Stochastic Intimacy (this is a spoken word piece so click to hear it read)
for Hypatia “Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.”
Blind caches of probability theory
hide in undercrofts
seducing non-deterministic variables
counteracting an unfairly weighted die
chance involves the randomness of specificity
slot machine spins
love is a weak convergence theory
requiring proof.
She’s dancing round helical truths.
Dependence will tend to be distributed
according to one of a small number of
attractor elements
diverging within the limits
approaching infinity
caressing asymptotic density convolutions
sexual creativity plays with game theory.
She chooses.
Variable ratio schedule of reinforcement
insures she keeps pulling the handle
appetite for stimulus drives the euphoria
highest rate of response
scientifically guaranteed
heightens the anticipation
of winning the whole show.
Figuring the chances of hitting the jackpot.
Ars Conjectandi! a bold conjecture
gene expressions in the roulette
of ubiquitous computing
predictable actions rouse random elements
probability theory spirals stochastic intimacies
astounds glistening ambient intelligence.
Equations inscribed by electric flickering tongues arouse.
Friction exerts its force
upon blooming lacunary trigonometric series
stimulating the total variation distance
pairwise independence won’t correlate
these atoms gotta smash up
to go supernova baby.
Each move she makes changes the board.
Multivariate Gaussian polytopes
nest in orthogonal matrices
central limit theorem initiates chain reactions
hydrogen bomb’s gonna blow
overcoming electrostatic repulsion
in a nuclear fusion transmutation.
Mathematics sighs and roars, she’s never been seduced by a poet before.
Chromapoetica 
Anna..well I find I have too much to say, so I ask, in advance, for your patience, it will all no doubt tumble out, a rambling stream…hopefully at least only as white noise…so firstly, a general point, I have thus far neglected to mention: I really appreciate your innovative use of scientific, technical language as a force in your poetry. It works, fundamentally expressing the creative power of scientific thought. Having been a maths/chemistry ‘freak’ until final decisions just had to made, (the divergent quest won by a sliver) and philosophy, then ultimately psychology ‘said look at me’ I still do have the fetish, especially for equations, shoot me now!!! I do believe, as I’ve grown up somewhat since that decision, that science at the highest level, is the most creative act there is. I know I have mentioned that before, but it bears repeating, as it seems to me, to just be a fundamentally neglected concept in the collective ‘psyche’.
So, I really love what you have done here, it was wonderful just to listen, initially a little daunting ‘where are the visual symbols to hold onto!!’, but I think it’s a great idea to just put it out there, just as it is, no explanations, nothing…I hasten to add I really enjoy your references, historical footnotes. However, It meant I really listened, and not just to the sound but to the thought, trying to divine your meaning/s…and took note of constructions that inspired. I found the experience engaging, and intellectually stimulating.
So: to your poem, Hypatia is a personal heroine, and a historical metaphor really for the fate of many women who reach beyond, her end is just so poignant and terrible (let alone the destruction of the library) – by the way, just in case, there is a film ‘Agora’ – worth seeing, great score too)
Anyway, the lines that hit me :
‘love is a weak convergence theory requiring proof’ (indeed)
‘randomness of specificity’ (love this tension/paradoxical)
‘diverging within the limits approaching infinity’ (love the paradox I see)
‘slot machine spins’ (great visual metaphor on chance)
‘sexual creativity plays with game theory’ (just love this!)
‘appetite for stimulus drives the euphoria’ (this sums up a whole element of human existence!!!)
‘gene expressions in the roulette of ubiquitous computing’ (great subject interweaving – may actually happen one day – biomechanical robots?)
‘Equations electric flickering tongues arouse’ (just something darkly sensual about this – online meetings?)
