Conscientiousness

I

"The waiter plays with his condition
in order to attain it." -J.P.Sartre

Without Place or Name
The Body is an object on loan.

Location then
Emergent in the forms of its movement:

Green ocean combed with flecks of white foam,
A sparkling line left on the shore
Where pinpoint holes from buried clams
Pop in the sand on waves’ retreat.

Seen then from the boardwalk
As the parched scent rises
Shimmering off the salt-baked planks
Isolated.

And the cool insouciant wave borne
Breeze tousles a lock of hair
Here.

A sparkle of air
That requires elegance,
White slacks, white shoes,
A straw hat
For its fulfillment.

So that you would appear.
You
Imagined further.

II

"Mind is absorbed into the desired object as oil is absorbed into cloth." -Geshe Gyatso on Shantideva

Expanded
The skin of the bathers,
Shrimp pink and tender,
Encounters on its tightened surfaces
The cold sea.
Hairs in their puckered follicles
Stand on end.
The message of contraction,
Received with oooo and ssss.

The teased bathers leap
Surrender
Take the plunge.

The float, sated and sustained
In rise and gentle fall
Aaaaah. Say

Is this returned
Or yearning?

From here,
Seen across the glassy curve,
The green arched back of the ingoing wave,
The brittle shore is so unimaginative,
So stolid and sad,
Its denizens so angular and conscious.

As for a time
Of wave-borne ease
The bathers yet
Do not renounce a common fate.

Given
Love then innate in circumstance.

You.

III

"In the unhappy realms of sickness, bondage and the shedding of blood..." - Shantideva

Gifts given
Are so difficult to receive
Wrapped in implication
Portents, messages.

From a distant radio
The splendid open voice
Of the great tenor
Long dead, glides on
Gilding the evening’s air
Encore.

Inscribing pleasure’s promise
On the inner ear

And vanishment.

A flickering compromise
With what cannot be appeased
By the solo pure exhale.

IV

"As though hypnotized by a spell, I shall reduce this mind to nothing. Even I do not know what is causing me confusion. What is there dwelling inside me?" - Shantideva

Reliant
On the green and cool emergent,
The pliant,
The delightful
Givens in immediacy

Which seen
In the angled light of sunset

Crystallize
As a martyrology
Of those who must labor, walk and eat
In the sorrow of necessity,
Burned by the secret of absolution
Pouring from the heart
Of a reddening copper sun.

A pure yearning
Requiring the body to be destroyed
In the untouchable donation
Of a wounded mind
Whose love, though unabsolved
Attains a piercing moment
Of luminous splendor
In returning to silence.

V

"Then if my body blazes for a long time..." – Shantideva

But the Grasping Masters,
Rulers over earth and sea,
Eye, ear tongue and touch
Contrive to unify
In legal speech
A Roman Emperor’s feast:
A menu of minute discernments,
Base omnivorous intrigues
From an addicted lust,
Not to quality event or sense,
But to location sole,
Ultimate, continuous, complete.

And the globe so articulated
Under momentary single rule
Is glamorized in the lurid assertion
Of meaning fated realized.

Of this,
Even
The ruin, the bleached wall
Stands with muted gleam
On the headland of the shore;

Does not witness rise and fall,
Remains a partial lustrous monument;
Remains
The implicate fragment.

O unappeased of incomplete continuing.


(For SN)




***

Claudia Muzio- Ombra di nube- Refice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVcIBzMgTaQ

SOLDIER CRY

(This was written as part of an installation piece for work that Joan Anderson has made to invoke the vast, implacable and timeless world of fallen soldiers. Reading through section VII accompanies the installation of two large image/effigies. At that point alcohol and meat are shared with the audience. The reading resumes with the last verses of section VI.

In the first performance, Barbara Dilley choreographed the installation; Mark Miller played Soprano Saxophone; I and Robert Spellman were readers, all under Joan's overall direction)


I

Heaven divides the world:
In dark and light,
In night and day,
In the living and the dead.

Only in the movement of sun, moon and stars
Do we know ourselves.
We know ourselves only as movements of fleeting clouds.

Beneath the vast bright sky,
The living dwell in their villages and homes.

In fathomless shadow,
The dead inhabit their silent towns.

