![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/nosehare_snifflemouse_halbritter_sm.jpg?resize=500%2C443&ssl=1\" "\\"Nosehare")
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From whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n Let me make this perfectly clear. You suspect this is a posture or an act You actually think I care if this Do not think for one minute it is the Poem that matters. (Gwendolyn MacEwen, “Let Me Make This Perfectly Clear,” Afterworlds<\/em>)<\/p>\n …and:<\/p>\n Then there is the BIG PROBLEM — who are you? There is an endemic human tendency for self-deception. We all think we’re one kind of person when we’re somewhat different (especially viewed by others) than we imagine we are. You — the reader — no doubt feel you’re an exception.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Alan Fletcher)<\/p>\n …and:<\/p>\n Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Can’t you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front—<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (G.K. Chesterton, from The Man Who Was Thursday<\/em> [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n Consider the plight of Ophelia and Gertrude, who must pretend that they are having normal conversations with Hamlet but know they are staging it for eavesdroppers hiding behind arrases and elsewhere. Bad enough, as I have been supposing, to have to attend to the colleague you are talking to and worry about what you are going to say next. But imagine if that colleague were Hamlet. A reptile on a cold day would be a nervous wreck talking with him. How do you converse with Hamlet and not walk away feeling humiliated unless, like Horatio, you have cultivated a stoical disposition? Hamlet is so much smarter than you, and he delights in never letting you forget it. He makes each conversation a contest to see whether you can follow his speed-of-light access to startlingly original images juxtaposed in difficult and fantastic ways. He tests to see whether you can fathom his incessant punning, his playing with words only a tenth of which you grasp at the moment; and while you are figuring out how to respond to them, another hundred whiz right by you, ones that future editors of Hamlet’s conversations will spend years parsing. When you finally steel yourself to open your mouth, he plays with your words, turning them against you or making you not only feel stupid but look it too. Now add that Gertrude and Ophelia have to perform not just for Hamlet but for the eavesdropping Polonius or Claudius and know that by so doing they are betraying Hamlet. It is amazing they don’t give up immediately under the stress of the duplicitous conditions in which they are being asked to converse and perform as genuine interlocutors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (William Ian Miller, Faking It<\/em> [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n You may know it’s been an unpleasantly distracting week for me, technology-wise. Of all the songs which might have become lodged in my mind over the last few days, then, looping endlessly, the one which follows — which has nothing at all to do with technology — seems an unlikely choice to head the list of candidates. It fits right in with the whiskey river<\/em> theme, though: Robert Cray<\/a>‘s “Little Boy Big,” from his 1995 album Some Rainy Morning<\/em>.<\/p>\n Cray is a great favorite of The Missus and me. There’s something about the way his voice combines the satin of soul with the misery of blues — something which just gets to us (and he’s a mean<\/em> guitarist). In this particular number, he uses both those tools to good effect in a tale of a protagonist who fools himself while living a life of fooling others. (For some reason, the image in that last couplet — right after the whistling — always affects me.)<\/p>\n (Remember: If streaming audio is not working for you, there’s always an alternative — clumsier, but it should work just fine. Just keep an eye on the correct bracket.)<\/p>\n
\nI have never written anything because it is a Poem.
\nThis is a mistake you always make about me,
\nA dangerous mistake. I promise you
\nI am not writing this because it is a Poem.<\/p>\n
\nI am sorry to tell you it is not an act.<\/p>\n
\nPoem gets off the ground or not. Well
\nI don’t care if this poem gets off the ground or not
\nAnd neither should you.
\nAll I have ever cared about
\nAnd all you should ever care about
\nIs what happens when you lift your eyes from this page.<\/p>\n
\nIt is not the Poem that matters.
\nYou can shove the Poem.
\nWhat matters is what is out there in the large dark
\nand in the long light,
\nBreathing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/fingeroo_halbritter_sm.jpg?resize=500%2C459&ssl=1\" "\\"Fingeroo,")
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