I have sometimes thought maybe the nature of time and human life could be described with an analogy to sheet music - the score of an orchestral piece, if you like. All the notes, all the cadences, all the moments, in existence at the same time - but to allow for the limitations of human perception, they must be played sequentially, from beginning to end.
- as a thought excercise, a play on ideas, but only partly -
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter
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I can recommend for you 'The Glass Bead Game' by Hermann Hesse (if you haven't already read it.
Hei Merkin, thank you for the recommendation. I used to really like Hesse, in particular Narcissus and Goldmouth and Siddhartha, when I was younger. Then I progressed to Steppenwolf and really went off him, for some reason - as I recall, I never finished it. The Glass Bead Game remains unread, but shhh...never tell anyone I have such a gaping gap in my literariness.
First year Uni in nineteen-canteen meant Hesse, Caravan, Gong, Zero the Hero and The Pot-Head Pixies and strange substances.
Come to think of it, I haven't really progressed that much (apart from the strange substances).
Ah, now I remember Gong. I saw one or two of their revival gigs in some London club or another, in the late 80s - v.early 90s.
Astonishingly, according to my research, they are still going (going, going, Gong - ok, that was terrible), and nothing much seems to have happened to Daevid Allen. Pickled in, um, strange substances, no doubt.
It's funny, but when I saw the title of this (very nice), I thought it was about what makes memories stick (like police plaiters, something we don't have here).
And lately, it's struck me how strong memories of small episodes attached to love can be.
Even long after it was over, some small kernels remain, strong as ever.
(Bad memories stick around too, but I don't cultivate them.)
So I guess it takes some emotion to burn them in, then revisiting the snapshot over and over to keep them alive?
PS: Your sun photos are great, but 22 hrs a day would drive me crazy.
Hei Kurt, good for you for liking the title of the post - this speaks volumes for your taste. It is, beyond any doubt, the best part of the post, given that I've stolen it from TS Eliot's poem East Coker (I have a ghost in the machine that makes it impossible for me to embed links in my comments box - most annoying - but check http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/east-coker-from-four-quartets/ if you're interested). That is also the worthy source of another very good title I had recently, namely the one about humility. Yeeees. Mediocre artists borrow, great artists steal, Kurt my friend (and by confessing this, I suppose I have doomed myself to mediocrity. No matter.)
Memories of love are easily attached to places and objects, for me - this is where we etc etc. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Also words carry a lot of sticking power - an inner-circle lingo develops between the lovers, a code for humour, for love, for expressing things in shorthand. Sometimes I miss "the things we used to say" even after the love itself has long since gone sour. Of course, the answer is not to allow the love to go sour, even if it ends, I suppose...
(I am sure you'd love the white nights, Kurt. It's not as if the sun is up there, beating away relentlessly, for the 22 hours. I uploaded a picture http://www.flickr.com/photos/annamr/681523821 so you could take a look at the night time hours (again, sorry about the inelegance caused by the lack of embedding. I can't think why it would be, incidentally, and any advice would be appreciated - they come up alright in preview, then the link itself disappears once posted, but the rest of the text after the embedding becomes the link. Tremendously annoying). At night, the sky remains blue, like the blue daytime sky, only try to imagine the blue daytime sky in shade. It is lovely. It wouldn't drive you crazy - not in a bad way anyway.)
x
well I was going to say something about memory, but then kurt did and saved me the bother of trying to come up with something intelligent. Some lines from Osip Mandelstam came into my head, not entirely appropriate, but still -
"I was born in the night of the second and third
of January in the untrustworthy year
of 'ninety-one, and the centuries
surround me with fire."
Signs my love - I had damn near gone suicidal with your recent untrustworthy awol-ness. Never do that to me again - I don't play up my neediness, right - but it's there, throbbing away like a sore thumb of gargantuan proportions.
Anyway - to say something sensible - I love Mandelstam and I particularly love the fact that someone would quote me Mandelstam, and also I recall the first time I bumbled into your worthy house, I was re-reading Nadezhda's book (you may recall my comment) and you were quoting Mandelstam in the post I read. Signs enough for anyone, let alone us two synchronicity-riddled loons, wouldn't you agree, sweet Signs? And of course this now means that Mandelstam is and will forever be linked with you, in my mind. Not a bad link to have, for a poet such as yourself - but try not to copycat his life story, hmmm?
(You will note my pleasedness with your fucking finally showing up, from the exuberance of my tone. I shall now wander further down because I have a feeling you've been there too. Just call it a hunch, Kolmio.)
xx
I love the words, I love the pics. I like returning to them. Even if it appears that you have endless sun and we have endless rain and I am reminded that life Is Just So Unfair.
*stamps feet*
*runs off back to his corner*
Dear dork - how good to finally see you here. Look, the only reason I post the endless sun is so that you could enjoy it too, ok? Not to go "nah-na-na-nah-nah, I have it, you don't".
Honestly.
I am, incidentally, chuffed to bits by the praise you come bearing. Welcome to my bloggy, and welcome back again, my friend, whenever the mood grabs you.
xx
(PS Your courageous choice of thread is duly noted and admired.)
Ah, it's Eliot. ee cummings was the first thing that sprang to mind. And "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds", for some reason.
The purple of the flowers is truly purple.
Yup, LottieP, it's Eliot the Eminently Quotable, again...
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