{"id":8144,"date":"2011-04-15T11:26:46","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T15:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=8144"},"modified":"2011-04-15T11:26:46","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T15:26:46","slug":"spark-of-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/spark-of-interest\/","title":{"rendered":"Spark of Interest"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/object><\/p>\n

[Video: “Musical Tesla Coils: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.” For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

What is it that you contain? The dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia opening in your gut. Every minute, in each of you, a few million potassium atoms succumb to radioactive decay. The energy that powers these tiny atomic events has been locked inside potassium atoms ever since a star-sized bomb exploded nothing into being. Potassium, like uranium and radium, is a long-lived radioactive nuclear waste of the supernova bang that accounts for you.<\/p>\n

Your first parent was a star.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jeanette Winterson)<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I won’t get any poems written during these weeks either. It’s not the first time this has happened. And I won’t go on about it. There isn’t much to say. Victor Hugo once summed it up as follows (Karol Berger told me about this as we strolled through Paris, the sixteenth arrondissement<\/em>). When someone asked him if writing poetry was easy, he said, “When I can write it, it’s easy; when I can’t, it’s impossible.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Adam Zagajewski)<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Boulevard du Montparnasse<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Once, in a doorway in Paris, I saw
\nthe most beautiful couple in the world.
\nThey were each the single most beautiful thing in the world.
\nShe could have been sixteen, perhaps; he twenty.
\nTheir skin was the same shade of black: like a shiny Steinway.
\nAnd they stood there like a four-legged instrument
\nof a passion so grand one could barely imagine them
\never working, or eating, or reading magazine.
\nEven they could hardly believe it.
\nHer hands gripped his belt loops, as they found each other’s eyes,
\nbecause beauty like this must be held onto,
\ncould easily run away on the power
\nof his long, lean thighs; or the tiny feet of her laughter.
\nI thought: now I will write a poem,
\nset in a doorway on the Boulevard du Mont Parnasse,
\nin which the brutishness of time
\nrates only a mention; I will say simply —
\nthat if either one should ever love another,
\na greater beauty shall not be the cause.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Mary Jo Salter)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

First Thanksgiving<\/strong><\/p>\n

When she comes back, from college, I will see
\nthe skin of her upper arms, cool,
\nmatte, glossy. She will hug me, my old
\nsoupy chest against her breasts,
\nI will smell her hair! She will sleep in this apartment,
\nher sleep like an untamed, good object,
\nlike a soul in a body. She came into my life the
\nsecond great arrival, after him, fresh
\nfrom the other world — which lay, from within him,
\nwithin me. Those nights, I fed her to sleep,
\nweek after week, the moon rising,
\nand setting, and waxing — whirling, over the months,
\nin a slow blur, around our planet.
\nNow she doesn\u2019t need love like that, she has
\nhad it. She will walk in glowing, we will talk,
\nand then, when she\u2019s fast asleep, I\u2019ll exult
\nto have her in that room again,
\nbehind that door! As a child, I caught
\nbees, by the wings, and held them, some seconds,
\nlooked into their wild faces,
\nlistened to them sing, then tossed them back
\ninto the air — I remember the moment the
\narc of my toss swerved, and they entered
\nthe corrected curve of their departure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Sharon Olds [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

C<\/strong>\u00e6dmon*<\/strong><\/p>\n

All others talked as if
\ntalk were a dance.
\nClodhopper I, with clumsy feet
\nwould break the gliding ring.
\nEarly I learned to
\nhunch myself
\nclose by the door:
\nthen when the talk began
\nI\u2019d wipe my
\nmouth and wend
\nunnoticed back to the barn
\nto be with the warm beasts,
\ndumb among body sounds
\nof the simple ones.
\nI\u2019d see by a twist
\nof lit rush the motes
\nof gold moving
\nfrom shadow to shadow
\nslow in the wake
\nof deep untroubled sighs.
\nThe cows
\nmunched or stirred or were still. I
\nwas at home and lonely,
\nboth in good measure. Until
\nthe sudden angel affrighted me — light effacing
\nmy feeble beam,
\na forest of torches, feathers of flame, sparks upflying:
\nbut the cows as before
\nwere calm, and nothing was burning,
\nnothing but I, as that hand of fire<\/span>
\ntouched my lips and scorched my tongue
\nand pulled my voice
\ninto the ring of the dance.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Denise Levertov [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

______________<\/p>\n

* Don’t recognize the name in the title? Lots of good starting points about C\u00e6dmon at the Wikipedia article<\/a>. Not bad for the lyricist\/composer of a single surviving 1400(ish)-year old song<\/a>, eh?<\/p>\n

____________________________<\/p>\n

About the video at the top of this post:<\/strong> A RAMH<\/em> post back in November<\/a> included a video featuring a Finnish theremin artist playing “White Christmas” by waving his hands in the air between a couple of antennae. In a similarly weird vein, if you’re unfamiliar with it already, this video will introduce you to an instrument called the Thoremin (or Zeusaphone\u2122): a BIG Tesla coil the sparking of which produces (sort of) musical notes. The generic name for this instrument, indeed, is the singing Tesla coil<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

The singing Tesla coil is a form of plasma speaker. It is a variation of a solid state Tesla coil that has been modified to produce musical tones by modulating its spark output. The resulting pitch is a low fidelity square wave like sound reminiscent of an analog synthesizer.
\n…
\nIt works by means of a microcontroller that is programmed to interpret MIDI data, and output a corresponding pulse-width modulation (PWM) signal. This PWM signal is coupled to the Tesla coil through a fiber optic cable, and controls when the Tesla coil turns on and off.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, I know: whatever the hell that<\/em> means. The technological details may exceed what I can grasp at the moment, but maybe the key phrase there, anyway, is low fidelity<\/em>. (At another YouTube video showing the device in operation, one wag’s comment consisted entirely of the word “Lyrics,” a colon, and a string of dozens of z<\/em>‘s. Ha!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Video: “Musical Tesla Coils: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.” For more information, see the note at the foot of this post.] From whiskey river: What is it that you contain? The dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia opening in your gut. Every minute, in each of you, a few million potassium atoms succumb to […]<\/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":[247,1393,95,5,251,372],"tags":[850,1017,1496,1497,1633,2325,2326,2327,2328],"class_list":{"0":"post-8144","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-science-medicine","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-poetry-writing_cat","11":"category-style-and-craft","12":"tag-denise-levertov","13":"tag-mary-jo-salter","14":"tag-jeanette-winterson","15":"tag-sharon-olds","16":"tag-adam-zagajewski","17":"tag-caedmon","18":"tag-zeusaphone","19":"tag-thoremin","20":"tag-singing-tesla-coil","21":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-27m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8144","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=8144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8145,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8144\/revisions\/8145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}