When I saw the title I suspected, and when I saw the dedication I knew, that this poem grew out of that very interesting discussion we had recently. Thank you for the dedication and for taking up the ball and running with it. (In general I detest sports metaphors, but this seems the only apt one I can think of right now). It is always especially gratifying when engagement moves beyond discussion and into creation.
I have spent a very happy half-hour tracing your quotations (most of which I was somewhat familiar with, but I like to be sure I have it right before proceeding). Oddly, the only one I did not recognize at all was the first. Odd because I have sung along with a local sea-shanty group in their informal get-togethers several times, and I had not come across that one. BTW, I also appreciate the call-out to Coleridge via the traditional spelling of "rime."
You have a call and response structure, and within that, the sea shanty itself has a similar structure, so there are indeed cycles within cycles! Very nice. The first stanza and response set the theme for the whole: within cyclic time, you awake each morning, but there is an afterwards, and in the linear time that follows, your love dies and the irrevocability of linear time manifests.
In the next stanza, I like the diminishing cyclone, again the cyclic giving way to the linear, while the bride calls back to the previous response and the indolent magenta prefigures the good men looking on in the next response. I really like how you tie these together like some kind of thematic terza rima. And then you do it again, as the brownian mote (the paradigm of the individual buffeted and controlled entirely by external forces) connects with the passivity of looking on found in the previous response, but also introduces the external control defense of Eichmann and its rebuttal in the next response. (I also associate brownian with brown-shirt here, but that may be accidental, I'm not sure.)
And the rebuttal of external control implies internal control, character, the pre-formed will, in this case the chords which determine the key in which, inescapably, life plays out. Schopenhauer has his say in the response, underlining and generalizing. We are fully in linear time now, full of preordained character and irrevocable consequence. Finally, there comes a question of what, given the existing character, will excite the blood to action? The response answers ironically with a humorous deflation, the (cyclic) Arthurian ideal of knight-errantry with its love of virtue and disdain of death is not awakened so much as tipped into the bin, and we are dumped back where we started, in the here and now with its practical linear-time problems of governance, feeling perhaps a bit foolish, a bit laughed-at. That's a wonderful way to wrap up the ending. It exits from the cycle of the poem with a flip neat as a gymnast's landing, feet flat on the mat of the present day.
As I'm sure you know by now, I applaud by analyzing. Consider this sustained applause.
I am both honored and humbled by this magisterial reading! If you haven’t heard Lowlands sung, then I highly recommend it for your singers. Its melody is as haunting as Monty Python’s songs are absurd.
Stuart’s comment really opened up my reading of this one. As soon as I understood the call and response and the mechanism of the sea shanty, it immediately coalesced.
I didn’t know initially if Brownian was a reference to Browning’s Monologue’s or Brownian motion, but strangely the two worked very as depictions of a thing separate but also surrounded by oceans.
I had a brilliant professor at university who was a lecturer on German philosophy and the semester on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche was one of the high points of my time there. I especially enjoyed Schopenhauer’s theory of music, and I don’t know if this was an invocation of that, but it also fit very well for me in the meta-scenery.
What a wonderful reader response! I hadn’t thought of Robert Browning but very much like the association.
I daresay my own views on music are indeed near to Schopenhauer’s; at least, I agree there’s something prelinguistic but essentially compelling in music, which has been a source of both greatness and mischief in the conduct of human affairs. For my own part, I have often relied on musical compellence to complete a piece of mercenary writing or drag my flabby carcass to the gym. Though you would know better than I whether that’s the sort of “Will” that Schopenhauer had in mind.
Your comment also brings to mind a young prodigy, aged ten, who was recently featured in our national news. She has been writing operas since the age of three. When asked how she created such beautiful pieces, she replied: “Well, I can’t really say because, to me it feels completely natural to have melodies pop into my head. That’s how it’s been my whole life. If our roles were reversed and I were interviewing you, I would be very curious to know what it’s like walking through life without music playing inside.”
I must admit I initially misread as “brownian moat” and thought it was a point about the separateness of the individual and those around them. And then googled “mote” and enjoyed that association even more as someone who works with technology. And the two together, although absolutely not intended, worked in perfect harmony in my stupid mind.
I think you experience an important aspect of what Schopenhauer is describing. Which is an aspect of why almost all people listen to music. It is transformative in many different ways. I believe he thought that at it’s pinnacle it is the purest expression in the arts of the will, just as maths can be described as the purest expression of truth in the physical universes (which as a pragmatist, I’d argue with). And very apt with your Brownian metaphor.
I like how the borrowed voices interrupt the poem almost as though history, philosophy, politics, and absurdity are all competing to explain the same human predicament. Beneath them is a surprisingly intimate question: how much of what moves us is actually ours? Perhaps cycles become most powerful precisely when we mistake repetition for choice.
Thank you, Adrien, for this superb and generous reading. I very much like your suggestion of philosophers contending with demotic culture to move or sway sentiment. In this case, Mill, Arendt, and Schopenhauer are in conversation with Monty Python and the anonymous sea chanty, which book-end a linear history that is also highly cyclic. Your conclusion is very near to the idea which prompted me to write this poem: that we must think about what we’re doing even as we’re swept along by tides of history. I’m grateful to have you as a reader.
When I saw the title I suspected, and when I saw the dedication I knew, that this poem grew out of that very interesting discussion we had recently. Thank you for the dedication and for taking up the ball and running with it. (In general I detest sports metaphors, but this seems the only apt one I can think of right now). It is always especially gratifying when engagement moves beyond discussion and into creation.
