{"id":13150,"date":"2013-04-19T10:42:20","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T14:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=13150"},"modified":"2013-04-19T10:42:20","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T14:42:20","slug":"cut-the-now-and-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/cut-the-now-and-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Cut the Now, and Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1yD8PzFFNFU?rel=0\" height=\"315\" width=\"560\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video from the PBS <\/em><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a title=\"YouTube: 'Blank on Blank' channel\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/blankonblank\/videos\" target=\"_blank\">Blank on Blank<\/a><\/span><em> series of animated &#8220;vintage [and previously unheard] interviews&#8221; with various celebrities. Others currently include, e.g., Jim Morrison on &#8220;Why Fat is Beautiful&#8221; (1969) and Dave Brubeck on &#8220;Fighting Communism with Jazz&#8221; (2008)]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From\u00a0<em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ours is a planet sown in beings. Our generations overlap like shingles. We don&#8217;t fall in rows like hay, but we fall. Once we get here, we spend forever on the globe, most of it tucked under. While we breathe, we open time like a path in the grass. We open time as a boat&#8217;s stem slits the crest of the present.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Annie Dillard\u00a0[<a title=\"Google Books: 'For the Time Being,' by Annie Dillard\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=d-Db3aqxBkYC&amp;pg=PT156&amp;lpg=PT156#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But it is never over;\u00a0nothing ends until we want it to.<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 6.5em;\">Look, in shattered midnights,<\/span><br \/>\nOn black ice under silver trees, we are still dancing, dancing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Gwendolyn MacEwen [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Gwendolyn MacEwen, Volume 2,' by Gwendolyn MacEwen\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=LNhTQZs4CIkC&amp;pg=PA97&amp;lpg=PA97#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Not from\u00a0<em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Far Company<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At times now from some margin of the day<br \/>\nI can hear birds of another country<br \/>\nnot the whole song but a brief phrase of it<br \/>\nout of a music that I may have heard<br \/>\nonce in a moment I appear to have<br \/>\nforgotten for the most part that full day<br \/>\nno sight of which I can remember now<br \/>\nthough it must have been where my eyes were then<br \/>\nthat knew it as the present while I thought<br \/>\nof somewhere else without noticing that<br \/>\nsinging when it was there and still went on<br \/>\nwhether or not I noticed now it falls<br \/>\nsilent when I listen and leaves the day<br \/>\nand flies before it to be heard again<br \/>\nsomewhere ahead when I have forgotten<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(W.S. Merwin [<a title=\"Poetry Foundation: 'Far Country,' by W.S. Merwin\" href=\"http:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poetrymagazine\/poem\/29710\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In Highland New Guinea, now Papua New Guinea, a British district officer named James Taylor contacted a mountain village, above three thousand feet, whose tribe had never seen any trace of the outside world. It was the 1930s. He described the courage of one villager. One day, on the airstrip hacked from the mountains near his village, this man cut vines and lashed himself to the fuselage of Taylor&#8217;s airplane shortly before it took off. He explained calmly to his loved ones that, no matter what happened, he had to see where it came from.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Annie Dillard, <em>ibid.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Nostalgia<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.<br \/>\nYou always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,<br \/>\nand I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,<br \/>\nthe ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.<br \/>\nEveryone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,<br \/>\nand at night we would play a game called \u201cFind the Cow.\u201d<br \/>\nEverything was hand-lettered then, not like today.<\/p>\n<p>Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet<br \/>\nmarathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags<br \/>\nof rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.<br \/>\nOut on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle<br \/>\nwhile your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.<br \/>\nWe borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.<br \/>\nThese days language seems transparent, a badly broken code.<\/p>\n<p>The 1790s will never come again. Childhood was big.<br \/>\nPeople would take walks to the very tops of hills<br \/>\nand write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.<br \/>\nOur collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.<br \/>\nWe would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.<br \/>\nIt was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.<\/p>\n<p>I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.<br \/>\nEurope trembled while we sat still for our portraits.<br \/>\nAnd I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,<br \/>\ntime enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,<br \/>\nor shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me<br \/>\nrecapture the serenity of last month when we picked<br \/>\nberries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.<\/p>\n<p>Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.<br \/>\nI was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees<br \/>\nand the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light<br \/>\nflash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse<br \/>\nand silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.<\/p>\n<p>As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,<br \/>\nletting my memory rush over them like water<br \/>\nrushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.<br \/>\nI was even thinking a little about the future, that place<br \/>\nwhere people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,<br \/>\na dance whose name we can only guess.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Billy Collins [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Sailing Alone Around the World: New and Selected Poems,' by Billy Collns\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=_uxrn_B6nQIC&amp;pg=PA42#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video from the PBS Blank on Blank series of animated &#8220;vintage [and previously unheard] interviews&#8221; with various celebrities. Others currently include, e.g., Jim Morrison on &#8220;Why Fat is Beautiful&#8221; (1969) and Dave Brubeck on &#8220;Fighting Communism with Jazz&#8221; (2008)] From\u00a0whiskey river: Ours is a planet sown in beings. Our generations overlap like shingles. We don&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,38,247,1393,426,73,274,5,251],"tags":[295,351,1141,1476,2625,3440,3441],"class_list":{"0":"post-13150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-backwards","8":"category-ruminations","9":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","10":"category-celebrities","11":"category-radio","12":"category-cartoons","13":"category-06_writing","14":"category-poetry-writing_cat","15":"tag-annie-dillard","16":"tag-ws-merwin","17":"tag-billy-collins","18":"tag-gwendolyn-macewen","19":"tag-pbs","20":"tag-blank-on-blank","21":"tag-larry-king","22":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3q6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13150"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13172,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13150\/revisions\/13172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}