Discovering a Poet

One of my favorite adventures is to raid the poem bin in a used-books bookstore. Small volumes of poems abound in these bins, and most of them have never been opened. Books of poems are always the first to be discarded, and usually the least regarded inventory with little attention paid to the upkeep of the books.

Yet waiting there are such wonderful explorations where words create new dimensions of experience, new insights, and explore deeper awareness of an elusive reality. One thing you know about these books. They come into being because someone loves words and the insights that poetic vision yields. My rule for choosing one book over another is that something must instantly grab my interest... a book title...a metaphor...a line....

...books like Glyn Maxwell's The Nerve with lines that tug at the imagination such as

Nothing that's been does anything but dance.
Nothing that blinked did anything but stare,
now being over, though the merest sense
of over is strange there.

The Structures of What Was

Or lines like:

The corners of our eyes,
cold and alert to missing them, report
a flash, and in the breeze
we turn our heads
to where the stars are quiet.

The Leonids

Leonids are meteor showers that appear to emanate from the constellation Leo.

Poets take us to new dimensions of ourselves and create new worlds from words colliding in new connections with each other. Maxwell sees the world differently, and his vision expands my world and my awareness. His is a world rich in structure, rhythm, flow, and metaphoric vision. There is economy of expression which always seems to find the perfect combination to generate new structures of meaning.

Coming upon Maxwell's poems in the piles and piles of discarded volumes was like discovering a parallel universe buried beneath crumbling constellations of words and letters. Here was a new sensibility, and my newly found windfall would take me many places where I could savor the work of an explorer of a universe that did not exist until Glyn Maxwell crafted and shared this miracle of his own making.

In his simplicity is such elegance that the lines continue to resonate long after the book is closed:

THE SNOW VILLAGE

In the age of pen and paper,
when the page was a snow village,
when days the light was leafing through
descended without message,

the nib that struck from heaven
was the sight of a cottage window
lit by the only certain
sign of life, a candle,

glimpsed by a stranger walking
at a loss through the snow village.
All that can flow can follow
that sighting, though no image,

no face appear -- not even
the hand that draws across it --
though the curtains close the vision,
though the stranger end his visit,

though the snow erase all traces
of his passage through the village,
though his step become unknowable
and the whiteness knowledge.

Glyn Maxwell

Kicking the Can

In the evenings in summer as we were growing up, we loved strategy games such as Kick the Can and Capture the Flag. These were the wargames of our youth.

These games were played usually in the late afternoons, when the heat of the day was beginning to yield to the approaching night. Choosing who was IT or captains and teams was always a ritual that had the trappings of spontaneity, but were usually just variations of the same theme. Kick the Can was like Hide and Seek with the taking of "prisoners." Everyone would hide while the person who was IT counted to a hundred. If IT spied any one and called their name, they became prisoners. Prisoners could get released if one of the hiders could reach the can and kick it before being seen by IT. If you beat IT to the can and kicked it, he must start counting again while everyone hides, but if IT reached the can first, the person trying to kick the can became the new IT.

Capture the Flag was a more elaborate game. You needed a minimum of six players (three to a side), but it was much more fun if you had many players. Each side would hide its flag, and the opposition would send forays into enemy territory to find the flag. Touching the enemy while they were in your territory made them prisoners. Finding the flag and bringing it to your territory constituted a victory. This was a game that was especially fun at night. I remember countless nights beneath the bright Texas sky with moonlight flooding the terrain where we vied against each other.

This was what we did in the days before television. We made our own entertainment and found ways to engage with each other. Such times led to many side excursions, stumbling upon adventures and dangerous liaisons. As we grew older, we played these games with much more at stake. Our movements were in automobiles, and the city was the playground. These were dangerous times, since nearly everyone carried guns. Now real enemies emerged and often, lives literally hung in the balance. The innocence of youth dissolved into the bravado of many who had become so bored with life that the only excitement to be had was seeing how close you could come to death and still survive. Now it would take much more than Kicking the Can to escape to freedom.

Forever Young

Greenwich Village is ageless, forever young. No one has really deciphered the secret of its perpetual youth. The Village holds onto this vigor, despite the meddling of outsiders and many challenges to the integrity of its existence.

