retrograde
now that no
part of me is left
untouched
what shall I bring forth?
And, so, I walk slow
along the precipice
circling once before departure...
Comments
its brilliant. i listen to it an awful lot, usually when i want to write. i agree, the concept, while accidental, is staggering and i think beautifully sums up what life is about. astonishing that the original clip is merely a few seconds long and its disintegration is pulled out to an hour long. for me, its like listening to something dying, which is morbid yes but also quite beautiful.
and i quite agree, every end is a beginning and i dont think you can truly have a beginning without having an end. i am inspired by this and former discussions regarding cycles and circles which is a wonderful side effect of this site and poetry in general i think.
elPintor
Sun 16th Oct 2016 23:51
I'm listening to it, now..very haunting how it begins. I'm taken aback at how completely this phenomena encapsulates the feeling I was trying to express. The whole idea is quite remarkable...
"Basinski has said that he finished the project the morning of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, and sat on the roof of his apartment building in Brooklyn with friends listening to the project as the World Trade Center towers collapsed."
--that, from Wikipedia, "The Disintegration Loops".
I didn't want to choose between an "ending" or a new "beginning" as the inevitable departure point. Maybe at zero, they are synonymous with one another.
A very touching piece, here, Stu..the French horn is exquisite and the strings just continually draw you in so deep.
elP
lovely elP. im very taken by the idea of our lives being fulfilled once every part of us is left untouched. greatly thought provoking and written in that skeletal way you have, like your words are elements with limited half lives and at any point they could blink out. i am reading this while listening to william basinski's disintegration loops, which is a wonderful ambient album that came around after he found some old easy listening tapes and tried to digitize them. he left the machine to do its business and when he came back he found the tapes were degrading ever so slightly with each turn, as the magnetic strip wore off. it produced this amazing effect whereby these short snippets of music gradually disintegrated, changing minutely each time but over the course of the hour they completely vanished. its a startling listen, and deeply philosophical when you really think about it. the day after he mastered the first was 9/11 and he set up a camera on his Manhattan apartments roof and recorded the last hour of daylight while he listened back to it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjnAE5go9dI
its not an easy listen by any means and requires quite a feat of time and patience but there is something about it that plays in nicely with what we have been talking about. even if you cant sacrifice the hour it takes (and i dont blame you, time is precious), its interesting to scan through it to see how it all changes.
sorry i have wittered for ages about nothing but basically neat poem!
elPintor
Sat 15th Oct 2016 00:37
Good questions..very probing.
It, I would say, is most like the passage of time, though time relative to our positions at the point(s) of measure. Think of it more as rates of acceleration and movement along different trajectories. According to the point of observance--if we are to define time as common among each of us--we are all moving along different paths.
I hope that explains something of what I meant. It is somewhat personal but, I believe, nothing more or less than the common human experience.
Thanks for asking, Adriana.
elP
ps
maybe for more of an explanation, look at my response to "all we ever wanted was everything"...it formed a great bit of my inspiration.
subliminal--think ellipses.
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elPintor
Mon 17th Oct 2016 00:10
I agree, in total.
I'm quite thankful to know, without a doubt, that it isn't near impossible to find minds that work more deeply than how to get from point A to point B.