I moved to NYC in the late 70's as a video artist. In those days that was like saying you were a - (stick in an obscure, useless job in here, no one in the room or me could come up with one). I remember the NYC phonebook at that time, pre cellphones, had all sorts of amazing people in it. You could look up and call Ornette Coleman, or Nam June Paik, etc. As a burgeoning video artist I called Nam June Paik. I have no idea what I expected to get out of this but you know, it was there. Anyway, he said come on up to the Museum of Modern Art that Monday, (a day the Museum was closed). I showed up to find him his wife Shigeko Kubota and the museums video curator, (who I later found out majored in Egyptology in school and is still their video curator today!) all sitting around in the Museums sculptor garden with this other guy with long brown dreadlocks who Nam June introduced to me as a video poet.

What the hell is a video poet I thought to myself, yeeshh.

Anyway I never did find out what the dreadlocked guy's work was like but I did see him for years afterwards hanging out in my neighborhood ice cream parlor smoking cigarillos.

A couple of years ago I came across a site called La Blogotheque which a lot of other people seemed to know about. I was tipped to it by Tommy Jordan, the singer from a group on the label called Geggy Tah who had been living in France. (The keyboard player, Geggy, is the Bee in A Bird and the Bee.) Tommy told me stories of running down hallways in Paris, carrying sound equipment and following a French cinematographer filming bands in interesting locations. Who was this person? Or was it persons? Well - when, what they called The Takeaway Shows, all started one of the original folks was Vincent Moon who I have recently met in NYC.

Now I know what a video poet is:

Vincent has started a video blog called fiume nights. Some of his entries have a poetry and power that makes you feel that this music couldn't be presented any better:

Fiume Night 06 _ Elvis Perkins _ Austin, march 2009 from vincent moon / temporary areas on Vimeo.

Vincent doesn't seem to live anywhere and he is at once everywhere and anywhere in the world. He has been incredibly influential with everyone with a video camera nowadays making elliptical attempts at his sort of poetry and mostly falling short. Like all good art it defies definition as to what sets it apart.