Currently Greenwich Village is in the stranglehold of newstyle yuppies, and corporate America (including that wild and greedy private corporation, New York University), determined to choke the life out of the dynamism of this area that has always existed as a country within a country. At the moment, these challengers to the creative milieu of the Village appear to be winning on all fronts. In addition to the expanding tentacles of NYU, CVS and Duane Reade have replaced jazz and theatre landmarks on Bleecker street. An apartment building replaces the innovative presence of Theatre in the Square (which had been chased away from Washington Square by NYU) on Bleecker, a condominium appears to be replacing the tiny theatre on Sullivan Street that gave birth to The Fantasticks. NYU managed to drive the Bottom Line out of business so that great Village Landmark could be replaced by classrooms and a lecture hall. Even the Provincetown Playhouse is now under the aegis of NYU. The city, distressed by the lack of symmetry in Washington Square Park, is spending millions of dollars in public funds to move the central fountain a few feet in order to align it with the Arch and Fifth Avenue.

The Village has been the birthplace of many ideas that have challenged America and created a new culture. In the 1630s Dutch settlers cleared the land and named their settlement Noortwyck. To the north, the Village Grin'wich (1713) was once a rural hamlet, separate from New York City. When it was incorporated into the city, it retained the layout of streets, which was angular and antithetical to the logical square grid layout of the rest of the city. This lack of conformity geographically to the rest of the city reflects the divergent stance of the residents and artists who found the Village as a resonator for their progressive ideas.

The Village has been the Bohemia of the country, the home for the avant-gard and alternative culture with the small presses, art galleries, and experimental theatre and music. Every generation has found an important oulet there until now. Greats such as Maxwell Bodenheim, Eugene O'Neill, Jack Kerouac, Marcel Duchamp, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Bob Dylan flourished in the Village because the open spirit invited change.

Youth, more than anything is characterized by change. The Village has been the homeplace of our young thinkers and artists, and even now they flock to this historical birthplace of their predecessors. They have been forced underground by the establishment, and perhaps they are surfacing in newer progressive communities elsewhere.

But the beat goes on. Walk down any street in the Village and you will sense the underlying energy. Its eternal youth is vibrating all around you. In a matter of time, something wonderful will erupt once more, spawned in some movement on some tiny side street in the Village on the fringe of the corporate shadows that currently obscure the rich tradition of a continually changing and vibrant culture.

Tan Dun: A Shaman of Music Making

Tan Dun, who is known throughout the world for his film music (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) has been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to compose The First Emperor. The opera will premiere December 21 with Placido Domingo in the title role. It will be conducted by Tan Dun, who also wrote the libretto along with the noted novelist Ha Jin, whose first full-length novel, Waiting is the winner of the 1999 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The opera will be directed by the celebrated film director Zhang Yimou, confirming Tan Dun's vision that cinema is the opera of our time.

Tan Dun has always approached his projects with fanatic energy and inspiration that fashions new forms and structures challenging the premises and fabric of the past. His "out of town try-out" took place about a month ago in Shanghai, and it was clear from the outset that Tan Dun had brought a new voice to the Metropolitan Opera:

The run-through began with pulsating drums. Singing in the style of Beijing opera, an ‘official geomancer’ introduced the story of Qin Shi Huangdi, the visionary and brutal warlord who unified China in 221 B.C …the music rose from the orchestra, alternately heroic, lyrical and haunting. Voices wove through the gongs, the bass flute and the plucked strings of ancient instruments as well as the orchestra’s standard violins and cellos, woodwinds and brasses.

--Sunday New York Times, May 14, 2006

Tan Dun is a shaman of music, where sound, text, visual art, video, and movement merge as a single entity, a magical and mystical expression that transforms time and space. Opera is the most extreme form of artistic collaboration --- the essence of art comes from opera, and such opera is the crystallization of life itself. Tan Dun delves into the spiritual realm of creation, penetrating and connecting many seemingly disparate realities into a new holistic and inspiring vision. He has a way of defining, connecting, and mapping the world that suggests a new paradigm for the 21st Century.

The Grand Opera of the 19th Century dominated the 20th Century, and premieres of contemporary works at the Met were often pale replicas of the past. Tan Dun is proposing a new direction, one in which the content of antiquity fuses with the dynamics of contemporary cross-cultural life. What may emerge anticipates the longing of our time for an authentic voice that assembles the unfolding worlds of East, West, North, and South, in cataclysmic collisions that tear off and shape chunks of past remote worlds into new spheres of influence and expression, much as the moon was created from the earth in a catastrophic episode with a rogue planet.

Tan Dun, as the rogue shaman who has infiltrated the establishment, may have the magic touch of an alchemist, transforming the wornout relics of the past into pure gold.

