To thine own self be true

(Elsewhere Community: Hugh Kenner’s term)

It’s been a decade of absence, but I have rejoined the Stroll of Poets–as the lone survivor of Spiritus. The time had come–many of the old guard there had moved on. Coming back last night to read at the Upper Crust there were a few of the old familiar faces including Robin–who was in Glenn Martin’s Ed CI class with me way back in 1971-72, and Marcia, a former student from 1970s McNally days, now serving on the Stroll board. Interesting,the oddity of these old connections despite the passage of time.

The other main readers were strong and the open-stagers were memorable in their 2-minute ways! Talk about limits and limitations.
Last night I read (in order):
Perspective, Upsy-daisy, September (from the ’80s), A Buried Life, The Spirit of Ecstasy, Athabasca Falls, Old City Market Shanghai, Out-of-print, and Northern Journey. A happy range of subject matter and tones.

I am confirmed to do a workshop on poetry as sound/music and image on a date T.B.A. This will be a renewal of teaching-catalyst-facilitator process. The session reveals the possibilities of those two elements within poetry and the writing process.

Full circle. The time has/had come. It was inevitable that I reinitiate this possibility and process to share and exchange presences with other poets in Edmonton.

What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross….
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage.
–Ezra Pound, The Cantos

Wonderful, amazing! To think he did about 2 CDs of great music per year over about a 30 year period of composing.

I have been through most of the main classical composers’ works with Beethoven finishing at the top of my favourites to date. Tchaikovsky was so unique and powerful and is the only one in my book who rivals the latter for writing the most powerful romantic music.

He is totally unique and so deliciously different from all the other main composers, and on a grand scale, to boot. What a truly splendid, beautiful varying catalogue and electrifying body of work! Great flow!

Both he and Beethoven have added much to my consciousness, sensibility, and writing this year.

it is the dream or illusion that is most beautiful and true, particularly in its conscious/ly realized forms. In literature, in music, in art, in architecture, in film, in Nature, and Love.

As Thomas Wolfe said, “For if a man should dream of heaven and waking, find within his hand a flower as token that he had really been there–what then, what then?”

Saw the Citadel’s competent production last night, a long journey unto itself. Each actor did well when it came time to do their various solo speeches which give the audience and the other characters on stage the missing info which ‘explains’ each character–what they once were, what they could have been, and what they now, painfully, are. We are all very much like that–the past haunts our presents and will be there in our futures. And it is only in the honest self-examinations and self-appraisals that we come to know ourselves and potentially communicate that to any others who might be listening, who might understand and, perhaps, appreciate. In that, our necessary redemptions.

But most (for me last night) it was the awareness of the “could haves”. The father who wanted to be a great Shakespearean actor, but ended up selling out for and to the distraction of a money play. The older son who was so traumatized by his mother’s addiction and jealous of his younger brother, the family favorite, that he distracted himself into alcoholism and whoring. The younger son who came closest to living and achieving the father’s artistic dream (and did, by becoming a poet), but ended up a consumptive sailor and sea-lover. Most of all, the play’s main casualty–the mother–who had dreams of becoming a nun or a pianist, but was herself distracted by appearances, and significantly the father as a young, promising, marriageable man.

Eugene O’Neill, the author, often wrote of characters who had dreams that were disappointed, frustrated, and destroyed by contexts, choices, and, finally, time. Again, a topic I’ve written of before–the many limits and limitations we are all subject to and ‘up against’. In this play, more than any other I can think of, except Death of a Salesman and The Cherry Orchard, the atmosphere hangs heavy and character inertia is at a maximum–the unwillingness and inability to change played out in so many ways.

At the end of people’s lives, there is who and what they are–something the people themselves and others closest to them must need to accept. They have all taken long day’s journeys in their earlier life before night. Often there have been flashes of whatever good, beautiful, or true moments (as the younger son-poet recalls to his father; in his case, the blissful solitude and empathy with Nature). Moments of true being, inner peace, and integrity of inner and outer as well as of a life. O’Neill shows us that much hope, that much positiveness. And, as I periodically point out in this blog, that state is finally just a personal thing; it is something we work out and arrive at for ourselves, to understand and articulate ourselves for and to ourselves. And that it is consciousness that makes this positive possibility possible. In that, and through the expressing of it, the emotional release of it–a fundamental redemption.

It all comes down to what we know–which I talked of, also earlier–the information we seek and desire. The information that ‘completes’ us. Despite denying and limiting it–as the play’s family does–as it pertains to each family member. In that choice–theirs–the symbolic fog and failure to achieve most of the family member’s dreams, and the tragedy of this great play.

“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”–My Antonia

“He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true Poem…”

“At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.”

