Commentaries on Bob Cobbing - The Argotist Online

The working order of pages changed constantly while the number of pages in all slowly built, to
fluctuate towards the end of the entire process.
Order of composition, order of responsive composition and place in the book are all different. The
spatial context for each page was different.
And then, when the book was finished, a few pages were performed at its launch; and then the two
moved on. That is how Cobbing and I behaved separately, with a few poems being revisited; and
the two of us together reinforced that behaviour. (In the case of D.A.N. we were much more
thorough in our performance coverage.)
Some of this has been said previously in an essay called ‘Hot Mazing on Time’, from 2004, which
you will find on the web in Pores 3. As well as this book, it deals with performing with Cobbing,
particularly his book Members Only.
I should say, in case anyone has read my talk ‘Collaboration, Not Just Cooperation’ given at the
University of Surrey in November 2009, you might be confused about my use of “cooperation” and
its comparison with “collaboration” in that essay as opposed to my usage in ‘Hot Mazing on Time’.
My ideas have changed and, when I was writing the talk for Surrey, I forgot that I had said
something different but using the same words in 2004 for Birkbeck, University of London. That is,
I knew that I was changing my usage but had forgotten that I had gone into print using the old
idea. I am hopeful that is something I shall clarify in the forthcoming Lab Book, due for publication
in 2011.
I was and am inclined to say that Collaborations for Peter Finch is my favourite work with
Cobbing. I think there’s a lot going on there. I think we were breaking new ground. That may well
be true of the other works; but, I suggest, you get a lot in a few pages here!
I am still deeply pleased with and somewhat proud of D.A.N., but there is something of Moby Dick’s
expansiveness about it! That is both a strength and a weakness.
In Collaborations, our sourcing from pop imagery of the time, in some places, may be more
apparent now. (One is aware of that sort of source in the images from Cobbing’s With our Tongue
Our Drils and Quadras from 2001, which Writers Forum republished a few weeks ago; but, in both
cases, I think the re-use of that imagery survives the original’s inevitable datedness.
As a performance text, it is somewhat problematic in that it is written by both of us for both of us
to perform. And now one of us is dead.
I have thought of proposing pages as performable with John Drever, as if he and I had anywhere
near enough time to make the pieces we already want to make. At present, however, the vocal
source is me; and I do not feel that one of the original readers with his voice treated by another
artist quite makes up for the absence. I need to think more. It’s a pity Peter Finch and I don’t live
nearer to each other.