Sunday, November 20, 2005

After noon


It is a platitude that the great force of human creativity is a means of dealing with the relentless, bladelike grief of being alive. I'm not so sure about this, as it might just be part of the story we like to tell about the Agony of the Artist, a lie that we tell ourselves about what it is to be authentically human, that it is to be angry and in pain, so that we need not torture ourselves more than we are already tortured. But still it seems to me that there is such an exhausting amount of energy involved in this grief, and I am not a poet. I do not know the pebbled, cobbled, dirt, asphalt, grassy paths of music and I am wide-eyed and often frightened in the face of those who do. I cannot draw.

So I am sitting, marooned in the tumult, and I cannot sharpen it as They do, distil it into nib or note. Instead like the others marooned I grasp at the things which The Others have made, tearing pieces from their pieces and clutching them to myself as though I might slipstitch them together, throw them in the air over and over until they came down arranged into something I might have made.

From Shaler's Fish
draining the land into raw salt and a poverty of sand and judgement
and I am balanced on one foot, assuming that the next step is groundward
but wherever the ground is, blood.

2 comments:

Scrivener said...

Just now discovered your blog, and wanted to say that I think this post is beautiful and I totally identify with the sentiment. Thanks.

I notice in your sidebar you're listening to Hem. IMHO, Rabbit Songs is just amazing, though I've had kind of a hard time getting into Eveningland and I'm not sure exactly why. I only bring it up to say, if you haven't already, give the earlier album a listen too.

Xtin said...

Thanks, Scrivener. I am a great lover of your own blog. And also of Rabbit Songs. I was sent both it (them?) and Eveningland by a friend of mine, and we both had just that experience: something about Rabbit Songs makes Eveningland difficult to hear. But after standing on its own for a while, it starts to take on its own wonders!