Subtitled: Set Meter or Category Meter?
Categories are aesthetically imperative. Distinguishing one thing from another thing is a typical endeavor of conscious entities, and I sometimes think this is why Robert Ashley was so adamant about his work being referred to as opera, even though it didn’t strike all that many people as that on first glance. You could argue we’ve become a little too complacent when it comes to categories, that we don’t rigorously define categories in aesthetics as much as we used to. To Ashley, for example, his work was a fusion of text and music, in long form, so it was opera. In his words, there was nothing else you could call it. I’ve similarly struggled with category, because you’re always tempted to re-categorize things, usually in ways that are critically or commercially advantageous to your work. No one wants to write poems anymore just like, for a time, no one in American wanted anything to do with opera. You can’t pitch a poem to a literary agent. It’s a genre with basically no commercial value left in it whatsoever.
As a side note, categorically, it seems like poetry should be: a text that adheres to some fixed sequence of sound patterns? Otherwise, what would poetry be? Is it just line breaks? No, that’s absurd, because if poetry is defined by having line breaks, then its qualitatively indistinguishable from prose. An enter key can’t define a literary genre. When poetry exits its natural metrical iterations it perhaps loses sight of its proper definition. If we agree that an enter key can’t define a literary genre, then poetry, if defined by line breaks and not metrical structure - or by feeling or other nebulous attributes that could very easily also be attributable to prose - isn’t a literary genre. It seems obvious that what primarily distinguishes prose from poetry is the former is not measured temporally, while the latter, by some method or another, is. Sans this measurement it becomes a nonsensical category, and I’d offer the possibility that the “serious poet” has continued to decline in relevance in Western culture in congruence with this unfortunate categorical restructuring of poetry. Poetry used to be the highest form of literature, held in the same royal esteem as philosophy. Philosophy was even at times chiefly expressed through poetry. Do people not yearn for poetry anymore? The popularity of rap music could suggest otherwise.
In fact it was on pocket notepads in retail parking lots that I first started developing a new meter - I was listening to my cherished CDs of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2 and Supreme Clientele, intensely studying the intricacies of Raekwon and Ghostface’s language, how at times they would use the absolute bare minimum micro-repetitions to vault their narrative lines forward. It struck me as a genius use of language - a pushing forward of rhyme schemes, to the point where at times they were no longer strictly rhyming at all, where they weren’t defining themselves by line length or end-rhymes, but by a machine-gun like dispersion of very small symmetries. Big Pun used a more ostentatious but similarly subterranean style on Capital Punishment. Those three really put the bug in my head about developing forward-looking meters, about measuring the tiniest possible symmetries in a line - not Ashbery or Pound or Eliot or Tate or WCW or Whitman or Ginsberg or Stein. And then it was studying Ashley’s operas that moved me to formalize that type of structure more mathematically, to make it categorical in a sense.
So then a movement toward making poetry metrical again doesn’t have to ipso facto reintroduce iambic pentameter. Poetry doesn’t need to go back to classical meters to adhere to a meter. A fixed sequence can be an extensive quantification, but it can also be intensive. You could count syllables. You could established fixed patterns. But you could develop quotients as well. You could establish a fixed range for these quotients. The sequence would then be variable in a way, but fixed as well. Wouldn’t that be metrical as well? Wouldn’t that be a text adhering to some fixed sequence of sound patterns?
The idea that came to me further in stages, usually while I was sleeping or in a waking state, was developing what I now call an echo quotient. A quantification of the aggregate symmetry in a line or a poem. An echo being an instance of symmetry. Symmetry being an instrument of acceleration. Acceleration being a key to breaking through things.
There’s a binary of stressed and unstressed, but there’s also a binary of the symmetric and the asymmetric.
There’s Set Theory where each mathematical object is defined by its interior (stressed-unstressed, stress-unstressed). There’s Category Theory where each mathematical object is defined by how its overall value relates to surrounding objects (the first line is 72.4% symmetrical (echoes/syllables), while the second line is 69.3%, and the third is 70.4%: all three lines fall within a range of .667-1.00).
You could reasonably argue that not everything has to be strictly about counting.
