Notes
wildlife documentary //
before Phaedrus can speak, Socrates makes an accusation wrapped inside a demand:
if you would first disclose, O friend (philotes), what it is you have (echo / echis) in the left hand (aristeros) under your cloak.
here, echeis could be either a conjugation of echo/echein (to have/hold - and this again) or the plural nominative/accusative declension of echis (viper). exchanging echis for echein yields the alternative translation,
if you would first disclose, O friend, what vipers are in the left hand under your cloak.
the common verb (to have/hold) makes more sense than the uncommon noun (vipers), in explicit context; or what Phaedrus calls the dianoia, i.e. the reduction of written speech to a kind of thought-content. but the local environs (poetic) of this echeis call for circumspection. on one side, there’s the sinister aristeros, “the left (hand)"; and on the other, the concealment, “under your cloak”. while the word spoken aloud makes the sound of a snake’s hiss—echeisss; its natural sound is concealed by its being written (technology).
Socrates invokes the concealed, present absence, or possibility of snakes; as he demands revelation of—?
English “echo” isn’t descended from echein (to have/hold), but from eche (sound). The best word built from echein is Aristotle’s entelecheia (en + telos + echein), translated as “having or holding itself in its end or completion”; neatly, a talisman is an external container for, or reminder of, entelecheia.
//
I was thinkin' about turquoise, I was thinkin' about gold //
I was thinkin’ about diamonds and the world’s biggest necklace
As we rode through the canyons, through the devilish cold
I was thinkin’ about Isis, how she thought I was so reckless
Bob Dylan // “Isis”
One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite Dylan albums. All that thinkin' ends up just thoughts, of course, other than Isis. The song builds a world and tears it down, in its heart an unmarked grave, and as its whole a mystical lovers' reunion. The gold here is part of its central deception. At the Rolling Thunder Revue, Bob says “this is a song about marriage” (song begins around 19:00). Of course it is.
Over the past few days, motivated by ideas from this post, I’ve been caught in the lyrics, melodies, and moods of gold-mentions from my favorite songwriters. These are, in no particular order, the ones that rose to the surface when I went “thinkin' about gold”. They’ve populated my soul for years, as lyrics do, being at work in my memory and imagination. In this respect, I consider them “mine”. Each one is worth multiple essays' worth of consideration—but poetry can do better justice, so I’ve tried to keep these notes brief.
(I’m very sorry for all the youtube links, including the commercials. I wish there was some other way.)
In the process of re-surfacing, re-listening, and re-considering, I realized a few things. First, that I should study written song lyrics with more sustained attention. They are at least as influential and instructive as the written words that have sculpted my sensibility. Working with them in writing engages different capacities.
Second, I don’t listen to pop music; I listen to poetry.
Those men who lust for land
And for riches strange and new
Who love those trinkets of desire
Oh, they never will have you
And they’ll never know the gold
Or the copper in your hair
How could they weigh the worth of you so rare
Suzanne Vega // “World Before Columbus”
I’ve always loved this song, shaded as it is by the colonial frame. It makes me wonder who she wrote it for. From the album Nine Objects of Desire, but I like the more recent acoustic release, where she includes it among songs about Family.
As often with Vega, there’s an understated irony at work; here, with the simultaneous liberation and re-objectification of the beloved. I find myself relating to that bittersweet bind. Loving an indigenous person from a (once- and neo-) colonized land, and writing poetry about that person (or writing poetry about my “new home”), inevitably invokes the incriminating history.
How to love in a postcolonial world? It’s an open question. Again, explicitly related to power and the image.
I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And 27 angels from the Great Beyond
They tied me to this table, right here, in the tower of song
Leonard Cohen // “Tower of Song”
The irony in this song is overt and complex, like the taste of a very expensive booze. His later lyrics do this to me all the time. I sit and savor them for years, decades, and wonder who is this thing that they come from? How do you boast, and self- and other-cut, all at the same time, with such contemplative panache? I feel personally like I have a great deal to learn from elder-Cohen sensibility, being an unripe wine myself—grape juice, even. There’s an abandoned Cohen love poem in my drafts because I just couldn’t manage it . . . yet.
“I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m gonna join in a rock ‘n’ roll band
I’m gonna camp out on the land
I’m gonna try an' get my soul free”
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
Joni Mitchell // “Woodstock”
No overt irony, but the yearning remains uncanny . . . so uncanny. Interesting to know that she missed the event and wrote the song in a hotel room (see notes), after seeing footage of the festival on tv. This gold has been displaced. The lyrics describe naive delusion and an eerily impoverished hallucination. To me, it feels like she doesn’t quite believe, being however in genuine awe of the moment. The closing darkens the frame: “We are stardust / Billion year old carbon / We are golden / Caught in the devil’s bargain.” The passage of time has only deepened the sense of surreality—how has that movement unwound? Where did it go? Where did we go? —not the garden, I think.
You told me once
Gardens, yes, they know
Death is not the end and
Flowers burn to gold
Tori Amos // “Flowers Burn to Gold”
No irony here, just pure love and consolation. It’s not the only Tori song about gold but this one lives inside me. It’s pretty clearly about her mother who passed away. Live version here with a few vocal flaws but a legendary performance in tandem with a gorgeous cover. Here’s where to go when your open heart needs a good, hard cry; which, it probably does, and you just weren’t aware.
Whereas the others are examples of ironic gold, this lyric is, similar to my own kind of way, an example of liminal gold.
I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm
Leonard Cohen // “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye”
Honorable mention; neither ironic nor liminal, a relic of the younger Cohen. “Sleepy golden storm” describes my own hair very accurately, and possibly my own self. (That’s Leonard, always looking at me, one last time.) I can’t listen to this 2008 live version without tears. I saw him play on that tour.
If you a pussy, you get popped, you a goofy, you a opp
Don’t you come around my way, you can’t hang around my block
And I just checked my accounts, turns out, I’m rich, I’m rich, I’m rich
I put my hand above my hip, I bet you dip, he dip, she dip
I say I get the money and go, this shit is hot like a stove
My pussy glitter is gold, tell that lil' bitch play her role
I just arrive in a Rolls, I just came up in a Wraith
I need to fill up the tank, no, I need to fill up the safe
I need to let all these hoes know that none of their n-ggas is safe
Cardi B // “Bodak Yellow”
Her pussy glitter is gold—yes. Also, liminal. To be clear, money means something different to Cardi B than it does to me. I think hip-hop appreciation, for most white people, requires a kind of cultural translation. It’s often poetry from a warzone, more like the Illiad than a folksinger out of the 60’s. But its ethics are just as serious, if not more sensitive to the urgencies of material and psychic insecurity. Cardi B doesn’t dance now, she speaks armor of the feminine. In doing so, her verse has impacted the very course of my life. I wouldn’t be where I am today without Invasion of Privacy. I shouldn’t forget that.
Which reminds me—
Joanni, Joanni wears a golden cross
And she looks so beautiful in her armour
Joanni, Joanni blows a kiss to God
And she never wears a ring on her finger
Kate Bush // “Joanni”
Kate makes gold neither ironic nor liminal, but mythic. Another artist whose work provides psychic armor. This song, and its album, have sustained me through depths, and I have no way to describe it better than that. One might say that an earlier provision of armor (by fire!) was “Lily”, and it’s delightful to think that Yeats would probably recognize that invocation. But if any of these lyrics demonstrate the power that Yeats claims, by the gold of Byzantium, it’s here . . . Joanni, surrounded by skies and seas of honey. The beauty of Aerial remains uncontained.
One final mention (for now)—
An afro
A pharoah
I can’t go
You said so
But threads that are golden
Don’t break easily
Tori Amos // “Beauty Queen - Horses”
Tori’s muse isn’t often straightforward, but this is the opening statement on Boys for Pele, which was the most formative album of my teenage years. This poem was not an intentional reference. But unless I caught it in some childhood version of the Ariadne myth . . . BFP is where I first heard of a golden thread.
Here is a third thing that I realized, going back through these songs, related to meter and rhyme. All of my music listening, which has been a constant conditioning, influences the poetry I love, which is often written in metric verse; and the poetry I write, which, for better or worse, often comes with some kind of meter and rhyme. Why does it come that way? Metric poetry supplies—and is supplied by—its own musicality. Metric verse is, like faith, a negotiation with the sacred imagination, sacrificial and empowering at once. In this, my day and age, I know no other way to grow a voice.
But don’t listen to me, I’m grape juice. Which reminds me, the fruit described at the end of the homonymous husband poem is jambu air, which translates as water guava. Speaking of self-disclosure . . . Prose begins to feel like a kind of graphic incontinence. So, enough.
//
One final note, I adore this, “saving phenomena” from Angles Morts. Who does the work daily, and whose daemonic words, neither dead nor blind, daily conspire with my own. In case it isn’t obvious, poetic replies are this blog’s love language.🤍
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“Then,” he said, “O Simmias, those rightly loving wisdom practice (meleta-o) death, and dying is least fearful for those, among humans."
// Phaedo 67ε
If Phaedrus sits between Phaedo, whose act is the death of philosophy, and Timaeus, whose act is full creative flight—then Phaedrus is the birth and fledging of the poet. It accomplishes the transformation from interior to exterior by way of externalized interiority. It demonstrates the containment of love in a poem; its success rests on Socrates’ closing prayer.
Practicing death (as previously mentioned) is reborn as studying and writing poetry. In this, the pharmakon becomes a necessary tool—like a eucharist, hence the prayer. The pharmakon both kills and resurrects.
O beloved Phaedrus, whereto and wherefrom?
hypothesis : the second sailing :: pharmakon : Platonic poetics . . . :: demiurge : cosmos.
Notes on recent poems. //
“Sideview” began as a dream I had, the night after reading Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Since then, I’ve been spending time with her posthumous collection, Ariel. - What a voice.