Now the living surround the Eastern capital.
Now the dead surround the Western hills.

Though inseparable,
The living and the dead
No longer know each other.
In moments of joy,
They do not remember the other,
In bitterness,
They do not long for one another. (1)

II

The cold passes reluctantly from the earth and the retreating mists reveal an army stretched out for miles on the hills, asleep. A watery sun rises slowly and the landscape changes from pale gray to green. The army stirs. It trembles at the whispers of rumor. It casts its eyes upon the roads. (2)

III

With a groan, I start from sleep.
All the earth is on the march to war.
The rulers have commanded it. (3)
*
Heaven is high and far away.
The king’s business never ends.
I cannot stay to plant my crops
How will my parents and my children live?
Heaven is high and far away.
The earth below must always march to war.

When will it end? (4)
*
We pray for a sovereign.
We pray the sacrifices he commands
Bring peace.

Yet we long for home.
In what month will we return? (6)
No breeze stirs.
We must wait.
I look down the highway
And my heart is blank. (7)
*

Oh bright Heaven high above,
Shining on the earth below,
How our westward march
Has brought us to the empty plains

We have suffered cold and heat.
Oh the aching of an empty heart
Oh the poisons of bitterness.
Thinking of the ones who raised us,
My tears fall like rain in the sadness of my heart.

Though I long for life and home,
I cannot turn back.
Warfare drags me on. (12)

IV

The sweat of waiting, even in the silent cold, each frozen in his own thoughts, even those who make jokes and can’t stop talking, the rank smell of fear and dust, choking.

At the shout of command, there is no longer any time. Doubts dissolve in the sheer mass charge: arms taut, weapons held in front. legs pumping, screaming war cries. And then, charging, scrambling wildly down the hillside, amid the hail of arrows and bullets, there is a sudden moment where the clear bitter smell of crushed leaves, the exhilaration of running, and cold air pouring through nostrils is desperately alive, and it is impossible to imagine life will ever end. The enemies rise up like weeds before us. They are cut down. The work of killing begins.

V

Like a slowly moving flood gate,
Iron scraping iron,
The great hinge of battle opens.

A bow string snaps,
And there is silence.
Now time stops.

The white disc of a single cloud
Hovers in the pale sky.

Flocks of sparrows rise and wheel.

Red, yellow and black banners flutter.
Sunlight glitters
On steel blades and spear points.

Sword arms raised, mouths gaping,
Soldiers freeze.
An arrow stops in mid flight.

VI

Shining like diamonds in the air
The gods of war
Descend in a circle of hard light:

Seated on their steeds of wind,
Indifferent to all obstacles and enemies.

Radiant
They do not move.

Everything around them now erupts.

Soldiers forgetting all their names or home,
Charge forward as if there were no death.
They hurl themselves onto the iron teeth of war.

Wildly, they shout:
Seu Lhawang Damsang ride with me
Seu Thuchen Mongpa guide my arm
Tungsen Karma do not let me fall
Nyengen Deva deliver me.
Shinje Chogyal take me through the terrors of this world.

Now the living and the dead
Part.

The world of the dead falls into the black earth.
The world of the living bursts into flower.

VII

Soon behind us,
They rest in the soft earth on the hills
They, in tens of thousands,
The victors and the vanquished.

They have entered the dark world.
They are cut off from the living,
The tomb is sealed.

In their joy, they do not remember one another,
In their bitterness they do not long for one another.
(15)
*
The war gods have returned to their abodes.
The earth is gray.

Climbing to the ridge of a high mountain
I now look down on the capital,
Now lonely, and how still.

Palaces and houses burnt to ash.
Walls and fences broken, fallen down,
The royal names effaced from looted tombs,
Family gravestones crumble
As thorns and brambles clamber towards the sky.
I do not see old men or youths.
I turn aside: no straight road to walk
Through wasted fields.

I have been away so long.
I do not recognize the paths
Amid abandoned pasture lands.
A thousand miles without chimney smoke.
Thinking of the house I lived in all my life
I turn inward.
Alive or dead,
I cannot speak.
(16)
VII

In the torrent of existing,
The fires of endless war,
We have touched
The all- consuming heart.

The blazing sky touches this dark earth.

