The Why
I’m not here to offer a poetic analysis; my English minor days are many moons in the rearview mirror. I’m here to share a little bit of my weird with you.
I find that I’m drawn to darker verse. Lines that echo thoughts we don’t say out loud, cries of the heart. Lines that speak to the larger machinations of the universe around us. Sometimes these lines swirl around in my brain and they just want to float. Not exist as song lyrics. Not stay stagnant on a page.
How We Create
I sat down Sunday evening and improvised a piano tune that fit my mood. Then, I sifted through favorite poetry books, their pages dog-eared and worn and sometimes marked with multiples post-it notes.
I intended for the project to be a quick one, another lesson in creative practice, but here I am uploading this video at 2:30am on Monday, having found myself glued to the screen, adding bells here and a drone there. Another layer of transitions here and there. Once I felt that I was sufficiently in a trance, I called it a day. It is rough around the edges, like myself. But hopefully it is enjoyable.
Social media has always existed in some primitive form, but it wasn’t until I was in college that the groundswell of new technologies allowed for an absolute explosion of rapid, online creative communities. I was in college when YouTube debuted, at a time when smartphones with cameras and internet access didn’t exist. Can you imagine?
It seemed like a new frontier! As digital cameras and recording equipment became cheaper and cheaper, the in-roads to sharing one’s artistic progressive became highways rather than narrow one-lane roads. Everyone brought their wagon into Rome. It was a delightfully weird time, when no one worried about their brand, or algorithms, or the pace at which one created. You just did it.
And now, I plan to sing something. I have to schedule time to rearrange my lighting setup, do my hair and makeup, practice, do multiple takes, make digital assets in about 4 different aspect ratios, come up with captions, schedule posts, cross-post…..
All that has exacerbated my perfectionism. But, I wanted to read poems and write piano ditties and paste it up with weird video!!
from ‘Black Riders and Other Lines’
Stephen Crane
VII
Mystic shadow, bending near me, Who art thou?
Whence come ye?
And-tell me-is it fair
Or is the truth bitter as eaten fire?
Tell me!
Fear not that I should quaver.
For I dare-I dare.
Then, tell me!
XLIV
I was in the darkness;
I could not see my words
Nor the wishes of my heart.
Then suddenly there was a great light-
"Let me into the darkness again."
XXIII
Places among the stars,
Soft gardens near the sun,
Keep your distant beauty;
Shed no beams upon my weak heart.
Since she is here
In a place of blackness,
Not your golden days
Nor your silver nights
Can call me to you.
Since she is here
In a place of blackness,
Here I stay and wait
from ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’
Charles Baudelaire (translated by William Aggeler)
To lift a weight so heavy,
Would take your courage, Sisyphus!
Although one's heart is in the work,
Art is long and Time is short.
Far from famous sepulchers
Toward a lonely cemetery
My heart, like muffled drums,
Goes beating funeral marches.
Many a jewel lies buried
In darkness and oblivion,
Far, far away from picks and drills;
Many a flower regretfully
Exhales perfume soft as secrets
In a profound solitude.
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