“Δ” is pronounced delta.
“Δ” contains at least one allusion to the title poem of Ariel.
“Δ” began as a dialogue between Homeric monsters. Not sure what it became. I think it cut me off from social media, though.
“Δ” also borrowed a few words from this entry on Exeter Riddle 82, by Adam Roberts. Inadvertently, it might have become some kind of erotic expansion of Exeter Riddle 82.
Maybe: poetry is the erotic expansion of previous poetry.
Listening to I’m the Drama, Cardi B’s new album. That diss track, ow. Love this strength, this vulnerability. I remain an unapologetic fan.
“Δ” might be weird sisters with “WAP"—but way more dissy.
//
Indigo is calm in his convalescence, after being bullied by the other roosters, relieved to be in his cage, nibbling vervain seeds and other treats, as far as I can tell.
And something unexpected—he’s not lonely. The other roosters (his brothers) spend almost all of their time hanging out around his relaxed and shady retreat. They like to be nearby him, napping, clucking, snacking, preening feathers. We’ll re-integrate after making some changes that should reduce stress.
No bandwidth to do hyperverse this month, I’m afraid. Family matters require extra attention lately and I’ve given myself permission for less, on here. Anyone reading this, I wish you substantial moments of reprieve from the onslaught of bad news. And restful sleep.
I reaffirm my belief in the power of quiet voices, not least the quietest ones, the hard-won voices of the interior. Those voices can’t be silenced by armies or by algorithms. Their power is deeper than tyrants can fathom. The only hope that humanity possesses, not to destroy itself by its own cleverly-implemented appetites, remains in the quiet voices.
This is the paradox of democracy, and human politics writ large: that government by the loudest would never survive without a demos that could and would listen, deeply, to the quietest. No constitution could replace the primary need for education in a republic. Secondary pillars of liberalism crumble without it.
Children must be taught to listen; shouting only closes their hearts.
Assalamualaikum, selamat tilem, peace 🌑
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A guest reported seeing a jalak Bali, or Bali myna, one morning on our mulberry tree. These are so rare that we wondered whether it was a real sighting. The myna (Leucopsar rothschildi, also called Bali starling) is a critically endangered species. Most of them are located in the northwest corner of the island, in a national park. They are unfortunately heavily poached and sold on the black market as pets.
Then I discovered that a breed and release facility is close, around 1.5 km away from our house. That’s “as the myna bird flies”— it’s on the other side of a deep jungle ravine. For us to visit would take around 4 hours of driving.
But now I really want to visit.
The snow-white, blue-masked myna became the voice for this poem. I’d very much like to see one myself, so I’m often checking the mulberry these days.
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Socrates: (cont.) Well do I know, that when he heard Lysias' speech, he didn’t hear it only once. But often and repeatedly, Phaedrus urged him to speak. And Lysias eagerly (prothumos) obliged.
// 228α-228β
εὖ οἶδα ὅτι Λυσίου λόγον ἀκούων ἐκεῖνος οὐ μόνον ἅπαξ ἤκουσεν, ἀλλὰ πολλάκις ἐπαναλαμβάνων ἐκέλευέν οἱ λέγειν, ὁ δὲ ἐπείθετο προθύμως
//
Phaedrus: what could you mean, O best Socrates? when Lysias, who is the cleverest (deinos) of contemporary writers, composed it over a long time, and at his leisure; while i’m just—any old body—(idiotes)—
how could i remember this, in a way worthy of that ?
so i lack, abundantly; and yet, i’d want to— more than much gold becoming mine.
// 227δ-228α
Phaedrus: indeed Socrates, and the hearing relates to you. for the account was— of our spending, somehow, i don’t know— erotic. for Lysias has written the temptation of a beauty. but not by a lover, this is his very subtlety. he says one must gratify one who is not a lover, rather than a lover.
// 227ξ
How many a desert plain, wind-swept,
like the surface of a shield,
empty, impenetrable,
have I cut through on foot,
Joining the near end to the far,
then looking out from a summit,
crouching sometimes,
then standing,
While mountain goats, flint-yellow,
graze around me,
meandering like maidens
draped in flowing shawls.
They become still in the setting sun,
around me, as if I were a white-foot,
bound for the high mountain meadow,
tall-horned.
Excerpt from “The Arabian Ode in ‘L’” (Lamiyyat al-Arab), attrib. Al-Shanfarā (may Allah have mercy on him), translated by Michael A. Sells (may Allah have mercy on him) in his volume Desert Tracings.
These are the final lines of the poem and the ones most explicitly referenced by this, but of course, excerpts don’t do it justice; 64 stanzas writhing snake-like through spirits of the desert as purest distillation of outlaw’s heart. Earlier stanzas can be found here. It seems appropriate that only traces of this poem should appear online.
Al-Shanfarā is a terrible dust devil, burning himself alive. Legendary antihero, desolation and exile ensconced in the premonition of paradise. dizzying!