“The dance, then, here in the gray and gold light of the FIRST VALLEY, is the dance of the mind as a mute – muted man and muted place.” - Charles Olson
We sit in our homes, far from our origins in, well, it doesn't matter your beliefs. Our origins in a garden guarded by flaming trees with reason to be lost if we left, in a savannah where we learn to walk upright with reason still on the far dawn, in the dark woods of a cold Europe seeking the inmost cave where reason would take us – they are all far from our homes layered with carpet or tongue and groove wood, padded chairs, electronics blaring into our mind and taking control of our evolution without our knowing how.
Sometimes, however, we sit with a window open, curtain flapping in the breeze, and if we stop the electronics, stop our minds, stop our places, we just might hear it. A far off echo of some din in the past, a memory stirring out of the collective, an archetype rising from its deep sleep in the farthest corner of the woods or deepest trench in the ocean. At that moment, if we enter the time and memory and invading place, we enter a dance. This dance is one where we are in a primal dance around a fire with our own meaning, our own place, our own actions. Sometimes, we fall mute in The Presence.
Some never have these moments, and it is a pity. Others have them but do not share them. That is their right, the personal is, after all, personal. Others find a way to overcome the muteness on their return, and use feeble words or abstract images thrown at a piece of paper in fevered attempts to capture what was 'just there'. Perhaps they heard a hound bay and were suddenly on a hunt, perhaps they heard a gypsy guitar and were sitting next to a red wagon in the dance of firelight, perhaps they were back at a school dance, even, or they heard the voice of the other. The words are never good enough, the images on a canvass never quite right, but they are re-worked, and then, the electronics of the present world are back. What is there is what will be there despite any further attempts. The moment is gone except for some deep feeling carried in our bones. Memories of some generative place, a first valley where someone once walked in the mists and rising sun.
An attempt at overcoming the muted man and place is in Curtains in the Wind, the poem. It is but a short dance, re-played now at your convenience. A faint echo of the moment that came in past the curtains leaning in on the scented wind.
We sit in our homes, far from our origins in, well, it doesn't matter your beliefs. Our origins in a garden guarded by flaming trees with reason to be lost if we left, in a savannah where we learn to walk upright with reason still on the far dawn, in the dark woods of a cold Europe seeking the inmost cave where reason would take us – they are all far from our homes layered with carpet or tongue and groove wood, padded chairs, electronics blaring into our mind and taking control of our evolution without our knowing how.
Sometimes, however, we sit with a window open, curtain flapping in the breeze, and if we stop the electronics, stop our minds, stop our places, we just might hear it. A far off echo of some din in the past, a memory stirring out of the collective, an archetype rising from its deep sleep in the farthest corner of the woods or deepest trench in the ocean. At that moment, if we enter the time and memory and invading place, we enter a dance. This dance is one where we are in a primal dance around a fire with our own meaning, our own place, our own actions. Sometimes, we fall mute in The Presence.
Some never have these moments, and it is a pity. Others have them but do not share them. That is their right, the personal is, after all, personal. Others find a way to overcome the muteness on their return, and use feeble words or abstract images thrown at a piece of paper in fevered attempts to capture what was 'just there'. Perhaps they heard a hound bay and were suddenly on a hunt, perhaps they heard a gypsy guitar and were sitting next to a red wagon in the dance of firelight, perhaps they were back at a school dance, even, or they heard the voice of the other. The words are never good enough, the images on a canvass never quite right, but they are re-worked, and then, the electronics of the present world are back. What is there is what will be there despite any further attempts. The moment is gone except for some deep feeling carried in our bones. Memories of some generative place, a first valley where someone once walked in the mists and rising sun.
An attempt at overcoming the muted man and place is in Curtains in the Wind, the poem. It is but a short dance, re-played now at your convenience. A faint echo of the moment that came in past the curtains leaning in on the scented wind.
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