Our eyes are scorched.

Words have no meaning.

Parted,
The living and the dead
Hold the secret of fleeting love.

They do not know peace.



************************************************

Adaptations from:
(1) Mark Edward Lewis- The Creation of Space in Early China; SUNY 2007- p.123)(2) Stephen Crane- The Red Badge of Courage Chapter1, p.1)
(3)Arthur Waley tr. The Book of Songs:Grove Press:1301;(4)#152;(5)#151;(6)#150;(7)#149;(8)#139;(9)#133;(10)#148;(11)#146;(12)#143;(13)#141;(14)#130-1(15) Lewis- supra, p. 123(16) Cao Zhi, son of Cao Cao- Lewis, supra.-p.188

**********************************************

This fragment of Ariane Mnouchkine's splendor and intensity is part of the conscience of the above

Theatre du Sloeil- Les Atreides
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OahkdsfIPgg

TEXTS FOR JOAN ANDERSON’S PERFOMANCE/EXHIBIT OF RETREAT PAINTINGS

CHANT OF THE WANDERING STARS

In nearby shadows
Rise from the ground, each decked with stars,
Those who watch and bless in secret
The soil and the streams.

The star people have come;
They have come here.
The star people come;
They come here.

Here: fathers and mothers;
Here: elders and children

In nearby shadows
Rise from the ground, each decked with stars,
Those who watch and bless in secret
The soil and the streams.

The star people have come;
They have come here.
The star people come;
They come here
To the red earth.

Now they stop,
Just for this moment,
Here
On their long journey.

Now they stop,
Just for this moment,
Rising from the red earth,
Here
On their long journey
They appear.

They stop
On their long journey.
They show themselves.

Shining in the dark soil,
They rise.
They show themselves;
They show the dream pattern
Of the stars.

Wearing the pattern of the stars,
Marking the brown earth
With the sweep of rainfall:

Wearing the pattern of the stars,
Marking the red earth
With furrows of water;

Wearing the pattern of the stars,
Marking the black earth
With the glare of reflected sun on water;

Wearing the dream pattern,
Red earth
Marked by the plow;

Wearing the dream pattern of stars,
The red earth,
Marked by the scars of battle;

Wearing the secret pattern,
The dark earth
Marked by the scars of memory;

The star people have come;
They have come here.
The star people come;
To the earth.

Just for this moment,
They stop here
On their long journey.

Just for now,
They stop.
Rising from the red earth,
Here
On their long journey
They appear.

They stop
On their long journey
They show themselves.

In nearby shadows,
Rise from the ground, each decked with stars,
Those who watch and bless in secret
The soil and the streams.

III

As the spectacle endlessly ends & vanishes, somehow we refuse to accept the completeness of impermanence. But all the forms and instances of art that now exist, many are damaged, fragmentary, and all are devoid of their original context and hence meaning.

Beyond that, compared to all the things which have been made and still exist, how many more have been destroyed or lost, each of them a Repository of love and intuition, skill and concern, the outgrowth of a civilization that no longer exists.

So that being the likely fate of what we make, could we then embrace this? Could we regard what we do and the doing of it as completely momentary, having no future and accomplishing no communal result?

Momentary, surely. But cause and effect being inescapable, surely what we make and the making of it does influence the next instant in some truly unknown way.

So, making our diagrams of color or cloth, of sound or speech is perhaps like sand painting and may, for a moment, draw something into the world which has only hovered on its borders before being utterly swept away.

It is hard to overcome the desperate habits of permanence and completion. As the spectacle endlessly will be ending & vanishing.

***

FROM AN ACTOR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_ByGXCey68

About KING GESAR

(The following appeared in New Muse, but I’ve changed it somewhat. I was asked to write the piece as part of the publicity for the release of Sony Classical’s wonderful (And with Yo Yo Ma, Emmanuel Ax, Peter Serkin, Omar Ibrahim among others how could it not be?) of ‘King Gesar’ which Peter Lieberson composed and for which I wrote the text. It was also supposed to provide some discreet tub thumping (eliminated here) for the premiere of our opera ‘Ashoka’s Dream’. )



THE WORD AND THE WORDLESS

There is, of course, awareness beyond thought.