I have spent a very happy half-hour tracing your quotations (most of which I was somewhat familiar with, but I like to be sure I have it right before proceeding). Oddly, the only one I did not recognize at all was the first. Odd because I have sung along with a local sea-shanty group in their informal get-togethers several times, and I had not come across that one. BTW, I also appreciate the call-out to Coleridge via the traditional spelling of "rime."
You have a call and response structure, and within that, the sea shanty itself has a similar structure, so there are indeed cycles within cycles! Very nice. The first stanza and response set the theme for the whole: within cyclic time, you awake each morning, but there is an afterwards, and in the linear time that follows, your love dies and the irrevocability of linear time manifests.
In the next stanza, I like the diminishing cyclone, again the cyclic giving way to the linear, while the bride calls back to the previous response and the indolent magenta prefigures the good men looking on in the next response. I really like how you tie these together like some kind of thematic terza rima. And then you do it again, as the brownian mote (the paradigm of the individual buffeted and controlled entirely by external forces) connects with the passivity of looking on found in the previous response, but also introduces the external control defense of Eichmann and its rebuttal in the next response. (I also associate brownian with brown-shirt here, but that may be accidental, I'm not sure.)
And the rebuttal of external control implies internal control, character, the pre-formed will, in this case the chords which determine the key in which, inescapably, life plays out. Schopenhauer has his say in the response, underlining and generalizing. We are fully in linear time now, full of preordained character and irrevocable consequence. Finally, there comes a question of what, given the existing character, will excite the blood to action? The response answers ironically with a humorous deflation, the (cyclic) Arthurian ideal of knight-errantry with its love of virtue and disdain of death is not awakened so much as tipped into the bin, and we are dumped back where we started, in the here and now with its practical linear-time problems of governance, feeling perhaps a bit foolish, a bit laughed-at. That's a wonderful way to wrap up the ending. It exits from the cycle of the poem with a flip neat as a gymnast's landing, feet flat on the mat of the present day.
As I'm sure you know by now, I applaud by analyzing. Consider this sustained applause.
I am both honored and humbled by this magisterial reading! If you haven’t heard Lowlands sung, then I highly recommend it for your singers. Its melody is as haunting as Monty Python’s songs are absurd.
Thank you, Joe. I did listen to it when I looked it up. It is haunting indeed.
Anything quoting Monty Python works for me.
That was your Easter egg, dear Ray.
Stuart’s comment really opened up my reading of this one. As soon as I understood the call and response and the mechanism of the sea shanty, it immediately coalesced.
I didn’t know initially if Brownian was a reference to Browning’s Monologue’s or Brownian motion, but strangely the two worked very as depictions of a thing separate but also surrounded by oceans.
I had a brilliant professor at university who was a lecturer on German philosophy and the semester on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche was one of the high points of my time there. I especially enjoyed Schopenhauer’s theory of music, and I don’t know if this was an invocation of that, but it also fit very well for me in the meta-scenery.
Thank you. Loved the poem.
What a wonderful reader response! I hadn’t thought of Robert Browning but very much like the association.
I daresay my own views on music are indeed near to Schopenhauer’s; at least, I agree there’s something prelinguistic but essentially compelling in music, which has been a source of both greatness and mischief in the conduct of human affairs. For my own part, I have often relied on musical compellence to complete a piece of mercenary writing or drag my flabby carcass to the gym. Though you would know better than I whether that’s the sort of “Will” that Schopenhauer had in mind.
Your comment also brings to mind a young prodigy, aged ten, who was recently featured in our national news. She has been writing operas since the age of three. When asked how she created such beautiful pieces, she replied: “Well, I can’t really say because, to me it feels completely natural to have melodies pop into my head. That’s how it’s been my whole life. If our roles were reversed and I were interviewing you, I would be very curious to know what it’s like walking through life without music playing inside.”
A better metonymy for poetics I never did hear.
I must admit I initially misread as “brownian moat” and thought it was a point about the separateness of the individual and those around them. And then googled “mote” and enjoyed that association even more as someone who works with technology. And the two together, although absolutely not intended, worked in perfect harmony in my stupid mind.
I think you experience an important aspect of what Schopenhauer is describing. Which is an aspect of why almost all people listen to music. It is transformative in many different ways. I believe he thought that at it’s pinnacle it is the purest expression in the arts of the will, just as maths can be described as the purest expression of truth in the physical universes (which as a pragmatist, I’d argue with). And very apt with your Brownian metaphor.
J
From brownian motion to Britain's finest, this poem is a masterclass in compressed expansiveness. Well done, friend.
I like how the borrowed voices interrupt the poem almost as though history, philosophy, politics, and absurdity are all competing to explain the same human predicament. Beneath them is a surprisingly intimate question: how much of what moves us is actually ours? Perhaps cycles become most powerful precisely when we mistake repetition for choice.
Thank you, Adrien, for this superb and generous reading. I very much like your suggestion of philosophers contending with demotic culture to move or sway sentiment. In this case, Mill, Arendt, and Schopenhauer are in conversation with Monty Python and the anonymous sea chanty, which book-end a linear history that is also highly cyclic. Your conclusion is very near to the idea which prompted me to write this poem: that we must think about what we’re doing even as we’re swept along by tides of history. I’m grateful to have you as a reader.