ON BUILDING THE JEWEL TRANCE SITE

We have been gathering together Bersone’s poetry – over forty years of work. Gene and I met in the late 60s in San Francisco. He had been studying at SF State and doing the Poetry in the School gig and was an active part of an important yet not often recognized poetry scene in the Bay Area. There were readings every week all over the City where Gene and other writers, like Steve Schutzman, read their latest work. The clubs on Broadway and in the Fillmore were alive with jazz music: Miles, Thelonias, Cannonball, Mingus. New theater was being performed in the small North Beach venues, and performers like Lord Buckley might be discovered in the least likely dives. The City was churning in its own unique way. Artists like Bersone were doing whatever they could to make a buck without selling their soul to the company store. We first met in the Operations Center of a bank, on the midnight shift. He was working all night, trying to raise a family during the day, and writing some of the best work of his life. (Schutzman has said that “Jewel Trance” should have been recognized as the “Howl” of their generation.) At one point Bersone took a job as a copy writer for an ad agency. I remember picking up a package of Thomas’s English Muffins and seeing his slogan: “You are holding the original English Muffin!” That job, however, like all the rest, didn’t last long, but the poems kept coming – the direct link to his sanity, the truth of his spirit. Some were published in poetry reviews, most were not. The years slid by, lives were lived, suffering endured, and the bliss of life honored in song. So now, in this distant future, we are gathering the fallen leaves together, even as they continue to blossom, mature and fall where they mingle with the earth to nurture generations to come. We are creating the “Jewel Trance” site as a receptacle, a gathering place for the work, and a public venue. This process is intimate and exciting. Many of the poems I had never seen, but most had fluttered by my eyes as they were dropped. To handle them now and examine them closely with the eyes of this generation is exciting and rewarding. The following correspondence will show some of this process and, perhaps, provide some insight into a few of the poems.

Email to the Buffalo
1/4/09 11:53 AM Buffalo

That "Suicide" thing is a jewel!!! (Can You Hear The Suicide Bomber Singing?) When did you write that? I vaguely remember having seen that before, is that possible? Great singing! Do you want this posted on Jewel Trance? Do you have an image or photo to go with it? It is definitely the Gene Berson Voice singing in the key of ‘Infinite Humor in Truth and Vice-Versa’ - sharp! Very funny! Very true. Great riff!

:)

1/4/09 12:24 PM Bersone

Thanks for the reaction; I wrote that last August, inspired by reading Miller's Hummingbird book; I felt at the time that I was tuning my chops and that there was a lot more to come. But we went to Canada for two weeks and that interrupted the flow so I never quite got back into it. I feel I'm still on that wavelength, however, if I get the time and whatever it takes. It's like a current, I feel. I got into rereading Henry's Rimbaud book, which I brought back with me yesterday, and feel that that's a lead back into whatever state the suicide thing came out of. Certainly with the events in the Gaza strip I'm feeling it all, but I'm getting ready to go to work tomorrow. I hope not to drink and have energy to write in the evening. I'm also interested in these sound things I did with Ruby on her bowls, her brother playing bass and me improvising out of the dictionary like I do. I recorded them on the iPod and would like to send one to you but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. One little song goes:

I work weekends, just call
finding a loan for every home is my yearning I'm talking top banana I work weekends, just call I'm clean and bright inside and out I work weekends, just call to find a home at the end of the road with privacy, just call I work weekends, just call I'm topless neat and meticulous clean and bright inside and out why rent etc

That's not giving it justice but I can't remember it off the top of my head. Suffice it to say that it goes off and the three sounds, bowls, bass and voice have moments where they come together. It then goes into a little thing about Saddle-sore Sam and Sally Salmon in her saloon, following a sort of lope-along rhythm set by the bass. This is something we've wanted to do for a long time. The path is infinite once I get off the page. Check out that Oliver Sachs interview on www.ttbook.org where he talks about the healing power of music; quite amazing, really. Music can make people with Parkinson's be able to dance and move without problems; he theorizes that music is in several parts of the brain, some of those parts older, phylogenetically speaking, and are undamaged by strokes or disease, more primitive, you might say. I remember reading about a guy being operated on for a brain tumor in the thirties, in the phylogenetically ancient part of the mid-brain, and he had to be conscious for the operation. When the surgeon touched the tumor the guy would fly out with a spurt of language, full of rhyme and in all three languages he knew, German, Greek and Latin, telling him to get out of his head.

