Saturday, July 11, 2009

Whether by uproar, music, or cries for help.

"The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed."

I think about this sentence, and in addition think about it within its contextualizing passages, while writing. I do not have conversations about writing with writers very often, and so am unsure of how others tend to go about. But when I write, I have found that I tend to draw my past in with a slow stroke, with some deep inhalation, and sprinkled unevenly with imagination. Or perhaps not just my past, but any aspect of my real life, present circumstances inarguably included.

So I'm writing an album right now while in the process of recording it. And some of the songs' lyrics are already existant from long ago, where their present circumstances were relevant. Some are of other topics that are relevant as we speak. The two are entirely separate. So what I wish to try, and what I'm finding to be incommunicable, is to convey the notion that all of those words sit in my pockets of history, themselves unchanging. But what those words mean when I sing them have changed. It is difficult to present not simply the changed meaning but that secret process of change to make everything whole.

When men of reason go to bed.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

If you're asleep all the time.

Days like these make me think of films or pictures where people go mad from the heat. Shirts are sticking, kids are running around with ice cream cones and hula hoops, dogs are in closed doorways with their tongues hanging out their open mouths. These scenes with, remember, those faded old Coca-Cola signs. Everything is a yellowy pale grey. And I don't like a sweaty brow, but hot skin is something so good you can't just imagine it. Maybe to another it's thought best to stay inside where the air is conditioned for comfort, when outside you can see how your eyes change. It gets so hot you can't touch anyone or anything, so I just stand up on my toes, as if either about to reach for something higher up there, or to step quietly enough to avoid a disturbance.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Some boats that are not steered.

I have been thinking about how strange it is, really, that some of the things people are held responsible for are not ever of their own accord. Our names, our birthplace, our meek bodies that we are gifted with and all of their wavering attributes, are not anything we had to do with. Yet people are looked at by others, and they by still others, with some sense of conviction that is, however it came, mutually understood. I wonder, though, how these roles are assumed, and how a person might shape their characteristics, the things they do have control over, around those attributes that happened to have fallen face up when cast upon the reverent dirt.

Friday, May 15, 2009

All the uses of this world.

Go to http://www.inbflat.net.

There is something about a song as a work of art that takes it beyond any physical types, such as paintings or sculpture, at least in a sense. When a person sings or plays a previously written song they are able to create new meaning from something already existent. This occurs just as easily whether the song is one's own or was written by another. And even if it is sung by the one who wrote it, who did so with a particular meaning in mind, when it is later performed it can have some entirely separate meaning when it again courses through one's body. And it's doing so from something that already exists and was created with a particular meaning attached to its authorship. The same song's elements can exist in many forms. So I like to find the elements I might draw from that website and its song, if I may call it that. I would certainly recommend giving it a try.

And there is something about the way one person breathes, and how its meaning is affected by the breath of those surrounding. The gestures and their implicit, or explicit, meanings that are given by one person may be received in an entirely separate manner from what is intended. And, if received at all, they may then be imitated. The same gestures, but with a removal of primary meaning, refitted with something else that is completely unsuggested by the origin. This is a recurring idea that I have grazed over, but there are deep, misty workings that take place in what people give to one another, much more than the simple gaze.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Jude / Thaddeus.

In a twistedly esoteric manner, this is related to this. No, really, I mean that.

I was talking anecdotal analogies with someone I know. The philosophical kind, of course, because what else would I do, right? I don't watch What Not To Wear and I don't watch LOST, so other things have to be made up instead.

We were thinking of a person who, since birth, has no self-consciousness; that is, their mind never registers the sensations its physical body receives. The person's mind does think and, presumably, the body senses, but it never connects with the mind's functions. What would such a person and their thoughts be like? Perhaps a very certain blank and unquestioning understanding. It would seem that a person's imagination is only made up of things, or combinations of things, that they have already experienced. And if this is the case, then a (solely) mental image can not exist. One might think, well, but of course you are using your imagination to think of this person--but that is just it. We were cobbling together the negatives of our experience.

What does that tell us but, among other things, that perhaps it is our tendency to think of things outside of our own experiences, and sometimes even to desire them. And only through the edges of experience. Knowing them as impossibility.* With us, yes, but with this person there would be no desirous hopefulness, no expressive language, no ethics, no revolutions.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

They were clouds in my coffee.

The thing I love about breakfast foods is everything.