‘astound glistening ambient intelligence’ (double meanings?)
and the end
‘mathematics sighs and roars, she’s never been seduced by a poet before’ (leading assumption she is a scientist or logic creature, but perhaps she is a poet too)
Ok…so I gathered, saw, felt, two top level meanings, which may or may not be what you intended:
a very real reflection of the mathematics, variables, factors, in the random love/reproductive union of humans, now and across all known history, and the ultimate consequences of that, and its assured continuance, by the intrinsic nature of the process within the arena/context of potential play..the other meaning I felt, although I’m not at all sure, was a comment on minds meeting through the modern medium of this little ether world I am contacting you through now.
Thank you, really enjoyed!
Heavens lady you’ve made my day, week, and month with this feast of a comment. First to Hypatia, yes that fate of women who reach beyond (‘counteracting an unfairly weighted die’) was present in my mind and factored into the use of the fusion metaphor and is a motivator in my epic Mere Beasts. Self-possession is another recurring theme. The primary reason I read it aloud and didn’t provide the poem on this one was to allow my voice some addition weight here (normally I help with the notes I’m just trying something new – experimenting as I’m prone to do :)).
It’s funny, sometimes I create something and I think who is going to respond to this, am I jumping off a cliff? However, after years of showing artwork I’ve learned to trust the process. Clearly this poem has found a home in your mind and it couldn’t have found a happier one. As a silly aside the fact that you were able to exactly reproduce the lines makes me proud of my diction (which, you know, as a singer is important :)). I’m astounded you mention the creativity of science because the line ‘sexual creativity plays with game theory’ was initially a line about the creativity of science but I didn’t think that would come across with the intensity I intended. Also, I’m thrilled you saw the paradoxes and poetic license I took with some of the mathematics, I was playing with it and had a moment where I envisioned the horror of getting a long pedantic e-mail from someone pointing out where I ‘got it all wrong’!
Love is such a multifaceted, complex enigma and I’ve been told the goal of art is to reduce complexity but my mind thrives on creating things that point to complex signified entities. This is my version of a love poem (with all its additional themes) and I’m sticking to it, thanks for your incredible engagement and acute observations. A wonderful meeting of the minds indeed. Also, once this has had its run as a spoken word piece I’ll post the poem.
sadbeautiful lush, an animation of shifting colour seeking resolution
Just so, Janet :).
ok so… (opening a window to let in some air) this is hoooooot! obviously the words are amazing – your vocabulary is truly stunning but to hear you read this was an amazing experience because of how wonderfully natural you sound. honestly i felt quite breathless at times – at one point i nearly fell out of the window, let alone open it! jeez this is quite extraordinary and imaginative, creative and seductive and more – more – more?
seriously anna you redifine hot – my socks are on fire lol. we are such nerds but i love it.
game theory – very very very very cute and acute and cool and clever and smart and making my day
(throwing his socks out of the window into the river – he prepares for another listen – by putting on some asbestos socks)
you are genius and your voice should win a grammy or something
Asbestos socks (heavens)! I’m laughing myself into a tizzy. Don’t fall out of the window or get hypoxia on my account. I think ideas are incredibly seductive – as I said I had to go write some hush-hush words. This is a more sensual version of Interhemispheric Synaptic Transmission. A love poem to self-possession and intellectual liberty (and growth, naughty you :P), a tribute to Hypatia, and a bit of g(r)eek hot cause we got feelings too ya know. You used some of my favorite superlatives so you get the huge gold star for the day.