Ex:
Line 1: ()(--) ()(--) ()(--) ()(--) ()(--) - unstressed/stressed - iambic pentameter
Line 2: (-) (-) (--)(--) ()(-) (-)() (--)() - symmetric/asymmetric - macrotonal
() = syllable
-- = stressed/symmetric
- = partially symmetric
The two lines are iambically divergent but macrotonally equal
i.e. A line in iambic pentameter has a stress quotient of 0.50. The macrotonal line above has an equal echo quotient of 0.50
But the above are only preliminary examples. Really, what this meter is - is a macrotonal meter, and by that I mean it’s focused on the two things: (a) the extension of the line, and (b) the line’s relation with itself.
An extended line that’s measured in relation to itself - then that measurement relates to the other lines of the poem.
The line must be severely extended! In The Madness of a Cloud, the initial poem has a mean line length of 375 syllables, while the epilogue has a MLL of 144 syllables. The lines are even longer in Metropolis + Isosceles. You extend the line so it has more of an opportunity to relate with itself, to loop back and thrust itself forward - the line relates to itself via a scattered symmetry of sound - it’s basically, in rap terms, a long internal rhyme scheme in the service of a narrative thrust, but the scheme, rather than A-B-A-B-C-B-C is denoted by a quotient. How many instances of echoes are in the line in relation to its total syllable count.
Echoes divided by syllables equals echo quotient equals macrotonal value. That’s how the line is defined, and that’s how it relates to the other lines in the poem. The echo quotient.
The meter, strictly speaking, is then this shared range. In the case of (a) Adam Metropolis, (b) Larry Isosceles, and (c) The Madness of a Cloud, to take three examples, the meter is >.667. So each line’s symmetrical relationship with itself is greater than two-thirds - or: there are 67 or more echoes (internal “rhymes”) for every 100 syllables. The symmetrical relationship each line has with itself is in the final third of the number One.
Symmetry accelerates. Another tenet of Ashley’s work in opera was his assertion that the English language needed to be accelerated, that due to the higher concentration of consonants, due to the more wide array of discrete phonetic sounds, that English couldn’t be slowed down to the same degree as the Romantic languages.
Ex:
Eros is a Gateway
Line 01 (Initial Edit)
Cloud was [f][i]ne [w]ith [w]h[a]tever Ti[f]a [w][a]nted to [s][a]y to him (“I al[w][a]ys [w][a]nt you to [s]peak your m[i]nd!”), [b]ut he just [w][a]sn’t going to [b]ack off his [w]ell-[d]eveloped (in his m[i]nd) [i][d]ea [th]at [th]e [i]n[s][t]itution [i]t[s]elf (as a [c]on[c]ept) was fundamentally [r]e[s]t[r][i][c]t[i]ve, [th]at [th]ey shouldn’t ne[c]e[s]s[ar]ily [c][ar]e what’s in the [c]ontainer (“[C]atego[r][y] theo[r][y]!”), but al[s][o] that e[r][o][s] [w]as a g[a]te[w][a]y. Ti[f]a just wasn’t sure th[a]t doing [th][a]t in the bar, [a][f]ter hours - she [d]i[d]n’t kn[o]w, was that ap[p][r][o][p][r]iate, Cloud?
Echoes: 76
Cloud was fine with whatever Tifa wanted to say to him (“I always want you to speak your mind!”), but he just wasn’t going to back off his well-developed (in his mind) idea that the institution itself (as a concept) was fundamentally restrictive, that they shouldn’t necessarily care what’s in the container (“Category theory!”), but also that eros was a gateway. Tifa just wasn’t sure that doing that in the bar, after hours - she didn’t know, was that appropriate, Cloud?
Syllables: 124
Quotient: .612903
Line 01 (Revised Edit)
Cloud was [f]or sure [f][i]ne [w]ith [w]h[a]tever Ti[f]a [w][a]nted to [s][a]y to him (“I al[w][a]ys [w][a]nt you to [s]peak your m[i]nd!”), [b]ut he just [w][a]sn’t going to [b]ack off his [w]ell-[d]eveloped (in his m[i]nd) [i][d]ea [th]at [th]e [i]n[s][t]itution [i]t[s]elf (as a [c]on[c]ept) was ba[s]i[c]ally [r]e[s]t[r][i][c]t[i]ve, [th]at [th]ey shouldn’t ne[c]e[s]s[ar]ily [c][ar]e what’s th[e][r]e in the [c]ontainer (“[C]atego[r][y] theo[r][y]!”), but al[s][o] that e[r][o][s] [w]as a g[a]te[w][a]y. Ti[f]a ju[s]t wasn’t [c]ertain th[a]t e[n]gaging i[n] [th][a]t in the bar, [a][f]ter hours - she [d]i[d]n’t kn[o]w, was th[a]t [a][c]tual[l]y ap[p][r][o][p][r]iate, [C][l]oud?
