On Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 12:56:33 PM UTC-4, OB wrote:
> On Apr 13, 2:57 am, Will Dockery <will.dock...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > "OB" <gerardianlewis @yahoo. com> wrote...
> >
> > >Will Dockery wrote:
> >
> > This post is getting long fast, plus I've travelled about 500 or so
> > miles tonight -in circles - which is pretty much every night, so I'll
> > be breaking this up into sections since each one is interesting and
> > important... heh... a bit of entertaining narcissism for y'all... and
> > if I attempted to respond to each statement /now/, I'd be asleep or
> > too tired to do a couple of other things I need to do tonight - mainly
> > getting some new words finished up right for a recording with Brian
> > Mallard tomorrow. probably a rewritten ''Ash Dust Moon'', though I
> > haven't decided yet... I've listened to a music track he made for this
> > for a few days, and some possibilites are under consideration,
> > including a pardelle, of all things.
> >
> > So, as I wrote, breaking the post into sections.
> >
> > > > Such as your pompous poems directed at an audience of two or three.
> >
> > > I've tried to explain already that you cannot assume you know who my
> > > (or anyone's) intended audience is.
> >
> > You seem to /know/ similar things about me and my audience, and no, I
> > don't see you as superior enough to do this. I think /you/ think you
> > know something about an intended audience of mine... I don't accept
> > that any more than you accept my opinion.
> I've never claimed I "know" anything about your audience. I have a
> vague idea that there was probably someone watching when you recorded
> "Zorro": maybe a few old men sitting at a corner table playing gin
> rummy, maybe a tight crowd of sixteen-year-olds in gothic makeup with
> their hands up each others' kilts, maybe eight or nine fat librarians,
> two with Cruella De Vil cigarette-holders and another clutching a dog-
> eared copy of Middlemarch. No, really, I've no idea. I /do/, however,
> assume you have some sort of regular audience, if only because the
> idea of a whole band getting together several times a week, year in,
> year out, and performing new material to an empty room is just too
> disturbing for me to want to go into.
> > You regularly claim that, despite
> > > getting an almost universally negative response on Usenet, you have an
> > > "audience" in your home town that loves your stuff.
> >
> > No, I've never claimed that, ever. People like what I do, fine, if
> > not, that's not my problem.
> When I lived in Spain I knew a poet (self-described) who hung around
> the tables in the Bar Zurich in Barcelona (the
> no.1 hang-out spot for recently arrived tourists, and a favourite
> haunt for pickpockets, three-card Montyists, conmen, etc). His line
> was to plant himself in front of a table, interrupt the conversation,
> insist on first-name terms rather more quickly than you'd like, recite
> a poem, wait for a polite compliment, then try to flog you his (self-
> published) book. I had a copy of that book. It was total crap. Why did
> I have a copy of that book? Go figure.
> He probably sold about a thousand copies a year. Did anyone "like what
> he did"? So much depends on what sort of date you have sitting next to
> you when the spaced-out tramp comes lumbering over to your table.
> Good thing about Usenet, you get a (relatively) honest opinion from a
> non-captive audience who aren't looking for the quickest way to stop
> you blocking their view of the Rambla.
> > I've never been booed... and I supect many of the Usenet audience
> > wouldn't, either, for various reasons.
> Have /you/ ever booed anyone, live?
> Well, there's one reason.
> > I've written on this here several times, from different angles, to
> > other hecklers over the years... later, I could just repost one or two
> > of these and save some time with this, but the key word on this is /
> > heckers/.
> >
> > Once in a great big while, I see this type out at one of the fuctions,
> > poetry readings, open mics, et cetera, from both sides of the stage -
> > while I was on a couple of times, and many more sitting at a table or
> > outside smoking, watching the show the performer of the moment was
> > putting on.
> >
> > Often, a simple comment like ''okay, this is open mic, so sign up and
> > let's see what /you/ have next...'' tends to shut many of the types
> > seen here on Usenet up.
> >
> > Almost never do the simpering clowns claiming ''I could beat that'' in
> > the back of the bar even make it to the sign up stage... very similar
> > many here, folks you would call /spineless/.
> As I've said before, I haven't seen anyone here (except Meat Plow)
> claiming they could "beat" you at what you do. I really doubt whether
> anyone else would /want/ to do anything like what you do. In fact, I'm
> not at all clear on what it is you actually /do/, or think you do, and
> I have even less of an idea what your parameters for success are. I'm
> pretty sure I could scribble down some random shit, and then stand, or
> stagger, in front of a mike and mumble it incomprehensibly to a
> musical backing, if there was some reasonable inducement to do so, but
> maybe that's not the idea. Maybe there's something else involved. All
> I can say is that whatever it is you do, it doesn't carry well onto
> Usenet, and it doesn't seem to have a lot to do with anything I can
> identify as "poetry".
> But you already knew that.

He still doesn't know it, but everyone else here does.

That description captures Will's shtick to a "T."