"The defeat

of presupposed expectation of unity may be itself
a pleasure. Music
which pleases
by doing what we expect
('coming home') may also please us
by failing to do so."

So says Iris Murdoch

and of course
everything new
about a new "home."

So that leaves us with . . .

[ahem, kick them feet]

Before judging a piece of music as
great
we would have to separate
the music from the particular
stereo
from which we
eat it.

Restate as: the problem of all
this speaking
of beauty anyway,
I guess. The work is the breaking
of difficult
horses.

____


Ease up, she says,
motherly(?) and
stern (she calls people who look at art
"clients."): "[There] are innumerable points
at which we have to detach
ourselves, to
change our orientation, to redirect
our desire and
refresh and purify our energy,
to keep on looking in the right direction:
to attend upon the grace that comes through . . ."