Sit Up And Take Notice

Music never repeats itself.

Daniel Barenboim
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Hello Holly
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Just as in nature it is almost impossible to find pure symmetry. Perhaps it can be found in a bubble, or can be seen in butterfly wings. But even in the repetitious scales of some reptiles the pattern changes with the changing anatomy and movements of the animal. So in art there are many things that have the appearance of repeating patterns and symmetry.

I have a photograph of a brick path. Along both sides of the path there are small trees in pots evenly spaced to provide an edge to the path. Though all the trees are the same height, no matter how much shaping and pruning the gardener does he cannot make them identical. To the casual observer they may all look alike, but to the careful eye of someone else, each tree takes on its own personality and beauty.

"Music never repeats itself." The musical notes on the page are always the same for any printed piece of music. But when it is put in front of a musician it will become even more alive than those trees. And whether he plays it ill or well its life is momentary. Every time he plays it the experience will be different. Even a piece of music that is recorded will have a different experience for the listener every time it's heard. You may even hear a difference when it is played on a different record player. And when the same piece is played by another musician the experience is new and different even though the notes on the page haven't changed. You may have a favorite recording of some music that you love and have taken for granted. One day you will stop and listen again because you suddenly heard something different you didn't know was there, some movement of a muscle in the music you thought you'd never heard before.

These things happen because music is the most basic human art form there is. There is a direct link between music and human thoughts and emotions.

But one can also have the same sit up and pay attention with art and poetry.

I have a favorite painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Whenever I went to the museum, for whatever reason, I always made it a point to go and spend some time with that picture, and whenever I did it had more to say to me, like an endless conversation that picked up where it left off even if a year had intervened. You may have such a picture hanging on your wall from which one day something will emerge that you never paid attention to before, that you thought you never saw.

I like to say that I don't read books, I eat them. I love going back over the same great literature I've read before simply because even though the words on the page, like the notes in a musical score, haven't changed, somehow it's a brand new book. Once through the book or poem is an adventure. The next time through is a different adventure.

The endless, ever changing life of great art is one of the joys of human existence.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
(never give up)
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Let The Door Open

Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and unknowable.

Carl Sandburg
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Hello Adelaide, Australia. Have a warm and happy day.
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Every work of art is an announcement, a declaration, the cry of a new born, the rattling of the prison gates, the sound of two stones being smacked together.

Sometimes art is pretty, but it usually isn't meant to be. Sometimes the things that grow out of the ground are pretty, but sometimes they are ugly and they are both doing the same thing for similar reasons.

Art happens because there is something missing, a hole in the fabric, a mess that can only be cleared up by the magical workings of art and the artist as obedient servant. Art is for healing, not the kind of healing the doctor is paid for, but the healing of the rend that separates us from the beatific.

Great art is not a decoration, it is an attack, a challenge, s weapon against all the inanity, pedantry, ignorance and chaos that surrounds the earth and its humans. It is the bird struggling against the library window trying to get out, as Karla Feinzig once wrote about. It is an alarm bell and a beacon shining down on those who are morally corrupt and who aren't smart enough to know it. Those who do know it are lost. Art can't help them.

The poet holds stars in his hand and he flings them one at a time against the door of hope and beauty behind which is the land of truth. One day the door will open.

DB - The Vagabond
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No fooling around, here is this week's puzzle.
These are all legitimate movie titles in translation.
Your task, if you wish to survive, is to translate them back into their original titles by the end of next week.

Several Saints
Uprising Over The Thanksgiving Dinner
How One Murders An Imitator
Swept Away In A Breeze
The Lion Is Burning It's Feet
What The Flute Makes
The Insects' Messiah
She Married The Monster
Mr. Summerfall Winterspring
The Chimpanzees Live There
Confessing When Drenched
He Paid Very Close Attention, Unfortunately
Boiling When It's Dark
Misplaced Religious Artifact Stolen
Trees Around The Little House
Leo's Secret Message
Ultimate Spanish Dance in France
Country In A Maternity Ward
Instructions In Stone
Creepy Creatures Aloft
The Bitch Is Domesticated

2 entries so far.