–You are the protagonist of your own life.

-The experience of beauty is important in affecting and enhancing your imagination, mind, sensibility, feelings, spirit, and soul.

-It is important to have some way of expressing your feelings and thoughts, to release them and possibly share them, too.

-The main challenge of life is to think of and arrive at your own answers to life’s main and biggest questions. Most importantly, have you recorded them for yourself?

-It is important to understand what is common, permanent, meaningful, and true about human experience, and how that applies to you.

-Do you have an understanding or ‘system’ that makes sense of life’s apparent chaos and confusions? Are you ‘at home’ in the modern world?

-What role do the humanities play in your character, knowledge, understanding, sensibility, and appreciation of daily life?

-Are you the master (or mistress) of your own life?

-Are you a thinking human being? Do you examine your own life?

-What are the great forms and works of culture that have lasted?

-What does it mean to be alive and fully conscious of it?

(inspired by Clifton Fadiman’s 1959 still insightful video about the humanities, available for free viewing on the Encyclopedia Britannica website–look under Fadiman’s name, then Videos)

One of the richnesses of my life and collections is my audio collection of great books, readers, and writers. Nightly, I have my pick of ‘who I go off to sleep to’–their voices (more on that in future writing) echoing soothily or provocatively in my ears.

Beside my bed, I have a cassette player (many of these performances are out-of-print and scarce or rare) and a CD player. Last night it was Newman’s voice which, for the second evening in a row, has read to me from the rareish Mr. and Mrs. Bridge recording (with his wife, actress Joanne Woodward).

Presence is such a funny thing. Best experienced, live and in person. I never had that pleasure with Newman, but suddenly at 11 pm last night, there he was! Preserved and as alive and memorable as ever in a role quite different from Hud or Butch Cassidy (he had a wicked sense of humor by the way). Paul and his voice–a key, essential part of who he was–as captured in 1990 AD. Paul dead since 2008 and yet still delightfully, accessibly there five years later for me, personally and intimately. One of those occasional epiphanies that evokes the response of “Can it get any better than this?”

I regard all of my audio recordings (including rare readings on LP by the likes of John Steinbeck, Evelyn Waugh, Bertrand Russell, and Hurd Hatfield) as precious unique artifacts that never cease to amaze, delight, and enthrall. Much of my scarce video collection used to work much the same way, but, of late, life, purpose, and meaning has come down to presences for me, and the experience of presences.

The human voice, whether spoken or printed (the latter which of me which you can read throughout this blog), is the most intimate artifact of all, apart from/in addition to touch and touches of a personal intimate nature. What people truly long for or miss, as the key imprint of presence (along with face).

And so it is I miss Newman, the person and presence he once was. But, luckily and haply, I can remember and retrieve some of that in the darkness and quiet of evening or night as I discover the world of Evan S. Connell’s novel and world, along with the sensibility, tones, and presence of one of the great actors of all time.

…………………………………………

ps/ Re. the subject of voice, that is why I have enjoyed and amassed quite the collection of interesting signed books, with oddities ranging from Stephen’s Frye’s autograph in the Wilde screenplay to Woodward and Bernstein’s autographs in All the President’s Men to Newman’s signature in his cookbook, to rare signatures by the likes of Peter Ustinov, Siskel & Ebert, Simon & Garfunkle, Charles Schulz, Sidney Poitier, Michael Caine, Arthur Miller, Somerset Maugham, W.H. Auden, Thor Heyerdahl, Graham Greene, Donovan, Dave Brubeck, Kenneth Branagh, Joan Baez, Robert Altman, Archibald Lampman, Ian & Sylvia, Robert Service, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Gabrielle Roy, Sinclair Ross, Lawren Harris, Mordecai Richler, A.Y. Jackson, Margaret Laurence, Stephen Leacock, Gordon Lightfoot, Marshall McLuhan, Norman McLaren, Grey Owl, Northrop Frye, Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen, Bertram Brooker, Laura and Aldous Huxley, Jonathan Winters, Tennessee Williams, Martin Scorcese, Eugene O’Neill, on and on….

I see and feel their presences and have contact with something they once experienced whenever I open any of hundreds of signed I am fortunate to own. Experience, in a similar way, their voices. Voices and imprints of people and geniuses I have admired, enjoyed, and, to some extent in various ways, emulated. their characters, their values, their art and wisdom.

T.S Eliot spoke of the importance of building on the past work of poets. Matthew Arnold and Northrop Frye spoke of the influence, likewise, of past literature, geniuses, and culture. My own interest in the above speaks of my own sensibility, largeness and depths. The various voices and imprints of the great past that reflect my own deepest values, beliefs, attitudes, meanings, and purposes, reflected in my own rich daily life.