all watched over by machines of loving grace

• a [[poem]]
  • by [[richard brautigan]]
  • part of the [[poetry collection]] of the same title
  • see subnode by [[neil]] for the full text
• a [[poetry collection]]
  • a [[subset]] of [[The Pill versus The Springhill Mine Disaster]]
  • [[list]]
  • [[wp]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(poetry_collection) pull
  • [[go]] http://www.brautigan.net/machines.html
    • with the titular [[poem]] in it and 31 others
    • might 32 (2^5) have significance?
  • [[meta]] the following section assumes [[auto push]], which I haven't implemented yet :)
    • once it's implemented, each node in the following list should get the children blocks automatically transcluded
  • [[the beautiful poem]]
    • [[phallocentric]]
    • didn't find it beautiful, but hey, at least it's honest
    • sexual in nature
  • [[december 24]]
    • didn't get it, but I like how these are short
  • [[milk for the duck]]
    • sexual in nature
    • seems to be about lack of self confidence after not having sex for 20 days
  • [[november 3]]
    • echoes of [[frank o'hara]]?
    • "there's a pretty girl I want to look at" -- [[richard brautigan]] was all about the ladies
  • [[flowers for those you love]]
    • about [[venereal diseases]]
    • a bit like a [[psa]]
  • [[san francisco]]
    • [[found object]]
  • [[star hole]]
    • I like this one
    • "I sit here / on the perfect end / of a star / watching light / pour itself toward me"
  • [[love poem]]
    • seems there's an ironic vein, as this poem is about not-loving
  • [[I lie here in a strange girl's apartment]]
    • [[ladies man]] strikes again
    • dedicated to [[marcia pacaud]]
  • [[it's raining in love]]
    • I like this one
    • "or perhaps i start to examine, evaluate, compute what I am saying"
    • "in other words / I get a little creepy"
    • "it's raining somwhere, programming flowers / and keeping snails happy"
  • [[hey! this is what it's all about]]
    • "it makes me want to write poetry"
  • [[our beautiflu west coast thing]]
    • [[the mamas and the papas]]
      • [[california dreamin']]
      • [[i saw her again]]
  • [[widow's lament]]
    • short
  • [[december 30]]
    • about a [[fart]]
  • [[lovers]]
    • "put her in a low brass bed"
    • women aren't very active in many of these, perhaps I'm biased by the phallocentric opener but Brautigan feels a bit objectifying?
  • [[a mid-february sky dance]]
    • I liked this one, this feels more participative (a proper dance)
    • "dance toward me, please, as if you were a star / with light-years piled on top of your hair, smiling"
  • [[hey, bacon!]]
    • [[desire]]
  • [[after halloween slump]]
    • [[magic]]
  • [[hollywood]]
    • [[jefferson airplane]]
  • [[it's going down]]
    • "magic is the color of the thing you wear"
  • [[albion breakfast]]
    • written to go with a [[found object]]
    • [[susan morgan]]
      • http://www.brautigan.net/nonfiction.html#morgan
    • [[ladies man]]
      • lived without a refrigerator
      • "physically he was none too attractive, but he was [[charming]]"
  • [[comets]]
    • "there are comets / connected to chemicals / that telescope / down out tongues / to burn out against / the air"
  • [[the pomegranate circus]]
    • "I feel like a drowned king / at the pomegranate circus"
  • [[my nose is growing old]]
    • "I'm 31 / and my nose is growing old"
  • [[at the california institute of technology]]
    • [[bored]] on a rainy day while poet-in-residence
    • clearly pre internet
  • [[your catfish friend]]
    • pre [[catfishing]]
    • "I'd love you and be your catfish friend"
  • [[karma repair kit: items 1-4]]
    • liked it
    • 1. "get enough food to eat, and eat it"
    • 2. "find a place to sleep where it is quiet, and sleep there"
    • 3. "reduce intellectual activity and emotional noise until you arrive at the silence of yourself, and listen to it"
  • [[all watched over by machines of loving grace]]
    • a [[banger]]
      • taken straight (without irony), it embodies technological optimism and makes me think of the [[agora]]
    • [[cybernetic meadow]]
      • [[programming harmony]]
    • [[cybernetic forest]]
      • "where deer stroll peacefully / past computers / as if they were flowers / with spinning blossoms"
    • [[cybernetic ecology]]
      • [[free of our labors]]
    • [[robert gangeware]] "American poets seldom portray the happy marriage of technology and the natural world. Thus the optimism of the following poem is somewhat unique—unless the reader detects [[irony]], in which case the poem joins [[the mainstream of antitechnological American verse]]."
    • [[charles perry]] "The [[robots will do all the work]] vision of [[utopia]] was certainly widesread, the subject for instance of Richard Brautigan's famous poem, 'All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace' and one of the recurring ideas in the [[Leary-Snyder]] debate in [[Oracle No. 7]]."
      • this seems like a reference to [[san francisco oracle]]
    • [[a good-talking candle]]
      • "listened to its comfortable voice of light"
      • [[kasina]]
    • [[nine things]]
      • "knows four other things / one is the color of your hair"
    • [[a lady]]
      • [[highway 101]]
    • [[let's voyage into the new american house]]
      • [[doors]]
        • "that want to be free from their hinges to fly with perfect clouds"
      • [[windows]]
        • "that want to be releases from their frames to run with the deer through back country meadows"
      • [[walls]]
        • "that want to prowl with the mountains through the early morning dusk"
      • [[floors]]
        • "that want to digest their furniture into flowers and trees"
      • [[roofs]]
        • "that want to travel gracefully with the starts through circles of darkness"
• a [[film]]
  • by [[adam curtis]]
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(TV_series) pull
  • https://twitter.com/flancian/status/1397323805899608067 pull
  • https://twitter.com/flancian/status/1397321398369062916 pull

