nous causåmes longtemps; elle était simple et bonne
ne sachant pas le mal elle faisait le bien;
de richesses du coeur elle me fit l’aumône
et tout en écoutant comme le coeur se donne
sans oser y penser, je lui donnai le mien;
elle emporta ma view, et n’en sui jamais rien
Alfred de Musset
[We talked for a long time; she was simple and kind.
Knowing no evil, she did only good; she gave me alms from the riches of her heart,
listening intently as she poured out her heart,
Scarcely daring to think, I gave her mine;
Thus she carried off my life and never even knew it.]
For antecedents, read Marcel Proust (gender free), George Elliot (feminine sensibility), James Joyce (mainstream), Charles Bukowski (lion rampant)…
Feeling with the mind of a child with the soul of an old man, emergent and subsiding recollections of similar things
in deja vu of moments, as if knowing then, what couldn’t be imagined.
Celebrating souls from worlds past; evaporated selves, possibilities left unfolded in their time, fleeting dreams of a person, caricatured in photographic transcriptions of a person I’d thought was me. If I could heal the past and see through the sensibility of another kind of me, would I relieve myself from unbidden upheavals of thought? (These judgments and counter-judgments, denials and defense?) Will there be a part that wouldn’t cease to be as I am now?
This human child, with whose body I feel the world, in addition to past experience, views the world through the experience of genetic forbearers, parents, grand and great grand parents, a brass band of expectations, great and small. 長老祖先 zhǎnglǎo zǔxiān
To know the person that I sometimes try to explain by imagining who I am, I inquire into this genetic inheritance; and observe its workings in others; and read in every discipline of ancient and modern art and science and philosophy and narratives of every form and culture; trying to understand the principles underlying my own subjectivity. And what shows up is simply that my dominant cognition is an emotional response to things felt by my ancestors for whom I’m expected by my peers to take unearned acclaim and blame.
Thus the Chinese expression: 長老祖先 zhǎnglǎo zǔxiān
Life is a bridge between two worlds.
So here am I, the visible moment of an unseen complex historical pattern, a beacon at the apex of an infinitely expanding ripple in spacetime, somewhat jaded from years of taking credit for things and unfamiliar with their exact origin; just a feeling about it, grateful and sometimes less than thrilled with observations of past times.
(Successive iterations of Pandephonium are posted with the latest version, first:)
Pandephonium – Dance #3, entitled, “Prayer”, a meditation for Choir, Flute, Brass and Orchestral Quartet: light emerging as the horizon falls below a rising sun.
Pandephonium Oriental – 2nd Dance (Chi)
Pandephonium – 1st Dance (Batucada)