3 Zins Later

Once an inhabitant of Des Moines, 3 Zins Later (VJM) found herself plopped down in Fort Smith, Arkansas (You're not in Kansas anymore!) The spirit of her Blog, 3 Zins Later: "Etta James sings in the background, I love you circles the friendship, and Wine Night continues..." is an intriguing premise, born of the spirit of Des Moines, but now growing in the remote fields of a different place and sensibility.

Adjusting to suddenly being transplanted into a different place is usually not an easy transition for anyone, and VJM confronts these issues head on, but many remain unresolved. There is no question the stories are there, waiting to be discovered, uncovered from memory and imagination. But her Blog reveals that there are also new stories bubbling over in the context of personal crises. VJM is a story teller, and all we need are the 3 Zinfandels and candles burning, and the stories will rise like smoke from the candles filling the air with scents and textures of the past. I sense a reticence to embrace the level of intimacy that 3 Zins Later's banner suggests, almost in a whisper...

We are invited to lean forward. Stretch out our hands, and maybe she will read our story from the Tarot cards that are part of her personal treasure. These are more than cards. Through the Tarot she connects with a deep awareness of spiritual forces linking us to one another and to destiny itself.

She has slowly expanded her presence in her blog. Her style is starting to shine through. She is easing into the space, observations spilling out in increments. Reality intrudes as a tyrannical diversion, and her energy is directed at day-to-day survival. Even so, we long for the chance to turn down the lights and discover the quiet revelations of her world still in the act of becoming.

Catching Up With the Blackholes

Something there is about "being behind" that is part of the human condition in modern times. It is a terrible way to live, because such a sensibility robs me of the abundance of Now, and divides my attention so that my energy is diverted and blunted. I suppose this comes from the obsession of list-making for the sake of being organized and efficient. These lists live in our heads and guide us through our tasks, each path focused on clear destinations.

So I find myself running through this gauntlet of lists, of dividing the lists into personal lists and work lists, and gauging my success as to how many tasks I have crossed off, but always adding more in the process. And when I am idle, I find myself creating lists... just for the sake of lists. Lists are linear, and at heart, I am not really a linear person.

I am a broad spectrum person, a person who functions best when on the edge of chaos, and I delight in seeing the debris of order crumble at the edges like the huge sheets of ice at the polar caps that sheer off from the mainland and disappear into the global-warmed ocean. Yet, if I exist in the aleatoric, non-ordered world, I know it is an illusion. Isn't chaos merely the mirrored reflection of order? Chaos IS Order.

Without the linear lists, what paths would I take through the murky haze of the not-knowing Now? Yet, I discover more moving through the fragments and madness of my personal blackholes that stand between me my singularity. Once thought of as the ultimate destructive force in the universe, blackholes have been discovered to be the source for the creation of all galaxies. So I am delightfully adrift in the disarray of my own new galaxies now ready to burst into being.

Lightning

Lightning is the universe energizing the earth, the dynamism of solar forces ripping through the fabric of the planet with dazzling vigor. It is more than just the discharge of negative and positive ions, and we are just now learning that although we have regarded the earth as self-contained eco-system, it is deeply and tangibly affected by the many forces in the solar system, the galaxies, and the universe. We simply have lacked the means to detect and measure such energy. My intuition is that lightning will be discovered as one way of capturing and renewing energies of the earth. Energy flows into the atmosphere from outer space and finally is released through turbulent storms of lightning. Yes, I know this is counter to conventional wisdom, but I have detected acknowledgements here and there of forces from outerspace impacting on the eco-system of the globe in ways not yet fully understood.

The other evening we were treated to a brilliant lightning storm. Looking north from the apartment, we could see the storm approaching, see the flashes of lighting in the distance, and hear the far away rumbling of thunder. The flashes created arcs across the sky and tumbled down to the earth in multiple jagged spears that disappeared behind the skyline.

As the storm approached, the thunder grew louder and the lightning spears more intense in electrifying incandescence. Don't say that lightning never strikes twice, as I watched the Empire State building absorb several bolts, so fierce that I thought I could feel the electricity coursing down through the wires to the ground.

What was so fascinating about this display? There is no question that the discharge of such power evokes our riveted attention. But equally attractive is the unpredictability of the moment. Anticipating the next strike, you hang on the quiet pauses in between (I call them pausations), and when the storm is upon us, we feel each crashing intrusion into the moment as an explosion, an invasion that crashes through us as a visceral blow. Somehow our environment has become an awesome bully, threatening us to take note of our place or face instant extinction.

I have noticed that as science and technology have attained greater influence on our thinking, a cult of extinction has emerged. The new priests look ahead to the death of planets, the death of stars, the death of the universe itself. Extinction is the natural order. It was time for the dinosaurs to die, and soon, we will lose the moon, or be destroyed by a random rolling stone from the asteroid belt, or the sun will spear us with a devastating flare.