Echoes: 91
Cloud was for sure fine with whatever Tifa wanted to say to him (“I always want you to speak your mind!”), but he just wasn’t going to back off his well-developed (in his mind) idea that the institution itself (as a concept) was basically restrictive, that they shouldn’t necessarily care what’s there in the container (“Category theory!”), but also that eros was a gateway. Tifa just wasn’t certain that engaging in that in the bar, after hours - she didn’t know, was that actually appropriate, Cloud?
Syllables: 133
Quotient: .684211
Line 02 (Initial Edit)
[E]ven if sh[e] wan[t]ed [t]o [d]o [i]t! [I]n the [b]ar?! Sure, C[l]oud total[l]y un[d]er[s]tood, [b]ut, again - ju[s]t to [r]eite[r][a]te - e[r]os was a g[a]tew[a]y. [I]t [d][i][d]n’t have to [b]e a[b]out, you know, purely that. [W]hat? - [w]as [T]ifa now going to a[l]low herself to [b][e] [t]y[r]annical[l][y] [r]e[s]t[r]ained [b]y the [i]n[s]t[i]tutio[n]al [n]orms of Shin[r]a, et al? That’s how she was going to [l]ive her [l]ife? - by the [r]ules of [Sh]in[r]a? [Sh]e could [p]op that [p]ussy [w]ide o[p]en [w]henever she [w]an[t]ed [t]o! - if sh[e] r[e]all[y] [w]an[t]ed [t]o, ev[e]n [i]f [i]t was ju[s]t [s]u[p]er [q]u[i][c]kly! ([W]hat [w]as the tem[p]e[r]ature in the [r]oom?)
Echoes: 80
Even if she wanted to do it! In the bar?! Sure, Cloud totally understood, but, again - just to reiterate - eros was a gateway. It didn’t have to be about, you know, purely that. What? - was Tifa now going to allow herself to be tyrannically restrained by the institutional norms of Shinra, et al? That’s how she was going to live her life? - by the rules of Shinra? She could pop that pussy wide open whenever she wanted to! - if she really wanted to, even if it was just super quickly! (What was the temperature in the room?)
Syllables: 141
Quotient: .567376
Line 02 (Revised Edit)
[E]v[e]n [i]f sh[e] wan[t]ed [t]o [d]o [i]t! [I]n the [b]ar?! Of [c]our[s]e, [C][l]oud total[l]y un[d]er[s]tood, [b]ut, again - ju[s]t to [r]eite[r][a]te - e[r]os was a g[a]tew[a]y. [I]t [d][i][d]n’t have to [b]e a[b]out, you know, purely that. [W]hat? - [w]as [T]i[f]a [n]ow gon[n][a] [a][l]low her[s]el[f] to [b][e] [t]y[r]an[n]ical[l][y] [r]e[s]t[r]ained [b]y the [i]n[s]t[i]tutio[n]al [n]orms of Shin[r]a, et al? [W]as that [n][ow] h[ow] she [w]as go[n]na [l]ive her [l]ife? - by the [c]ontem[p]uous [r]ules of [Sh]in[r]a? [Sh]e [c]ould [p]op that [p]ussy [w]ide o[p]en [w]henever she [w]an[t]ed [t]o! - if sh[e] r[e]all[y] [w]an[t]ed [t]o, ev[e]n [i]f [i]t was ju[s]t [s]u[p]er [q]u[i][c]k[l][y]! ([W]hat exa[c]t[l][y] [w]as the tem[p]e[r]ature in the [r]oom?)
Echoes: 107
Even if she wanted to do it! In the bar?! Of course, Cloud totally understood, but, again - just to reiterate - eros was a gateway. It didn’t have to be about, you know, purely that. What? - was Tifa now gonna allow herself to be tyrannically restrained by the institutional norms of Shinra, et al? Was that now how she was gonna live her life? - by the contemptuous rules of Shinra? She could pop that pussy wide open whenever she wanted to! - if she really wanted to, even if it was just super quickly! (What exactly was the temperature in the room?)
Syllables: 149
Quotient: .718121