ON SONG

In the voice
of the face

is the crease
of the soul

unfolding

ξ


In “Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2,” he sings: When we break, we wait for our miracle—God is a place we will wait for the rest of our lives. When the girl with the green hair plays a cover of this song on the Internet, she averts her eyes at this moment. When the song continues, it has changed. It has become an apology. An apology for someone who must leave. The purpose of a song is to say I am here. Perhaps the act of stating that one is here is only a preamble to apologizing for the moment when one must leave. Perhaps that is why in Aboriginal philosophy one does not leave, one only and always returns. Not to mention Nietzsche. The Anti-Transcendence School. Face it: there is no home in the sky. You can only return to here.


ξ


Through the plastic
pane of the airplane’s
window I wear
the planet

with my eyes
the kidney bean blue
of each swimming
pool hatched

landscape that
denatures itself in
order only
to leak at each simple

abutment a patch
here or there
sampling the rest
that arrives silently

like a throttled half-note
the trick
is to wait until everyone is
asleep and try on

their shapes

ξ


In ancient Finnish societies, the only means of entertainment were the songs of the great singers. At gatherings, people would form a circle at the middle of which sat two singers, their knees touching to form a platform for their elbows, which in turn supported their clasped hands. There was a lead singer and a sort of echo singer. Both singers were responsible for extemporaneously reinventing the great stories of the Kaleva district. The lead singer would begin each line and the echo singer would spontaneously compose a variation on that line. In this way, the two singers would go back and forth, hand in hand, improvising new flourishes to a very old story under the constraints of a highly structured rhythmic scheme. Back and forth: pulling different words out of the same cup, acknowledging the presence of ancient days within the surprise of the moment, repeating and returning as a way to move forward. If the intensity of the composition became feverish enough, the singers would rise and lurch around some, their hands still clasped together. This was the only form of ancient Finnish dance.

ξ


“To counterfeit is DEATH”
says Benjamin Franklin

“Success is the lowest art”
says Anselm Berrigan

while Jean-Michel Basquiat
spray paints GOLD WOOD

on the enormous American
car