Can the page perform enough?

I had previously taken a Writing for Performance class in which we able to experiment with language and words and how they appeared on the page but also how they were performed. This increased what I had learned in an earlier class - the sense of words on a page being much more than that. Spacing and breaks allowing for words unspoken - to create a feeling within the work which was unable to perhaps be expressed in other ways. But now the words became the performance or as much of a performance as was possible for ink on the page.

This week we focused on reading the BathHouse guests work, Tisa Bryant and Douglas Kearney. Again, both these works allowed for expansion on my knowledge of what it means to explore the page and stretch it. When I went to the lecture on Wednesday it was a different experience because it brought performance into their work. Hearing them read and articulate things written added another element to the words. "Textual Orality" is what they called it and it took the work to another level.

Before the lecture I saw some of Douglas Kearney's book and it was more different than anything I had seen before - similar but different. It had a loudness to it. Perhaps it was the bold fonts, the larger than life brackets, the compilation of words in one area that one was unable to decipher. On Wednesday, the work came to life more so than it had on the page. How does one read his work? It is all over the page. Some nuggets here and there, some more linear, some angled and somewhat broken off. To hear about some of his processes, the layering, all added that much more to the work itself.

While Kearney's was a visual feast, Bryant's was more like a typical book that had words on the page. BEWARE - you cannot judge this book by it's initial flip though. When you read her work you find that she writes a picture or a movie. She pulls from what is unfocused and brings it to the front. They say "A picture can say a thousand words." Well, Bryant's work are those words and more. First off, I think it is very challenging to look at a picture or movie and literally write what you see. What do you start with first? Top to bottom, left to right, right to left, bottom to top. Second, she focuses in a way or on things within the picture that you might not see. It's like watching your favorite movie several times and then all of a sudden you see something new. She brings the new forward and speaks to that.

In some ways Kearney's and Bryant's works are similar. Where do you start? On one hand the where do you start is the reader's decision for Kearney's book. In Bryant's work she decides where it will start. After hearing them both in person, I realized that while the page does "perform" seeing it articulated is quite another. There is attitude and cadences that cannot be seen easily in the way it is written. Maybe some, but not as much as when you see it "live". So it makes me wonder - can the page perform enough?