Four Poems For Robin
An Autumn Morning In Shokoku-ji
Last night watching the Pleiades,
Breath smoking in the moonlight,
Bitter memory like vomit
Choked my throat.
I unrolled a sleeping bag
On mats on the porch
Under thick autumn stars.
In dream you appeared
(Three times in nine years)
Wild, cold, and accusing.
I woke shamed and angry:
The pointless wars of the heart.
Almost dawn. Venus and Jupiter.
The first time I have
Ever seen them close.
No Swan So Fine
“No water so still as the
dead fountains of Versailles.” No swan,
with swart blind look askance
and gondoliering legs, so fine
as the chintz china one with fawn-
brown eyes and toothed gold
collar on to show whose bird it was.
Lodged in the Louis Fifteenth
candelabrum-tree of cockscomb-
tinted buttons, dahlias,
sea urchins, and everlastings,
it perches on the branching foam
of polished sculptured
flowers – at ease and tall. The king is dead.
I had always thought the deep bass note is the driving force behind the song. Much like the low rumbling and deep bass sounds indicate foreboding and fear in a cinema experience. Relentless with a hint of dread.
But then again, the chord progession is rather haunting and Annie Lennox’s vocals (top-notch) are stark and beautiful. Maybe it’s the syncopation?
From the description (arranged for order):
I’m going with the 8-bit or the dual piano (2 and/or 4).
‘Piano version, 8 bit version, ragtime version, dual piano version or the terror version…’
The original video is mildly surrealistic 80’s shock-pop; just cheesy enough to flirt with schlock, but the combination of lyrics, story, musicality and simplicity give this song serious staying-power:
Below is Albert Bierstadt’s ‘Puget Sound, on the Pacific Coast, 1870″ which is on display the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). Bierstadt painted the picture without having seen Puget Sound! More on the Hudson River School here, with its strong roots in romanticism.
“Then you get to the last room of the exhibit, where something special happens. In 1994, Xie traveled to Yosemite National Park with his painter wife Chen Peiqiu. There, he produced a series of paintings that are a testimonial to cognitive dissonance. He paints the mountains and trees of Yosemite, but they look vaguely Chinese.”
Also at SAM: A Reaction To Jeff Koons ‘St John The Baptist’
How might Nietzsche figure in the discussion (was he most after freeing art from a few thousand years of Christianity, monarchy and aristocracy…something deeper?), at least with regard to Camille Paglia. See the comments: Repost-Camille Paglia At Arion: Why Break, Blow, Burn Was Successful
Approach Of Winter
The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden.
Too much shredding? Maybe, but that’s some tone, timing and technique!
You need a guy with near virtuosic talent on his instrument, some feel for composition, and long, long hours to play so faithfully live.
I like the change to the Am chorus at 2:50 or so.
Towards a theme. New-agey and way 80’s yes, but I really like the composition, and the raucous feel beginning at the :32 mark as the drums and bass kick-in:
Why, it’s a like a tapestry of vocal harmonies:
Everything old is new again. It gets positively medieval at 3:20 seconds?:
Who’s writing these things? Just enjoy. You culture has much to teach you if you bother to listen. Stuff gets passed down, you know.
You can’t see (hear) it all from one place.
October
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.