::: friends ::: john farris

John Farris with Hakan Turan aka Kino

CIVICS

As children we raised them, homers and tumblers
and baldies, flying them from flimsy coops
all over the city: it was a tenement thing for which we paid

ten cents a bird. Each morning the sun came up
and there was no rain nor chore to keep us from the rooftops,
we would loft enough to blacken the sky.

We made our coops from cheap white pine
and chicken wire. Our hammers made the neighborhood ring
with the sound of their construction in between

the peal of churchbells so one exhilarating afternoon,
flagged up, up from a rooftop here or there
three, four new flocks could take ragged flight, tumbling

madly over the elaboration of belfries: we
imagined them P-38s over Tokyo, spumes of thick black smoke
belching from the stacks of factories like ack-ack:

I earned my wings down at the barber's shining shoes,
delivering papers Sundays I wasn't flying, opening crates of oranges
down at the fruitstand. Sometimes combat was hand-

to-hand, bloody over the coops, our eyes shining
like plums: we settled our disputes like men.
We learned to lock up against raiders, how cats and peregrines

could take a bird, considered these while cleaning the coops,
lining them with fresh straw before heading to school
to sit dumbly through the meaning of territory,

the integrity of nations: we waited impatient as airmen
for the sound of the bell that sent us flying
back to our sentinels; our rooftops, our birds, our flags.

John Farris: That is a recent poem. I was recalling my childhood in the Bronx.. to tell the truth, i didn't have a coop. I hated animals, but all my friends had them. This was before television. Most people didn't get television till the sixties; we were poor but we had one back in the fifties. I was 12 years old, it was 1952.

Kino: Bloody hell that early, eh?

JF: My father was a gambler, went to the race track you know, and I knew when he won, because he'd come home with the loot, like a television and things like that.

Kino: Were you already writing like a madman?

JF: Well of course not, I was reading. I was pretty advanced at that, I learned to read when I was 3 years old. Better read than most of the kids. I could keep up with general culture and art because I read all the time.

Kino: When did you move to lower east side, where you still reside?

JF:That was a funny story. I was up in the ghetto, being abused by colored people, where they would shoot you, if you put your head up, you know, I managed, but that was it, that was too much for me. I wouldn't go to school because, among other things, my mom was told that if I wasn't skipped 2 grades forward I would lose interest. But my brother was 2 years ahead of me, so that if they skipped me 3 grades, I would be ahead of him. I didn't go to school much after that, but I was still interested in learning. So I said I am gonna go down there where all these poets, artist, musicians, all this stuff, I am gonna hang out.

JF: How old you at the time?

JF: I was 19.

Kino: What did literature mean to you by then?

JF: Well you know, I had read all the classics. It was still book information, and all the people I knew already had an organic relationship with writing, my relationship wasn't yet mature.

I was a babe in toyland down there on the west side. Hence, I got into trouble right away after 3 months... hanging out with people from Sheridan Square... One day a guy that I knew says to me would you pass this bag to that fellow sitting at the table with us. I did. He invited me to a party following night, so next day we went there and we are coming down Abingdon Square, stopped at the light, and all of a sudden, guns, I thought it was a robbery, but then I heard "Don't move Police!" I was glad it was the police, so they aren't gonna kill us, right. So, they took us to the precinct. Over there, I am saying it must be a mistake i haven't done anything illegal. So they said " oh yeah what's your name, Farris? " I said that's me", and they said "you are the one we want"

Kino: Really, bastards!

JF: Yes, I stayed in jail for 3 years for possession of marijuana. While I was there my mother died on my 21st birthday. When I came out of there I was really radicalized. I married a young Nigerian lady whose father had signed the first post-colonial constitution of that country... I moved out of the lower east side and up to Harlem because my mother–in–law managed a building up there. And so I said what can i do now, now that i am in Harlem, I heard on television, on the news that Malcomn x was presenting something. So, I said let me go and see what's all that about! I joined the OOAU. i.e. Organization of African–American Unity. To make a long story short, Malcom X got shot. Going out of there, I met a guy who offered me a job at the Black Arts Repertory Theatre–School. I became acquianted with all the musicians on the scene, Andrew Hill was directing the music. Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, you name it, I met them all, I used to hang out with Andrew. That's how I became acculturated. I met Harold Cruise. He was the one who really understood me. He just died, bless him. Married again. I came back down here, that would have been 1974, I was spending most of my time in Brooklyn, Clinton Hill. We would go to the The Tin Palace and listen to music - on the bowery and 2nd street. That truly was a radical scene. Stanley Crouch would be on the door. That was when I met David Murray and later Butch Morris. By then, I was surrounded by musicians.

