whiskey river Fridays

Being Here (Today)

March 13, 2009 by John 16 Comments

From whiskey river (first 3+ lines not included there):

from The Ninth Duino Elegy

Why, if this interval of being can be spent serenely
in the form of a laurel, slightly darker than all
other green, with tiny waves on the edges
of every leaf (like the smile of a breeze)–: why then
have to be human–and, escaping from fate,
keep longing for fate?. . .

Oh not because happiness exists,
that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.
Not out of curiosity, not as practice for the heart, which
would exist in the laurel too. . . . .

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some
strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,
just once. And never again. But to have been
this once, completely, even if only once:
to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, c. 1922 [source])

…and:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then one of them looks over at the other and says, “What the hell is water?”

(David Foster Wallace, 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College [source])

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Finding What’s Important, Holding onto It Once Found

February 6, 2009 by John 4 Comments

From whiskey river:

Nothing is ever lost. If you have moved over vast territories and dared to love silly things, you will have learned even from the most primitive items collected and put aside in your life. From an ever-roaming curiosity in all the arts, from bad radio to good theatre, from nursery rhyme to symphony, from jungle compound to Kafka’s Castle, there is basic excellence to be winnowed out, truths found, kept, savored, and used on some later day. To be a child of one’s time is to do all these things.

(Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Inside You)

Not from whiskey river:

Happiness

Why, Dot asks, stuck in the back
seat of her sister’s two-door, her freckled hand
feeling the roof for the right spot
to pull her wide self up onto her left,
the unarthritic, ankle — why
does her sister, coaching outside on her cane,
have to make her laugh so, she flops
back just as she was, though now
looking wistfully out through the restaurant
reflected in her back window, she seems bigger,
and couldn’t possibly mean we should go
ahead in without her, she’ll be all right, and so
when you finally place the pillow behind her back
and lift her right out into the sunshine,
all four of us are happy, none more
than she, who straightens the blossoms
on her blouse, says how nice it is to get out
once in a while, and then goes in to eat
with the greatest delicacy (oh
I could never finish all that) and aplomb
the complete roast beef dinner with apple crisp
and ice cream, just a small scoop.

(by Wesley McNair, from The Town of No and My Brother Running)

…and — simply because Wesley McNair has landed in my mind, swooping in out of nowhere, and now I keep finding more of his stuff I love — this:

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The Satisfactions of the Small, Found in the Large

January 23, 2009 by John 5 Comments

From whiskey river:

Only horizon and sky are given up easily. Take the numbing distance in small doses and gorge on the little details that beckon.

(William Least Heat-Moon)

Not from whiskey river (one of The Missus’s favorite poems):

I Am Too Near

I am too near to be dreamt of by him.
I do not fly over him, do not escape from him
under the roots of a tree. I am too near.
Not in my voice sings the fish in the net,
not from my finger rolls the ring.
I am too near. A big house is on fire
without me, calling for help. Too near
for a bell dangling from my hair to chime.
Too near to enter as a guest
before whom walls glide apart by themselves.
Never again will I die so lightly,
so much beyond my flesh, so inadvertently
as once in his dream. Too near.
I taste the sound, I see the glittering husk of this word
as I lie immobile in his embrace. He sleeps,
more accessible now to her, seen but once,
a cashier of a wandering circus with one lion,
than to me, who am at his side.
For her now in him a valley grows,
rusty-leaved, closed by a snowy mountain
in the dark blue air. I am too near
to fall to him from the sky. My scream
could wake him up. Poor thing
I am, limited to my shape,
I who was a birch, who was a lizard,
who would come out of my cocoons
shimmering the colors of my skins. Who possessed
the grace of disappearing from astonished eyes,
which is a wealth of wealths. I am near,
too near for him to dream of me.
I slide my arm from under the sleeper’s had
and it is numb, full of swarming pins,
on the tip of each, waiting to be counted,
the fallen angels sit.

