December 14, 2014

December 14, 2014

The quiet is deafening.  Starting today, I lose contact with the one I love.   I usually use the phone app “Line” to stay in touch with her, but she is in a location where she doesn’t either have a cell phone or access to the Internet.   All quiet on the Western Front.   All quiet in the house.  To make the room more lively, I have been playing music by Spike Jones and his City Slickers.   The way he looks and sounds is so far removed from my world, that playing this album, is like a foreign presence in my life.  I eventually lose track of my reality, and enter into his world.   My favorite recording by him is “Cocktails for Two, ” which was originally a romantic song, but in his possession it becomes a mockery of romance and love.   Yet, when I hear the lyrics: “Most any afternoon at five/ We’ll be so glad we’re both alive / Then maybe fortune will complete her plan/ That all began / With cocktails for two” - I find myself in misery, because around that time it is cocktail time, and there is only a reservation for a table for one.

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.” I obtain a faint memory of a life that I feel rather nostalgic now, thinking of it.  The ritual of getting up in the morning, and here I worked on the living room table, and she comes out of the bedroom into my arms, for a good morning.  We open the window shutters to let the sunshine bath us with its rays, but since she’s gone, either by design or fortune, there is nothing but clouds.

I shop, I look, I pretend to do stuff, but I’m not here or there.  I look at my cell phone as it sits on the desk attached to a cord to a wall-socket.  I keep it there in fear that I will lose power or battery the moment she calls - but alas, I know this is only a fantasy on my part.  “Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?” Who knows?  I taste my loneliness as if it was the most expensive bottle of wine.  I savor the memory as I let the taste roam around my tongue.   She made me a bag to keep all my loose ends - I am sort of like a woman who needs her bag more than anything else in life.  But since she’s gone, I don’t feel compelled to bring the few objects I need when I leave our house.  I feel empty, so I want to become empty-handed as well.

“I delight in what I fear.” It’s the only thing, that keeps me fully alive.   The separation could be visualized as a vanishing point.  I look in the distance, thinking I may see her.  But what I see are the things by the side of my vision.   It’s a tunnel that I want to run into - but I know I’ll never reach the other side.  But yes, one can still imagine that there is a destination in that tunnel, where eventually I’ll reach the one I love.

“Her head falls asleep in my hands / Where are we / Together inseparable / Alive alive / He alive she alive / and my head rolls through her dreams.” - Paul Éluard

June 21, 2014

June 21, 2014

What I like about writing is noticing the little moments in one’s life and other’s as well.  What does appear to be insignificant, can be important if it’s framed in a certain fashion.  The songwriting craft of say, someone like Ray Davies of The Kinks is his ability to place emphasis on the trivial and bring it out dramatically in his songs.  It is interesting to compare his songs with Pete Townshend of The Who, because basically they share a country as well as a culture.  Yet, Townshend focuses on the big statement, for instance, “My Generation, ” and Davies write “Waterloo Sunset.” A beautiful song that captures an intimate moment or a series of moments, which speak softly, but has a great deal of meaning to the listener.  Both artists look at the world visually as well as thematic, with respect to class, culture, and how that individual is positioned in that world.  The thing with Townshend is that he takes huge subject matters and presents it that sort of represents the everyday person.   In a way, he’s like Wagner in capturing the immense emotional moment.  Davies on the other hand is more of a sketch artist, or one who draws in pencil, and also deals with a group of people who belong to a specified location and of course a member of the class system of that neighborhood.  The Who is international, and The Kinks are… British.

It is also interesting to read “Who I Am” by Townshend and Ray Davies “Americana.” The Pete book is very much grand in its scope of The Who’s history, but I found it lacking a certain amount of feeling or details of people around him at the time.  On the other hand, Ray’s book is filled with insightful and detailed observations of the world around him.   The Who is great, and Townshend is a fantastic songwriter, but Ray Davies strikes me more of a skillful artist to my liking.  He’s in the same league as his fellow British writers such as Noel Coward, Alan Bennett, and perhaps Morrissey.  Hearing The Kinks’ classic “Village Green Preservation Society,” one can practically smell the British town or countryside off the vinyl record.  The observation of that world is pictorially clear, and you can taste the English tea and the seasons off that album.  In something like “Tommy” or “Quadrophenia” one gets the huge scope of one’s life, but again, it lacks specific details.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m a huge Osamu Dazai fan, due to his attention to a specific environment,  and when I read or listen to a Ray Davies song, I get the same charge out of it, as reading Dazai. I know my limits, and I will never be as good as those writers, but still, I try to reach up to the stars, and will settle for a rooftop at the very least.   We all have choices to make, and it is important to engage into that precise choice.  Commitment is very imperative, and to follow through that journey, wherever it may take us, is part of the adventure, and not fully the destination.  I often admired (but not loved) the poetry of Paul Élaurd, due to its sweeping brush-strokes of a time that must have been difficult for him and the whole of Europe between the world wars and dealing with the Nazi occupation of France.  Nevertheless, what was touching in his work was his intense, perhaps even obsessive, love for his wife, Nusch, who I know little about, but I do know that she served the poet as a muse of sorts.  So yes, one gets the big picture of his work, but in the end I know a little about his inspiration.  A poet can do many things, but for me, I like the poet who sees the world as it is mapped out, and put their stamp on that world as they see it.   A lack of detail can make the work seem lazy, and it is difficult as a writer to fulfill that vision that is a clear picture of one’s subject matter, whatever that maybe.

I cannot make comments on the whole world, but perhaps if I focus on the little things around me, one can gather enough information, or even a feeling, that can somehow be of some interest to a reader.  Then again, who knows?