ENEMIES

 

  

I find the idea of having enemies silly

Where would I find one?

In alleyways of grief?

In forgotten childhood toolshed of twisted intentions?

What would I do with an enemy if I had one?

What enemy could harm me more than I have harmed myself?

****

What what I do with an enemy if I had one?

Plot slow revenge, steam open letters, 

booby trap my poems?

***

We could do harm to each other

by turns, or both at the same time

Anger, hatred, be careful when someone gives these gifts to you

They are not very good ones

***

And what of lovers?

They are easier to find than enemies. 

Not people to got to bed with

(Though there's that too!)

Or set up domestic arrangements

But anyone who will love you for a moment or two

Or deeply and long 

Fernando

 Here, from my google scholar alerts:

"At the end of the same decade, the Spanish poet Fernando Garcia Lorca visited New York between June 1929 and March 1930 during which he penned his famous  work of poetry, Poeta en Nueva York..."  

A conversation

--I didn't want to say no to this article because I had never published an article in Poland before.

--What's so special about Poland? 

--Nothing. I just haven't published anything there before. I would publish in Sweden, Chile, anywhere they invited me.  

--Where have you published?'

--U.S., Canada?, Spain, UK, Italy, Australia...  

The Death of the Comendador

 The narrator of the Murakami novel is relatively passive. He reacts to things but is not the main driver of events. Menshiki is the instigator of most of the action, having the nameless narrator paint his portrait and then the portrait of the girl who may or may not be Menshiki's daughter. 

The common wisdom is that a protagonist should want something, and take action to achieve it, and then deal with the obstacles that arise. Here we don't know what he really wants. His wife has left him, and he has affairs with some women, but they are not what he wants, really. He perhaps wants to forge his own artistic style, rather than being a painter of commissioned portraits, but to do so accepts Menshiki's commissions.  It is Menshiki's money that permits everything to happen. 

A passive protagonist can work, but it is much more difficult to pull off. It doesn't feel satisfying, so something else must compensate. Verbal descriptions of someone painting are not wholly satisfying either.  There is something half-hearted about the whole novel. as though the author didn't know what he wanted to do in writing it.   

2 models

Here is outline of the next talk I want to give. Please invite me!  I will speak for food and drink. 

Two models of song

1) The classical model

The text comes first. Song is a musical setting of a previously written poem. 

The relation between music and words is fraught with tension. The composer in some sense is going against the poet. The text's own prosody is over-ridden by the music. 

2) The vernacular model 

The listener processes music and words at the same time, without caring which was written first. We don't think of song as a musical setting of a "poem." The words might come first, or the music; it doesn't matter too much. If we asked Cole Porter whether he wrote music or words first, the answer might be interesting, but it wouldn't really affect our understanding of his songs. 

The lyrics may or may not have a "literary" value apart from their union with the music. 

There is no fundamental tension between words and music. 

***

A third model: in vernacular settings of literary poems, we know the text comes first, and was chosen for its literary value. The inherent tension of the classical model comes into play again.  

Thus the classical model is more relevant, despite the vernacular character of the setting. This means that we listen to this kind of vernacular music differently than other genres. The poem is not anonymous, unlike a folk song. 

Consequences of this for Lorca. He arises out of a tradition in which the vernacular assumptions are operative, but settings of his work need to be heard more critically, with this analytical separation between words and music.  

 

Manuel

 Vino, sentimiento, guitarra y poesía

hacen los cantares de la patria mía. 

Cantares… 

Quien dice cantares dice Andalucía. 

***

Here is Manuel Machado celebrating flamenco. Wine, feeling, guitar and poetry form the songs of my homeland. Songs... Whoever says songs says Andalusia.  

What an utter mediocrity.  

Hey Catalan publisher of Murakami

 It's Thelonious, not Thelonius.