Comments on: On Lying

By: Aaron Fagan

Aaron Fagan — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:07:09 +0000

Captive Consumer Commodes would be better. For the sake of alliteration and for the closeness to commodity, It is a brilliant way to control people, not that there were venetian blinds drawn to conceive of such a thing. You can’t control the language, but you can control the commodes. And if you control the commodes, you control the people.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:48:49 +0000

I hear Frontline is planning a show on “Captive Consumer Toilets.”

By: Aaron Fagan

Aaron Fagan — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:30:07 +0000

I like Don’s bit about Geoffrey Hill. However, I am thinking of the reality. Public toilets, in the classic sense, are a thing of the past–at least one you would actually use, or be able to use; even if you had that daring or desperate feeling. There are only captive consumer toilets in America. It has been privatized. Like poetry. And in that sense mirrors just about everything else about the culture–that dirty suspicious word as taboo as poo.

By: Don Share

Don Share — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 13:00:19 +0000

Daisy, where the metaphor collapses is that nobody would say that toilets make nothing happen.
I apologize for being potty-mouth and hereby resume my customary dignity.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 11:28:33 +0000

Don–I just had a vision of toilet manufacturers and plumbers dividing into camps over accessibility v. difficulty. Reviewers would say things like “The flush repays how hard you have to work for it” and “just because the water is perfectly clear, doesn’t mean it’s not profound…” and “this toilet works on so many levels…” etc. Daisy

By: Daisy

Daisy — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:44:32 +0000

J.E. Stone–There has got to be at least a short series of poems on this subject. Thank you for explaining! It all comes clear now. I wish someone’s house would flood when I don’t get poems written, though. It would make me feel important.
Steve–yeah, you’re right, I’m fixated on plumbers. It’s because my toilet is, well, perpetually in the toilet. Thank you for the museum tip. That sounds very cool. We’re thinking of putting a poster of Duchamp’s Fountain in Maisie’s room when she gets to the age your boy is…good luck with that…
Daisy

By: Don Share

Don Share — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:18:25 +0000

No such discussion would be complete without mentioning that Geoffrey Hill has said – according to Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian – that “public toilets have a duty to be accessible, poetry does not.”

By: STeve

STeve — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:27:42 +0000

It's time for you to visit the toilet museum. Seriously. It's in Watertown, Mass., and we're going to go there soon (our little guy is approaching toilet-training time). Daisy, didn't you and I have a friendly dispute about plumbers in the print magazine last year?

By: Aaron Fagan

Aaron Fagan — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:07:57 +0000

More confidence art than lying. In principle–outside of the subjective realm of quantitative and qualitative ethical and moral arguments–language is a lie in the strict sense that it is not true. You say tomato, I say tomato. You say “causal determinism” and I say “shit happens.” In the end language is really just a lot of fancy barking. Against every statement its contradiction may be advanced with equal justification.

By: J.E. Stone

J.E. Stone — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:19:19 +0000

Actually, I’m not sure that plumbers, electricians, sheetrock guys, painters, and the other types that I habitually put under the label “contractors” are all or always liars. I’ve been hanging around contractors for a while as the contractor who built our house is a great guy, his subcontractors are mostly great guys, and I find their world kind of fascinating–particularly as we’ve had our own mystery problems with water: leaky skylight and weird toilet.
My theory is that contractors live in an alternative universe, which occasionally intersects with our own. At times, the hole in the space/time continuum opens and you make contact with the other side: they answer their phones, or they actually show up at your house. The good ones are really fascinated by the work they do, with finding the answer to puzzling problems. Because plumbing and wiring and painting are not as straightfoward as we would like to think they are. There are multiple ways of approaching a job, and multiple ways of working through a problem, and multiple ways of finishing it. Their sense of time is totally different from our own, and is driven by some sort of circadian rhythm that may or may not have to do with the cycling of our own Sun.
When contractors are not, for example, working on your project, they are at work, busily, in some other sector of the space/time continuum, and they are, in fact, deeply engaged in what they are doing. Their priorities are not your priorities–their priorities are sometimes driven by money, sometimes by friendship, sometimes by the way a particular job holds their interest.
So, in some ways, they are much like poets. Do you finish every poem that you start? Or do you sometimes leave it lying in pieces on your desk? Do you sometimes think, starting a poem, that the poem is far more valuable than it ultimately appears to be? Do you think sometimes, after having started a poem, that perhaps you should have gone a different route?