A call from Bill

The legendary Bill Direen has sent out a call for contributions to his elegant journal Percutio:

Inspired in part by Richard Taylor's EYELIGHT web site, the next Percutio is asking people to write on the theme of "guiding lights" -- what "enlightens" people in their chosen arts today. Once it was popular to talk of having an "ideology", recently the terms "poetics" has had a new lease of life, being applied to all the disciplines.

Some work intuitively, some aleatorically, some are firmly based upon some ideology or other. There are experimentalists among us, post-structuralists, avant-gardists, and those who reject all three of these categories.

There are communists among us, comrades, capitalists, competitionists, provocateurs and (many without knowing it) constitutional monarchists.

How do we work in terms of such "frame-ologies"?

And religion? I'll be trying to write something on this, and it would be interesting to have your responses to the religious forces of our education. Or the "ideal-ology" of such. The ideals posited before us, which we (many of us) felt obliged to reject, or to espouse. Refusing to reject, believing, not blindly, but purely, is also an inspiration, and enlightening cause of art and "industry". So BELIEF! The placebo power is strong, as strong in some cases as the drug used to cure. Belief is strong. Is it all really more to do with believing in something.

And THE industry... where does that come into the whole thing. I mean "industry standards". They are necessary as guides, but have to be treated as challenging limitations, don't you think?

And superstition! Wouldn't someone dare to write a poem or a treatise upon the superstitions of artists and writers. Rock stars have many, the lucky pair of socks, or underpants or guitar! But do we not all have that lucky pen, that incredible thing that helps us to generate the creative spacio-temporal condition.

Responses can be poetic or essays or whatever. Send them to titus.books@online.fr

Percutio 2008 will be launched in Dunedin in August. I have a feeling it will be a fascinating issue. It has been an honour to have had contributions of such high quality already for 2006 and 2007. As for responses in France and Germany, they have been particularly encouraging and copies have been archived in Europe as promised.

Hoping to hear from you,

best to you all!

Bill Direen