Running After My Hat

Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so

The Mysterious Experience of the Sirens’ Song

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[Image: “Yam awely,” by Emily Kame Kngwarreye. (1995; synthetic polymer paint on canvas; approximately 16 feet wide by 5 feet high. For more information, see the site of the National Gallery of Australia, where the original resides.) From the essay where I encountered it this week: “It is not our cultural differences that strike me when I look at this painting. I know that a complex set of ideas, stories, and experiences have informed its maker. But what captures me is beyond reason. It cannot be put into words. My felt response to this work does not answer questions of particular cultures or histories. It is more universal than that. I am aware of a beautiful object offered up by its maker, who surely felt the beauty of her creation just as I do.”]

From whiskey river (although there it omitted a crucial sentence on the next-to-last paragraph):

One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world.” What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes — but whom has it saved?

There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious.

Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition — and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted.

In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.

But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force — they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.

So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through — then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfill the work of all three?

In that case Dostoevsky’s remark, “Beauty will save the world”, was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all he was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.

(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn [source])

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Where Have We Been That Has Brought Us Here?

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[Video: original video version of Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime.” This isn’t the first time I’ve accompanied a Friday post with this song, but come on — it’s been over twelve years. And with a post title like today’s, how could I not have been reminded of these lyrics?]

From whiskey river:

Desperate Note from Byron’s Palace in Lerici

In the blue wind the leaves begin to think they are birds.
This is when you lean your body against its sorrows.
The truth is always there with its hidden reefs.
Your touch still hovers over the shore. Each wave is
a mirror that washes in a past we wanted hidden.
Now our voices are roosting in the branches.
Everything is echo, or shadow. Your shadow
walking on the other side of the street, your shadow
sitting in a passing car, your last words casting
the shadow that has replaced my own. Where have
we been that has brought us here? The past burrows
into me like an insect. The tree frogs, after tonight’s
rain, fill the woods. They throw their voices
so predators can’t find them. The old truths are
falling from the branches. The old dreams wash up
on the shores of our souls. Sometimes I think
the soul is a shadow even gravity can’t touch,
and love is what passes in the mirror as we look away.

(Richard Jackson [source — apparently originally here, though])

…and:

Ancient maps of the world — when the world was flat — inform us, concerning that void where America was waiting to be discovered, HERE BE DRAGONS. Dragons may not have been here then, but they are certainly here now, breathing fire, belching smoke; or, to be less literary and biblical about it, attempting to intimidate the mores, morals, and morality of this particular and peculiar time and place. Nor, since this country is the issue of the entire globe and is also the most powerful nation currently to be found on it, are we speaking only of this time and place. And it can be said that the monumental struggles being waged in our time and not only in this place resemble, in awesome ways, the ancient struggle between those who insisted that the world was flat and those who apprehended that it was round.

(James Baldwin [source, originally here])

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Gig Lamps or Halo? This Lump or That One?

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[Image: “Whole in the Wall,” by Alan Davey. (I found it on Flickr, and use it here under a Creative Commons license. Thank you!) This abandoned storefront was found by the photographer in Mitchell, Oregon, about which Davey offers some information from Wikipedia. While not related specifically (as far as I know) to the building, the last paragraph cited is particularly haunting. I’ve reproduced it in a note at the foot of this post.]

From whiskey river (italicized portion):

Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being ‘like this.’ Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls different from that of old; the moment of importance came not here but there… Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

(Virginia Woolf, Modern Fiction [source])

…and (in oft-cited but slightly different and, well, not quite right form — below, with ellipses added, is the correct one):

[Wollman said to me,] “…you think you know everything, but you don’t know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem.

“If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire—then you’ve got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy.

“Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems. You will live longer. And you will not annoy people so much…”

I think of this as the Wollman Test of Reality. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One should learn the difference.

(Robert Fulghum [source])

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In the Unmapped Land Between Me and Not-Me

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[Image: “That’s not me in the mirror,” by Anais Gómez-C (whose Flickr username seems to be sweet_vengeance; found it on Flickr, and use it here under a Creative Commons license. (Thank you!) I don’t usually select watermarked images for these posts: certainly it’s up to the photographer or artist to embed a signature or not, yet I find it distracts from the work in order to highlight the work’s creator. (Again, it also may indicate just a touch too much insecurity about their work being “stolen.”) But this image was too apropos to disregard, and the watermark, too discreet to worry about.]

From whiskey river:

Between two and three o’clock—at the half-way house of night—I heard slow hoofs below my window, and leaning out, saw under moonshine two great cart-horses wandering down the road together. They were enjoying a phase of their existence unknown to us. They conversed in little sounds and when one stopped, to snort and sniff at the water of a duck-pond by the way, the other also stopped, raised his head and looked steadfastly up into the starry sky. I saw the moonlight in his big eyes. Presently they put their noses together. Then one gave a slight start—perhaps at the opinions of the other—and side by side they sauntered away into the night-hidden land.

