Corky

Back in high school, some friends and I "broke into" an old abandoned house out in the country. I hesitate to use the term "broke into" because the house really had been abandoned for some time, and the door was disintegrated enough that getting in didn't require breaking anything. The contents of the house were diverse.... it looked like it had been abandoned for at least 10 years, and the woman who had lived there (we believe her name was Josephine) was quite elderly, and probably suffering from Alzheimer's disease, judging from the level of organization.

The visit was really unspectacular, but it's always stuck in my mind as being rather otherworldly... strangely quiet and disjointed from the world. For some reason, I picked up a letter from the kitchen table that was still folded nicely in its envelope. I don't remember reading it at the time (it's quite long), and I must have set it aside after I got home that evening.

Anyway, I found it this summer when cleaning out my old bedroom for the last time. You can see some of the other treasures I found in earlier posts....

This one is really special, though, which is one reason I waited until now to post it. First of all, the return address has a house number and city, but no name. The letter itself is signed only "Sis". So I have no ideal who this is from. It's postmarked January, 1974 atop an 8-cent stamp that reads "LOVE" in bright red letters.

The contents of the letter are remarkably dramatic. Although "Sis" opens the letter with "I wish I had [...] news to write [...] but my life just isn't that exciting," she manages to describe in seven riveting pages her plans to coax a man named "Corky" into marrying her, her recent dabbling in architecture, her acquisition of an injured falcon (and a falconer's license), and her return to college. Sounds pretty exciting for a nameless women writing to her friend in rural Coldwater, MI.

The contents of the letter seem almost hilarious at first, but after one realizes that they are really and truly serious, they are actually pretty profound. It's really a testament to the mystery of life, and the beauty of individuality. I don't know this woman, and I probably never will. For all I know she could be dead. Or made up. But the letter is amazing. If you have a few minutes, read it. It's worth your time.

CLICK HERE TO READ IT

Before the Internet

This is what kids did before the internet. Pitiful.

Pocahontas

The post-college room cleaning has begun. Here are the first fruits. I have no idea where this came from. More to come soon. 

Holland

All the time we spent in bed
Counting miles before we said
Fall in love and fall apart
Things will end before they start

Sleeping on Lake Michigan
Factories and marching bands
Lose our clothes in summer time
Lose ourselves to lose our minds
In the summer heat, I might.

(Sufjan Stevens)

Shiny

I am quickly realizing both in evaluating my own aesthetic values, and in discussing those values with others, that the worth of pure aesthetics in artistic work is a matter of some debate. The argument is particularly potent in works that contain narrative: film, literature etc.—"good graphics don't make a good movie," or (albeit less frequently) "the prose were beautiful, but that's not enough to make a good book."

While I agree that the function of narrative in film or literature is a vital part of making a consummate work of art, I think it is a mistake to require a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk for every movie or book written. Furthermore, I submit that music, the visual arts, and poetry are more often than not purely aesthetic forms (with many notable exceptions).

Is not the Mona Lisa valued for its beauty, rather than its subject? Do we not value the pure emotional expressionism of Rothko for the same reason we value the abstract splashes of color in the tone poems of Debussy? Should we feel shame for giving ourselves over to pure emotion, and forsaking the story, the meaning, the narrative? Is not the great beauty of art that it cannot be explained by narrative?

I often find the subjects of paintings to be uninteresting, vague, stupid, or irrelevant, despite the fact that they were painted with the purpose of conveying that very information (who really cares what Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo looked like?). I often find the programmatic subjects of musical compositions to be riddled with the same flaws. But does that diminish the beauty of the work?

A friend of mine said recently, "Pretty things only hold for so long," but I submit that for many things, particularly artistic things, the prettiness is the only thing that has allowed them to endure.

Things I Remember

I remember (quite more than vaguely)
stretched on giant blades of matted grass
with my sister
while my father played softball.

I didn't care about the game;
only the fictional characters
I had imagined were sitting
with my sister and me.

I do not remember (not even vaguely)
the day I met my first love
nor the day I fell in love with him
nor what I said the last time we spoke.

Yet, I cared more about him
than any game of softball.

Perhaps I was too busy
imagining the characters.

Android Dreams

Idea for a new piece for baritone and orchestra… three movements… the theme being the moral and philosophical dilemma of artificial intelligence. The first movement would be a poem by Wallace Stevens which describes a man imagining immortalizing himself in bronze:

“This Solitude of Cataracts”

He never felt twice the same about the flecked river,
Which kept flowing and never the same way twice, flowing

Through many places, as if it stood in one,
Fixed like a lake on which the wild ducks fluttered.

Ruffling its common reflections, thought-like Monadnocks.
There seemed to be an apostrophe that was not spoken.

There was so much that was real that was not real at all.
He wanted to feel the same way over and over.

He wanted the river to go on flowing the same way,
To keep on flowing. He wanted to walk beside it,

Under the buttonwoods, beneath a moon nailed fast.
He wanted his heart to stop beating and his mind to rest

In a permanent realization, without any wild ducks
Or mountains that were not mountains, just to know how it would be,

Just to know how it would feel, released from destruction,
To be a bronze man breathing under archaic lapis,

Without the oscillation of planetary pass-pass,
Breathing his bronzen breath at the azury center of time.


The second movement would be a poem by Costas Dafnis about an android luthier. Still waiting on that from him…

The third movement could be this poem by Jeni Couzyn, which references the book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (better known by its movie adaptation “Blade Runner”) by Philip K. Dick:

“Do Androids Dream”

Do androids dream of electric sheep in their pastures
grazing electric grass? Does Winnie dream of
walking in fields with sun on her skin

laid out ready for her coffin
unofficially dead in the home for old people?
Like an image of God as a fierce old woman in stone

flowers on sunday and news of the grandchildren
silent, unseeing, she receives like worship.
The undeniable tick tick tick of her heart

impales her to the living.
I heard an android cry before the bounty hunter
retired her, (unable to kill what is not alive):

"I was made instead of born; my empathy rating is low;
I will not grow old as you will or die of diseases;
the machine that I am will calmly

turn itself off at the proper time. But you’ve made me
so like you—bone marrow and blood and my heart is a big
muscle as yours is. I know fear when footsteps in the dark

pause at my door, and feel murderous, as you would
when you dig sharp fingers into my arm, tearing skin.
There’s saliva under my tongue. There are real

tears in my eyes. The factory that made me and for what
purpose, makes no difference to the way I feel myself
me, know myself mysterious. I am I as sharp as the lowest

creeper on earth is himself, whatever egg he crawled from
or gut he tore open entering, or cell accidentally
dividing created him. There are many ways into life.

Let me live."