The Last Voices from Heaven

Work is really catching up on me, and I am hardly in the mood to relax totally sometimes. But I guess in this case, being able writing is really purgatory, as Aristotle would say of drama.

I happen to catch this documentary Last Voices From Heaven on discovery channel that day. Show is basically about music producer Anthony Copping continuing his search to record an album of traditional Melanesian songs before they disappear. But it is the songs and the people's way of life that really left a deep impression on me. One can practically distill this awing simplicity from their music which is devoid of metallic notes. Sometimes it makes you wonder how far we have come, and how much we have lost, like how interactions break down, and how little music we share and how better are our lives.

Okay... jorie graham.. i must get back to reading David Lodge soon.....


Prayer

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of
themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
motion that forces change--
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.