One knew that they were revealing much about themselves concealed from their masters, and meditating upon life in their fashion while man slept.

(Eden Phillpotts [source])

Not from whiskey river:

There is such a dreamlike quality to snow as it falls heavily and piles up, transforming our regular world into an uncanny landscape. Sitting here, watching it, one feels the urge to remember what is underneath, just as when waking from a dream.

Sometimes it isn’t easy to see into what is there in front of us. We know that our dreams are just ways we have of telling ourselves about ourselves when we are asleep, and yet we have learned to keep from ourselves so much of who we fully, truly are that our dreams seem strange. Amazing, isn’t it? What we tell ourselves about ourselves must be told with so much secrecy and arcane symbolism that we can’t remember it, and if we can, we can’t understand it. At such moments our inner world seems shrouded, muted, alienated, as the natural world seems when it is covered with snow.

Isn’t it sad to realize that we have learned not to accept who we fully are? And isn’t it wonderful to remember that gradually, with courage, we can come to accept and include even what at first had appeared so strange, so horrible, so not-me in our dreams?

Can we be resolute about facing, with bare attention, the reality of things? Even when we discover that the old, narrow myth of who we are no longer holds, and the emerging, fuller person is so unexpected?

(Sylvia Forges Ryan [source])

It Can Go Either Way (Hint: So Can You)

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[Image: “Every Day a New Balancing Act,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river (last three stanzas):

what they did yesterday afternoon

they set my aunts house on fire

i cried the way women on tv do
folding at the middle
like a five pound note.
i called the boy who use to love me
tried to ‘okay’ my voice
i said hello
he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened?

i’ve been praying,
and these are what my prayers look like;
dear god
i come from two countries
one is thirsty
the other is on fire
both need water.

later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

(Warsan Shire [source])

…and:

I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.

(Henry Miller [source, apparently (unconfirmed)])

…and:

Do you remember the happiest day of your life? What about the saddest? Do you ever wonder if sadness and happiness can be combined, to make a deep purple feeling, not good, not bad, but remarkable simply because you didn’t have to live on one side or the other?

(Ocean Voung [source])

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A Quirky Eclectic Christmas Mix (2020 Ed.)

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[Video: “Sleigh Ride,” from the ten-year-old YouTube series called “Post-Modern Jukebox.” (Tip o’the hat to the erstwhile blogger and longtime RAMH friend known as Froog for reminding me of the collection.) PMJ’s videos feature a rotating stable (!) of contemporary performers rendering classics or contemporary pop music in retro musical styles, often in a form of musical irony — hence the “post-modern” of the title, I guess. As in many (most? all?) of the videos, PMJ’s creator, Scott Bradlee, features here on the keyboard. Unlike — as far as I know — any of the others, this one places at the centerpiece not a vocalist or instrumentalist, but a dancer. I don’t think I’d ever considered tapdancing as a type of percussion instrument but, y’know, maybe…?]

Want to visit the pages for earlier playlists, which include videos, other songs, and some background material not in the “official” current list? Here y’go:

2008 2009
2010 2011
2012 2013
2014 2015
2016 2017
2018 2019

Greetings, and welcome to the latest of Running After My Hat‘s annual Christmas fests, such as they are. Of course, since this is 2020, it’s only natural that this would be the thirteenth such iteration — but let’s dwell no further, for now, on the prospect of things going wrong. To the music, then!

As always beginning in 2008, I’ve added to the heap ten songs previously not included; the playlist therefore now includes 130 songs (the first is just a scrap of dialogue). Total time required to listen to the whole thing, start-to-finish, is now up to around seven hours of music. This means that — unless you’re interested in only this year’s ten — the best way to play the whole thing is in random order, as background so to speak. Then you can just close this browser window, and go about your holiday business.

So, first, here’s the complete playlist, presented in random order. Note: you can open it in a pop-out window by clicking (duh) the little “Popout” button at the top left (that’s the way to go, in my opinion) and if you don’t like this random order, just reload the page:  

…or, if you’re in a hurry, here are the ten 2020 selections only. Unlike the complete list, this player just runs through the songs in sequential order:

In either case, or even if you don’t want to listen at all, you might want to glance at the complete current list of song titles and performers. (Note: the window that opens when you click that link is just a listing; you cannot play music from it.)

Want to know why I recommend the random order? Check the 2018 post; it lays out my reasoning in probably excruciating detail.

And that’s it for the music per se. Below, some further ruminations…

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Admin: Taking a Slight Pleat in the Weekly Schedule

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…just this week:

The whiskey river Friday post will appear here as usual in a couple of days. Note, though, that Friday is December 18 — the date on which I’ve been posting my annual Christmas playlist (up to seven-ish hours’ duration now). Rather than dump them both on Friday, I’ll do the playlist thing tomorrow. (Of course, it’ll still hang around thereafter.)

Hope your soul is getting whatever it needs at this time of year — yes, even in this godawful year.

Thanks!