Our fate is sealed, or so the new high priests of science and technology would have us believe. And yet, even as we think we know everything, we may have entered an enormous Dark Age in which too much information is more stifling than no information. We have always had the doomsdayer, who like Robert Herrick reminds us that the time for living is Now and only Now:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

Yet, I know that even now, our concepts of the universe, generated from shopworn equations in physics are giving way to perceptions of parallel universes and the existence of time before the big bang.

Maybe there is hope for us yet.

Beyond Borders

Although some favorite places for me are "used" bookstores such as Strands or the Mercer Street Bookstore, an even headier afternoon is spent at new bookstores. Borders is nearby, so is Barnes & Noble, and Shakespeare & Company Booksellers. Although Shakespeare's remains in the vein of a classical bookstore, Barnes & Noble and Borders are a new breed, a kind of comfortable library for browsing in the hopes that we will decide to buy. In many communities, these bookstores become cultural meeting places and have served to underscore the importance of books in our lives. If anything, digital technology has made the book format even more popular and readily available.

Walking into such a place, seeing the Starbucks-like atmosphere, people lounging in easy chairs and sofas with stacks of books, others in the coffee-shop area with stacks of books on tables and lattes in hand, makes me want to read everything at once. First the titles beckon, urging me to discover their hidden meanings, and artwork abounds with seductive shapes and colors. I grow drunk with expectation.

I attack the books randomly, going first to the tables filled with new fiction. I open a book to some random page and begin reading, after several paragraphs or pages, depending on how the prose grabs me, I go on to another book, and another book... a literal infusion of words, a transfusion of prose, an array of styles, all coming together with abrupt swiftness and opening my mind, expanding me to places beyond... Time is suspended and I am immersed in the miracle of writing... transported beyond the borders of my own confines into the minds and sensibilities of many authors.

There are so many new and good writers, all deserving to be read. Such great styles, and so many ways to invent new worlds. I carry out these maneuvers every Saturday in some unsuspecting frontier of literature. The words lay between covers, waiting to ignite the passions of browsers, to convert them to readers and advocates. Words and phrases are waiting to unleash the energy of the imagination in countless ways. And I am poisd on the brink of new adventures all erupting beyond the borders of my mind.

"I Don't Know": The Genius of Kim Myung Sook

I Do Not Know
Poem by Han Yong-un performed by Youngju Kang


I have commented on this beautiful poem in an earlier blog, "I Do Not Know." Now I will describe a work of art that has subsequently emerged from this poem, the creation of Kim Myung Sook, an inspired dance that relies on the poem as a point of departure and celebrates the Korean experience, identity, and the fabric of life as humans existing as elemental earth. Recently the Korean government gave a special award to Dr. Kim for the outstanding contrbution of this work to Korean culture.

This remarkable artist has painted a masterpiece of dance where movement unfolds like brushstrokes and choreographic calligraphy... her dance group is Nuhui, a dance troup that has served as the canvas for Kim's explorations of movement, color, space, and structure. Kim has fashioned a cultural icon in her realization of the poem, extracting profound elements of Zen Buddhism to explore the essence of the poem and the spirituality of the Korean Psyche.

Kim has always had a sensitive eye, designing her own graphics and controlling every nuance of color and costume much as the great film director Antonioni. Her choreography frequently takes on the vocabulary of cinema, and Kim often creates video versions of the dances that employ cinematic effects such as cross dissolve and superimposed images.

This new work is closely related to the narrative structure of Han Yong-un's poem. As we listen to the performance of the poem, we can hear the textures and rhythms that find their way into movement and sound. Youngju Kang's eloquent rendering of Han's poem creates a sense of wonder and awe, and the sheer beauty of the language permeates our sensibiity in a profound awareness of mystery and revelation.

Here is a synopsis of the dance structure:
Prologue.
Dancers : Kim Yul Hee, Pak Koung Eun, Kim Whal Ran, Bea Jin Yl, Lee Jung Min, Lee Eun Jung, Lee Yoon Kyoung, O Ji Young, Kim Yuen Hee, Yoon Ji Yang. Musician : Son Bum Ju playing a reed instrument (sort of traditional pipe)
Act I. [Sae Oul] - green fountain from east / sound of water and rainfall...
Dancers : Yoon Jueng Min, Kim Yul Hee, Pak Koung Eun, Kim Whal Ran, Bea Jin Yl, Lee Jung Min, Lee Eun Jung
Act II. [Mu Ji Gae Sal] - over the rainbow / Gayageum
Act III. [Nat Dal] - moon rising in the afternoon / Voice
Act IV. [Mu Geoung Ji Hea] - everlasting being / Korean traditional fiddle (violin)

Prologue -- Kim draws upon an austere palette for sound, the sounds of an ancient windpipe, as though summoning the spirit of Korea to attend a celebration. Sun Bum Ju produces an inspired melody that penetrates and envelops the emptiness. The dancers awaken to discover themselves in the midst of antiquity merging with the present..not only awaken but seem to be created out of the mists and textures of the infinite moment. The sounds of the windpipe are evocative, as though Silence itself had discovered its own true voice. The music fades into darkness dissolved by a steady, refreshing rain.

Act I -- The rain brings new images of dancers around fountains flowing from some infinite wellspring... the dancers are vertical with an outstretched arms extending their reach as though gathering the rain. The way they surround the fountains evokes the image of a temple, the guardians of the flowing force of life...Sounds of distant thunder welcome the ritual, the quiet celebration of an undefined presence... the rain yields to the sound of water flowing...


Act II -- a cascade of sounds, the ancient harplike sounds of the Kayageum spill through the space while a lone traditional flute soars through the texture like a rainbow. Flowing water in fountains sustain us, the ebb and flow of life reach to the source of our identity in a cold and alien universe. The water welcomes us, nourishes us, delights in our delight. A swirl of sound encasing the flute...dancers swirling...lingering...in final gestures of celebration...a final touch of the fountain... withdrawing and fading into the clouds concealing a revelation...

Act III -- Wind and the sound of the surf rip through the terrain, the dancers run forward like the wind sweeping the ocean... and in the wind we hear the voice of I Don't Know, the text now transformed into a profound prayer in a most expressive and sustained performance, beautifully drawn out in a flowing musical line sustained by the wind and waves in lingering counterpoint.The dancers attend the poem in awe as worshippers of the source of wonder... reaching a sense of supreme ecstacy... above, butteflies hover in evocation of an endless sky...

Act IV -- A harbor bell sounds in the night... we see the ocean in the distance and the waves upon the beach, accompanied by the incessant sounds of the surf... almost imperceptibly we see the dawn slowly glowing and dancers emerging from the ocean like life itself...the dancers are part of the ocean... a Korean fiddle creates a soliloquy with the surf, a comment on the mystery and awe of the night, the endless ocean, and the slowly emerging enlightenment of the dawn... a light in the center of the stage flickers through the shadows and movements of the dancers and we sense this to be the source of ourselves, forever enclosed within our wonder and embrace... and yet, in the enveloping darkness our wonder continues and echoes... I Do Not Know... I Do Not Know... I Do Not Know...

The sculpture work of You, Young-kyo is inspired, the stone pools and butterflies add to the spiritual presence of the work. The composer and music director Hwang, Byoung-ki helps set the musical texture that melds with the layers of visual richness and structured movement.

Yuoul, the Kayageum ensemble, adds color and antiquity to the over all impression of sound. The sound design by Kim, Tae-gun establishes an ambience that envelops in the dance in the resonance of rain, wind, thunder, and silence. The baritone Sin Kyoung-ok provided one of the most remarkable performances in his singing of the poem, an inspired and inspiring performance. The poem was set to music by Hwang, Byoung-ki(he put the rhythm on the poem as lylic song). Jeung, Soo-nyun's Korean fiddle cuts through the surf and wind of the final movement like a spontaneous prayer. These artists and the dancers provided an extraordinary immediacy that transformed the many parts into an integral whole.

Kim Myung Sook has created a tour de force of movement, sound, and shape that provides a framework of introspection and revelation. The dancers combine with the musicians, the sculptor, the sound and light designers to weave an inspired tapestry of a work that fuses the past and present, the unique with the universal. The grace, agility, and sheer virtuosity of the dancers is tempered by the deep respect bestowed upon the work by these performing artists. Each dancer establishes a distinct individual quality while contributing to the whole.

Kim does not attempt to answer the questions of the poem. She goes beneath the answers to the essence of the questions themselves and provides insights into the fundamental resonance of ourselves within the world that is our dwelling place.

159 Years of Liederkranz

Liederkranz of the City of New York presented its 159th annual concert and gala evening on Saturday, May 20th. This is a venerable cultural club of the kind that began to emerge in the United States during the middle and late 19th century. Liederkranz was founded in 1847 as a male choral society. Now it has spanned the 19th and 20th centuries, and emerges in the 21st century as a full society of men and women with male and female choruses that also combine as a mixed choir. The purpose continues to celebrate German culture, but also promotes musical talent through competitions, scholarships, recitals, and concerts involving musicians from around the world.

