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The Erotic Life of Property
July 6, 2007    File under: Information Technology , Language , Lomography / Photography , Poetry & Poetics

A few days ago, I ran across this image, which I originally posted here over a year ago, on Nicholas Manning's blog, where it had a new title, one much better, or at least more powerful, more capable, than any title I'd have ever given it.

I wrote Nicholas, to wit:

*First*

As a regular but perhaps infrequent reader of your blog, I just saw
this post:

http://thenewermetaphysicals.blogspot.com/2007/05/blog-post.html

And therein saw a photograph I took and posted on my blog some months
back.

I very much enjoy the title you've given it, and I am indeed quite
flattered you think enough of it to post it.

I'm working on an essay about quotation and what Lewis Hyde called
the "erotic life of property," and I was wondering if you could tell
me more about how the image came to you. I'd like to trace its
transit if possible.

All my best, and thank you for your blog,

Jake Adam York

*Second: A Reply*

Jake,

I'm really delighted to have found out where this came from, and to be
able to give you proper credit for your wonderful photo. I'd love to call
it a collaborative effort, though you deserve much more kudos than me.

Firstly, it is indeed a fascinating incarnation of the erotic life of
property: property's fluidity conferred by simple ignoring of borders of
attribution! Was your photo thus unfaithful to you? The erotics of
appropriation, perhaps. The story of this particular attribution is, I
suppose, not atypical of the flux-like, largely untraceable dynamics of
such things. I was having a conversation by letter with another friend and
poet about the hoary but still strangely pressing idea of emotionality in
poetry being justified by mirage-like "non-linguistic" or "non-rhetorical"
or "authentic" displays and mises en scene of Self. Your photo, in this
context, hit me like a gorgeous breath: it was personality's helplessness
in such justifications, a helplessness which was not, for all that,
malevolent, simply, after this century, sad and exhausted, burnt-out.
Being situated in the context of consumption was also extremely important,
for the idea of Personality somehow authentifying language was like the
commodity exchange: a stamp of garantee on the dubious product.

As you saw, Susanna Gardner said it would make a beautiful cover for an
anthology or critical book. But I'm sure it works as a stand-alone piece
as well. Maybe we can do something with it. I'll post it again Jake on the
blog this week and give you your attribution you so richly deserve.

All my best,

Nicholas

*Third: A Continuation*

Nicholas,

Thanks for your reply and your thoughts.

I wasn't concerned at all that my photograph was unfaithful to me. I always expected it to travel beyond whatever gallery I could construct for it, and I'm glad it has: for me a large part of the joy in writing and in photographing lies in knowing the work will always exceed whatever story we tell about ourselves to ourselves and whatever berth we construct for the genesis or the survival of the work. I think this is the test of work, so I'm interested, not because I feel betrayed but because something that was supposed to happen did, and I'm simply interested in the mechanics, the dynamics of conversation and community that transmit work.

I'm particularly interested in this transit because, though the photograph lost its attribution, it nevertheless never went very far afield, or at least it returned somewhat close to home: though you and I have not exchanged before, the ecosystem of poetry blogs is fairly well interconnected, so to see the photograph inside that ecosystem does not represent a radical relocation. I'm asking myself whether circulation (erotism in the etymological sense, always tending toward the other, though not necessarily sexually) within a community, however internally heterogenous, is somehow easier to accept because its easier to understand or because the traces or residues of transit are never completely dissolved.

The new question that comes to me here is why was the photograph e-mailed, rather than being linked? The internet provides for the most durable trace or residue in the link (which indexes all sorts of information), but the photograph is clearly more powerful, more capable, once it's alienated from its origin, and I wonder if the e-mailer knew this or if he/she had received it in turn from someone else.... And that's why I wrote you.

Your reading of the photograph is powerful. I would press many of the same complaints you're pressing in your reading, though I doubt many of those who know me or even read my poems would suspect me of such discomfort. And so, the query is also, as it tries to identify the moment when the photograph left my blog and its attribution, a search for the value of my name and my blog in this ecosystem, not as a narcissism, but rather as a study in rhetoric.

As for the photograph itself, I've no plans for it---indeed, almost
all my photographs just sit around (I did a few gallery shows and got
somewhat tired of them)---so the idea that someone could title it and
give it new life is very welcome. Anyone is welcome to it for a cover
&c.

Thank you, Nicholas,

Jake

***

A lot to digest here, both due to my rather lackluster blogging of late, and because of the recent adventures in the land of licensing, on which more later, as well as the discussion of posting poems on blogs....

Anyone have any ideas here?

Posted by Jake Adam York at July 6, 2007 8:17 PM