(Wislawa Szymborska;
translation by Czeslaw Milosz)

Finally, an undisputed master at the reverse: finding large things in the small (click Play button to start):

[audio:billcosbychickenheart.mp3|titles=’Chicken Heart’|artists=Bill Cosby]

Surprising the Audience

January 9, 2009 by John 4 Comments

[Above still from director Alex Cox’s Walker (1987), which sounds like one of the most
interesting films I’ve never seen. Click image for more info.]

My regular Friday post inspired by the mysteries of the past seven days’ entries at the whiskey river blog. This one’s a little more complex than most — one or two more selections, and a small cluster of strangely relevant associations from elsewhere around the Web.

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Figure, Ground, Imagined, Real: Not So Very Different

December 26, 2008 by John 4 Comments

From whiskey river:

The Cutting-beam

Imagine this blur of chill, white, gray, vague, sadness
burned off.
Imagine a landscape
of dry clear sunlight, precise shadows,
forms of pure color.
Imagine two neighboring hills, and
your house, my house, looking across, friendly:
imagine ourselves
meeting each other,
bringing gifts, bringing news.
Yes, we need the heat
of imagination’s sun
to cut through our bonds of cloud.
And oh, can the great and golden light
warm our flesh that has grown so cold?

(Denise Levertov)

…and:

We might imagine that our thoughts, feelings, or the essence of who we really are is intrinsically private – that we fundamentally exist inside our mind and our body and that we can only imperfectly send and receive messages out into a world of other separate, isolated minds.

But the fact is, who and what we are is constituted, and constantly, moment-by-moment, re-constituted, by the world we live in and are part of. We are all part of a common fabric of being. All of us are simply human beings trying to clarify what it means to be human, and to come to terms with the suffering that being human entails.

When we imagine that our experience is unique, we may imagine ourselves particularly talented or particularly hopeless at whatever it is we’re doing. But since all of us are struggling with the same problems inherent in being human, it turns out that all those things we thought were so unique about ourselves are precisely what we have most in common.

(Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness)

Finally, not from whiskey river, the trailer for the film of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline* (opening February, 2009):

“You’re just in time for supper, dear.”

“You’re not my mother. My mother doesn’t have… b-b-b-buttons?”

“Do you like them? I’m your other mother, silly.”

________________________________

* Selected reviews of the book:

“A virtuoso adaptation…a master of fantastical landscapes, [illustrator P. Craig] Russell sharpens the realism of his imagery, preserving the humanity of the characters and heightening the horror, even as Gaiman’s concise storytelling ratchets up the eeriness.” (Booklist)

“This book will send a shiver down your spine, out through your shoes, and into a taxi to the airport. It has the delicate horror of the finest fairy tales, and it is a masterpiece. And you will never think about buttons in quite the same way again.” (Terry Pratchett)

“I think this book will nudge Alice in Wonderland out of its niche at last. It is the most splendidly original, weird, and frightening book I have read, and yet full of things children will love.” (Diana Wynne Jones)

Something to take a look at, eh?

Sweet Mystery

December 12, 2008 by John 4 Comments

[Image above is a “Kitty Kitsch” sculpture by C. David & Ferbie Claudon,
depicting feline versions of Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy
serenading each other in the Canadian wilderness. Click image for more info.]

From whiskey river:

Strange Life

It’s as if you are alone in a room
in an empty house and there’s music
playing somewhere, the kind of
music that you always knew would
accompany a moment like this
The air is heavy. The water in
the pool outside looks like glass
The color of everything can be
described as in the blue hour,
which eventually fades to gray
Yes, it’s a strange life
But wait. It’s getting stranger still

(by Eleanor Lerman)

Not from whiskey river:

The Mystery of Meteors

I am out before dawn, marching a small dog through a
meager park
Boulevards angle away, newspapers fly around like blind
white birds
Two days in a row I have not seen the meteors
though the radio news says they are overhead
Leonid’s brimstones are barred by clouds; I cannot read
the signs in heaven, I cannot see night rendered into fire
And yet I do believe a net of glitter is above me
You would not think I still knew these things:
I get on the train, I buy the food, I sweep, discuss,
consider gloves or boots, and in the summer,
open windows, find beads to string with pearls
You would not think that I had survived
anything but the life you see me living now
In the darkness, the dog stops and sniffs the air
She has been alone, she has known danger,
and so now she watches for it always
and I agree, with the conviction of my mistakes.
But in the second part of my life, slowly, slowly,
I begin to counsel bravery. Slowly, slowly,
I begin to feel the planets turning, and I am turning
toward the crackling shower of their sparks
These are the mysteries I could not approach when I was younger:
the boulevards, the meteors, the deep desires that split the sky
Walking down the paths of the cold park
I remember myself, the one who can wait out anything
So I caution the dog to go silently, to bear with me
the burden of knowing what spins on and on above our heads
For this is our reward:Come Armageddon, come fire or flood,
come love, not love, millennia of portents —
there is a future in which the dog and I are laughing
Born into it, the mystery, I know we will be saved

(also by Eleanor Lerman*)

Finally, this: If you’re familiar with Mel Brooks’s 1974 film Young Frankenstein, you know the scene in which Madeline Kahn’s character — Elizabeth, Dr. F’s fiancee — first meets up with The Monster (played by Peter Boyle). Or rather let’s say, the scene in which The Monster first makes himself known to her. The scene which, uh, climaxes with Kahn’s operatically ecstatic warbling of the first few lines of the song “Sweet Mystery of Life.”

The YouTube clip below takes a different approach with the song. Here, the singer is Mario Lanza; over that glorious voice are interleaved a host of scenes fom Young Frankenstein (except, interestingly, any scenes featuring Madeline Kahn or Peter Boyle).

(By the way, if you’d like to see the Kahn-Boyle moment itself, of course it’s on YouTube as well.)

Update, a little later on 2008-12-12: Over at the inestimable Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast site, coincidentally, Jules is also thinking about great movie-music moments.

___________________________________

* Eleanor Lerman’s work has now made three appearances in two consecutive Friday posts here. (Here‘s last week’s, which includes Lerman’s lovely “Starfish.”) This pretty much makes her the only candidate for the title of RAMH Poet Laureate. I didn’t even know there was such a title.

Everyday Matters

December 5, 2008 by John 10 Comments

Giant screw

[Photo of a giant Archimedes screw. Funny, isn’t it — how
a giant screw can be both a problem and a solution?]

From whiskey river:

Starfish

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

(by Eleanor Lerman)

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Letting Go, with Thanks

November 28, 2008 by John 9 Comments

From whiskey river:

The wonder of a moment in which there is nothing but an upwelling of simple happiness is utterly awesome. Gratitude is so close to the bone of life, pure and true, that it instantly stops the rational mind, and all its planning and plotting. That kind of let go is fiercely threatening. I mean, where might such gratitude end?

(Regina Sara Ryan, Praying Dangerously)

Not from whiskey river:

Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

(Leroy “Satchel” Paige, New York Post, October 4, 1959)

…and:

My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it’s on your plate — that’s my philosophy.

(Thornton Wilder, “Sabiba,” The Skin of Our Teeth)

Finally, the song chosen to wrap up the Northern Exposure series. Not everyone is a fan of Iris Dement’s voice, but I think this is a great song. The performance was on Austin City Limits. (If you’d prefer to see the Northern Exposure version, it’s on YouTube as well — in a shorter and quite darkly lit video.)

Lyrics:

Our Town
(words and music by Iris Dement)

And you know the sun’s settin’ fast
and just like they say nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover
’cause your heart’s bound to die
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town
goodnight

Up the street beside that red neon light
that’s where I met my baby on one hot summer night
He was the tender and I ordered a beer
It’s been forty years and I’m still sitting here

But you know the sun’s settin’ fast
and just like they say nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover
’cause your heart’s bound to die
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town
goodnight

It’s here I had my baby’s and I had my first kiss
I’ve walked down Main Street in the cold morning mist
Over there is where I bought my first car
it turned over once but then it never went far

And I can see the sun settin’ fast
and just like they say nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover
’cause your heart’s bound to die
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town
goodnight

I buried my Mama and I buried my Pa
They sleep up the street beside that pretty brick wall
I bring them flowers about every day
but I just gotta cry when I think what they’d say

