Thinking and Singing

I just picked up a collection of essays by a group of Canadian poets and philosophers called: THINKING AND SINGING: Poetry and the Practice of Philosophy.

Ultimately, what's the difference between serious thinking and poetical cogitation?

(Miles Davis comes to mind. His music is the embodiment of lucid lyricism.)

The best essay in this collection is by Robert Bringhurst, "The Philosophy of Poetry and the Trashing of Doctor Empedokles."

He cites this quotation from Giordano Bruno: "True philosophy is also music, poetry and painting; true painting, too, is music and philosophy; true poetry or music is a form of holy wisdom; so is painting."

So it would seem.

There is also an essay included entitled: "Philosophical Apokatastasis: On Writing and Return." Learn a new word and suddenly it's everywhere you look!

In this case, however, the essayist seems to be using the term as a fancy substitute for Plato's theory of epistemology--knowledge as recovered memories.

Nico

Icon of doom.

I just finished this memoir by James Young recounting his time as a keyboard player in Nico's band for some tours in the late 80's.

Nico was the forerunner of the spectacular burn-outs of our time.

Dylan, Warhol, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, and others--fell under her spell, and used her for inspiration to further their careers.

Unlike Hendrix, Joplin, and Jim Morrison, Nico actually endured into middle age--but it was not a pretty sight.

She died riding her bicycle on the island of Ibiza.

Her only friend: the end.

Paint continues to flow--

and dry.

Crack

and fade

and revivify.

Until all is restored

in the original white light

of The One from which all things emanate.

Syringa threaten to devour our house!

Where I came across the term:

Apocatastasis.

Understood as an astrological term.

The book is an account of Miller's association with Jaime De Angulo.

Apocatastasis

The plum tree in our back yard

at 100 Jefferson

implies a kind of apocatastasis

*

All souls will eventually be "saved"

*

But what about the bees?

A. Bray Foundation in the afternoon.

One of the great pleasures of visiting "the Bray" is seeing the cast off work strewn about the grounds.

Everywhere you look there are beautiful remnants.

Clay making its way back into the earth.

Another head.

Saw this one at the Archie Bray Foundation this afternoon.

An utterly amazing show by new director Steve Young Lee.

Beautiful stuff. Lots of bunnies. Sort of a Jeff Koons feel to some of it.

Reminds me of the Eminem lyric:

"Still got a lotta growin' up to do,
Still gotta whole lotta throwin' up to spew."