As far as posting that suicide thing, go ahead, post it wherever you want; I sent it to Velene last summer but she never commented on it; I asked Erika about that, and she said it wasn't Velene's thing, and Erika also questioned whether or not it should be published because people were so literal minded and it might be dangerous in some way. I wouldn't want any repercussions to you but as for myself whoever would object to it can shove their reactions up their ass.

The idea of an image with it is intriguing. I hadn't thought about that. Maybe Larry would have an idea. there's plenty of images there to work with, that's for sure.

1/4/09 3:26 PM Buffalo

I'll put the Suicide riff up on Buffalo and on Jewel Trance. It's a delightful example of your voice. Let me know if you have an image or image idea. Philippine Snakes is a wonderful poem. I re-discovered it on Velene's site along with Zenny's. Such good stuff, and how nice it is to see it gathered together. The type is small to preserve the original line breaks.

I really want to hear the piece you guys did up in Eureka with Ruby and her brother. You need to get it into a common format, like wav, and then use one of those free sites where you can send large files that won't go through the email. People have sent me files that way, but I have never sent one and don't have a url for you. Maybe Larry does, or figure out how to google it. Your selection looks like Advanced Rap.

:)

1/5/09 1:15 PM Buffalo

Funny you should mention Oliver Sacks - I'm reading his book: MUSICOPHILIA Tales of Music and the Brain. I couldn't locate the interview at that site. I guess it's no longer there.


Buff

1/6/09 12:39 PM Buffalo

It would be good if we had your bio up on the Jewel Trance site. I have started one, which I have attached. None of this has to be included. I’m just encouraging you to give me what you would like to post. However, I do like this image, and the “look”. Fill in the data and anything you would like for it to say. No rush, of course.


1/7/09 6:39 AM Bersone

I sent you some photos of myself. One on the deck with Ruby enjoying a story with her, Larry and Flo; one of myself, the old romantic, after four or five marriages, contemplating the promise of Niagara Falls, or Viagra Falls as they are wont to call it now; one of me chopping wood, letting the chips fall where they may, and one of myself in a canoe on Lake Huron in my middle sixties with some strength still in my arms. The picture you selected that Wilfredo took of me, while I was on a wild reading tour throughout the city, is a fine one, and should be included, although I send these others to sprinkle in or leave out as you wish. It occurs to me that I should send you my Mexico fuck poem, circa 1968, which shows perhaps some William Burroughs influence. Some of the poems I send may not be totally accepted, such as the Etheric Knees, but I send them on because sometimes seeing them posted helps me see them outside myself in order to weigh their worth. Your reactions are extremely helpful. I'd like to include some small recent, objectivist type poems, such as Evening fog's ycummin in, about the bum retrieving a cigarette from the trash barrel, and the poem Certain Imperatives about sitting on the back porch watching a spider.

As for the bio, well, what you have's ok so far; might as well post it. It's such a major project, and of course the poems will tell the same story more or less, and a rather exciting idea, to write an autobio, but I don't have time to do it now and so what if we let what you have stand. I like that whole essay I gave you, because it connects my emotional life as I experienced it as I grew up to the growing awareness of what a wholesale desecration of the environment was going on all around me, a realization that leads, once I understood that every sacred place I loved as a child, which was every wild place, was under attack, to the paranoia I ultimately express in the white truck, i.e., if they're destroying everything I love they've probably got me in their sights too. The essay may lack my usual pop, language-wise, having been written in a rather subdued mood, for various reasons.


1/7/09 10:15 AM Buffalo

Good photos. I'll weave them in. I'm going to put the bio up as it is. Instead of posting it at the top, I will put a photo of you and a link to the post, but put bio at the end. Yes, the "Evening fog's ycummin in" is a good one. I have a printed copy but please send me a text version so I don't have to re-type it. The Mexico fuck poem is essential. In fact, most of the poems from those years have a special quality to them, an energy that is special. It was an era, it was a life, a time, and it has its own voice. There are, however, some poems in the HONEYDEW book from those years that don't reach me. "Wind Song" is one of them - seems to be about getting a BJ - which is fine in itself, but it seems to be behind a curtain - shielded behind a glaze of what might be "feminism". Erika may have had something to do with that. But everything is real. Of course, I'll put all of those up if you choose. It's interesting looking at your work in this way - collected in a group. You can almost see the seams between our various lives. You are a poet! And a damn good one!

