A • lea • tori • cism

Aleatoricism is the incorporation of chance into the process of creation, especially the creation of art or media. The word derives from the Latin word alea meaning the rolling of dice.

On day 9 of NaPoWriMo I ran short of creative juice. Someone had asked me on day 8 whether I would be writing about the death of Margaret Thatcher the next day. I told them no, I don’t really go for topical writing – especially poems – as the field is already crowded with thousands of words dedicated to the subject in advance.

Which got me thinking about Thatcher’s impending biblio-mass of obits. Obviously these would be marked on the front page of every newspaper. All my favourite artists have used newspaper at some point as a multimedia, to either utilise its rigorous vernacular, or as a cheap method to transgress the boundaries of text, via cut-ups and typographical collage. I was tired of constructing; #9 had to be a Dada poem.

What formed while randomly selecting from a hat was surprising and intelligible. I particularly like ‘has rope as power’, there is something about the unstressed syllables rhyming. The line ‘restored Lady £10.08 mystery’, reminds me of Daily Mail headlines. Overall, the money shot, the one I will take away with me: ‘dream blacker faceless engineers’. It’s the seething menace, as though there is one whole character and their story embodied in a single line. I digress.

What Banksy and Flash Mobs accomplish today the Dadaists, Les Hydropathes and the Incoherents were doing in the 1890s. I will strive to understand, but will not pretend to know the Dadaist manifesto, or what (under the pall of nonsense) they were pragmatically trying to achieve. All I fathom is aleatoricism – from William S. Burroughs’ novels to Bataille’s corncob pipe-smoking Mona Lisa – is responsible for my favourite works of art.

Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.

Fionn Coughlan-Wills.