If they could see how the sun’s settin’ fast
and just like they say nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on now and kiss it goodbye but hold on to your lover
’cause your heart’s bound to die
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town
goodnight

Now I sit on the porch and watch the lightning-bugs fly
but I can’t see too good, I got tears in my eyes
I’m leaving tomorrow but I don’t wanna go
I love you my town, you’ll always live in my soul

But I can see the sun’s settin’ fast
and just like they say nothing good ever lasts
Well, go on I gotta kiss you goodbye but I’ll hold to my lover
’cause my heart’s ’bout to die
Go on now and say goodbye to my town, to my town
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on my town, on my town
Goodnight, goodnight

Words Enough, and Time

November 7, 2008 by John 2 Comments

Clock Words, by Caroline Lisfranc

[The clock above was designed by Caroline Lisfranc, replacing the numbers on the clock face with a dozen French verbs. The English translation (starting with one o’clock and moving, duh, clockwise) is to divide, to give, to listen, to work, to love, to dream, to reflect, to laugh, to tinker, to travel, to grow, and to speak.]

Changing things up a little for a Friday post…

Here’s an audio track to accompany the rest of the entry. Start it now to play in the background as you read, or come back and listen later. The song is “Lakmé,” the first number on the uncanny and apparently never-to-be-followed-up album Coco de Mer. It’s almost four minutes long — much longer than it will take for you to read the selections. So feel free to listen for a while, then start reading, finish, and listen to the end.

[audio:lakme_cocodemer.mp3|titles=Lakmé|artists=Coco de Mer]

From whiskey river:

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now.

(David Whyte, “lassie and timmy”)

…and:

A Piece Of The Storm
For Sharon Horvath

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
From your book, saw it the moment it landed.
That’s all There was to it. No more than a solemn waking
To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,
A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that
Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,
Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,
That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:
“It’s time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening.”

(Mark Strand)

Not from whiskey river:

Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

(T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

…and, as long as we’re talking about having enough time (and words):

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.

(Douglas Adams)

_______________________________________

More about Coco de Mer (from Rasa Music):

Conceived & produced by Adam Plack, Coco de Mer is a lush fusion of traditional French, Italian, and Latin arias, live orchestration, and instruments which are elegantly stitched together with sensual, downtempo dance grooves & modern music. Coco de Mer is a potent musical experience for the concert virgin. Australian born, New York based, Adam Plack has embraced his own childhood passion for opera, jazz, and the blues with the intention of taking opera from the perfumed arid halls of “Uptown” onto the funky street and into the heart of “Downtown.” Coco de Mer features the angelic vocals of acclaimed soprano Chen Reis [and] virtuoso pianist Ilan Rechtman under [the] direction of Plack. Although the arias written by the great classical composers Bach, Handel, Delibes, Bizet, Puccini and others are a hundred years old and beyond, in Adam Plack’s deft hand the emotions are deeply touching & ring true with us, the 21st Century listener.

As an aside, Adam Plack is a noted player of the Australian didgeridoo. I don’t know if that instrument is on the album as a whole, let alone in “Lakmé” — but wouldn’t be surprised.

Coco de Mer is available from Amazon as a plain-old CD, not as a download; but you can get it digitally, in whole or part, via iTunes.

Seeing Things

October 31, 2008 by John 4 Comments

From whiskey river:

Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.

(Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

Shadow

So the dead are among us again
even here where Halloween is not celebrated
and the moon flies through the skeletons of trees
and men in rowboats fish for souls on the river
There is a woman with spidery hair swinging a lantern
disappearing down the colonnade
a row of buildings tilted like gravestones
in which a single window is lit
a wall from whose depths shadows emerge
assuming the contours of bodies they will follow
all night and abandon at dawn:
a revelation to you
that each day we take on a new shadow

(Nicholas Christopher, from Crossing the Equator: New and Selected Poems 1972-2004)

Not from whiskey river:

Fezzik: Why do you wear a mask? Were you burned by acid, or something like that?
Man in Black: Oh no, it’s just that they’re terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.

(The Princess Bride)

Also not from whiskey river: Jim Carrey’s not to everyone’s taste. But this is pretty memorable:
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