Days Like These

I once wrote a short piece about music asking whether it was a ubiquitous annoyance or the highest form of art, as Ruskin thought:

'All art should aspire to the sublimity of music'.

For a long time I agreed. Now I am not at all sure. Shops and shopping centres trivilialise everything from Vivaldi, Mozart and Handel to the ephemeral but not unmeritable popular music from the sixties to the present. Music is used in Lifts, on telephone lines, it can be downloaded, copied, forgotten and replaced by newer songs, quartets and symphonies - which will, just as quickly give way to more 'product'.

But music is not the only invasion that drowns out the silence that gives rise to reflection and thoughtfulness. The roar of traffic, the 24/7 rolling newscasts, the senseless racket of talk shows, local and national, these all conspire to reduce our natural tendency for peace and thoughtfulness to a premature and tragic end.

We are desensitised to the many serious threats to our survival by being constantly distracted from distraction by distraction'. Is it really surprising that famine, war, epidemics are invariably met with a charity concert. How many of us know how to practice and feel even 15 minutes of pure empathy with the poor and the victims of wars and dictatorships? Yet that fiften mintes could change our perception of suffering and lead us to act in ways which we are not even aware of.

Noise has reduced us to a state of constant unnatural excitement and made us fear the backdrop of silence that is essential to unique ideas, insights and understanding leading to a strong conviction and an untapped ability to really change some of the injustices - the insane inequalities of this world.

Maybe noise is the result of the fear that without it we would find ourselves and our environments terrifying?

Anthony Sher has written about his stage fright. It is not, as I would have thought, increased adrenaline, sweats, nausea and even terror but, rather

"having four voices in your head. One is speaking the lines, another is mockingly telling the first that at any moment he won't remember them or will faint , the third is reciting a different play altogether and the fourth has the right play but is several acts ahead."

I've often wondered about the psychology of actors - I so easily might have become one had things been different - and, in a more complete sense I have been. I can understand exactly, I think, what he is talking about except, that in my own experience, the voices are different. One says 'I am a woman', the second says 'this is obviously nonsense' while the third mocks both of them and supports the fourth who is speaking the lines of whatever I am saying - as a woman (or as a man - reverse as necessary and without warning.)

I am not being melodramatic or unable to tell what I want. It is a complete loss of sense of who I am, or what I am in the most existential way.

In the beginning...

THERE WERE WORDS. Words. words. words. Words of love and hate and spite and words of belief and distrust and death and life, love words and love of words, words to splash around in, short modest words, demure words, ugly coercive and intolerant words, words of light and sparkling words; spray, breeze, grass and meadow and hill, clouds, scudding, floating, hanging, falling like dew, rainbows, tears,rainspots on windows, glass caught in the sunlight of a spring even; words,words,words; words of wisdom and folly and madness, lewd words, precious words, life, lust, musical words, tinkle, tremelo, timpani, allegro, presto, adagio, andante, words like notes; words, words, words; words of deceit political words, words of destruction and hatred and valour and vainglorious words like honour, peace, truth, justice, duty, patriot, democracy, left wing, right wing, how can a nation fly on one wing? Words, words, words, criminal, scoundrel, fool, killer, psychopath, power words, victim, innocent, righteous, the damned and the saved, saviours prophets, kings, kingdoms; lying words, false words, fake, rule, divide, land, nation, patriot, charity, just, democracy, salvation salvific incantations conjuring the spirit of moloch the god of many names, buddah, jesus, muhhamed, thor, artemis, pantheons and archetypes, words forged in our own houses, minds shod with words, thoughts tied up with words, spirits weighted with words, stuck on words, blocked with words, the right word, elusive, forbidden, illegal, suppressed words, whole columns of words, continents of words, an occupying force will first kill the native word, words, words, words, words, clubbed, beaten, stabbed, the elect, the chosen, liberty, empowerment; dancing words jellaby, fortuitous, spangled, creationist, drunkenly, wobbly, wrinkling, joyfully, merrily, ceremonious, qudrille, jig, jitterbug, twist, clitoris, penis, vagina, tongue dancing merrily in mout tasting honey, these words turn and fly on waves of pure air; Academic words, dark, deep, philosophical, sophistry, deconstruct, analyse, scrutinise, classify and petrify, jargon and tradition, pentameters, sonnet, words swinging in song and rhyme neither yours or mine, you cannot own words, words are free; social and descriptive words, obscure and decadent, decayed, depraved, words, words, words; words of war, onomatopoeic words, words of war, wounded words people on fire with words; words of the prophet, words of the unbeliever that truly believed, the hypocrite cowards that didn’t know fear and the fools and idiocy that informed them; words, words, drumming on keys the ancient sound of the blood stirred, for or against the subject or the object, words of contempt, nigger, kike, yid, spik, wop, wog, hun, gook, queer, harlot, faggot, nancy, fag, cretin, moron, retard, spastic, words of loathing and love and heresy and hierarchy, divisive words, war-words, kill, bayonet, napalm, bomb clusters of words exploding in the darkened sky, words that screamed, jabbered, swore allegiance; words of flight, crazed idiosyncratic, uncivilised, barbaric, barbarian, them, words, words, words, marching to a drummers strike, poverty, plague pestilence, justifiable, battle anger, cruelty, justified, sinners, collateral damage, friendly fire, my country tis of thee, gallows, holocaust, burnt offerings, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, words, words, words.