:)

1/7/09 6:34 PM Bersone

I'll have to find the Mexico poem and retype it in, maybe this week maybe this weekend. I'm going to try to find a photo of a pig race Larry took at the Grass Valley fair and send it to you. I wrote this poem to go with that picture. The wind song I always felt was a true poem and, although I haven't read it in a long time, think two things: one, that period was my feminist period and what you say is probably true. also it is too tight, perhaps, and maybe the mythological status feels contrived. I'm thinking of putting it up, though, because it's part of what I went through, craft wise, to get my voice out. Out loud. That's what it's all about. How we sound. And, if you look at the pictures I showed you of myself as a soldier, you can understand the long journey to reach the vocal chords. The intestinal groans and squawks of Charlie Parker and Coltrane show that any part of the body can sing, but it takes a lot of work to reveal the music. Maybe a saxophone can sound like the adrenal gland crushed by interrogation under a bright light, and maybe we're part of an effort to let the whole man speak, but Wind Song might be wrapped up in an Ace bandage I thought was form. Still, I feel it was genuine. The high school dropout poem similar tightness, or effort to master conventional forms. In that one I tried to catch the sound of the street car wheels within the words. there's a story behind that poem, about the writing of it.


1/8/09 8:04 AM Buffalo

When are you going to tell the story behind the writing of the high school dropout poem?

Here’s my hit on Shards of Song: following the analogy of the multi-course meal, I don’t think we are at the desert course yet, or the cheese and coffee course. Another take is that perhaps the poem is just fine, but the subject is so large that it cannot be sung in one poem. The societal tamping down of free spirits, imagination, freedom of song, is one of the deepest bruises we all must nurture, heal, accommodate. And the human response to that tyranny is the source for Man’s greatest songs. I’d like to see you take a freer voice of images and just sing it through, balls out, unrestricted. Its energy is the guide that will lead the way. See what happens.


1/8/09 7:15 PM Bersone

I think your take on Shards is correct; it's not bad, and maybe just came up as a reminder to a consistent theme living inside me and others. Your reaction raises a profound question: can you pull off a reasonably decent artifact, with a true theme, but fail because it hasn't flown completely on your own voice. Henry realized, at one point, that his fate depended on what happened to "Tropic of Cancer". All stops had been pulled out. He had laid it out, and not been afraid to show the bones on the way. Lawrence had this integrity, also. At any point, he may have veered off and written quite saleable books, but he drove deeper, and earned the enduring appreciation of at least four generations of future lovers. This type of advice, or reaction, was a constant in my living with Erika, who rarely accepted anything but the whole hog. Unfortunately, we lacked proper career planning. Which, of course, we had chosen to fly in the face of. We'll leave the shards until I can open it up and give it more of the real thing.

I haven't found a copy of Mexico Letter yet, and may not have it with me. I will enclose a poem I published with Velene, which I like and feel is the real deal. Also, I'll copy out a first version, or almost a first version of the gold fish thing so you can see a little how my process works. Also, maybe something I wrote about the time I wrote the poem to my daughter, the torn roots poem.

