Students' anthologies are due Wednesday and Thursday. I'm almost done, too: a couple more introductions to edit and the "overall" introduction to write and then it's time to move on.
I'm in the middle of another Rolling Stone "100 Best" reactions, this time to Joni Mitchell's Blue. Anyone have thoughts on that record?
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Introduction to "Deeper Than Love"
When I read DH Lawrence’s “Deeper than Love,” I was immediately taken back to my sophomore year of college, to my class on Latin American short stories, a class in which all of the reading, all of the writing, and all of the discussion was in Spanish. I thought of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s short story “Muerte Constante Mas Alla del Amor” and my struggle, in our discussion of it, to explain that we all carry around with us a belief, an illusion, that love can and will transcend death, but that this might be merely wishful thinking. It’s a hard story to discuss, as I remember, without words like “bromide” or “platitude” or “myth” or phrases like, “It’s possible that I’m just a cynical college student and that I’ll probably grow out of this arrogant cynicism in a few years.”
It seems to me that this is what Lawrence’s poem is doing: not discussing a great story with only limited (if technically proficient) Spanish, but asking us to look at what we believe about love, at what power, what strength we ascribe to love and why we insist on giving it those qualities. The poem, for what it’s worth, is not willing to cede the kind of ultimate power, ultimate authority to love than many poems are. “There are deeper things than love,” Lawrence writes. And then, while praising love as life, as like the flowers, as lovely, as like the living life on earth, he proceeds to demolish many of these cherished ideals of love.
You love? Great. You’re still alone.
Love grows like flowers? Great. Underneath is solitary rock.
Love is twoness? Great. But underneath that twoness, you’re still alone.
Underneath, the poem keeps insisting. Underneath. Consider what is underneath. And what is underneath is not worse than love, nor uglier than love, but different: a fiery primordial imperative, a primordial consciousness. Justice.
Clearly, love matters. Connection matters. I believe that. And I very well may believe that love, that a connection between people, can be stronger than death. I’ve certainly argued it before: if I am changed by another person, by the love of another person, and that person dies, am I not still changed? And, in that respect, isn’t love – what it creates, how it manifests itself – stronger than death? The truth, the beauty of the trinity lies not in its religious overtones, or its papal mystery, but in its recognition that any strong love between two individuals creates a third individual. Not a sentient being. Not a sentient spirit. It’s dependent upon the two, but independent of the two. It manifests itself in the world. It affects the world. It changes the world.
Why does that matter?
We know love affects us. We know love changes us. But that does not mean that we have to ascribe to it supernatural power, or that we have to construct myths around it.
We can live quite contentedly, quite complacently, with a surface-level understanding of the world. We can even live relatively contentedly (or at least complacently) only presenting the surface of ourselves to the world. But doing so involves a fundamental denial. You must deny that there is more to yourself. You must deny that you hold things back. You must deny that any part of you wishes to probe further, to ask more questions, to dare more amibiguity, to confront more mystery, or to live more honestly.
Let us confront the occasional myth. Not for the sake of demolishing it, but for the sake of pursuing a genuine, personal understanding. For the sake of taking a potentially rewarding risk: living beyond the surface of the world. Living beyond the surface of yourself.
It seems to me that this is what Lawrence’s poem is doing: not discussing a great story with only limited (if technically proficient) Spanish, but asking us to look at what we believe about love, at what power, what strength we ascribe to love and why we insist on giving it those qualities. The poem, for what it’s worth, is not willing to cede the kind of ultimate power, ultimate authority to love than many poems are. “There are deeper things than love,” Lawrence writes. And then, while praising love as life, as like the flowers, as lovely, as like the living life on earth, he proceeds to demolish many of these cherished ideals of love.
You love? Great. You’re still alone.
Love grows like flowers? Great. Underneath is solitary rock.
Love is twoness? Great. But underneath that twoness, you’re still alone.
Underneath, the poem keeps insisting. Underneath. Consider what is underneath. And what is underneath is not worse than love, nor uglier than love, but different: a fiery primordial imperative, a primordial consciousness. Justice.
Clearly, love matters. Connection matters. I believe that. And I very well may believe that love, that a connection between people, can be stronger than death. I’ve certainly argued it before: if I am changed by another person, by the love of another person, and that person dies, am I not still changed? And, in that respect, isn’t love – what it creates, how it manifests itself – stronger than death? The truth, the beauty of the trinity lies not in its religious overtones, or its papal mystery, but in its recognition that any strong love between two individuals creates a third individual. Not a sentient being. Not a sentient spirit. It’s dependent upon the two, but independent of the two. It manifests itself in the world. It affects the world. It changes the world.
