Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Voodoo Computers--Keith Bucholtz Visuals & David Chirot

The text here is from a letter posted to the Poetics E-list--apparently a "Nigerian Letter" had showed up there & at the addresses of many contacts of mine who are on that list and contacts list. In the"Letter" sent to the bewildered receivers, "David Chirot" was stranded in Africa, having been robbed of all his money while on the way to work for an educational/aid group for children. Not only that, but "David Chirot" was also very very ill and for medicines and daily survival alone he was asking for some help (financial, etc etc) from his friends and fellow workers.

Ironically, I was at the doctor's that day having been actually very ill for a week, the first of four--and when I returned, I was amazed to find a huge number of emails on the E-list asking about me and if this was a true, or a fake letter, etc Apparently many people took it for being "true" until more responders brought up the possibility of the "Letter" scam.

What was very strange was that except for a few tiny notes which I didn't see at first in the flood of messages to the group, was a direct address to myself to enquire how "I" was and where "I" was.
What was amazing was how suddenly "David Chirot" vanished or split into various identities, dispersed among the herds and hordes of letters which had taken full flight and become ongoing discussion lasting a period of days re "David Chirot" and what the scam was and how it worked, and this in turn opened into an argument over the derogatory connotations and associations of its being called a "Nigerian Letter" no matter where it came from.

After a certain paroxysm had been reached in the discussions of the connotations of the names for the Letter in its incredibly prolific variations and approaches to the problem at hand (obtaining money), there bega nthat drifting away of a once heated topic of conversation whcih precdes the calm of its cessation, leaving it finally to drift aimlessly or be trappedin the dread embrace of the Doldrums.

I had nearly forgotten all this and the letter which is reproduced here, when out of the blue these fanatstic images arrived from Keith, whcih understand and show and take off from the underground meanings and allusions, voices,whsipers, movements which are alive in the writing and lead them into entirely Other and new wild dimensions.

It stuns me still to see these figures moving among the machines, not "the ghost in the machine" of a classic book of another era--but li8ving dead beings, the Zombies which wlak among us and may be ourselves also at times or perhaps permanently without our knowing--

I thank Keith very deeply for the great voyage he has set these beings on, emerging into their now seen Beings from the hidden lives in the writing.




















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