Kino: Were you renowned as a poet yet?

JF: I was very insecure about my writing. So i didn't share it straight away just because i was writing. I did not know the nomenclature of literature. I was still basically exercising. I was trying to work out an asthetic. I was very unpopular, because I was a radical but my poetry wasn't. I would learn as much as I could. Then I would do what I wanted to do in my poetry. I was never into the beats or other currents.

Kino: At the time your life was probably more driven by the cultural activity and the people you were acquainted with?

JF: You said that right, my life was a rollercoaster.

Kino: If you look at the music for instance during the bout of 60s, it reflects the dynamics of the zeitgeist.

JF: I don't understand what you mean

Kino: I mean did you like the music

JF: Oh yeah. I liked jazz from the time I was a small kid. Swing and stuff. The music at the time was very different. Archie Shepp and sruff like that. I started hanging out with Sun Ra in particular.

Kino: Is that how you met Juini?

JF: I met Juini downtown, he was playing with everybody famous down at Slug's. I just used see him there and other clubs.

Kino: When were you convinced that your poetry was mature enough to share with other people?

JF: Curiously enough, I didn't feel ready for sometime. When asked I would say I was trying to write poetry. Steve Cannon from Tribes [a foundation for arts on the Lower East Side] initiated my first reading. And people, much like today, if you had enough conviction in what you are doing, they won't question what you are doing. I was nervous mainly. I had to stay in the wilderness and recreate my whole life. I started writing cultural criticism. I wrote novels, plays... you name it.

Kino: John, I wanna go back to the music theme. It's often mentioned around here that you are a great musician without an instrument, and musicians do care a great deal about your opinion of their craft.

JF: Yeah you know I evolved into a critic. But criticism takes a superior position, you have to be careful with that.
Kino: Coming from the riches of 60s and 70s, and you are still surrounded by musicians... What is different?

JF: You have to realize that this ain't the sixties. Even then it was the "end of jazz" of what I knew of jazz, it certainly wasn't Louis Armstrong, wasn't bebop anymore, hard-bob, the music that was evolving was avant garde jazz; Ornette Coleman had the belt, it was the shape of jazz to come. In another words, I came in at the end of what had begun at the beginning of the century and what began evolving to what's going on now. The people on the scene were doing something entirely different. Now I can sense that it's the beginning of something new.

Kino: Are you suprised that drums gained this much of importance?

JF: I really like the bass, I have always been impartial to bass holding the rythmn. Yeah, what shocks me is, never in my life would I have imagined drums played thru the computer. I still have to get used to that.

Kino: doesn't that lock the music in a quite limited space?

JF: I know electronic music and it has an inherent problem. I mean though you can change frequencies with, most of the stuff now, you know, the frequencies won't allow certain dynamics, which causes a loss of emotional content. Emotional content is mostly missing.

Kino: Also the loss of the role of the bass.. because, electronic beat oriented drums occupy the spectrum of bass frequencies as well. Movement is locked to a rigid groove and the feeling suffers from that.

JF: Yes, absolutely.

Kino: Nublu is supposedly a place where music emerges out of a community, jazz musicians or people who embrace improvisation in their music shift towards electronic trends and make music together with their different influences. Does this environment feel similar to your scene in the sixties.

JF: [dodges the question] It gets rid of the blues. it's knocked out right away. It used to be, if you didn't know blues, you couldn't play jazz. So the loss of the blues really effects the music. Ornette Coleman was still a great blues man, even though his music didn't advertise.

Kino: What are your inspirations? [poetry]

JF: I was influenced earlier on, by e.e. cummings, rather than the rest of them. I read T.S. Elliot, Ezra Pound, the Russians, anybody translated into English which was a drawback right there. Of course I read all the South Americans under the same conditions. I am, as a poet, I suppose a lyric poet, but the truth is, I never approached literature as a career.