*
In our collaborations, neither Peter nor I have thought of our work as particularly “spiritual” or as bearing the message of some particular religious outlook. But we do share a view, or a sensibility that sound, whether formalized in music or specified in words, is a communication from and to the world that is all-pervasive, alive and never ceasing. Whether presented in melody, rhythm, and the movement of chordal structures, or articulated in the language of conversation, of epics, love poems, of comedies, elegies, novels, or tragedies, sound is awareness as continuity.

*

As a child, I found music more vivid and compelling than painted images, sculpture or words. Since then, though I have never had the slightest ability to play or compose, music remains not only a love, but a model for what I have wanted to realize through writing. It always remains entirely mysterious how music, by arranging sounds without any conventional meaning according to varying underlying formal logics, can move us into the deep, subtle movements of existence and invite more profound involvement with them.

But language itself is hardly less unfathomable. Words distinguish and separate one experience from another, but brought together in stories and poems, they brought the lives of others to life and enabled me to explore worlds in time and space far beyond my own. So while music provided a feeling of continuity with wordless inner live, words provided a vivid sense ways of life long gone and deeds that would have otherwise been long forgotten.

*

Peter Lieberson and I met thirty-five years ago when we were each beginning our respective careers as composer and writer, and from the very start we wanted to write opera together. In the following years, though we both studied with Trungpa Rinpoche teacher, we usually have ended up living fairly far apart, so our friendship has developed over many years in numerous visits and dinners, sometimes with our families, sometimes not, and in correspondence, phone, fax, and the like.

And I think we both feel, even though we have never discussed it, that in combining words and music, we have the opportunity to convey the worlds which expand in the immediacy of so many ordinary moments which subtly present but usually bypassed.

*

Often, standing alone in a crowd, one may see a flock of birds wheel before a sky-scraper, hear a child whistle, smell rain coming, and experience some poignant feeling of meaning. We cannot explain, reduce, or convey this feeling of elusive significance in terms of the outer circumstances from which it arose. Nor can we capture it by referring to our own inner states of mind or the history of our moods. It cannot be directly stated.

The essence of what we feel then is both specific to a moment and somehow outside of its circumstances; intimate, it is somehow impersonal. There is a kind of freedom from contingencies here, and this may be experienced as freedom of longing, freedom of enjoyment, freedom of feeling or awareness. It does not remain, can barely be remembered, and is, in some elusive way, very near our core.

In general, our world is an unceasing welter of conflicting emotions, obsessive thinking, long term ambitions and desires, and a pervasive uncertainty about what is, or is not, truly real, valuable, and significant. But in certain moments, like a bubble rising out of a rushing stream, such subtle feelings bring a stillness free from all this.

Then, as we try to verbalize and hold such moments in the language and memory of personal continuity, the experience fades. We lose the heart of it. We are returned to the clamor of outer and inner life.

*

The obdurate and impassioned 14th century Zen genius, Ikkyu wrote of our passage between unsought stillness and unceasing movement like this:

From the world of passion,
I return to the world beyond passion.
A gap.
If the rain comes, let it rain.
If there is wind, let it blow.

*

When we try to articulate and convey anything whatsoever, be it lust, rage, understanding, sorrow; whether it be smoothness or sweaty heat, or granular roughness; or whether it be more complex sequences: aspirations not quite reached, hopes overwhelmed in passion, longings sustained by unfulfillment, insights that did not quite hold up; when we try to articulate and convey what we have felt and know, that same empty silence, the suspended moment of presence arises, mocking our intentions.

It is mysterious that this gap bubbles up through the stream of our intentions again and again.

*

Although in the early eighties, Peter had set some poems of mine for the Fromm Foundation, our first real collaboration began with King Gesar, a chamber opera commissioned by Hans Werner Henze for the Munich Biennale. Peter and I discussed the piece extensively before I wrote it, but I felt it necessary to write a full account of Gesar’s most famous exploits before I made excerpts for the libretto. (This was later published by Wisdom Publications and will soon be re-issued.) Then it was edited and slightly altered as musical needs dictated.