The concert featured the combined chorus and the men's and women's groups, along with the New York Concert Opera Chamber Orchestra, led by their talented and resourceful music director, Dr. Ulrich Hartung. Not only did he direct the chorus, but he was also responsible for a number of the orchestral settings and choral arrangements.

The chorus has approximately fifty members, and Dr. Hartung was masterful in leading them through an ambitious and delightful program. Although the chorus is no longer the dominant choral organization in the city, the performances were sensitive and musical. One highlight of the evening was the winner of the Liederkranz vocal competition, Mari Moriya, who is joining the MET in several roles including Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte. Her performance of Der Hölle Rache was simply stunning for its clarity, range, and power. The chamber orchestra led by Hartung provided a spirited performance of Die Zauberflöte's overture.

This was a mix of works such as Beethoven's Die Ehre Gottes in der Natur, Mendelssohn's Auf Flügeln des Gesanges to a medley of Broadway hits, and a finale of works from Strauss's Zigeunerbaron that brought the guest artists together with the chorus and orchestra for a memorable and rousing close. The baritone Laszlo Fogel and soprano Mari Moriya added to the rich Strauss texture and the gypsy spirit as they performed excerpts with the chorus in an inspired abbreviated version of the work as selected by Maestro Hartung.

Liederkranz has played an important role in the musical life of New York and the nation through its close association with the Metropolitan Opera. The chorus once was so select that it performed with the New York Philharmonic, and performed with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The organization has hosted guest artists such as Jenny Lind, Frederuccio Busoni, Victor Herbert, Lilli Lehmann, and Helen Traubel, to name a few.

Liederkranz has had an impressive and illustrious history, and one hopes this cultural society has the imagination and energy to endure another 150 years. The Liederkranz building is a treasure, but it looks as though it is in need of an overhaul and a creative touch to align its facilities with its expanded cultural role. Formerly the organization was located in a much larger building on 58th street that included a full stage. The society moved to its current quarters on 87th street in 1948. Up until about that time, the organization continued to be a male chorus, but around 1949 women joined Liederkranz as was the practice of many cultural clubs throughout the country.

The challenge for the organization is whether its greatest days are in the past or whether it can rise to the demands of modern musical practice and establish a new dynasty in a multicultural world. There is clearly a need for cultural societies such as Liederkranz to maintain ties with a rich past and an important cultural tradition while forging new standards through imaginative concerts, recitals, and staged performances. Currently, it is but an echo of its past, but Liederkranz could be poised for a new era of excellence. Certainly the musical guidance of Ulrich Hartung inspires a new level of achievement, but serious recruitment from the younger generation of music lovers is greatly needed. Whether the organization has the will and dedication to renew itself remains an open question.

One notable feature of the concert was the elaborate printed program which served as a souvenir for the occasion. The person to be credited for this expanded version is Trudy Sczesny, and the quality of this brochure-like program added to ambiance of this gala event.

Many Happy Returns

Thanks to all my friends who have commented on my absence from the cyber world. It was a sobering experience to face the prospect of not being able to work in this medium that I have come to love.

Even though there appears to be an physical explanation of the difficulties I have faced, I can't help but note that my difficulty occurred in the context of learning of Wyatt's death. The loss of such a good friend underscored my own mortality and whispered of the tentative and tenuous existence that frames each passing day. In these days I have discovered how the presence of all those I know defines my experience and illuminates who I am. The context of my life has been essentially one of aloneness, and I haved counted being "alone" as a virtue of being "all one."

Yet, now I see that all those who define my space and time constitute my awareness of being, and my aloneness includes the interpenetration of each of you. The reality of what we are to one another continues to unfold in this mysterious medium of Time. I have always regarded the notion of Time and Being as redundant, as Being is the expression of Time. My electronic presence extends my reach and reflects my growing awareness. Yet, I am involved with your journey which is continually defining my own. The intervention of this new medium has created new opportunities of discovery, and somehow we are all moving to a new place in which the boundaries that have served to define us are yielding to new horizons that invoke the emerging reality of our continual and constant becoming.

To this sensibility I now return in the climate of new awareness and commitment.

Wyatt Back Deep in the Heart

My copy of Wyatt's Deep in The Heart contains an inscription by the author:

for Elizabeth---
who will surely go to Texas before long. It's terrible and beautiful -- as I hope this book shows. I also hope you enjoy the people here, who, troubled as they are, are close to me.

Wyatt Wyatt
20 March 1981

I had been thrilled to learn that he had written a second novel, and was struck by the title because it seemed to indicate that he was at last returning to a part of himself he had disowned when he went to New York and became enthralled with Perle and the romance of becoming an author.

The setting is the town that Wyatt and I grew up in, during an intense drought in summer:

It was the beginning of the dog days. Amarillo was bone dry. In the throat of the afternoon the temperature stuck at a hundred and eleven degrees Fahrenheit -- in the shade --if you could find shade. Between noon and six, you couldn't touch the door handle of your car without a glove or a handkerchief, and the ground had slowly cooked into a friable crust that flaked off and rose in the wind and tinted it. People said there was blood in the sky. On restless days -- nearly every day -- the wind beat at the town with the hack hack of a great rusty blade, flinging out a spray of dust that settled like a dry red mist down over everything whether it was alive or still.

This review can be found on Amazon.com:

Wyatt Wyatt (author of "Catching Fire") scores big in his second novel "Deep in the Heart"--- a well-crafted tale of sex, love, and violence in the heart of the Texas Panhandle, Amarillo. His prose is rich and imaginative and deserves a wider audience. Boone Randolf is the central character who struggles with his emotions and his friends in a personal quest for sanity in the midst of irrational and tormented characters. His people ring true, and yet, loom larger than life: Grady Hornsby, a legend of fiery wildness, a volcano always on the verge of eruption; Rowena, Grady's love, a sultry goddess tormented by a desire to control, Sue Pam, a 19-year-old sexual feast eager to live life fully; Dennis, Sue Pam's husband, protected and sheltered by wealth; and Lloyd Hollister, a cynic corrupted by power. Full of surprises, Wyatt Wyatt mixes these ingredients with abandon and shrewd observations that will stay with you long after you finish the book. But the real star is Texas itself, and Wyatt spins us through a devastating summer drought and welcomed respite of September rain. His descriptions weave an unforgettable texture of torrid temperatures and temperaments.

Wyatt Wyatt was a Texan who ran from his heritage most of his life and returned to himself in this wonderful tribute to a vanishing frontier of the freedom to be wild. Reading this book makes you wish for more, but sadly Wyatt Wyatt passed away in 2002, which makes this book all the more poignant and precious.

It really is a wonderful second novel, full of promise for a third, which was not to be. If there are flaws, they might be traceable to a tendency to be too driven by the plot, keeping the characters encased in the narrative. As though he was aware of this trap, Wyatt wrote "Already, I've been tempted to explain more than is necessary, to justify or ameliorate." He always ties up the loose ends, and life is never quite that orderly.

Wyatt writes of an Amarillo of the 1970s, and it is a city full of contradictions and wild living. The people are struggling to find an identity in a Texas that cannot come to grips with its heroic past and estrangement from modern life. It is a Texas that yearns to be the wild west, but is caught in the throes of a betrayal of itself. This treachery is manifest in Boone's deception of his best friend Grady, and through this deceit the extraordinary becomes merely ordinary. "The wild, reckless, best part of him had dried up, it had split off and blown tumbling across the plains in the wind until it vanished."

United 93 and American 11

The recent showing of the film United 93 has brought back the morning of 9/11 with startling clarity.

September 11, 2001 was a beautiful Tuesday morning, possessing a splendor and elegance that only September can distill as an idyllic memory --- the kind of day that poems are made of.

On that morning, I walked out of the market on La Guardia Place across from my apartment and looked up to see an airplane flying south so low that I could see it was an American Airlines commercial flight. The plane was flying full-throttle, and the engines sounded loud and laboring, an eerie, sinister whine that knifed through the September stillness with alarming swiftness and in a matter of seconds disappeared into the north tower of the World Trade Center some 30 blocks away in a flash of smoke and flames. The world changed in that instant, and I was stunned by the smoke pouring out of the north tower and the solemnity that cloaked the collision's aftermath in the semblance of silence. I was too far away to hear the screams of death and horror.

Minutes later, the world watched in terror as a second commercial airline approached from the southwest and erupted through the southern tower in a cataclysmic explosion magnified by telephoto lenses and television coverage. Throughout the day there would be repeated airings of this brutal attack, and when the towers collapsed, frequent relentless showings indelibly etched this catastrophe on our collective consciousness, including the ghastly images of people leaping to their deaths to avoid being burned alive. We also were intensely aware that when the planes struck the towers, countless numbers of people were instantly incinerated, including those ill-fated inhabitants aboard the hi-jacked airliners. Yet, minutes later, another commercial jet crashed into the Pentagon, and to my amazement, the media still seemed to be wondering if these events were related.