”Eros is not to be understood as another transformation of primal energy – it is not like ambition or ideals or creative spontaneity, although it shares characteristics with each of these. If it has a relationship to the originary state of… grandiose perfection, it is, as Aristophanes’ myth and Hans Loewald tell us, an attempt to recapture a sense of wholeness. But it cannot do this by regressing, by returning to pure potentiality, but only in actualizing, in integrating itself with itself and the world. Hegel’s Geist striving to achieve actuality by developing increasingly more complex forms of subjectivity and world relatedness is pure Eros. The reason Eros cannot be another part or function is that it must gather the parts and functions into a whole. It seems to lurk in the interstices and penumbra of the soul – sometimes dormant, sometimes awakened. When awakened, it gathers the soul’s parts, makes us feel whole, and infuses us with life. This erotic cathexis of the self is not narcissistic – its aim is neither to express grandiosity nor to defensively inflate an injured self. Rather, the soul’s eros directed toward itself is what keeps it growing and developing – like Aristotle’s entelechy – reaching for ever wider meanings, ever more integration within the vast ecosystem of the soul, and ever longing to ecologically dwell on this earth. Along with its closest friend, suffering, it is what compels us to descend into the dangerous pit of the unconscious in heroic attempts to retrieve a part of ourselves that had been lost. It is what seeks ever more complex forms of experience to express the growing complexity of the soul’s increased integration. It is either the most profound expression of the self or even more ontological than the self itself, the very loam out which the self emerges. It is, as Plato says, a great daimon – a divine spark longing to unite with ever more transcendent forms of beauty. The deadness that lurks under the surface of our very lively culture has, as we have seen, many sides, but, perhaps, the most important is that the life favored by economics, the life of desire, has supplanted the life of Eros. The life of desire and excitement is lively, its pursuits so easy in comparison to the arduous commitments of Eros. But the glow of Las Vegas is not a genuine radiance. It is a siren luring us away from our proper journeys, luring us from ever returning to Ithaca. It was Eros – for Penelope, for his homeland, for his own wholeness – which kept Odysseus on his journey, and Eros which keeps us on ours. When we fill with Eros we become radiantly beautiful and our souls are alive with life.” – John Riker
the Riker quote is powerful. it makes me hopeful.
Me too Janet.
Each move she makes changes the board…” so many crackling good lines in here, Anna. Thanks for providing the written transcript–I am awful with spoken word, and while I enjoyed your reading immensely, it all passes too quickly for me to retain such complex combinations of words and really savor them as I can when they’re spread out in a visual array before me. velvetina purrs has selected a lot of my favorite parts already, but I also actually laughed out loud (ruefully) when I heard :
Variable ratio schedule of reinforcement
insures she keeps pulling the handle
appetite for stimulus drives the euphoria
and the super nova line. Baby. I normally find your experimental works, while full of cool words and concepts, thorny and complex and time consuming, as if written in code, but either I’m getting more used to them and their techniques, or this one is just especially vivid and personally meaningful. Thanks so much for delighting me with it.
Thanks, I took some good advice from Brendan on leaving more ‘gold coins’ as he puts it. Don’t know if he’ll see them but I think they’re there. The recording was to help a bit with my direction in case it somehow all came out too cerebral again. I’m smiling ear to ear that you enjoyed this and happy you found it more accessible. It’s probably a combination of what you state. I have been ever so grateful for your advice and humorous help about my poems finding a path. While I’ll still build labyrinths from time to time I’ll also try to keep the road repair crew handy :)! So happy you were delighted my dear friend, it’s music to my ears. And thanks for shedding light with your inner paramour poems, this one couldn’t exist without your amazing talents which opened my eyes to the possibilities.
I could hear Austin Powers say that “supernova baby” and still know that the famiilar leys of this seduction are fheaped high with brain candy. Fun read.
Brendan, I’m glad it was fun; I was trying to lighten the mood after Road Kill. Thanks for your help.
harmonic blues. my madness. a love of mind and nature, simple awe.
i stand in amber earth and try to step sincerely.
feeling fractured a clumsy navigator of binary disbelief.
how does a good heart stand divided?
perhaps i was lost looking for correlation.
a voice affirming and challenging both dimensions.
sudden emotional dissection. transparency. recognition.
yes. trying to exist properly within the whole,
perhaps a kind of procedural proof, persistence of vision.
could this unlikely dream find safe and happy closure?
Enjoyed your reading of this poem.
I don’t think I’ve seen Mathematics being seduced by a poet before. Order and chaos coming together in a supernova is rightly how I would put it summarizing this piece. There are calculated moves resulting in random results but overall, favorable (“chance of winning the whole show”). It’s such a joyful poem too, I feel, so playfully she calculates and takes her chances.
