September 22nd saw the first ever SLAMHAI! go down with a proud line-up of 6 poets, and a friendly though surprisingly dirty minded audience (you know who you are). All to our delight, goes without saying. We put our poets through three stages, producing highlights such as Kathrina slammin’ Bring da Ruckus, and Estelle improvising verses on pulling her skirt up in the world’s finest squatter toilets. Not to forget misfit Morris, Hunter (where is it?!), and Butler, whose musing on lesbians are a bit shocking even for this site (or even the Internet…) And last not least, our own Susie Q:

And everyone says
That poetry’s for losers, geeks, library goons,
But I’d rather have this than those modern tunes
Give me Ginsberg, give me Eliot (I don’t want to be an idiot).
It’s the papercuts that matter
When you think about it.

We couldn’t have said it better. Big thanks to all of you, poets and audience, for helping us make SLAMHAI! one of the coolest evenings Shanghai has seen since the glory days (Ho-Tom, Christian, Simon, Morgan, and Brother J – love you guys!). See you around Christmas for the next one, drop us an Email to get on our mailing list, editor@haliterature.com

Love
B.

S.C. Gordon - There were street pajamas, Expat dramas…

Hunter Braithwaite – There are more nerves in this quarter inch, than thoughts in my head, than pricks in a pinch…

Estel Vilar –

We stop by the toll, I drag myself out and across,
the grass-sprinkeled pavement, to the bare brick case,
the menacing gonggongcesuo squating place…

Katrina Hamlin - 

Morris – The Swedish GG Allin of Freestyle

wm. Butler readi.. doing tequila shots onstage…?

The beautiful, energized and increasingly intoxicated crowd.

Shiny happy poets at SLAMHAI! 2010

Our favorite superstar T-money supported, along with…

Ben Thriller (who wants to see you all at Dada tomorrow (Sat 10/09).

by Björn Wahlström

Harmony does not move. It rests in itself, content, lazy, and somewhat arrogant. Consonance and dissonance move, promises to be fulfilled or broken, seeking always more, struggling toward something. No rest.

Harmony bores us when unchallenged, and as much as we strive to achieve it when in dissonance, we rest on it only long enough to catch our breath, then to be thrown out again. Contrary to what musicians will tell you we build our dissonances not to create movement between different harmonies, but because they are as much in our nature as harmony itself. Harmony in itself is uninteresting.

Despite the fact that words like “unpleasant” and “grating” are often used to explain dissonance, in fact all music with a harmonic or tonal basis — even music which is perceived as generally harmonious — incorporates dissonance. The buildup and release of tension which can occur on every level – from the subtle to the crass – is to a great degree responsible for what we perceive as beauty, emotion, and expressiveness. There is fear, conflict, dispute, anger and the threat of chaos in dissonance; it knows not where it’s going, knows only its own restlessness. To say that all dissonances lead to harmony is a lie; uncertainty is in its nature, and so also in the nature of harmony. Isolde sings her Liebestod to the sleeping Tristan, climbing higher through the cycles of dissonances and relative harmony, and does not – can not – strive to that last harmonious chord, knows not how to escape the knowledge that her loved one lies dead before her. The cycle seems endless, but finally, in a brilliant and harmonious D minor the orchestra exits victorious on top, and the movement stops, Isolde falling dead with it, in harmony now herself. It appears to me that any good harmony must live with the fact that it will never go unchallenged, and that it perhaps even harbors the desire for dissonance within itself.

The Sunstorm Lectures: “On late Isolation era conceptions of chance”

(Transcript of lecture held by Dr BGW Blacksea at Mercury 5 as part of the Applied Ancient Sciences Series, 2^nd Sunstorm phase of CY (2865AD))

‘Ladies and Gentlemen,

Firstly, I would like to thank you for joining us at this early hour here at the M5 facilities. With the state of traffic during sun storm season I’m also happy to see that you all still have your hair and skin intact. Most of you anyway, no offense Professor Starkk (laughter). Jokes aside though, until the council finally have all M-shields up and running 100% again I strongly advise you to stay within the screen zones as much as possible. I’m sure our guests from the outer planets find it nice and warm here at arms length from the Source, but believe me, you do not want to go sunbathing right away, at least not your first year here (laughter).

Today I will outline late Isolation era conceptions of chance. One of the major functions of applied historical sciences is to penetrate the state of mind that brings forth certain questions, and to understand and experience how and why change came about. This sounds trivial, but it is not. Particularly not as the general concept of science has been a more distant, colder one during most of System history. To a certain extend this has always been known, in varying degrees, to the historical sciences, but not always applied, and never really, until the beginning of our time of course, properly understood as a practical possibility. I invite you to forget for the duration of this lecture all you know about time/space/chance flow, future conceptualization, and general organic system will analysis. Hard as it is, I will try to cicerone you back to a time when the faulty gap between organic and mechanical sciences was still not perceived, a time when man was not only alone in the universe, but actually regarded the System as a cold and hostile system, a time when Einstein and quantum gravity was still regarded as the future of science (laughter).

The last centuries of the Great Isolation is surely one of the most intriguing periods in the history of the System in this respect, and at the same time the hardest one for us to grasp. You all know the historical facts of late Isolation, let’s say around 2100AD. The mother planet was still cut off from the rest of the System, which was largely believed to be uninhabited, including Mars, including Jupiter, and of course M-minor where we are this morning. We know now how development from this stage is always the slowest, from T2 to A2 to S3, as the movement from a passive two-dimensional concept of time/space continuum to an active and four dimensional understanding of time/space/chance flow requires letting go of it’s own inherent founding principles, namely the individual. As Wittgenstein almost correctly put it: you must throw away the ladder once you’ve climbed it. The paradox from a 21st Century point of view, of course, is how to throw it while climbing it. This does not sound paradoxical to you here today, but as with all paradoxes, the problem for a 21st Century scientist (or any citizen for that matter) was that he was of course unable to question the very entity posing the question – himself.

An event either occurs, or doesn’t occur. I see you rolling your eyes Professor Starkk, but please bear with me. An event either occurs or it doesn’t – to a 21st Century mind however, there were certain…mindsets preventing the realization of what drives events. I’m thinking of course of the period of the great wars between 1500 – 2300AD. Strange as it may sound, the later part of this era was considered one of progress in all sciences (except the organic ones of course, but we’ll get to that after lunch). You all know the characteristics: de-deification, subjugation of nature, and the reinsertion of mankind at the center of the universe. There seems to be no limits to how many Galileos and Descartes humankind needed to show us the way (laughter). We all know the results: a constant, random and very violent clashing of different parts of the mother planet, coming to within an inch of actually destroying this one part of the System.

We will have to break for lunch at this point, I can already feel Professor Starkk getting impatient with me (“Not at all, not at all”). Shuttles outside will take you up to level 45. After lunch I will go into details on the example of the infinite monkey theorem, one of the most illuminating thought faults of Isolation era. Without getting ahead of myself, let me give you this one thought to ponder over lunch: how is it possible that the 21st Century mind kept repeating a question already containing it’s own answer? I will also try to give you a few ideas of the System question this poses to our own time, for remember this: T2A2S3 development is just as hard for every time. Or as the brightest of them all, Professor GW Hegel put it: ‘The Owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dawn.’

Enjoy lunch everybody, I will see you back here at 13.30 sharp.’