Acoustic Underpass

The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
Useless
to silence it.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps monotonously
as water weeps
as the wind weeps
over snowfields.
Impossible
to silence it.
It weeps for distant
things.
Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!
Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.

- Federico García Lorca, "The Guitar"

Songs for Someone

What You Don't Do

"Grace is about what you don't do"

Revolt

Seeking Inspiration?

NEVER seek* to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart;
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears,
Ah! she doth depart.

Soon as she was gone from me,
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.

- William Blake, "Never Seek to Tell Thy Love"

* Note 1 - I give here the earlier and incomparably finer version of this song, which Blake subsequently altered by cancelling the first stanza (after changing ‘seek’ to ‘pain’ in l. 1), and substituting ‘O! was no deny’ for the concluding line of the poem.

Paris (16 June, 1944)

Jacques Lacan, Cecil Eluard, Pierre Reverdy, Louise Leiris, Zanie Aubier, Picasso, Valentine Hugo, Simon de Beauvoir, Brassai, Sarte, Albert Camus, Michel Leiris, Jean Aubier, and top photo only, Picasso's Afghan dog called 'Kazbeck'

Sphinxed

Salvador Dali, "Old Age, Adolescence, and Infancy" (The Three Ages)(1940)

Cross Pollination

And now you ask in your heart,
"How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?"
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.

Kahlil Gibran "The Prophet" (excerpt)

Summer Doldrums

Better Audio version

(i)
Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Curtsied when you have, and kissed
The wild waves whist,
Foot it featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.
Hark, hark!
Bow, wow
The watch-dogs bark,
Bow, wow,
Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting Chanticleer
Cry, Cock-a-diddle-dow.

(ii)
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange:
Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell.
Ding-dong!
Hark! now I hear them,
Ding-dong, bell!

(iii)
Where the bee sucks, there suck I,
In a cowslip's bell I lie,
There I couch when owls do cry,
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily, shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

William Shakespeare, "Ariel's Songs"

Ways Lost

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Socrates

Mahvellous!

Framing Desire 2

Violence "frames" desire and established the coordinates under which "fantasy" can real-ize itself. It's the creative detruction which precedes the re-creative act. The "Revolution" which precedes the "framing" of a new Constitution.

Framing Principle
Meaning depends on context. So control the context.

How it works
We create meaning not just through the main part of what we hear and see, but also those element that surround it. By changing the surroundings, the meaning of the main topic is also changed. However, people are usually focused on the main topic, which enables the frame to be used as a subtle form of persuasion.

Argument framing
When you are arguing for or against something, you may frame your argument by giving broad detail about other contributory factors before making your major point. The persuasiveness of the argument can easily be affected more by the frame than the core point.

Physical framing
The physical frame of a persuasion is typically where you are when you are doing the persuading. Thus asking someone to marry you is more likely to be successful in a romantic setting, such as on a beach at sunset, rather than somewhere more mundane, such as on a bus.

Reframing
Reframing is persuasion by changing the frame that the other person is using. If you ask an employee to do some additional work and they complain about being alone, you might point out that the boss goes home late and seeing the person there working alone will give them extra credibility.

On Becoming an Air Head

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

- Rudyard Kipling, "If"