As these events were unfolding, passengers of United 93 discovered through their cell phones that they were destined to die as the others in the three flights that had been commandeered as volatile missiles by terrorists. This knowledge empowered them to act, in an attempt to take the plane from control of the terrorists, but their awareness of their situation had materialized too late for them to do anything but cause a premature crash, diverting the plane from its likely target in Washington D.C.: The White House. It crashed in an "empty" field in Pennsylvania.

An excellent writer of The American Digest, Vanderleun, places United 93 in context (Of a Fire in a Field). Fires continued to burn for many days in the subterannean aftermath of the collapse of the towers:

Inside the wire under the hole in the sky was, in time, a growing hole in the ground as the rubble was cleared away and, after many months, the last fire was put out. Often at first, but with slowly diminishing frequency, all the work to clear out the rubble and the wreckage would come to a halt... Far away on that day, far from the pillar of flame and plume of ash at the foot of the island, there was another fire in a field in Pennsylvania. Those nearby felt the shudder in the earth and saw the smoke, but it would be some days before we understood what it was, and longer still until we began to know what it meant.

...The film I saw by myself tonight expands that meaning and brings a human face to the acts by the passengers of United 93 that endure only in that rare atmosphere that heroes inhabit. What I know in my heart, but what always escapes my understanding until something like this film renews it, is that heroism is a virtue that most often appears among us not descending from some mythic pantheon, but rising up out of the ordinary earth and ordinary hearts when the moment calls for actions extraordinary.

In the days that followed the collapse of the twin towers, those of us who lived below 14th street, found ourselves in a war zone. Hordes of people wandered about this war zone. They collected in parks and along streets, stunned by the sudden and swift calamity that had befallen the nation. Strangers met and talked, and support groups and vigils met in parks and other public areas. Along walls and fences, pictures of people were posted in a desperate attempt to account for those missing who were thought to be in the vicinity of the attack. As time passed, these were transformed into walls of rememberance for those who were believed to have persihed, and were strewn with flowers and candles. As these postings were ripped from the walls by wind or passersby, the authors would repost and add to the text and images (including laminating them), a ritual that clung to the hope that some miracle might restore everything.

In the meantime, the war zone had been clearly mapped. The air still retained the smell of death, and the dust of pulverized remains were still sifting, drifting, and settling on the terrain. Residents had to be identified before they could enter the area, and shipments of goods such as groceries, magazines, and newspapers were curtailed. I had to go above 14th street to get a newspaper. There were shortages of bread and milk. None were permitted into this downtown zone unless they could demonstrate that they had legitimate business and had acceptable ID. Vehicular travel was limited to emergency vehicles, and troops were stationed throughout the area with deployment of heavy armament on strategic streets such as Houston, Broadway, and the entire downtown Wall street area.

As the time of this vicious attack has grown more distant, many seem oblivious to opposing worlds on the verge of collision and collapse. We have insulated ourselves from the impending violence and danger. Yet, we know that in the blink of an eye, at any moment, our fragile world may disappear in an act of hatred and devastation, as it did on that idyllic September morn of 2001.

Etude

Morning...
quickening sounds...
fleeting glimpses...
A breeze slips
through fresh-leaved trees...

Spring dances
to a counterpoint
of birds bickering,
laughter leaping,
and conversations cavorting
in the early shadows of May.

Filtering the Past

I received Wyatt's Deep in the Heart today. He wrote an inscription in the book, and somehow I feel his presence. This book marks a return for Wyatt, back to the matters of the heart in the land that he once fled with a vengeance.

We filter the past in many ways, and Wyatt turned his back on his past for a time, and now returns to reconstruct a world, to give it a new birth and dedication. I am happy to travel along with him.

Although for a while we were cohorts in that Texas terrain, I come to his story telling as a stranger who has travelled similar paths, but now follow them through his eyes and ears. It is all strangely familiar as though I have been there before, but also wildly strange since there is a new luster, a patina that masks the moment in a new awareness.

The journey for him is so different from the ones I have been pursuing in this blog. I often am writing of the same place, but of quite different times, a kind of pre-Wyatt and sans-Wyatt sensibility. However, this filtering of the past also recounts the special nature of our friendship. We maintained separate spheres even though we were the closest of friends. Our connection was fundamental and intense, but our worlds were also separate and remote.