Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Building Harmony

I don’t know how many of you have been blessed with the love of a genuinely talented person, who really could dance, who could sing or act or otherwise produce. What happens to real intense love when it is backed by real talented art is indescribable. Or perhaps it is just me who gets round heels at that point. There is that moment in the movie, Men In Black when the heroine discovers that she is actually an extraterrestrial queen, and she cries. It rains. She learns that it rains because she cries, because she really is a queen. Love and art is like that. It is hard to know what is causing what when they are so close together. The love affair turns into a romance because it is art. Because we can do it. Because it’s right to do it. It would be wrong to leave it in the mundane world of every day when our wings make flight possible. Love as play, love as a play, is it tragedy, is it comedy? You cannot know the outcome, even when you do. That is a truth. Even when you do know what is going to happen, it doesn’t matter because you know as well that you cannot know that. And then it happens that way, and it is a complete surprise even though you can say, “I knew it would happen something like this.”

Even when it ends a tragedy, you say, “This was worth it.” Romeo and Juliet both die. Ask their shades. “It was truly worth it.” You might know that you wouldn’t try to do that again, but you know as well that if you were the person you were before and your lover appeared just like that, you would do it the first time all over again every time. You would hope for Ground Hog Day. (A Bill Murray movie reference, for those of you who don’t know.)

Building Harmony

That you sing of me
in the rain that falls around
your heart gives me hope
you will find your way
from the edge of things, tuning
up to the true tone,
building harmony
from warm voice, profound alto
notes anchoring us
both in this sweet rain
in the key of love's finest
dance and poetry.

April 3, 2009 2:29 PM

12 comments:

  1. (sorry for the mono-comments but this is what I have....)

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  2. Even when it ends in tragedy and we know it will, we do it that way because we must.

    I note the unselfishness of this in the hope

    "That you sing of me
    in the rain that falls around
    your heart gives me hope"

    and yet the speaker shares in the glorious results.

    Wonderful musings about art and love. I think of all the famous lovers from myth and literature and life.

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  3. Yes. My point of course is that love ennobles and lifts human life. It is the power of flight and places the most ordinary lives into a mythic land hwere we are all kings and queens.

    That is the universal and unselfish note. That I become king cannot, would not, block you in your own love becoming king or queen. In fact, I notice that a true lover at the peak hopes everyone will find a way to enter love's kingdom.

    I found in my own experience that I was actively praying for "all of you" that you could find what I found. I was much more generous than my earlier incarnation. Far from being all wrapped up in my own affairs, I was much more willing to enter yours. The reason is simple, my love protected me from the darkness no matter what was in front of me. I had no need of extra courage.

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  4. Ah, you heard me last night, and I thought I was alone :) Love songs to empty spaces, hoping to reach private ears. I am intrigued by this love and art synergy. There is definitely something there.

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  5. Art's best subject is love. Love is art's best energy.

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  6. At Poetic Asides over the weekend, they had some thoughts on love poetry. Someone pointed out that the best love poems were written for particular people, that they could never be truly honest unless they addressed someone specific. I agree with that, but drawing on what you say here, I think that "love" and "love poem" are broad terms; there are romances, and there are muses, there are romantic sonnets and there are paeans of inspiration. Art is love and love is art?

    I'm turning myself around here. Anyway, you've given me food for thought. :)

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  7. I agree that the best love poems are written specifically. In fact, I am somewhat at a loss in thinking how else love happens but in the specific. Erk. I don't have much use for or trust in statements about love generally unless they stay close to specifics like you suggest. I had a specific person in mind when I wrote this poem. She is a real person but she is not my lover. She could be, however. It is easy to marry the realities of past loves with the dream of a current person.

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  8. I found you
    out in the sugar rain.

    Do I even know where
    to begin with this sweetness?

    The trees bend down thinking
    it is ice or snow
    thinking it is time to give in to the weight
    only to find light and sweetness

    I am surprised too
    my own limbs free
    free in the sugar rain
    you let fall all around
    my world.

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  9. I feel like I remember this one. Or something like it. :)

    My heart is open to you.

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  10. Christopher,

    It has been more than a year since I have known you. You have changed my life. Maybe even been the guardian angel that kept me going one more day and one more day more. You taught me that I am okay... to just breath... that the moment I am in right now... I can be in... and live. And I love you from a deep deep place inside of me. You allowed me to love you when I needed to feel connected and loved. And you always showed me love back. There really aren't words to thank you. But.... Thank you.

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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