• [[poem]]
  • [[author]] [[richard brautigan]]
  • [[utopia]]
  • [[go]] https://allpoetry.com/All-Watched-Over-By-Machines-Of-Loving-Grace

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

• [[Poem]]
• [[Richard Brautigan]]

I originally came across the poem All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan via the Adam Curtis documentary of the same name ([[All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (Adam Curtis)]]).

It’s kind of fascinating. I like it. I know it came from a period whose [[Technological utopianism]] certainly didn’t come to pass, and might have been a bit off-key in the first place, but its sweetly optimistic (…or bitingly critical, depending on what way you squint at it).

It was written in 1967.

If it were written today it must surely be ironic. But I wonder if it was heartfelt back in the 60s?

I find what it paints, this harmony of nature and technology, to be kind of a mixture of pleasantly bucolic and desireable, and weird and creepy all at once. Not sure if I want it or not. I like the idea of a cybernetic ecology, where we are free of our labours, and joined back to nature. Not entirely so keen on being watched over by machines of loving grace. (Though the benevolent AIs in [[Iain M. Banks]]’ Culture novels could be good role models if we did want machines of loving grace…)

The idea of technology being more in balance with nature is good. Though the poem kind of has it backwards - a kind of [[accelerationism]] of the technology, rather than maybe a [[degrowth]] to natural boundaries.

It’s interesting that the poem doesn’t really make a case for technology, other than the nod towards a kind of [[fully automated luxury communism]] at the end. It just sort of assumes that tech is the route to liberation – I guess that’s the flavour of the time. I’m not a primitivist, but I’m not sure that an IoT meadow will have all that much better benefit than the analogue equivalent.

Obviously [[cybernetics]] was hot stuff back then. I would say that the poem misuses the term. I don't think that cybernetics is necessarily about a conjoining of technology and nature. It's the study of how organisations function and maintain themselves, and it just spans organisms/structures in technology and nature.

Notice that the poem increases in scale over verses, from meadow to forest to ecology:

• cybernetic meadow
• cybernetic forest
• cybernetic ecology

Curtis explores a lot of these ideas in [[The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts]] part of his documentary.