improv a step further and tried to spin the words into a poem from reciting the Heart Sutra with my eyes closed, then reading from the zine.

I recorded each on my phone and stitched them and some other bedroom readings into a 20-minute poetry tape(?). Maybe mixtape? Maybe an album? Not sure yet. It’s on bandcamp here:

For the March 4^th show, I started off, sitting half lotus in a flimsy metal folding chair, holding the broken micstand, yelling at my friends, singing some Sanskrit Lotus Sutra, then some shaky reading, and then we went into the set improvising around each other. Our shirts blended into the white wall next to the cafe and everyone wanted to sit in the shitty parking lot grass instead of the concrete. We wanted to take it somewhere else. And in doing it, in getting it said, and in translating some Mahasatipatthana Sutta for the show, I realized what was at stake in my translation practice. That it was not just getting it right for myself, but getting it to be open, accessible, and portable for other people. I can know all the Sanskrit, Pali, and “Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit” I want to, and touch the morning Buddhas of concrete and construction sounds that way in my own head, but that doesn’t turn the Lotus for anybody… I didn’t notice there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. No ambitions. No ozone stupas or hands screaming out our bellies, just some eyes with nothing to glass or glare at…

After the show I gave away almost all my letterpress prints. I expected people to like my lino-carved Buddha-head, with Matt’s Hover lyrics and a poem of mine juxtaposed around it. But everyone went for the pressure-printed cut-out (from a postcard) of the Sri Lankan Kurunegala Tara bodies clouding over the page, some in uneven blue, some a purple blend… her seated posture over and over again…

But what I found most interesting is I wasn’t prepared to talk about any of it with people. Strangers asked what I did, and I kept saying I had no idea, or asking everyone else what it seemed like we were doing. I pointed at the Buddhas… the torn receipts, the acidic handwriting… and realized I had no way to introduce it.

So the whole issue of getting started. When is it ok to get started? When is it ok to tell everyone? When is it ok to hijack a Hover interview to talk about your small press you haven’t started? Maybe more on that later… Estelle says we’re only here for a few more months, Skylar’s already moved away, and I never printed the Udumbara Press First Meditation-on-Receipts-and-Broken-Headphones Book I planned and scribbled down, and so there’s the question of why even do it?? But I keep telling myself that that question is entirely out of bounds.

I’m remembering I’m supposed to finish some books I promised people at the show… two week turnaround isn’t the worst…?