King Gesar is based on a Tibetan and Central Asian epic which is part of a bardic tradition, involving narrative, chant and song still alive today, and tells the story of the semi-mythical medieval monarch, Gesar, King of Ling. Gesar, as is said, was born completely enlightened in order to overcome the demonic forces in his world. However, unlike the conventional Western notion of 'enlightenment' which usually is taken to mean: serene, otherworldly, unflappable, and consistently full of wise sayings and cryptic advice, Gesar is a warrior. His life is a life of battles, treachery, ruses, jokes, and feasting. Within that, he is always acting to renew uncompromising wakefulness and to restore confidence in the potential of human life. The demons he fights are neighboring lords who embody the self-serving territoriality of envy, fear, lust, greed, and so forth. Often he loses himself completely to those mental states before he can conquer them. Thus, in order to realize the freedom, dignity and luminosity of open direct experience, Gesar moves through his wild and shifty world with ferocity, passion, crude humor, and uncompromising simplicity.

Working on this grandiose, gaudy, barbaric, yet somehow very human play called forth a scale of gesture and utterance that left me uncertain of its possible effect. When I was done, I had no idea what to think of it. I also had no idea of what Peter would do or what the music would sound like. But when I finally heard the words and music together for the first time in Munich, the power, extravagance, and lyric delicacy of Peter’s created a world where the words seemed more pointed and resonant. The world of Gesar was present in the hall, and it was like listening to, as Peter put it, a “campfire epic”.

*

Sound, of course, is a ceaseless communicative presence. Within this, music is distilled from our appreciation of the pattern and flow of all that lingers on the edge of comprehension. Words rise in the precision of our desire to communicate that appreciation. Music is more true because, even if notated, it exists only moment by moment. Writing is more true because of its lavish, shifting specificity. Music is delusory because of its freedom from embodiment. Words are delusory because they make the insubstantial seem solid. Joined, words and music create a reciprocal context, not necessarily more ‘real’, but often more haunting.

*
Ikkyu again:

From the endless realms of sight and sound
One transparent note emerges in the cold.
The crazy master had a few tricks up his sleeve;
Wind and bell meet high above the frozen balustrade.

*******

John McCormick/Fritz Kreisler- Joceyln- Berceuse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aAy7zdmYI4


********


OUT TAKE
(There was no way I could include what follows in the essay above.)

King Gesar was commissioned for the Munich Biennale by Germany’s greatest living opera composer, Hans Werner Henze who ran the festival with great efficiency and vision. Though we had friends in common, I had never met him.

I was wandering around in the balcony, checking balances as Peter conducted one of the later rehearsals, when suddenly I heard a voice in a hard German accent shouting through the music:

“The TROMBONE is too LOUD! I cannot hear the CELLO. I’m PAYING the cellist (Yo Yo Ma) a lot MORE MONEY, and I want to HEAR him!”

The music crumbled to a halt, and the trombonist began sinking in his chair. I looked down to see a man with a shaved head, looking rather like Mussolini striding through the hall. This, I was to learn, was Henze.

The premiere was attended by the mayor of Munich, the Governor of Bavaria, and the President of Germany Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker as well as by many luminaries from the art and music worlds. All came to the reception afterwards in a nearby Indian restaurant. At some point, Hneze signalled to Peter and me to join him outside.

There was a small paved square in front of the restaurant. The air was cool, and the autumn sky was clear. Two of the President’s guards, in bright green racing leathers leaned against their motorcycles. I was surprised at how little security Germany’s titular leader seemed to need.
Henze looked around, nodded at the guards, and lit up a joint.

“It’s for the arteries I need this.” He tapped his temple, and indeed the veins there were prominent. Peter and I stood awkwardly as Henze smoked.

“You know, ACTUALLY, I am … HETEROSEXUAL.” Peter and I blinked. This was not at all Henze’s reputation. “BUT… due to MISFORTUNES in my UPBRINGING, I CANNOT express this DIRECTLY.” He waved the joint around vaguely and smiled warmly, moving his gave between the two of us. “SO with this festival, and with the WONDERFUL PIECES such as yours that we commission,” and here he swung his arm grandly to the heavens, “ I SPREAD my SEMEN through the WORLD.”

Maybe Peter and I now looked utterly stupefied, because Henze gave us an apologetic smile: “I hope you don’t mind.”

***

Words and music in the same key:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpfzdupLHaE