Icarus at home 33

If I had a boat...

It's Saturday morning, whoopee, I have promised myself a keyboard free day - but och, writing this means I have failed to keep my self-promise. Still, that doesn't mean I can't post a couple of gems before I go. Today I am going to play my guitar because I have a tune buzzing and as Elizabeth Bishop says - 'I Am in Need of Music'. I have been sent this most wonderful poem which I might have tattooed where no one will ever see it. I may not get a tattoo, but then again I just might. Enjoy the poem and then listle (which is a word I just made up and can't be bothered to correct). This song is just the bees knees.

I am in need of music that would flow

Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,

Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,

With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.

Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,

Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,

A song to fall like water on my head,

And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

And if I had a boat, I'd go out on the ocean and if I had a pony I'd ride him on my boat... kiss my ass Kemosabe, I am not gonna be a slave to the keyboard today:

Icarus at home # 32

being a player

In her little book on passion Dorothy Parker writes about the duende of the song. She writes that she understands duende to mean working without a net, about soul crunching risk, the like of which takes us into writing and poetry and songs by exposing our deepest thoughts and I like the idea of the primitive scariness of it, as the artist tumbles into the darkness of the unknown. I have been a fan of Lyle Lovett for a long time but sometimes I forget. But he makes singing and playing look so effortless and yet his songs are thoughtful and often mean the opposite of what they seem to say. In this song he mentions Tijuana and I will never forget the time when I was there - especially the huge Mexican/American border crossing. But this little film cuts across many things for me - friendship, guitars, motor cycles and singing and playing. So I post it cos I like it... and I dream a dream of home, where there's coffee on the table.. and if Mr Colings oferdme a guiar,well...

Icarus and the Iguana

We have just been to Las Iguana restaurant to celebrate the passing of exams and with it being 'happy hour' all round, two margaritas with lunch is just fine. Daniel has planned that we have more of these lunches because its his fave food and because he gets to be a Brighton flanuer with his sister before she flies off to be a cowgirl in the sand. Though I fully expect that plan to go by the wayside when he gets a better offer, which he is sure to do - handsome boy that he is. Funny thing families, I mean they are all over the house at the moment, no idea where, we hardly chatted all day and then a walk into town a nice and lunch and walk back just keeps you connected. And its funny too because when they are watching the TV I like to go walking at night, kicking the shadows sent by the moon to haunt the pavements. I'm not scared, never have been, I have been kicking them a long time now - ever since I could walk, which is before I could talk, but not think - I could always think, I just wasn't able to articulate everything I wanted to and so the shadows would mock as I passed, not knowing that I was knowing more than I was saying and listening to the Gypsy Kings. It was Joyce who wrote:

The eyes that mock me sign the way

Whereto I pass at eve of day

Grey way whose violet signals are

The trysting and the twining star

Ah star of evil! star of pain!

Highhearted youth comes not again

Nor old heart's wisdom yet to know

The signs that mock me as I go

Icarus flying

There is an air of discombobulation going on inside me at the moment, all my bits seem to be reconnecting themselves elsewhere, my lungs are doing a tango with my liver and my heart is fluttering all over, not quite sure what to do with itself. This is not a romantic issue, not the teenage ache of butterflies and high hopes, just a general health issue which really knocks you around - mostly in the concentration department. But today I was reading about something written here, with the webmeister: http://axonjournal.com.au/author/andrew-melrose-and-jen-webb which I am very proud of. Reading it again, it is a good article. And yet it feels unfinished and I feel a book beckons - along with some creative work. The bit I was thinking about is an engagement with Benjamin and Kundera, though, because we take an old idea and make it new - and that is good for progress, I think. We say, Kundera... introduces us to what he has called ‘the grammatical future of nostalgia’ (Kundera 2009: 106-7); it is this thought-provoking concept of opening up the future with prior knowledge and experience that offers a way in to contemporary appropriations of the Icarus story. Kundera explores this concept when referring to the poem, ‘November symphony’ by Oscar Milosz, in which an uncanny narrative twist reveals nostalgia being expressed grammatically by the future, rather than by the past:

You will be all in pale violet, beautiful grief

And the flowers of your hat will be sad and small

(Milosz 1984)

As Kundera explains, the grammatical form projects a lamented past into a distant future, ‘that transforms the melancholy evocation of a thing that no longer exists into the heartbreaking sorrow of a promise that can never be realized’. This brings to mind an evocation of Walter Benjamin’s thorough reading of another winged subject, Paul Klee’s Angelus novus..." It's too big and too cheeky to print here because its in the wonderful Axon Journal - and everyone should be reading it. But I am taken by 'the grammatical future of nostalgia'. It has the resonance of anxiety - you will break my heart, you will not want to but you will; that begins with the same teenage ache of butterflies and high hopes and never goes away, because we all succumb to disappointment at some time in our lives. And yet, Milosz could have written:

You will be all in pale violet, beautiful bliss

And the flowers in your hat will be be joyful and you content

And that would be enough. My baby girl is moving to Oklahoma soon and will be gone for four years! Four years, hoooo - but she will see the whole of the moon...