Good luck
dbdacoba@aol.com

DB
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SPRING QUESTION
(This is not a contest)

NASA has planned to send a two man mission on an 18 month trip to the planet Mars. It would take 6 months for the astronauts to get there and after 6 months of exploration another 6 months to return.

Should they do it and why, and if not, why not?

dbdacoba@aol.com

4 answers so far

I eagerly await your answer.

DB
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Rich Revealing 7/10/09

Art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision.

Herbert Read
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Hail.
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Imagine if one day you had a beautiful vision and you wrote it down as a poem upon an arrow and signed it, then strung a bow and shot that arrow into the sky so high and so far that it didn't fall to the earth for a hundred years in some far off remote place. And imagine that, after many years, someone was passing by that remote place, saw the arrow, picked it up and read the poem. And then suppose that he took the arrow home and copied out the poem. Then suppose he got the poem published so that other people could read it. And suppose some of those people memorized the poem and went around reciting it to other people. And suppose the poem was included in collections of poetry and college textbooks on poetry so that you and the poem became famous.

One of the most frustrating ironies of life is that works of art not only struggle to be born but then have to struggle to survive. The world has already prepared a large collection of blocks and holes for the genius of an artist to fall into or stumble over. The easiest thing for an artist to do is to give up. And many do. And when they do a special vision is lost to the world.

It takes an army to protect poetry from the unconscionable hatred of the limited, mortal world for anything that challenges it's supposed dominance over our lives.

A poet is one who sees beyond the observable, which holds it's ugly head up in arrogance, to the unobservable. Unobservable that is except by vision and inspiration. And as soon as he articulates what he sees the claws come out. The very heart, soul and spirit of a artist can be shredded by ignorance, arrogance, disrespect and dismissal.

So why do it? Why is there art? An artist is an artist because he has to be. It is a singular, solitary encampment against an indifferent enemy, It is a desperate love affair with the gossamer zephyrs. It is an agreement with an invisible partner who may be angelic or diabolic, the artist doesn't know nor care. But what he does know is that if the invisible partner ever leaves him he takes the meaning of the artist's life with him.

The future and the past are inextricably linked. The future and the past are dependant upon each other. The past becomes the future once it squeezes through the tight fisted grasp of the present, with its fads and prejudices. Every work of art is an arrow that has been shot, some near, some far, and thus became the future. Today is the day for the artist to string his bow.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
_____________________
Applaud the good stuff.
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SUMMER QUIZ

This is not a contest.


A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.


Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?


You have all summer to answer if you wish.

11 responses so far.


DB

Remarkable Reconsideration 12.01.08

Poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance.

M. C. Richards
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"Pacing the shore, the ship's cat." Unknown


It isn't usually the obvious that slaps us in the face. It's the realization that we have missed the point.

Most people would probably pay no heed to such a cat, and if heed was paid one might say that there was a cat down by the shore. Some might opine that it was looking for a fish. But since when do fish jump out of the water and invite themselves to dinner? And if such an event were to occur due to some lunar influence why aren't there other cats down there to enjoy the repast?

But this is no ordinary cat. This is a ship's cat. How did the cat and his ship get separated? Did the ship sink? In which case how did the car survive? Or did the ship sail off and the car "missed the boat?" Anyone who knows cats knows how territorial they are. It's not likely the cat would stray too far from its home. Or did the captain get tired of the cat and throw it overboard. No, the cat has duties on board that ship. It's an essential part of the crew or it wouldn't be the ship's cat in the first place.

But lets assume the cat and ship got separated somehow and the cat is waiting for the vessel to return. But the cat is not just waiting, it's pacing. This is an anxious cat. And pacing means back and forth over the same part of the shore. Why is that? It must be where the ship is accustomed to dock.

Maybe the ship is on its way in and the cat knows it before any local humans do, Or what if its a female cat with babies on board. That's enough to make her pace.

See how the author of this simple 6 word line of verse has opened up a world of questions and taken us on a journey of investigation.

Any good poem will do the same. I'm not a poet, but I appreciate fine poetry because it does turn my mind inside out and blow perfume at it.

BTW, if anyone knows who wrote that line of verse, please let us know. I used to know but I've forgotten his name.


DB - Vagabond