[poem] fragment: echo

[kaberett]

What if? -- the stick
beats time (too late) from railings--
ribs that chime my choices (if if if if if)--
keep other-whens held close, contained, confined.

Comments

[kaberett]

CONTEXT: I am actually fairly cheerful! This has arisen mostly from Stuff in yesterday's therapy session, about Playing The What-If Game making everything worse, and it coalesced, so hey, here's a thing.

[vass]

That is good to know.

I like the fragment, especially the last line.

[kaberett]

I'm not quite sure I got all the images I wanted into it but it was Very Insistent and hey I'm pretty pleased with how much music I shoehorned in!

<3

[lunabee34]

I really like this!

[kaberett]

Thank you!

[davidgillon]

Yay, poem!

I like the railings to ribs segue.

[kaberett]

Thank you! It was sort of a combination of mental images all smushed up in my head, so I am delighted that they translate at least a bit. (Cages & locked-off opportunities & all that.)

[alexseanchai]

the rhythm!

also: YOU POEMED! I have missed your poems!

[kaberett]

It went through Several iterations with markedly different meters before I ended up here! But yes I was very LET'S SEE HOW MUCH MUSIC I CAN SHOEHORN INTO THIS.

I am Very Enjoying having poemed! I have not quite had the brain for it, and kept going "ugh I need to get myself back into the habit, let's do Some Practice", and then this showed up -- in two different forms, one while I was drifting off to sleep and one while I was waking up again -- and so I poked at it a bit to see what fell out, and I think I really quite like this. :D

[alexseanchai]

—is there anything I'd recognize if I had more any background in classical music

[kaberett]

I mean it's mostly "the stick beats time" = conductors, with "keep [time]" as a sort of echo of it, where I'm appealing to a sense of being out of step with an ensemble (and also hurried along too fast to think), so it's probably very specific to (a) ensemble playing and (b) the ways in which I Struggle with same...

plus the vague sense of Here's A Xylophone

(for a while, in one of the drafts, there were four ifs, for common time - 4/4 - but I decided I preferred this rhythm and 5/4 is more unbalancing anyway, harder to dance to)

[alexseanchai]

😺

[kaberett]

though, I also want to say, there's also a much more buried allusion-thing to CN Lester's Anonymous:

it's not a wonder that fades with distance
or knowing how it's done
it was hearing my thoughts, unspoken,
on someone else's tongue
he could read my self back to me
and pin me where I stand
I forgot my perpetual moving
because he marked time with a pen in his hand

-- which is just a perfect self-referential description of That Specific Crush (and is one half of a diptych: Anonymous from the perspective of audient, You from that of performer).


-- AND ALSO OF COURSE Fractals, I am the ghost of my own lost lives...

[fyreharper]

I Would Like To Inform You that due to your links here CN Lester's soundcloud proceeded to form the soundtrack to my evening and The! Internet! Failed me! at providing available lyrics to some of the songs, WOE. Do the lyrics all exist somewhere (that is not your head etc) or is this a case of I Will Just Have To Pay Proper Attention Sometime Perhaps? (Do albums in physical form even exist? I couldn't tell that for sure either beyond If So Not Anywhere Easy...)

[kaberett]

Albums in physical form DO exist! ... though possibly only if you backed the Kickstarters, h'm (or went to a gig). They're definitely on my bookshelf... are you sufficiently into this that you want me to hassle them to see if they've got any spares for selling at gigs?

Some of the lyrics are on CN's blog, but if you want more of them then hassle me with specifics and I'll type them up for you.

I am DELIGHTED to have Spread The Good News; thank you for letting me know. :D

[kaberett]

RIGHT, I have checked in with CN - physical albums DO still exist, but as CN needs to ship them out personally, by hand, they're currently not available. However, given loss-of-income as a music teacher & performer, they would be super super grateful for digital purchases also, as that works out way better for them financially than soundcloud (alas) <3