Thursday, October 21, 2010

The post below...

makes me think of a series of films called "Arrivals" or (ironically) "Departures." In the second film (the first one's below), a man prepares himself meticulously for his day at work. Pressed pants and shirt, perfect jacket, cuff links. He's respectable as hell--even buffs his shoes and nails before leaving. He flosses for Christ's sake. We see his room, his perfect room. The book called _The Organization Man_ is in his bookshelf.

He makes his way outside, lives outside of New York, begins his commute into the city. We know this guy, he's got his briefcase, his blackberry. He reads a bit on the bus. An old, beat up, well used book with a brown cover. He mouths some of the words. Ultimately, he arrives in New York City and heads downtown on the train. He arrives at the 42nd street stop and winds his way into one of those long, hot, connective tunnels. He's walking with the crowd now. Walking with the crowd until he just stops. Takes his position along a wall. Yup, he's in his office now. He takes out that book, the old, beat up, well used book. And just starts screaming a sermon. All hellfire and damnation. Sweating. Stomping. Scrapping. He does this until the crowd thins out. Then he sits down on a crate, wipes his brow, and the film ends.

Treading some old ground here

and yet, the work seems to justify it:

http://www.af.lu.se/~fogwall/article3.html

______________

I love everything about Mr. Satie

the same way I love a cup of coffee, a window, a tiny pencil, a scrap of paper

Or the paper boats I make, and float, with my son.
They are so bold and yet
so frail. They could never
catch fire.

How I love almost every kind of weather,
certain tree stumps,
and black and white movies with the sound off.

I thought once I would make a very quiet
black and white movie
about Satie. I pitched it to the right guy,
but we got busy with something else.
Anyway, it was a simple story. A man
who looks like he's from another century
meets a woman in a grocery store. The woman,
in fact, works in the grocery store. She
runs a register, it's Friday night. Nothing much
of a Friday night. He asks her on a date
(in silent subtitles, this is to be a mostly
silent film), she says yes. She spends
a ridiculous amount of time getting ready --
if the film is 25 minutes, she gets ready for
at least 12 minutes, we see all the
careful calculations, it's wonderful and sad,
she tries on different dresses, earrings, she
throws herself on the bed in agony and then
at the last second, finds an outfit, a necklace,
she is utterly transformed. She looks
gorgeous. The man picks her up and they are
awkward together, his car's a wreck, but they're
getting there. They get there. To a motel.
She's uncertain, worried, he walks her down
the ugly hallway, past the charmless lights,
into a simple room. He lives there, apparently.
He sits her down at a table that he's prepared
for the evening. A bottle of wine, two wine glasses,
"the wine's been breathing," he says
(subtitles), and then he disappears, says,
"just a second," and we're left to wait for
a really long time, she looks nervous, upset,
gets up to leave, and he appears. He's carrying
an old record player. He plugs it in. He opens
the curtains. Traffic's going by. He pulls out a record,
puts it on, sits near her, and for the first time,
we hear music. Satie's music. We sit and listen to it
with them. Nothing happens, except for
the traffic.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Book of Dreams

So Yoga you've written (no, published) the kind of book I've dreamed a few times.

The dream went like this: I publish a book that can only be read once. Once, and with an expiration date. So, as you're reading it, you try to take it in. You try to remember everything you like about it.

But

*sometimes you are rushed, so you read quickly because you know it will disappear

*sometimes, while actually reading slowly and trying to remember it, you realize that reading in that way -- with a net aimed to trap -- is somehow impure. You're missing something central about the experience. So you stop trying to remember. You enjoy the process of words passing through you. Eventually, even, you enjoy the fact that you will never have to analyze or connect. Like a series of touches, the words caress, push, poke, knead, punch, play, tussle your hair.

*sometimes you start and then rush off and come back to find that the chapter you were reading is gone, so you fill in the blanks even if you don't really want to (and even if you do really want to)

*sometimes you start to copy the words, but you quickly erase them, this feels like hoarding a smile or a shooting star

Ultimately, this book is more "of a piece" with your own mind than most books because you make so much of it in your own mind. And you can't go back to something stable. You just have the static-y storage device of short term memory.

It's a voice in my head the way the announcer of old Celtics games is a voice in my head. The way my father's voice, coaching me around a track near dark, is a voice in my head. Or that woman hollering in the street back in 1991, some part of her all aflame with a wonder not made

but gifted

and then gone: a holy hole God leapt from.

This is a poem for William Byrd and an essay for you, tireless friend.
Honor us and all we've made and unmade
by never reading it again.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Phone Call, Phone Bill, Cooking, Eating

the simple things
crowd out the simple things --
they make bombs from the parts

I listen to old masses late at night
and this doesn't do a thing for a thing --
come morning we ache up

best to make like
Solomon Burke --
bury em, get buried by em.

Monday, October 11, 2010

It Looks Like

The phone call didn't happen.
Not for want of wanting.

Got caught up in the usual
stuff of life and then: what,

it's already Monday?

If I did call, I would've
said, Hey,

did you hear this place
is 500 pounds and one

big voice lighter?
Solomon Burke died.

You have to love that.
A soul singer who was also

a mortician. Lifting us up
while lowering us

down. What else was
religion made for?

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Not For Solo Piano

But since this "classical music" thing

has its claws in your mood,

I can think of a few you might

like. Have you heard of Lou Harrison?

He spent his whole life creating soundtracks

for falling leaves. Or Gyorgi Ligeti. A little

more disturbed, a little more Hungarian.

Stockhausen's "Stimmung"... Kaija Saariaho.

Or Meredith Monk's "Mercy" and "Dolmen Music".

But the music that seems the most fall

and winter to me, that tracks the

unmundane repetitions of it--

snowfakes unspooling from way up

in a fractal fall, ice stitching its jagged

quilts in a puddle--is Philip Glass.

"Music in 12 Parts", "Einstein on the Beach".

The breaths of thousands on those windows.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Am listening

to Dollar Brand's African Piano.

My recording's probably not nearly as nice, I acknowledge,
as the record
you hear it from
in a certain company, chopping onions maybe,
or washing dishes drinking coffee

with the kind of attention
and relation
you've worked so hard
to sculpt . . .

Regardless, my goodness!

It makes me crazy
with joy
all the things I do not know.

***

On an Overgrown Path

Peter Dickinson asked,
"Do you mean more attuned to somebody's spiritual development?"

John Cage replied "All
of that - more possible to live affirmatively if you find
the sound of the environment beautiful.

***

Irish musicians had a contest of heroes and the question was,

'What is the most beautiful sound?'

The one who won the contest said the most beautiful sound
is the sound of what happens"

***

and I would add
"to be shared."

Dear Friday night,

Bring out the stars
that need polishing.