As Plain as the Nose on Your Face (or Mine)

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[Image: “Oh, of course. Now I see,” by user “sf-dvs” on Flickr. (Used here under a Creative Commons license; thank you!) Further commentary probably self-defeating.]

From whiskey river:

In the Buddhist view, I depend on you for my existence. All things depend on each other, equally. Welcome to the doctrine of dependent origination. It’s teeter-totter metaphysics—I arise, you arise; you arise, I arise. Forget about our presumed Maker, the divine machinist in the sky. Take a look at this moment right now. You are you because you are not something else; therefore, what you are not—the chair beneath you, the air in your lungs, these words—births you through an infinity of opposites. It’s like the ultimate Dr. Seuss riddle: Without all the things that are not you, who would you be you to? There’s no Higher Power in this system to grab on to for support; we are all already supporting each other. Pull a person or people the wrong way and you immediately redefine yourself in light of what you’ve done to your neighbor.

(Shozan Jack Haubner [source])

…and (first paragraph):

Mindfulness may seem like a difficult practice that takes special training and abilities to practice, but in many ways we are naturally mindful, whether we practice mindfulness or not. Everybody has awareness. That is how we know that we are suffering. We know we’re anxious. Whether we practice mindfulness or not, we notice our breathing. We notice that we have a body. We notice the taste of our food, the smells in the air. We notice that we feel good when we are generous. We notice that we like it when people are nice to us. We notice that we feel wonderful when we feel loved. We don’t need a special practice to notice these things. That is what we do because we are alive.

Whether we practice mindfulness or not, we train our minds to manage our emotions. We practice habits that create our typical moods. We live according to our beliefs to create as much happiness as we are able. Even if we don’t practice mindfulness, we live in the present moment. That’s all we have.

(Peter Taylor [source])

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Waiting Many Moments to Grab Just One of Them

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[Image: “Catch of the Day,” by RAMH favorite Tom Waterhouse. You’ll not be surprised that I found this on Flickr, nor — of course — that I use it here under a Creative Commons license (thank you!); follow that link to read the story of the photographer’s patience.]

From whiskey river:

You really don’t have to lose everything and travel to a remote valley to discover that the world is always rushing forward to teach us, and that the greatest thing we can do is to stand there, open and available, and be taught by it. There is no limit to what this cracked and broken and achingly beautiful world can offer, and there is equally no limit to our ability to meet it.

Each day, the sun rises and we get out of bed. Another day has begun and bravely, almost recklessly, we stagger into it not knowing what it will bring to us. How will we meet this unpredictable, untamable human life? How will we answer its many questions and challenges and delights? What will we do when we find ourselves, stumble over ourselves, encounter ourselves, once again, in the kitchen?

(Dana Velden [source])

…and:

We can live any way we want. People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience—even of silence—by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting.

(Annie Dillard [source])

…and, from whiskey river’s commonplace book:

Remember
That to have the eyes of an artist,
That can be enough,
The ear of a poet,
That can be enough.
The soul of a human
just pointed
in the direction of the divine,
that can be more than enough.
I tell you this to remind myself.
Every gesture is an act of creation.
Even empty spaces and silence
can be the wings and voices of angels.

(Michele Linfante [source: couldn’t trace to original, but found here])

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You’ve Got to Blink If You Want to See

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[Image: “(Half-)Shoeless in Paradise,” by John E. Simpson. (Shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH). This was #779 (2019-11-14) in my series of 1,000 “everyday black-and-white” posts on Instagram (a series which I wrapped up in June, 2020).]

From whiskey river:

For the crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, “The emperor is naked!” — when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game — everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably.

(Václav Havel [source])

…and:

But there are other people, people who choose to be crazy in order to cope with what they regard as a crazy world. They have adopted craziness as a lifestyle. I’ve found that there is nothing I can do for these people because the only way you can get them to give up their craziness is to convince them that the world is actually sane. I must confess that I have found such a conviction almost impossible to support.

(Tom Robbins [source])

…and:

Reality Is Always Freshly Born

The more successful a technique, the more it is guaranteed to produce certain results.
But reality can never be known in advance.
Creativity is not a matter of just applying know-how in order to achieve ends that have been figured out in advance.
Indeed, we may say that if you know what to do in any situation, it’s the wrong thing.
Living truth has to be created in the act of living and even the means have to be created in the act of giving ourselves to the task.
If you know what to say, it’s a lie.
If you know how to teach, you’re a propagandist.
If you know how to compose a verse, you’re not a poet.
If you know how to get along with your husband or wife, you’re not really married, you’re simply applying psychology.
(If you know how to heal your client, you’re not a real therapist.)
Reality is not gained by know how.
Reality is always freshly born.
Whenever a relationship or action is real, it is being created and re-created from moment to moment.
The real question is not what to do, but
How can I give myself more completely to the situation, to the task, to the person at hand?
As one learns how to give oneself more and more unreservedly, one is led step by step and
Discovers what to do

(Bernard Phillips [source (anecdotal/hearsay)])

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