Kino: That's what distincts you as a true poet.

JF: I am more published in criticism, or my collaborations with other artists; David Hammons, Andrew Castrucci... That might be because I never had an agent.

Kino: There is lots of humor in your writing.

JF: Humor saves the day. I like whimsical stuff, that's why i liked e.e. cummings.

Kino: How did you end up in Nublu?

JF: Juini Booth brought me here. We had a gig at the Bowery Poetry Club together. So we came down. That was 3 years ago. And I have to say, God Bless Ilhan and the Turks. I imagine the Ottoman Empire was a very nice place, that's why the West didn't like them.

Kino: What are you gonna do tonight?

JF: Oh, I'll finish my drink and go home to get on with the press release!

Kino: For what?

JF: Nublu. Can you imagine... I became a pr agent for Nublu!.

Summer 2005, Nublu NYC

more of John Farris's poetry:

SOPHISTRY

“Money don’t have teeth like this,” I said dryly,
clearly articulating the words so my partials would slip,
allowing him to see for himself the lonely maxillary
incisor, the critical mandibular bicuspid
propped precariously up by the few remaining molars
after he had shown me the gun: “Wow,” he said

hesitating, adding the word ‘pop’ as though I might have
been his father – “yo – how’d that happen to you – yo?”
He lowered the gun pityingly as I told him, suspending
his disbelief, how life can come after you sometimes

faster than a bullet. “Pop,” he said, “you should
have been a poet – you should write that
down, so the next time we meet
I can make some cash.” I had to laugh how
some people never get it; not a sou, never.

SIX HAIKU

glorious weekend
she drifts into his embrace
brief dance of mayflies

sun bright at your back
tugs your face into shadow
tightening my throat

as if prearranged
proposed singularity
could be the mayfly

plotting our meeting
central park at crepuscule
avoid the midges

insect interlude
bodies slender as needles
winged iridescence

o mayfly mayday
philharmonic orchestra:
“Death and the Maiden”


