March 7, 2012: Nancy O Graham: Somniloquy Cycle - Into My Story (The Raven Of Which, Well, I Hope She Starts Quothing)

NANCY O GRAHAM: SOMNILOQUY CYCLE – INTO MY STORY (THE RAVEN OF WHICH, WELL, I HOPE SHE STARTS QUOTHING)

Nancy Oarneire Graham creates somniloquies, or recorded sleeptalk, by repetitively reading a short text—whether from a children's story, a work of nonfiction, or her own dreams—until she begins to fall half asleep. In the twilight state between waking and sleeping, known as the hypnagogic state, visions, half-formed thoughts, and stray words begin to interrupt those read from the page, opening a window onto this borderland.

Based on excerpts from Samuel Beckett’s “Texts for Nothing.” Undertaken as a collaboration with Michael Ruby, who chose different excerpts from “Texts for Nothing” and worked with them using a different process, also on the edge of sleep.

1. SORRY BODY                                                     
What possessed you to come?  We walked together, hand in hand, silent, sunk in our worlds. I could have stayed in my den, snug and dry.  I say to the body,Up with you now.  Home.  My dwelling place.”
—Samuel Beckett, “Texts for Nothing”

2. NOW THAT THE TREES HAVE ROTTED
Where would you go, now that you know?  Back above?  Creaming off the garbage.  Nothing terrible, nothing showed. Slowly in the head the ragdoll rotting.  That’s it, that’s it, the bright side.
—Samuel Beckett, “Texts for Nothing”

3. FALLING BACKWARD
I’ll will it, will me a body.  Far from the days, the far days, a ray of sunshine and a free bench.  No political opinions,  have silence, get into silence, into my story in order to get out of it, no.  To brew poisons.  It’s all I ask.  What’s wrong with that?         
—Samuel Beckett, “Texts for Nothing”

4. WHAT A RELIEF TO KNOW I’M NOT A MATRIARCH 
I’d go into the forest, I’d try and reach the forest to tell another lie.  That must be the voice of reason again.  I hear I have a kind of conscience under various assumed names.  It’s a game, it’s getting to be a game.  What a relief to know I’m mute forever, listen to that, what a relief.  Ah yes, I hear, I heard, it’s noted.  When silence falls against my lips where they meet, bringer of rest, let the last desert me and leave me empty, empty and silent, an infant dead in its dead mother.
—Samuel Beckett, “Texts for Nothing”         

5. NIXON’S ALIBI 
the trees were witness
complete with joys and sorrows
seeing the immensity to measure and that heads are
only wound up once,
bristles waiting to depart or let fall to the ground
in the great limpness of sleep, perhaps dreaming
it's in heaven, alit in heaven
—Samuel Beckett, “Texts for Nothing”         

6. I HEAR VOICES  
Moments of reasoning, they draw one another back, that’s how it goes, it must be supposed.  Never was like that, is like nothing, moments of hesitation, not so much rare as frequent.
—Samuel Beckett, “Texts for Nothing”

7. A BED IS SOMETHING TO EMBRACE
But peekaboo here I come again, foaming at the mouth, and chewing, friendly shadows, friendly skies, but what is this evening made of and he, what did he want never saying a word, as if he didn’t know, deep in this place which is not one.
—Samuel Beckett, “Texts for Nothing”         

8. MONSTER
...but who can the greater can the less, and somewhere a hand, it wants to make a hand. A trace, it wants to leave a trace, yes, this pity that is in the air,tears in its eyes before they've had time to open and wonders what has become of the wish to know.
—Samuel Beckett, “Texts for Nothing”
Nancy Oarneire Graham's somniloquy-based poems and prose have appeared in print and online publications, including BlazeVOX, Café Irreal, Chronogram, Eratio, Invisible City, New Verse News, Pindeldyboz, Prima Materia, Listening in Dreams (by Carol Ione), and Water Writes (edited by Larry Carr). She has performed somniloquies as part of the Deep Listening Institute's Dream Festival in Kingston, New York. Her chapbook, somniloquies, is available from Pudding House Publications.

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