The Calm at the Core of Disorder

[Lyrics]

[Video: “Saints & Liars,” by Pony Boy. See the note at the foot of this post for more information.]

From whiskey river:

There is tremendous power in unearthing, in recognizing distracted, scattered mind, the mind which would rather be anywhere but here, and spending some time there, with that mind. Rather than being an anonymous voice from the dark bossing you around, scattered mind is someone you can sit down and hang out with.

(Jusan Ed Brown)

…and:

A Settlement

Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned
into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come
up trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their
curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come
home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow,
happiness, music, ambition.

And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to
go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of
this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind.

* * *

Therefore, dark past,
I’m about to do it.
I’m about to forgive you

for everything.

(Mary Oliver [source])

…and:

It’s all a show, a deception. Your urges scream and bluster at you; they cajole; they coax; they threaten; but they really carry no stick at all. You give in out of habit. You give in because you never really bother to look beyond the threat. It is all empty back there. There is only one way to learn this lesson, though. The words on this page won’t do it. But look within and watch the stuff coming up — restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain — just watch it come up and don’t get involved. Much to your surprise, it will simply go away. It rises, it passes away. As simple as that. There is another word for self-discipline. It is patience.

(Henepola Gunaratana [source])

Not from whiskey river:

I’m for mystery, not interpretive answers… The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

(Ken Kesey [source])

…and:

Elizabethan

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow
—Queen Elizabeth I

Her sex sent her mother
to the tower,
made her father profligate
with arrogant desires,

but she was made of flint
and backbone.

Think of a young girl
in a blue velvet bodice,
a white collar and lace,
the very prototype
of virginal.

Think of a woman, her court
enlivened by suitors and lovers
in doublets, in brocaded cloaks,
despite suspicions of their motives
staining the sheets,

the way cups of spicy,
flowery mead were sipped
despite the possibility
of poison.

Even the crown of the sun
must go down each night.

Could she have stood at the prow
of a ship in that great Armada she ordered,
instead of at a window, waiting
for urgent results?

Could she have guessed that the words
of a man she inspired, carved
into the marble of ages,
had a muscular beauty
more than equal
to her own worldly triumphs?

Daughter, Queen, Ruler
of roiling seas, of meandering
rivers and meadows,
of armies of soldiers, their swords
and armor glittering
like planets to her sun.

Namesake to an age.

And Poet?
When she turned
to the empty parchment
(or once to a windowpane,
a diamond for quill)
everything
must have gone quiet.

Even a queen is naked
before the naked page, awaiting
not the generous spoils owed to a victor
but the gifts freely given
of a besotted muse.

(Linda Pastan [source])

…and:

I stand up.

I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years in still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me.

(Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front)

________________________

About the video: Pony Boy is the recent solo project of a Los Angeles-based singer/DJ named Marchelle Bradanini, who previously (still?) served as the lead vocalist for Bedtime for Toys (Wikipedia: “a multi-ethnic and multi-gender dance rock band”; the music of Pony Boy and that of Bedtime for Toys seem to be broadcast from entirely different planets).

I’ve been sitting on a draft Midweek Music Break post about this song/video since first encountering it at Beat Surrender back in December. In fact, I’d almost forgotten about it entirely — despite its many merits and pleasures, just because I’ve now got about a dozen MwMB drafts in the hopper, and keep adding new ones.

So why include it here today?

Get this: I dreamt about the song last night. Note that I didn’t dream about the video, nor about Pony Boy herself, but about the song. It wasn’t even clear at all in my dream whether the vocalist was male or female. I just dreamt of a song with a slow, easy, almost hypnotic rhythm; I dreamt of a reverbed voice; I dreamt of lyrics which included the word “saint” and the word “liar,” as I thought; and I dreamt of that singular background keyboard instrument — an organ? or a Mellotron? — scaffolding the whole thing. When I woke up, it drove me crazy: it was a real song, I knew, but I couldn’t think where I’d heard it. In fact, I’d half-convinced myself it must have been in a David Lynch film… After all, I could sorta-kinda picture it being performed from a stage in a roadhouse, not unlike the one in Twin Peaks… and the dreamy voice — a guy’s? a woman’s? — haunted, too…

…and then I remembered.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never dreamed about a song before, and I take it as a sign from the Universe that I should give “Saints & Liars” a central role today. Please feel free to decide for yourself whether all this hints at a mind disordered, or otherwise.

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