					Brazilian Girls Butch Norris Chantal Ughi Charles Stella Clark Gayton Dj Hardedge DJ Renochild Eddie Henderson ElodieO Erik Truffaz Jochen Rueckert John Farris Juini Booth Karina Zeviani Kenny Wollesen Malik Burke Marla Turner Martin Ogolter Petar Santiago U-roy	John Farris with Hakan Turan aka Kino CIVICS As children we raised them, homers and tumblers and baldies, flying them from flimsy coops all over the city: it was a tenement thing for which we paid ten cents a bird. Each morning the sun came up and there was no rain nor chore to keep us from the rooftops, we would loft enough to blacken the sky. We made our coops from cheap white pine and chicken wire. Our hammers made the neighborhood ring with the sound of their construction in between the peal of churchbells so one exhilarating afternoon, flagged up, up from a rooftop here or there three, four new flocks could take ragged flight, tumbling madly over the elaboration of belfries: we imagined them P-38s over Tokyo, spumes of thick black smoke belching from the stacks of factories like ack-ack: I earned my wings down at the barber's shining shoes, delivering papers Sundays I wasn't flying, opening crates of oranges down at the fruitstand. Sometimes combat was hand- to-hand, bloody over the coops, our eyes shining like plums: we settled our disputes like men. We learned to lock up against raiders, how cats and peregrines could take a bird, considered these while cleaning the coops, lining them with fresh straw before heading to school to sit dumbly through the meaning of territory, the integrity of nations: we waited impatient as airmen for the sound of the bell that sent us flying back to our sentinels; our rooftops, our birds, our flags. John Farris: That is a recent poem. I was recalling my childhood in the Bronx.. to tell the truth, i didn't have a coop. I hated animals, but all my friends had them. This was before television. Most people didn't get television till the sixties; we were poor but we had one back in the fifties. I was 12 years old, it was 1952. Kino: Bloody hell that early, eh? JF: My father was a gambler, went to the race track you know, and I knew when he won, because he'd come home with the loot, like a television and things like that. Kino: Were you already writing like a madman? JF: Well of course not, I was reading. I was pretty advanced at that, I learned to read when I was 3 years old. Better read than most of the kids. I could keep up with general culture and art because I read all the time. Kino: When did you move to lower east side, where you still reside? JF:That was a funny story. I was up in the ghetto, being abused by colored people, where they would shoot you, if you put your head up, you know, I managed, but that was it, that was too much for me. I wouldn't go to school because, among other things, my mom was told that if I wasn't skipped 2 grades forward I would lose interest. But my brother was 2 years ahead of me, so that if they skipped me 3 grades, I would be ahead of him. I didn't go to school much after that, but I was still interested in learning. So I said I am gonna go down there where all these poets, artist, musicians, all this stuff, I am gonna hang out. JF: How old you at the time? JF: I was 19. Kino: What did literature mean to you by then? JF: Well you know, I had read all the classics. It was still book information, and all the people I knew already had an organic relationship with writing, my relationship wasn't yet mature. I was a babe in toyland down there on the west side. Hence, I got into trouble right away after 3 months... hanging out with people from Sheridan Square... One day a guy that I knew says to me would you pass this bag to that fellow sitting at the table with us. I did. He invited me to a party following night, so next day we went there and we are coming down Abingdon Square, stopped at the light, and all of a sudden, guns, I thought it was a robbery, but then I heard "Don't move Police!" I was glad it was the police, so they aren't gonna kill us, right. So, they took us to the precinct. Over there, I am saying it must be a mistake i haven't done anything illegal. So they said " oh yeah what's your name, Farris? " I said that's me", and they said "you are the one we want" Kino: Really, bastards! JF: Yes, I stayed in jail for 3 years for possession of marijuana. While I was there my mother died on my 21st birthday. When I came out of there I was really radicalized. I married a young Nigerian lady whose father had signed the first post-colonial constitution of that country... I moved out of the lower east side and up to Harlem because my mother–in–law managed a building up there. And so I said what can i do now, now that i am in Harlem, I heard on television, on the news that Malcomn x was presenting something. So, I said let me go and see what's all that about! I joined the OOAU. i.e. Organization of African–American Unity. To make a long story short, Malcom X got shot. Going out of there, I met a guy who offered me a job at the Black Arts Repertory Theatre–School. I became acquianted with all the musicians on the scene, Andrew Hill was directing the music. Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, you name it, I met them all, I used to hang out with Andrew. That's how I became acculturated. I met Harold Cruise. He was the one who really understood me. He just died, bless him. Married again. I came back down here, that would have been 1974, I was spending most of my time in Brooklyn, Clinton Hill. We would go to the The Tin Palace and listen to music - on the bowery and 2nd street. That truly was a radical scene. Stanley Crouch would be on the door. That was when I met David Murray and later Butch Morris. By then, I was surrounded by musicians. Kino: Were you renowned as a poet yet? JF: I was very insecure about my writing. So i didn't share it straight away just because i was writing. I did not know the nomenclature of literature. I was still basically exercising. I was trying to work out an asthetic. I was very unpopular, because I was a radical but my poetry wasn't. I would learn as much as I could. Then I would do what I