Why does that matter?
We know love affects us. We know love changes us. But that does not mean that we have to ascribe to it supernatural power, or that we have to construct myths around it.
We can live quite contentedly, quite complacently, with a surface-level understanding of the world. We can even live relatively contentedly (or at least complacently) only presenting the surface of ourselves to the world. But doing so involves a fundamental denial. You must deny that there is more to yourself. You must deny that you hold things back. You must deny that any part of you wishes to probe further, to ask more questions, to dare more amibiguity, to confront more mystery, or to live more honestly.
Let us confront the occasional myth. Not for the sake of demolishing it, but for the sake of pursuing a genuine, personal understanding. For the sake of taking a potentially rewarding risk: living beyond the surface of the world. Living beyond the surface of yourself.
DH Lawrence: "Deeper Than Love"
There is love, and it is a deep thing
but there are deeper things than love.
First and last, man is alone.
He is born alone, and alone he dies
and alone he is while he lives, in his deepest self.
Love, like the flowers, is life, growing.
But underneath are the deep rocks, the living rock that lives alone
and deeper still the unknown fire, unknown and heavy, heavy
and alone.
Love is a thing of twoness.
But underneath any twoness, man is alone.
And underneath the great turbulent emotions of love, the violent herbage,
lies the living rock of a single creature's pride,
the dark, naif pride.
And deeper even than the bedrock of pride
lies the ponderous fire of naked life
with its strange primordial consciousness of justice
and its primordial consciousness of connection,
connection with still deeper, still more terrible life-fire
and the old, old final life-truth.
Love is of twoness, and is lovely
like the living life on the earth
but below all roots of love lies the bedrock of naked pride, subterranean,
and deeper than the bedrock of pride is the primordial fire of the middle
which rests in connection with the further forever unknowable fire of all things
and which rocks with a sense of connection, religion
and trembles with a sense of truth, primordial consciousness
and is silent with a sense of justice, the fiery primordial imperative.
All this is deeper than love
deeper than love.
but there are deeper things than love.
First and last, man is alone.
He is born alone, and alone he dies
and alone he is while he lives, in his deepest self.
Love, like the flowers, is life, growing.
But underneath are the deep rocks, the living rock that lives alone
and deeper still the unknown fire, unknown and heavy, heavy
and alone.
Love is a thing of twoness.
But underneath any twoness, man is alone.
And underneath the great turbulent emotions of love, the violent herbage,
lies the living rock of a single creature's pride,
the dark, naif pride.
And deeper even than the bedrock of pride
lies the ponderous fire of naked life
with its strange primordial consciousness of justice
and its primordial consciousness of connection,
connection with still deeper, still more terrible life-fire
and the old, old final life-truth.
Love is of twoness, and is lovely
like the living life on the earth
but below all roots of love lies the bedrock of naked pride, subterranean,
and deeper than the bedrock of pride is the primordial fire of the middle
which rests in connection with the further forever unknowable fire of all things
and which rocks with a sense of connection, religion
and trembles with a sense of truth, primordial consciousness
and is silent with a sense of justice, the fiery primordial imperative.
All this is deeper than love
deeper than love.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Introduction to "Each from Different Heights"
There’s a wonderful honesty in Stephen Dunn’s “Each from Different Heights,” a willingness to push against what we might assume to be true or what we might want to be true. In this case, Dunn asks us to examine the distinction that we want to draw between those times we claim to have been truly in love and those times it turned out not to have been love, and to ask to what extent that distinction is real. How big is it, really? Does it exist at all? Or do we just assume that it should, or wish that it did? How different is that time “I thought I was in love” from the time “I was truly in love”? If I can speak of my love calmly, does that mean that the love is not real? If I sleep poorly and find myself speaking to the wall, does that mean that my love is true?
The distinctions get flattened.
And the hurt that we carry from the loss of love and the falls we take, the pain that seems so overwhelming when love is lost, when a relationship ends, when someone hurts us – that, too, might be subject to this same flattening. Perhaps the “longer fall” leaves a bigger bruise, a darker bruise, a deeper bruise, but it, just like a small one, just like a mild one, fades. Fades to perfect whiteness.
Now, clearly, you don’t want to take that flattening too far. To claim that all hurts are, in essence, equal because all bruises fade is to deny, I think, at least some fundamental emotional truth. But I don’t think Dunn takes it that far. The poem remains grounded, wonderfully grounded, especially in moments like this: “Sometimes even the false is tender.”
And that’s true. Hard, but true.
