An insect lies dead stiff upon the piano
The music spread forgotten on the stand
I want there to be meaning in the tableau
But somehow meaning is not close at hand
The insect's death a hackneyed demonstration
An uninventive protest to the end
No web of winding sheets no weeping nation
No funeral for grieving insect friends
I brush its lifeless body from the keyboard
And take my place upon the piano stool
And sitting rest my fingers on the first chord
And play and sing of nothing much at all
Friday 20 February 2009
Tuesday 10 February 2009
Another Time Than This
There is a glass on a ledge. A curved glass with the dregs of cheap white wine pooling at the bottom. It sits forgotten, framed asymmetrically by the recess in the bare, cellar wall, and to its left a winter coat curled, sprawling, clinging to the ledge. The coat might fall, might descend to the ground to be trampled beneath the dancing feet, might float downwards to lie with sweat-sprinkled dust. It might fall, but it won't; it hasn't yet.
A pattern of light is projected onto the wall, the projector itself hidden, unseen. The projection catches the glass just so and sends out fingers of light into the room. At the same moment, someone's jumping hand sets the mirror ball spinning, throwing out points of white that mingle indecorously with the projected pattern and the light from the glass. Fragments of colour and life in the darkness.
It is a perfect moment - the laughter and the light and the music combining to produce a cascade of feeling. A free, unguarded happiness. Rarely found and impossible to create.
Abandon. Almost.
For though the first self is given up to the moment, is stretched so thin and transparent that it seems to blend with the world around it. Although the first self feels the harmony of oblivion, the second self stands back, as ever. Recording, documenting, filing away for later review and analysis.
The second self knows the moment has and is will always be lived twice through different eyes, different selves overlaying each other so closely that they seem as one, and yet so separate that they can hardly be thought of as a whole.
To be strictly accurate there is a third self in the mix. The self that defines the relationship between the aware and the unaware, the observed and the observer. But that is another story for different moment, another time than this.
A pattern of light is projected onto the wall, the projector itself hidden, unseen. The projection catches the glass just so and sends out fingers of light into the room. At the same moment, someone's jumping hand sets the mirror ball spinning, throwing out points of white that mingle indecorously with the projected pattern and the light from the glass. Fragments of colour and life in the darkness.
It is a perfect moment - the laughter and the light and the music combining to produce a cascade of feeling. A free, unguarded happiness. Rarely found and impossible to create.
Abandon. Almost.
For though the first self is given up to the moment, is stretched so thin and transparent that it seems to blend with the world around it. Although the first self feels the harmony of oblivion, the second self stands back, as ever. Recording, documenting, filing away for later review and analysis.
The second self knows the moment has and is will always be lived twice through different eyes, different selves overlaying each other so closely that they seem as one, and yet so separate that they can hardly be thought of as a whole.
To be strictly accurate there is a third self in the mix. The self that defines the relationship between the aware and the unaware, the observed and the observer. But that is another story for different moment, another time than this.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
