3/23/08

"We make the music that we imagine ourselves to hear." Dr. Johnson, 92nd Rambler.

The explanation of this phenomenon being that neural fibers communicate impulses from the brain to the ear as readily as in the other, more predictable direction. And that the melodies speed up, and are persistent, but could you recite silently to yourself Heilig Nacht, they would disappear. And that the music of the spheres consists of the rubbing together of the surfaces of two crystal spheres at points where there are scratches or tiny, crystalline fragments etching the spheres, or vibrating them until each one vibrates in a single tone like the wineglasses whose edges are stroked by the nimblest index fingers to broadcast a note as pure as any stringed instrument played expertly in a conservatory, a resonance coaxed from wood or glass. The fibers from the brain to ear are as glassine and as sensitive to vibrations as fiber-optic cable. The neural fibers as glass can be shattered as crystal or glass can.

The music that we think we hear we make, and would be true of the songwriter: Mort Schuman’s advice to Ray Davies: find some chords you like, and build a song around them. To build up the song around the chords you like, which were there before you. No words like chords appear around which to build around them. It’s just the medium. Time has passed since I last put words to paper. You can almost hear the sheets of snow melt beneath you as the last icicle drips away on the roof; you can see the heat of the sun as it fills the air. The ledges of snow on the banks melt, the crows are waiting in the trees, the Eighth Symphony ends, a volume is written, but it’s nothing to be valued, unlike Pepys’ diary, or lines crossed out; that were negated but which nonetheless the present embraced. That the author negated but which the present embraced. There were no magic markers then.

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Benumbed, and numb as a pounded thump. Dump as a thumb, as a pounded stump. Sump, stump, pump, and dump. Liquified assets, liquified gas, a contradiction–such as change of state? A chant of stage, a rant from a cage, my purple prism. Emprismed the core arcs from the manifold. Bore arcs rake me. Rooks white and blue. Crooks impaled in stews. Crews look. Barbequed forks. Tynes impale tots. Le mot juste.

Unlike you, I’m not interested in le mot juste, and I can’t evoke a scene. I myself am preoccupied with other things. It’s all vowels, all speech, not thought. I can sense your indifference to my experiments. I would have thought you would have done this other thing which I was thinking about doing, or would have done had I been you. And though I’m not, I’m more than enough, and for you can stand in, and can stand within your shoes, and can know there, just what you need. I wouldn’t have done what you have done myself, but can imagine what would be good for you: I can stand in your shoes. Inside your shoes I think that this is not the place for you, that this you should not do, and were I you, the other thing I would have done. Of this I sing–dead or wounded pigeons in abandoned buildings or hopping on park benches, abandoned elevator shafts, flags fluttering in breezes, broken wings fluttering. Sour milk in the carton but spilled, half in, half out. Tacky playground swings and mine shafts. The fall of light through milky cataracted window panes in shafts. I home on debris–I can’t describe it though. I break the line to violate convention, to be difficult. Broken glass, studs with rusty nails, gravel or sawdust, guano: standard paraphernalia. Monochrome, restricted vocabulary, including color-words, textures only feathered, dusted, or granular, or surfaces porous, or dry, or disintegrated and crumbling. Public parks the places, not sunny fairgrounds.