wanted to do in my poetry. I was never into the beats or other currents. Kino: At the time your life was probably more driven by the cultural activity and the people you were acquainted with? JF: You said that right, my life was a rollercoaster. Kino: If you look at the music for instance during the bout of 60s, it reflects the dynamics of the zeitgeist. JF: I don't understand what you mean Kino: I mean did you like the music JF: Oh yeah. I liked jazz from the time I was a small kid. Swing and stuff. The music at the time was very different. Archie Shepp and sruff like that. I started hanging out with Sun Ra in particular. Kino: Is that how you met Juini? JF: I met Juini downtown, he was playing with everybody famous down at Slug's. I just used see him there and other clubs. Kino: When were you convinced that your poetry was mature enough to share with other people? JF: Curiously enough, I didn't feel ready for sometime. When asked I would say I was trying to write poetry. Steve Cannon from Tribes [a foundation for arts on the Lower East Side] initiated my first reading. And people, much like today, if you had enough conviction in what you are doing, they won't question what you are doing. I was nervous mainly. I had to stay in the wilderness and recreate my whole life. I started writing cultural criticism. I wrote novels, plays... you name it. Kino: John, I wanna go back to the music theme. It's often mentioned around here that you are a great musician without an instrument, and musicians do care a great deal about your opinion of their craft. JF: Yeah you know I evolved into a critic. But criticism takes a superior position, you have to be careful with that. Kino: Coming from the riches of 60s and 70s, and you are still surrounded by musicians... What is different? JF: You have to realize that this ain't the sixties. Even then it was the "end of jazz" of what I knew of jazz, it certainly wasn't Louis Armstrong, wasn't bebop anymore, hard-bob, the music that was evolving was avant garde jazz; Ornette Coleman had the belt, it was the shape of jazz to come. In another words, I came in at the end of what had begun at the beginning of the century and what began evolving to what's going on now. The people on the scene were doing something entirely different. Now I can sense that it's the beginning of something new. Kino: Are you suprised that drums gained this much of importance? JF: I really like the bass, I have always been impartial to bass holding the rythmn. Yeah, what shocks me is, never in my life would I have imagined drums played thru the computer. I still have to get used to that. Kino: doesn't that lock the music in a quite limited space? JF: I know electronic music and it has an inherent problem. I mean though you can change frequencies with, most of the stuff now, you know, the frequencies won't allow certain dynamics, which causes a loss of emotional content. Emotional content is mostly missing. Kino: Also the loss of the role of the bass.. because, electronic beat oriented drums occupy the spectrum of bass frequencies as well. Movement is locked to a rigid groove and the feeling suffers from that. JF: Yes, absolutely. Kino: Nublu is supposedly a place where music emerges out of a community, jazz musicians or people who embrace improvisation in their music shift towards electronic trends and make music together with their different influences. Does this environment feel similar to your scene in the sixties. JF: [dodges the question] It gets rid of the blues. it's knocked out right away. It used to be, if you didn't know blues, you couldn't play jazz. So the loss of the blues really effects the music. Ornette Coleman was still a great blues man, even though his music didn't advertise. Kino: What are your inspirations? [poetry] JF: I was influenced earlier on, by e.e. cummings, rather than the rest of them. I read T.S. Elliot, Ezra Pound, the Russians, anybody translated into English which was a drawback right there. Of course I read all the South Americans under the same conditions. I am, as a poet, I suppose a lyric poet, but the truth is, I never approached literature as a career. Kino: That's what distincts you as a true poet. JF: I am more published in criticism, or my collaborations with other artists; David Hammons, Andrew Castrucci... That might be because I never had an agent. Kino: There is lots of humor in your writing. JF: Humor saves the day. I like whimsical stuff, that's why i liked e.e. cummings. Kino: How did you end up in Nublu? JF: Juini Booth brought me here. We had a gig at the Bowery Poetry Club together. So we came down. That was 3 years ago. And I have to say, God Bless Ilhan and the Turks. I imagine the Ottoman Empire was a very nice place, that's why the West didn't like them. Kino: What are you gonna do tonight? JF: Oh, I'll finish my drink and go home to get on with the press release! Kino: For what? JF: Nublu. Can you imagine... I became a pr agent for Nublu!. Summer 2005, Nublu NYC more of John Farris's poetry: SOPHISTRY “Money don’t have teeth like this,” I said dryly, clearly articulating the words so my partials would slip, allowing him to see for himself the lonely maxillary incisor, the critical mandibular bicuspid propped precariously up by the few remaining molars after he had shown me the gun: “Wow,” he said hesitating, adding the word ‘pop’ as though I might have been his father – “yo – how’d that happen to you – yo?” He lowered the gun pityingly as I told him, suspending his disbelief, how life can come after you sometimes faster than a bullet. “Pop,” he said, “you should have been a poet – you should write that down, so the next time we meet I can make some cash.” I had to laugh how some people never get it; not a sou, never. SIX HAIKU glorious weekend she drifts into his embrace brief dance of mayflies sun bright at your back tugs your face into shadow tightening my throat as if prearranged proposed singularity could be the mayfly plotting our meeting central park at crepuscule avoid the midges insect interlude bodies slender as needles winged iridescence o mayfly mayday philharmonic orchestra: “Death and the Maiden”