[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.
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 HorvathFrom 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)
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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