Thanks, I do try to be original. I like your summary very much and glad you felt the joy and playfulness. I didn’t really have toys as a child but games. Games were what I wanted for gifts and even today it’s near impossible to get people to play them with me :). Mostly I play video games because the AI never minds losing and doesn’t forget it’s a game!
Anna. Wow, just wow. Absolutely love this piece. Thanks for pointing it out over at my site, really glad i got to read it. It sure is chock full of mathematical jargon, which you included in such a way that, in most occasions even the reader not affluent in the terminology still receives their due- wonderfully crafted. Really can’t say enough about it- but it’s so much more than math though- which only deepens the ways it draws connectivity. Those last two stanzas are just amazing, really WOW, love the additive of tone with supernova baby- again, thanks I really enjoyed the read
Thanks, I thought you might like all the math and glad you saw the depths. I appreciate you coming by to read it!
woohoo – it’s getting hot in here…now you bring us the proof that opposites attract…maths and poetry – who would’ve thought of this…smiles… breath-taking, engaging and playful verse anna – i don’t even start citing my fav lines..i would copy the whole poem into the comment box – think that is the most creative sex poem i ever read…you rock!!!!
Claudia, this means so much to me coming from you. Part of why this piece makes me blush is that it reveals so much about what I find sexy (ideas, creativity, language). Thanks so much for your encouragement!
ha this is fresh…seeing sexual intimacy in a new way, much more technical but it was truly a joy to read….Variable ratio schedule of reinforcement
insures she keeps pulling the handle
appetite for stimulus drives the euphoria
mmm, sounds fun to me…smiles
A joy to read, awesome :)!
Oh hell – there goes another pair of socks ;-}
There you go again making me laugh so much I’m choking on my own spit!
ok, first of all – everyone needs to send Arron a new pair of socks because his tootsies are going to freeze off this winter. Secondly, this is one of my favorites by you, Anna. I listened to the recording before I read it and your voice- which Arron is correct – is very sexy and seductive but sorry, I still have my socks on 😛 Anyway, your voice gives this poem such life, intensity and just enough flirtatious humor to make it a grand and pleasurable listen. I found that by concentrating on your words I understood and related to the poem one hundred times better than if I were to have read it only. So, thanks for reading it to us. very impressive and of course like others, I giggled quite a bit over the “these atoms gotta smash up
to go supernova baby” line 🙂
Yes we should band together as charitable poets and send him some socks :)! Thanks so much for listening, it really is intended to be heard. Super excited you saw the humor and enjoyed it :)! Thanks for the fantastic prompt and all you do at dVerse!
I’m sorry, but I have a hard time figuring this out. I did try.
Thanks Mary, I appreciate the try; it is much easier if you listen to me read it, promise :).
I wish you could have seen the exhibit we had at the museum last year…a mathmetician who developed a software program into which he input equations for line, shape, color etc. and created the most glorious wedding of art and math.
Oooo that sounds fantastic Victoria. As you are aware I’m a big fan of mingling the silos, so much creativity and innovation comes out of it!
Anna, reads even better the second go-round- Again, a really wonderful piece
Thanks for stopping in again!
Even more enjoyable the second time through–and the Riker quote as well–such a statement needs to be made over and over–a thousand incarnations of Las Vegas will not produce one olive tree in Ithaca.
On a sidenote, I am amazed that Arron wears socks–I assumed he either was provided with a good set of hooves or had stoutly furred hobbit feet.
Come to think of it I kind of imagined Arron like Pan too (has anyone seen his feet :)). Thanks for the laugh fest and reading the Riker quote (he’s one of my philosophical heros and my former Professor).
yes, even the rules of physics may sometimes seemed undermined by the improbably actually happening.
i loved it.
Thanks Zongrik, game theory can be a lot of fun; I’m thrilled that you loved it!
Ha! Well, not everyone is up to it, you know! 😉
Too true it takes a supalova ;)!