1/9/09 6:50 AM Bersone

This is the version I meant to send you (Gold Fish). I'm beginning to wonder if I should back away from this approach because I'm getting confused. But I need this back and forth shit, I just don't want to take advantage of you and your time. Certain poems I feel are done and then there are all these others, in various versions. I long really to do something new, some different kind of writing, but I don't have the time. I've got to resolve this housing situation so I don't have to work so much. I was asked recently to go on a kayak trip to Vietnam, which I could have done had I not bogged myself down with these mortgages. I have to set my life strategically, on a financial level. And I'm close, except for these payments. I could have kept a journal of the kayak trip, interviewed people -- that kind of thing. I'd like to move around more, and take the pulse of various parts of the world. I turned down work this weekend and I guess I'll go back up there for a couple of days. I'll send you the Mexico letter poem from there. What a weird process. I said ok to a reading offer in Sacramento through a client of Ruby's who owns some kind of store that sells spiritual garb, with a friend of hers, Susan, who's a poet and wants to read with me. Reading will help me sort out versions, I can hear the air pockets and so on, and I want to get more into the sort of things I did with ruby and her brother. I've been re-reading robert burns, who spent the last twenty years of his life working on songs (he wrote 600 of them). His poems are jewels -- narrative, lyric, detailed, and his focus was on creating a literature in the scotch dialect, an effort that has continued through the work of Macdiarmid, a great writer of my grandfather's generation. Both men are GIANTS, which you need. You play better tennis against players better than yourself. I know how to make a reasonably decent poem, like this goldfish thing, but that isn't what we're after. We want something from the edge of ourselves. Reading Henry's book on rimbaud, it's scary what's required. But even there you can't fall into a conventional martyrdom. To make out your own path, like water trickling down a dry hillside: the course isn't visible until the water traces it, unhesitatingly, twisting, relentless, fearless, just falling, stopping at obstacles, spilling over, letting nothing stop it. But looking at the dry hillside you don't know the path. Anyway, we know all this. But these are exciting times, like during Watergate: the masks are slipping off, you can look at a banker and almost see where you could reach over and hitch it back up over the ear. the disguises and disappearing, with some surprising faces underneath. I feel an uncanny ability inside myself, as if I'm an antenna, especially if I move quickly in response to my instincts; it's a delicate state, I grant you, but I trust my perceptions in that state. I have to pull back from it in daily life -- nobody knows what to do with it. they don't know who you are. The thing is, you are nobody; you're not distracted by being somebody. But you're awake, and you don't fall for the illusions. You don't have a stake in the illusions, especially those others want you to verify to confirm their ridiculous self-importance.

1/9/09 1:17 PM Buffalo

Sunny afternoon after a chilly morning. Went to the office only once this week, but I’ll go in tomorrow. The time of day, an ice sculpture melting to the sound of its own drip. Time to think. Time to fuck around. Listen to music. No pay-back accounting system.

Got the Gold Fish. I’LL get it up this afternoon. Don’t worry about my time. You’re taking very good care of it. The job we have is always the job we give to ourselves. I think I may hang a shingle out my door: TOM RHETORIC – JACK OF ALL TRADES and change my middle name to JACK. Thus the lyric:

Tom Jack Rhetoric
Man of all trades,
Hammer, pen, or string bass,
He pays you back in spades.

Inquire within.

It’s good to be restless, in your spirit and your poetry, want to wander. It means you don’t completely accept the skin you are wearing, and are willing to stretch out a bit. The river never stops flowing. All that water is going to go somewhere! When are you doing the reading in Sacragheto? I’d really like to have a recording of that. I’m looking for material for my Somnambulist project. Does that recorder that Ruby has make wav files that can be moved to a computer? And I really do hope to hear that piece you did with her and her brother.

The more we can figure out how to thrive on our own juices the better off we are going to be. There is no such thing as “success” in the creative realm – because it never stops – you’re never “there”. It’s like breathing in and out – we don’t ask ourselves if we are good at it, we just fucking do it – in and out – in and out. We make poems, sing songs, tell stories, dance, paint because that’s what we do. Ain’t nothing else to it. In the mean time we try to figure out how to make a living and stay out of jail. Your analogy of the water trickling down the dry hillside is a good one. The force is inevitable. We don’t even need to navigate the course, just learn to float. The river will take us home! I used to say: The Future is Perfect. I’m changing that now to: The Future is Inevitable. Ever float down the Sacramento River in an inner-tube and a six pack? Easy as that! And these masks, disguises, personas: what is all that about? Who do we think we’re kidding? Where did that shit come from? “I feel an uncanny ability inside myself, as if I'm an antenna, especially if I move quickly in response to my instincts.” I heard that! That exact uncanny ability thrives in all of us and can be nurtured and developed. What are we teaching in our schools? What did we ever learn in school other than the fact that most adults are idiots? It is our responsibility, yours, mine, Steve’s, and anyone else who has come in contact with his own uncanny ability, to sit around doing nothing as best we can. In this way the very concepts of rich and poor, good and evil, etc., will be eradicated simply by virtue of being ignored. We solve everything in one step: no judgment, everyone eats.

It’s like the Kafka poem Steve sent:

You need not do anything.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait,
just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Franz Kafka

Why is it that even I, who know this to be true, cannot live by this seemingly simple teaching? Why is it that I feel as though I MUST be making money with every move I make? Is this just a hang-over from the last financial depression? Whatever. No whining. Buck up. The work must be done.

We must learn to do nothing, and to do it well!

Buff