I appreciate that honesty, but, really, what I respond to most in the poem is the speaker, truly in love, discovering “the hidden genius of [his] hands.” Is there any greater spur to creativity, to expression, to getting up and getting out and Getting Shit Done, than love? Have you ever been as inspired as when you decide that you’re “truly in love”? Have you ever felt more like a genius? More like someone capable of creation? More like someone capable of expression? More like someone who should create?
The distinctions get flattened.
And the hurt that we carry from the loss of love and the falls we take, the pain that seems so overwhelming when love is lost, when a relationship ends, when someone hurts us – that, too, might be subject to this same flattening. Perhaps the “longer fall” leaves a bigger bruise, a darker bruise, a deeper bruise, but it, just like a small one, just like a mild one, fades. Fades to perfect whiteness.
Now, clearly, you don’t want to take that flattening too far. To claim that all hurts are, in essence, equal because all bruises fade is to deny, I think, at least some fundamental emotional truth. But I don’t think Dunn takes it that far. The poem remains grounded, wonderfully grounded, especially in moments like this: “Sometimes even the false is tender.”
And that’s true. Hard, but true.
I appreciate that honesty, but, really, what I respond to most in the poem is the speaker, truly in love, discovering “the hidden genius of [his] hands.” Is there any greater spur to creativity, to expression, to getting up and getting out and Getting Shit Done, than love? Have you ever been as inspired as when you decide that you’re “truly in love”? Have you ever felt more like a genius? More like someone capable of creation? More like someone capable of expression? More like someone who should create?
Stephen Dunn: "Each from Different Heights"
That time I thought I was in love
and calmly said so
was not much different from the time
I was truly in love
and slept poorly and spoke out loud
to the wall
and discovered the hidden genius
Of my hands.
And the times I felt less in love,
less than someone,
were, to be honest, not so different
either.
Each was ridiculous in its own way
and each was tender, yes,
sometimes even the false is tender.
I am astounded
by the various kisses we’re capable of.
Each from different heights
diminished, which is simply the law.
And the big bruise
from the longer fall looked perfectly white
in a few years.
That astounded me most of all.
and calmly said so
was not much different from the time
I was truly in love
and slept poorly and spoke out loud
to the wall
and discovered the hidden genius
Of my hands.
And the times I felt less in love,
less than someone,
were, to be honest, not so different
either.
Each was ridiculous in its own way
and each was tender, yes,
sometimes even the false is tender.
I am astounded
by the various kisses we’re capable of.
Each from different heights
diminished, which is simply the law.
And the big bruise
from the longer fall looked perfectly white
in a few years.
That astounded me most of all.
The Brothers Grossman
In English 11, we bracketed our study of transcendentalism and Into the Wild with two choice books. For each, we went to the library and chose books from a cart that one of our librarians was nice enough to put together for me. For the first, I read Lev Grossman's The Magicians, which has some fantastic moments and is absolutely worth reading. It's a lot of fun watching Grossman simultaneously celebrate and deconstruct both fantasy and coming-of-age-private-school literature. Plus, it has this passage:
“If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart – reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life.”
Not bad, huh? It's even better in the context of the novel's consideration of just what kind of life fantasy literature (of the "kids find fantasy world that's kind of like ours but has kings and queens and talking animals and treasure and torches" sort) leads us to expect.
For the second, I read Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible, which engages in its own act of celebration and gentle mockery, in this case of superhero comics. It's funnier, but maybe ultimately a little less satisfying than his brother's The Magicians.
“If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart – reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life.”
Not bad, huh? It's even better in the context of the novel's consideration of just what kind of life fantasy literature (of the "kids find fantasy world that's kind of like ours but has kings and queens and talking animals and treasure and torches" sort) leads us to expect.
For the second, I read Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible, which engages in its own act of celebration and gentle mockery, in this case of superhero comics. It's funnier, but maybe ultimately a little less satisfying than his brother's The Magicians.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Marquee Moon
Television’s Marquee Moon is #38 on that Rolling Stone list from 1987. I didn’t hear this record until my sophomore year of college, after I started working at WCBN, hosting the stereotypical 3-6 a.m. slot one night every two weeks and spending those three hours running back and forth between the broadcast studio and an old production studio so that I could not only get music out over the air, but also dub four albums every shift. One of the first tasks I gave myself was to track down as many of those 1987 top 100 albums as I could. Marquee Moon was one of those.
And I loved it. The vinyl that I taped it from was a little beat up, and the whole thing just barely fit on one side of a tape, but I loved that thing. It was one of my go-to tapes that winter and I have clear memories of walking to my logic class listening to it and taking an extra lap around a hallway so that I could hear those last few desperate notes of “Prove It” before I sat down to an hour of Venn Diagrams.
