Unruly Tree
Poems
The cryptic prompts—fragments, really—of Brian Eno’s and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies unveiled themselves to Leslie Ullman as rough translations from an obscure language. As an experiment, Ullman used each one as a poem title, and in doing so she accessed a thrill of freedom, uncertainty, and propulsion beyond her own familiar patterns and landscapes. In the process, she found herself exploring the literary, visual, and musical arts from angles that had never occurred to her before.
Unruly Tree showcases the most successful of Ullman’s play, and the result is a marvelous work by a poet at the height of her craft. At its heart this book is about process itself—even when it applies to experiences outside the arts—and about reclaiming an inner freedom many of us lose in our lives as adults in these noisy, rancorous times.
“Unruly Tree is a joyful, searching book that pursues questions about the world of creativity and play. In conversation with the Oblique Strategies—a deck of cards created in 1975 by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt—Ullman’s collection is filled with curiosity, a desire to understand the thinking of other artists, and the beautiful uncertainties of the self.”—Jehanne Dubrow, author of Exhibitions: Essays on Art and Atrocity
“Because there is no shrugging off ‘the weight and shame / of being human,’ the gift that Leslie Ullman’s Unruly Tree offers is precious, as over and over its poems ‘glimpse / something diamond pure / for a moment in ourselves.’”—Harvey L. Hix, author of The Gospel According to H. L. Hix
Leslie Ullman is the author of several books of poetry and nonfiction, including Progress on the Subject of Immensity (UNM Press) and Little Soul and the Selves.
Preface
Prologue: Just carry on
Part I. Floating Time
Listen in total darkness or in a very large room, very quietly
Go slowly all the way around the outside
Are there sections? Consider transitions
Turn it upside down
Define an area as “safe” and use it as anchor
You are an engineer
What mistakes did you make last time?
Disconnect from desire
Ghost echoes
Left channel, right channel, centre channel
Only one element of each kind
Do we need holes?
Honor thy error as hidden intention
You can only make one dot at a time
Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them
Is the tuning appropriate?
Take away the elements in order of apparent nonimportance
Give the game away
Use fewer notes
Part II. Left-Hand Time
Abandon normal instruments
Imagine the music as a chain of disconnected events
Use an unacceptable color
Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list
Twist the spine
Into the impossible
Accept advice
Simple subtraction
Mechanicalize something idiosyncratic
Consult other sources: promising, unpromising
Ask people to work against their better judgment
Accretion
Don’t be frightened to display your talents
Repetition is a form of change
A line has two sides
Change instrument roles
Lowest common denominator check: single beat, single note, single riff
Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame
Cascades
Use an old idea
Is it finished?
Part III. Back-Beat Time
Do nothing for as long as possible
Faced with a choice, do both
Give way to your worst impulse
Spectrum analysis
The inconsistency principle
Listen to the quiet voice
Fill every beat with something
What would your closest friend do?
Infinitesimal gradations
Don’t be afraid of things because they’re easy to do
Use filters
Humanize something free of error
Get your neck massaged
Look at a very small object, look at its centre
Think of the radio
Water
Mute and continue
Emphasize differences
Consider different fading systems
Work at a different speed
Acknowledgments
