My fellow Maximum Anything collaborators have allowed me (and you) this space to write on anything that seems to deserve the time and energy… at the time of writing at least.
Last night I watched on youtube a lecture delivered by Stan Grant. This took place last week, so a couple of weeks after the referendum, which was not the main theme, but it was also not, not, the main theme. The title of the lecture, The Witness of Poetry, The Silent Breath. Throughout this lecture Stan Grant spoke on how it’s ok to be silent after bruising times and to admit one doesn’t know about things, but is trying to find out. If you don’t know…….
He spoke about and shared with us some words from the great poets and asked us to consider their view. Consider the poet’s view- where there might be some truth to be found. Because, as he suggested the rest is really just noise and has become an industry delivering noise to the voracious public, taking in anything to escape what it is the poets are trying to get us to listen to.
For example, second story of the Guardian feed yesterday… Tony Abbott debunking climate change during a speech in the UK- that’s not news, that’s the water we swim in. An idiot expresses an idiotic thought and we then have to wade through it.
I do want to be “in the world” but I’m kinda tired of that type of discourse.
As someone involved in making music with others- often quite strange music- are we also poets? Trying to find a truth by weaving together things we don’t quite understand. I like to think so and I have for a time now, but how do we listen to that sound? Where is the guide for the understanding of this dialogue? In the same lecture Stran Grant also spoke of the brokenness of words in our modern discourse, words no longer operating as they once did. We now have speak-not words but code.
Have we done the same thing to music? Can we still hear the words or do we just recognize the “code” the particular model we are already familiar with? Some will argue music has always operated like this… genre/style/fashion. But some music is meant to not operate like this- the spooky stuff, the stuff that can mix your insides up and change you forever-
Who’s job is it to help us recognize the difference?
speaker -listener-convener-critic
Maybe that’s too hard to get to right now and maybe it’s ok to not know and to let a breath of silence take the space.