You, I’m convinced, have been sent to us, angel and demon, L’Enfant Terrible. I loved these lines:
Ars Conjectandi! a bold conjecture
gene expressions in the roulette
of ubiquitous computing
predictable actions rouse random elements
probability theory spirals stochastic intimacies
astound glistening ambient intelligence.
I love it that Aaron said his socks are on fire! And FB is right; not everyone up to it. To boldly go… and so forth. http://parolavivace.blogspot.com
xxxj
Yikes L’Enfant Terrible :). Do I get a theme song with that? Arron is a hoot and a half; I’ve never set someone’s socks on fire before!
Oh those engineering, probability types. They always think they can run the board, spin the wheel and figure it out in advance. They think they got a real chance of beating the odds. MIT grads, Stamford ph.ds – I know they do! And who wins?…yep the silly, lucky dippy blonde. And they’re holding empty paper sacks.
Good one. Knew all these terms. My poor deceased husband was one of those MIT nerds. Lord, how I miss him. Keep on doin’ what yer doin’ Anna. You own the words!
Oh Gay, I bet your husband was a gem. Thanks for your kind encouragement, it is deeply appreciated!
Seriously, you are the most uniquely creative person I’ve ever met, Anna. This is a favorite. Loved to hear your reading, and the comments were just as fun, too! Love that last line 🙂
Oh Lori, that’s so kind of you to say. I’m so glad you enjoyed my little walk on the wild side and I appreciate the listen. Y’all do provide some great comments – I know I have fun reading them each week. Always lovely to see you here :)!
Delicious, brilliant, edifying.
read your piece twice and listened to your recording –
girl, you make mathematics erotic. Your voice, sounding your own poem, lovingly, I could hear and take it differently. the mellifluousness of sound -from you- gave it more meaning than my mind’s voice could ever accomplish.
brilliant and edifying, from your content. You make math and science interesting in another light. and Hypatia! forgotten by me from my history, years ago, you brought back into context. Reading you work, one gets an education.
Thank you Tink, especially for listening as I intended it to be heard. For me mathematics and science are erotic so I wanted to share that love in this work and represent that in its own language. However, poetry, part of the mellifluous sound, was ever present and shaping. Ultimately it is language that seduces me as a poet. The ideas behind the work are of utmost importance to me so I appreciate your compliments very much.
But mathematics like poetry is but a description of what it is to live.
Mathematics in this sense is a form of poetry, which has the same relation to the prose of practical mathematics as poetry has to prose in any other language. The element of poetry, the delight of exploring the medium for its own sake, is an essential ingredient in the creative process.(J.Bronowski, Science and Human Values, Pelican, 1964.)
Last time, I asked: “What does mathematics mean to you?” And some people answered: “The manipulation of numbers, the manipulation of structures.” And if I had asked what music means to you, would you have answered: “The manipulation of notes?” (S.Lang, The Beauty of Doing Mathematics, Springer-Verlag, 1985)
Thank you for the marvelous quotes John!
Without the reading, i’m afraid I would have been lost. More than two syllables and my hands start to get clammy and I hyperventilate…with the reading…I had no trouble, so know, for one such as myself, it allowed for me to sit back and enjoy what normally would have taken me weeks to figure out…now, if I had a bottle of absolute…it would be a different story! 😉
I’m sorry Tash, I must stress you out a lot :). Glad you got a reprieve and could simply sit back and enjoy.
This was a little technical for me, but I got the gist of your message specially after hearing you read them out. For someone who loves technical and math words, your voice is softly seductive.
The coming and fusing together was interesting.. though i would love to know what the poet thinks of the math lover….
Thank you Heaven for listening and seeing past the technical aspects to the heart of the work.
There is always so much to absorb here in your work, so much to praise, but what I love are those moments when something deeper peeks through past the jaw-gaping erudition. Yes, love needs proof, but then, there are loves and there are proofs, right? Love the interplay of mathematics and emotion…and that last line? Perfect.
Thank you Gene, yes, how can you prove love? It’s impossible. How can you quantify it? The interplay between erudition and emotion is a marriage made in my mind. I appreciate your close reading.