Saturday, July 26, 2014

We Have Grown Nonchalant Towards the Other World





Yes, Saturdays I often post music I heard on Bryce's Friday show, but - and this is true, only I can vouch, you believe or don't - I fell asleep listening to Radigue Thursday night - not this piece, but this






and this





and this




  
and this -





 
and promised myself Radigue here on Saturday before Bryce played Transamorem Transmortem yesterday. Blessed be Serendipity, fucked be the days when Radigue occurs to two people seeking - I project like I always do, should only speak for me - balm and calm and resolve.

  • Balm and calm? Me? As for resolve, sure, but to what end?
  • Tom's heartbreaking pieces on Gaza continue, Hijos de un dios menor and When Medics Cry.
  • Pretexts.
  • The thing is, when Israel says it is showing "unimaginable restraint" it might be a true statement, so think what it wishes it could do.
  • Forced to: Since 1948 Israel has refused to deal with the refugee question: the very existence of UNRWA schools and camps in Gaza is a direct result. It is Israel, not Hamas, that is occupying the West Bank and building illegal settlements (more than 120 to date). Since Israel withdrew unilaterally from the Gaza Strip in 2005, the occupation has been replaced by a sort of internment: Gaza is like a large prison, or a sprawling conurbation under siege. Despite the falsehoods of Israeli demagogues it isn’t Hamas that has laid siege to Gaza since 2007, it is Israel. Most world leaders have acknowledged it: in 2010 even Cameron said that the ‘Israeli blockade has turned the Gaza Strip into a prison camp.’ Was Israel ‘forced’ to quarantine Gaza? On the contrary it took the decision to do so, having calculated that by tightening the screws on 1.8 million people already living under the harshest conditions in the most densely populated place on earth, it would ensure peace and stability for Israelis. Strangely things haven’t gone to plan and once again Israel is ‘forced’ to kill civilians and children while hiding the truth from itself that its policy in Gaza was a choice. In this moment of terrible delusion it is worth repeating the point: Hamas is not laying siege to Gaza or bombing it from the air.
  • Syllogism of Death
  • Powerful and coldhearted
  • On the above. Empathy varies inversely with power: powerful people should be under continuous suspicion, should be regarded with continuous skepticism. the only real point has to be to hem them in, mitigate their disastrous effects, or tear them down. the human desire to be subordinated just puts us in the hands of the worst among us. that we deserve the exploitation, poverty, and rape that we receive from authorities, however, does not entail that the authorities aren't evil.
  • The Executioner's Last Songs
  • Also too, about a month ago I found a collected Merrill in a used book store, said what the hell. after all these year's of Merrill blindness I can see. Sweet.
 





VOICES FROM THE OTHER WORLD

James Merrill

Presently at our touch the teacup stirred,   
Then circled lazily about
From A to Z. The first voice heard
(If they are voices, these mute spellers-out)   
Was that of an engineer

Originally from Cologne.
Dead in his 22nd year
Of cholera in Cairo, he had KNOWN

NO HAPPINESS. He once met Goethe, though.   
Goethe had told him: PERSEVERE.

Our blind hound whined. With that, a horde   
Of voices gathered above the Ouija board,   
Some childish and, you might say, blurred   
By sleep; one little boy
Named Will, reluctant possibly in a ruff

Like a large-lidded page out of El Greco, pulled   
Back the arras for that next voice,   
Cold and portentous: ALL IS LOST.

FLEE THIS HOUSE. OTTO VON THURN UND TAXIS.   

OBEY. YOU HAVE NO CHOICE.

Frightened, we stopped; but tossed
Till sunrise striped the rumpled sheets with gold.
Each night since then, the moon waxes,   
Small insects flit round a cold torch
We light, that sends them pattering to the porch . . .

But no real Sign. New voices come,
Dictate addresses, begging us to write;
Some warn of lives misspent, and all of doom   
In ways that so exhilarate
We are sleeping sound of late.

Last night the teacup shattered in a rage.   
Indeed, we have grown nonchalant
Towards the other world. In the gloom here,   
our elbows on the cleared
Table, we talk and smoke, pleased to be stirred

Rather by buzzings in the jasmine, by the drone
Of our own voices and poor blind Rover’s wheeze,   
Than by those clamoring overhead,
Obsessed or piteous, for a commitment
We still have wit to postpone

Because, once looked at lit
By the cold reflections of the dead
Risen extinct but irresistible,
Our lives have never seemed more full, more real,   
Nor the full moon more quick to chill.



4 comments:

  1. you say ..fell asleep with on.. , does that mean of someth. that would just stop mach i n e after play , or that eart h girl ..this wom a n 's wor l' whir l work went about making ,closing down shop ..to be ready for a new day ..of this woma a n's work of why we don't blo g, /said anne now up to some' .. with a japanese ca. man ..to blend fennesz /ca broad , and more, of some mischief with the fairy bks of andrew lang to fritz and helmut , and more .. .

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    Replies
    1. The toss onto right-shoulder sleep means it's time for... jilts the earphones into my eyes I wake up and turn off the iPod then left-shoulder sleep...

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    2. night falls, anne goes out to look back at the building to make sure that no one is home around 'er , below and next to , then back in to put on mark hollis, renee renee renee , dancing around hollis's lovely nodding head.. . montreux.. .

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  2. PERSEVERANCE

    We must not hope to be mowers,
    And to gather the ripe gold ears,
    Unless we have first been sowers
    And water the furrows with tears.

    It is not just as we take it,
    This mystical world of ours,
    Life's field will yield as we make it
    A harvest of thorns or of flowers.

    Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

    ReplyDelete