And God, it’s still good. The tape has been replaced by two different CD issues, but the thing is still magic. It still crackles with this intensity, this tension, this electricity that’s unmatched, for me, by anything else from that mid-1970s New York punk scene. It’s not just the twin guitars of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, either (though they are justly lionized). It’s the skittering drums, always solid, but rarely predictable. It’s Fred Smith’s bass weaving its own melodies around the guitars. It’s the songs themselves, with their interlocking riffs and the bizarre couplets that emerge from Verlaine’s pen, like
My eyes are like telescopes
I see it all backwards, but who needs hope?
Yet it’s the guitars you remember. Lloyd’s more traditional solos and Verlaine’s unexpected jumps and leaps, the flashes of Neil Young rumblestorms and the moments of Richard Thompson fury, the psychedelic raveups and the third-eye explorations. It’s the neurotic, tense quality of Verlaine’s solo on “Friction.” It’s the way the notes of “Prove It” seem choked off, emerging from whatever the guitar equivalent of clenched teeth is. It’s the way the riffs of “Venus de Milo” run around the lyrics with what seems like complete abandon. It’s hearing Lloyd’s solo in “See No Evil” and comparing it to Verlaine’s in “Friction” and wondering just how much of the band’s greatness was driven by fundamental tension between their differing approaches to the guitar.
The only song I’m impatient with now is “Guiding Light,” which, in the context of so much that seems otherworldly, that taps this anxious, desperate nerve so effectively, comes across as predictable, as pat, as out of place. It feels like a song that anyone could have done, whereas the rest of the album is almost dauntingly singular. I remember really liking it in college, appreciating its relative calm, its chiming arpeggios, even Lloyd’s melodic solo, but now I just feel like it drags, and I find myself impatient to get to the glorious barbed wire solo of “Prove It.”
And last thing: this is Television’s debut. The debut. The first record. How many other groups can claim such a debut? How many other first albums are this strong? Big Pink, maybe? Freak Out? Appetite for Destruction? Please Please Me? Slanted and Enchanted?
I don’t know that I’d move it any higher than #38, but I have absolutely no problem with this making the list.
And I loved it. The vinyl that I taped it from was a little beat up, and the whole thing just barely fit on one side of a tape, but I loved that thing. It was one of my go-to tapes that winter and I have clear memories of walking to my logic class listening to it and taking an extra lap around a hallway so that I could hear those last few desperate notes of “Prove It” before I sat down to an hour of Venn Diagrams.
And God, it’s still good. The tape has been replaced by two different CD issues, but the thing is still magic. It still crackles with this intensity, this tension, this electricity that’s unmatched, for me, by anything else from that mid-1970s New York punk scene. It’s not just the twin guitars of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, either (though they are justly lionized). It’s the skittering drums, always solid, but rarely predictable. It’s Fred Smith’s bass weaving its own melodies around the guitars. It’s the songs themselves, with their interlocking riffs and the bizarre couplets that emerge from Verlaine’s pen, like
My eyes are like telescopes
I see it all backwards, but who needs hope?
Yet it’s the guitars you remember. Lloyd’s more traditional solos and Verlaine’s unexpected jumps and leaps, the flashes of Neil Young rumblestorms and the moments of Richard Thompson fury, the psychedelic raveups and the third-eye explorations. It’s the neurotic, tense quality of Verlaine’s solo on “Friction.” It’s the way the notes of “Prove It” seem choked off, emerging from whatever the guitar equivalent of clenched teeth is. It’s the way the riffs of “Venus de Milo” run around the lyrics with what seems like complete abandon. It’s hearing Lloyd’s solo in “See No Evil” and comparing it to Verlaine’s in “Friction” and wondering just how much of the band’s greatness was driven by fundamental tension between their differing approaches to the guitar.
The only song I’m impatient with now is “Guiding Light,” which, in the context of so much that seems otherworldly, that taps this anxious, desperate nerve so effectively, comes across as predictable, as pat, as out of place. It feels like a song that anyone could have done, whereas the rest of the album is almost dauntingly singular. I remember really liking it in college, appreciating its relative calm, its chiming arpeggios, even Lloyd’s melodic solo, but now I just feel like it drags, and I find myself impatient to get to the glorious barbed wire solo of “Prove It.”
And last thing: this is Television’s debut. The debut. The first record. How many other groups can claim such a debut? How many other first albums are this strong? Big Pink, maybe? Freak Out? Appetite for Destruction? Please Please Me? Slanted and Enchanted?
I don’t know that I’d move it any higher than #38, but I have absolutely no problem with this making the list.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)