Was Children Gleaning?

[billectric]

I planted this small palm tree;
Relocated it, really.
To this he didn’t sustain that I was living;
To keep our own, we emerged.

Crisscrossed now that truth was the only thing,
The peaceful door made by doing so,
I cannot make hours and I realize it,
While the lights from eyes were still with image.

The thing that gets it back,
I realize, is waiting over life rooms.
He sure was listening to the
Time front worker banging on them first ideas.

We would play on the better branches,
Characterized death first life lived acceptable.
If prodigious God were to add preoccupation,
The sleep kept all I realized out on a limb.

Now acceptable,
I am listening to ideas.

[judih]

bill, everything you write (almost)
i think: is this a cut-up? does it matter?
and so i read

is it?
does it?

i like it

judih

[ellipsis]

i agree with judih. i like it.

and, yes: is it a cut-up? if so, what is your method, exactly? this isn't disheveled like many cut-ups i read. this one is good.

[billectric]

Yes, it is a cut-up. Thank you so much for the encouraging words, both of you! I really like doing cut-ups.

The thing is, I don't just let them randomly appear on the page. I have at least some idea of what I want it to say and I kind of build it that way. I add words, leave out word, change tenses & suffixes, plural to singular, etc. Sometimes I may start out to say one thing, but a cut-up sentence gives me an idea and I pursue that idea instead of my original idea. Like in art, if you draw any kind of irregular shape, and then repeat that shape several times in a certain pattern, suddenly the shape takes on a life of its own. For example, in the following pictures, I just started with a shape and, well, check it out:

Wagon Eyes
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v30/B ... 1abfd4.bmp
Witch Hat Floaters
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v30/B ... f855f9.bmp

But I'm getting off the subject of cut-up writing. Or am I?
I find it is just as important to leave out stuff in a cut-up. Sometimes I'll have four verses, and three of them really seem to go together, or be somehow connected. While I like the other verse, it just doesn't fit with the other three, so I delete it or save it somewhere for future use, and just go with that compact little threesome. At the risk of sounding instructor-like, a good example of this are the verses in Developing the World For Profit
http://www.studioeight.tv/writers/billk ... oping.html
I started out with about 20 verses, but I wanted the theme to be islands, developers, resorts, property, etc. I had to zap all but 14.

I often use the Grazulis Cut-up Machine
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/gary.leeming/ ... achine.htm
and just for fun, I roll dice to decide how many times to click on "cut-up." I cut & paste back & forth from Word and Grazulis. Lot's of fun!

[mindbum]

do you sing your cutups?

[billectric]

I do write songs, but I've never written a cut-up as a song; never sang a cut-up. Not a bad idea though. I heard somewhere that David Bowie did that with the song "Modern Love" as well some other songs.

By the way, I finally got the links working in my previous message.

[Doreen Peri]

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/gary.leeming/ ... achine.htm

there ya go, bill! Is that the site you're referring to?

the URL tags in the bulletin board software don't seem to work that well for me... I don't understand them either... you know, to use it like html so you can click on the name of the site... so I just paste the URL in the window. (If I figure out how to do it to click on a name of the site so the URL isn't visible, I'll let you know).

to use the image code, click the Img button 2x, then the image opening and closing tags will appear. Then paste the URL of the image in between the tags.

Oh, and I loved the poem! Nice one!

[billectric]

Thanks, Doreen, I'm glad I'm not the only one who was puzzled by the kinks in the links. I'll try what you said for pictures.
I hear that interview with you & Lightning Rod should be published soon.