Songsters, balladeers and ball breakers, words of ethnicity, beautiful and hated; proud and singular, words of difference and fear, separatist, elite, kings, queens and guards at arms, bayonet, rifle, gun; boom, boom, boom, gonna shoot you right down, words, utterances, lies, prophecies, uncommon tongues that mince words into putrification, nation, state, borderline, frontier, mine, twisted words, words of ownership, wors of Babylon, words of hate and scorn and loathing, pet words, names and pronouns, words that classified and deified and shouted, squealed and screamed, word of the lost, set apart from words, language strangled by invading words, cultural words, sexual words, words of angry teens and old men and women attempting still to grasp and mean something, nothing words, nonsense words, scrunk, bebabble, gregptcih, quinge, plysity, dudge, muggrest, peace. Words of birth, cry, sniffle simpatico, pleasure, celebration and elation, ecstatic words, that take flight after lost souls, hades and space, bliss and union, circles of words, spirals of words, words of ignorance and bias, girl, boy, leader, led, ice, fire, rain, hard rain, victimised, words that were shameful, tongues of fire, breathing words, threshold, chrysalis, becoming, birthed, delivered; proud words, poetics synthetic and crucified; words of passion, words of despair, beauty words, idolatry, tears, anguish, wailing stacatto words, news from nowhere and everywhere on earth; a babble and explosion of words, books whence words tumble on and out and hit the mind and conscience like a blow, epiphany, words, words, words, bring light and extinguish life, number days and seasons, child adult, corpse, words open wide with innocence, words of nationhood, of spurious belonging, words of intent, kill, slaughter, liberate, niggers, kikes, yids, micks, krauts, huns, geeks, ghouls, fascistic words, gooks spics, frogs, motherfucking warmongers, words that are sure of themselves, smug words, lost words, dead words, peace, solace, silence caress and kiss and forgive, contrition attrition, confession aggressive words, punch, freak, poof, queer, faggot, pansy and fruity words, words about cinema, tv, words about belief, dishonourable words, spite, envy, profit, scheming, quixotic, heroes, freedom revolution, communism.

Words, words, words, word of ideas struggling to be born in a sleepy slum anywhere you wouldn’t be seen alive or dead, words of terror, terrorist words, words like towers, invincible, proud, platitudes, words before the fall, flames, human, flesh, burning sorrow, revenge, impostors in cheap suits preaching in side streets and alleyways of agony and agreeing that something should be done and the bums sang merrily as we hosed them away to obscurity, hanging words, dead man walking, words, sentences and patterns and paragraphs, orderly words, words that know their place, last words, words of betrayal, lest we forget, words of colour and sun, cacophony of howling, words splattered on windshield and falling like senescent dribble or sparkling with hope in the first cries of birth wonderful words, hope, new, nirvanna, , become, , parents, words, words, words that scrape the throat with vengeance internment, prison; gunbutt, pistol whipped, flagellation, barbed, electric, veins and eyes bulging, words fighting terror, terror words in search of peace oxymorons of dogmatists, but, too, in the bright beaches at the edge of the sea, words like fruitful, passivity, ancestors, whale riders, spirit callers, songs of the deep, or sacred cows mosquitoes, quicksand words, words that announced the last word before it fell, words, words, words and then silence, and unspoken words become flesh, words made manifest in wind, rain, crimson sun, black night, bible black, waves, storm, winter, skeletal, petrified, caught at the end of a word, and the same sad parade of traitor words, an end to the just war, a war to end all wars, a war to end words, stuttering words of horror, gaping, mouth, without words, quick words and dead words and words like a song rising on the heat of the last day, a dige, a lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, an arab peasant muttering words, words words, and the word why? The least hour, the spot on the screen, the last post, the long goodbye, death, cessation,rattling, blankeyed,flight,slither, emptiness, the comfort of strangers and then no words shall come for those who used words so carelessly, vainglorious and futile w o r d s_ In The Beginning Was The Word - a big bang? the divine expletive? a gutteral growl? The Word, a sign, signifying . . . .