[Date Prev][Date Next]
[Chronological]
[Thread]
[Top]
RAT from sound to song
The world is a sentence being spoken by lips we can't see in a language we
don't understand. The world is the speech we hear in our cradle. We're born
with a measure of faith - at least trust. We require it like the instinct to
suck or swallow... being born completely dependent, we couldn't survive
without giving ourselves over to forces around us. This faith is our
interpretation of the incomprehensible sentence. Through our formation we
give this faith various shapes - the sentence is spoken out of love, we
imagine, or spoken as a trick; as a caution; the sentence is perfectly
meaningless (and the perfection of its absurdity is super-human, graceful).
Our faith becomes more articulate, but the sentence of the world never does.
The speaker seems to be saying "suffer", but we have faith, so suffering
must not be real. The sentence unfolds in time and time kills us, so the
sentence must actually be an echo of what was said instantaneously, before
time, and time isn't real... we hear the sentence here, and can't gloss it,
so "here" must not be real. But here is... here, meanwhile.
As artists we pledge our lives to casting the syllables (suffering,
astonishment, boredom, peace) into the sane cadences of music. By applying
forms - logic innate from our heartbeat - we offer (in lieu of translation)
a performed guess at premise. "The nearest shape to a secret is a rhythm;
this beat (dramaturgy, sculptural or architectural rate...) must be the
skeleton that informs the flesh of this speech. If the holistic intent
behind the bombing, and the sun that shone down on the bombing, and the
generosity, and the bigotry, and the automatic heroism, and the slow-dawning
heroism were unpacked to its many parts, the parts would pattern a pulse
like this."
We never live long enough to know how to speak. We are born knowing how to
sing. The words of the world hang over the cradle. We repeat back inchoate
faith.
Art is service. Arts saves lives. Keep singing. Silence too can be a song.
Perform silence if that's the song you hear. But do not wait to be. Do not
let the silence merely happen to you. Being precedes understanding. Be. Sing
silence. Or louder.
- e
---------------------------------------
To [un]subscribe to the rat-list, send an email to "majordomo@ratconference.com"
with [un]subscribe rat-list" in the body of the message.
For information on other functions send a message containing the word
"help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.
---------------------------------------
You may also [un]subscribe on the web at http://www.ratconference.com/cgi-bin/web_domo.pl?list=rat-list