photograph by Natalie Parham via Unsplash
I still see
a reflection
in that strip mall shoe store glass
autumn winter sun winds whirling
but mine own
becoming myself
— J.S.
“Dramatis Personae (September, 1978)”
Tag: individuality
“The Soul selects her own Society”
photograph by Haydn Golden via Unsplash
The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —
— Emily Dickinson
“Barter”
cf. video by Kindel Media via Pexels
Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.
—Sara Teasdale, “Barter” (excerpt)
“Requiem”
Requiem
a long time ago
you mailed me your copy of Ulysses
and I tried but
now
many years later
I realize
you were
summoning my muse
to sing
— J.S.
“Sanctuary”
John Phelan, Berklee College of Music, Boston Massachusetts (2011) via Wikimedia Commons
My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet’s the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges.
— Dorothy Parker
Emily’s Epistemology
cf. Maclean’s Magazine (1970)
ADVENTURE most unto itself
The Soul condemned to be;
Attended by a Single Hound—
Its own Identity.
— Emily Dickinson, The Single Hound
Mrs. Sinico
Photograph by Kevin Jarrett via Unsplash
With almost maternal solicitude she urged him to let his nature open to the full…
— Joyce, from Dubliners
parallax portrait
cf. Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, Michelangelo (modeled before 1883) and
photograph by Nathan Fertig via Unsplash (edited collage)
Lenehan walked on again. He lifted his yachtingcap and scratched his hindhead rapidly. He glanced sideways in the sunlight at M’Coy.
—He’s a cultured allroundman, Bloom is, he said seriously. He’s not one of your common or garden … you know … There’s a touch of the artist about old Bloom.
Joyce, Ulysses
a persistent question
Photograph by Martino Pietropoli via Unsplash
I want my place! my own place! my true place in the world! my proper sphere! my thing to do, which Nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus awry, and which I have vainly sought all my lifetime!
— Hawthorne, The Intelligence Office
“Posts on…”
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Seaward, white gleaming thro’ the busy scud
With arching Wings the sea-mew o’er my head
Posts on, as bent on speed; now passaging
Edges the stiffer Breeze, now yielding, drifts,
Now floats upon the air, and sends from far
A wildly-wailing Note.
— Coleridge
I know not “seems.”
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
— Edgar Allan Poe, “Alone” (excerpt)
We start believing now that we can be who we are
They Will Never Know
John Dillwyn Llewelyn, “After the Storm” (ca. 1853)
I fit for them,
I seek the dark till I am thorough fit.
The labor is a solemn one,
With this sufficient sweet —
That abstinence as mine produce
A purer good for them,
If I succeed, —
If not, I had
The transport of the Aim.
— Emily Dickinson
You’re gonna need security
Risdon Tillery, “A young draftsman drawing plans for a house and developing his favorite hobby…” (detail) (1944)
“What career do you intend to take up, Mr. Joyce?” he asked. “The career of letters.” The dean persisted, “Isn’t there some danger of perishing of inanition in the meantime?” And Joyce, as his brother recorded, said this was one of the perils, but there were prizes too.
— Richard Ellmann, James Joyce
Mr. Wilcox, the bookseller, on being informed by him that his intention was to get his livelihood as an author, eyed his robust frame attentively, and with a significant look, said, “You had better buy a porter’s knot.”
— Boswell’s Life Of Johnson
Forty years is a long time to be misunderstood
I remember happier days…
My joking friends well they all moved away.
Bruce Woolley and The Camera Club — “English Garden”
The Calling
edited composite video: live action + Pudding Lane Productions
—It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with a swift glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the bankside… Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings…
—Shakespeare has left the huguenot’s house in Silver street and walks by the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has other thoughts…
— Joyce, Ulysses
Call me Ishmael.
photograph by Mark Jefferson Paraan via Unsplash
Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part.
— Melville, Moby Dick
Electric Light Orchestra – “Last Train To London”
Who is it that can tell me who I am?
Photograph by Bruce Mars via Pexels
KING LEAR:
Doth any here know me? This is not Lear.
Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied—Ha! Waking? ’Tis not so.
Who is it that can tell me who I am?FOOL:
Lear’s shadow.
Straight Ahead
Photograph by Easton Oliver via Unsplash
His railings and outbursts expressed not the conviction of failure but the passion for success. They touched off his disappointment, his injured self-esteem, his wounded pride, without ultimately concealing his determination to persevere — his finally unshakeable will to achieve. The strain of remonstrative self-pity and pessimism in Conrad was an overlay to the iron in him.
—Leo Gurko, “Joseph Conrad: Giant in Exile”
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
—Emerson, Self Reliance
Barter
cf. LIFE, 1968 and Vincent van Gogh, “Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat” (1887)
Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.
—Sara Teasdale, Barter (excerpt)
Loomings
LSE Library, “Student in the library, 1981”
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul…then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
—Herman Melville, Moby Dick
“Keep Your Head Up” by Ben Howard
A Turning Point
cf. Photograph by The Creative Exchange via Unsplash
One sound is saying, ‘You are not worth tuppence,
But neither is anybody. Watch it! Be severe.’
The other says, ‘Go with it! Give and swerve.
You are everything you feel beside the river.’
—Seamus Heaney, Casting and Gathering (excerpt)
Self-Reliance
cf. photograph by Will Wilson (edited) via Unsplash
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string…”
—Emerson
“At The College Art Gallery, October, 1981”
at the college art gallery, october, 1981
the ultrablue sunset sky
radiated around the white church spire
I walked into the art gallery
because I was a romantic
fair creature of an hour
was looking at chippendale furniture
but I shall never look upon thee more
my footfalls echoed around decorative arts
down the passage which I did not take
another door was opening
into another rose-garden
this fire is now my quarry
vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore
—J.S.
But when I face the light somehow it all seems right
Southworth & Hawes, “Classroom in the Emerson School…” (detail) (ca. 1850)
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
—Keats, Ode to a Nightingale (excerpt)
But when I face the light
Somehow it all seems right…
“Nay, if I mistake not, unity itself divided by zero equals infinity.”
Jack Corn, “The Cool Morning Air Condenses a Boy’s Breath as He Walks Along a Coal Car on His Way to School…” (1974)
“Nay, if I mistake not, unity itself divided by zero equals infinity.”
—Thomas Carlyle
“Follow the path your genius traces like the galaxy of heaven for you to walk in.”
Photograph by Skitterphoto via Pixabay
“…follow the path your genius traces like the galaxy of heaven for you to walk in.”
—Emerson, Greatness
Distant roads are calling me
John Collier, “Young man boarding train for New York state…” (1942)
Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the cagèd yellow bird
Hung over her in tune,He marked her through the pane,
He could not help but mark,
And only passed her by,
To come again at dark.He was a winter wind,
Concerned with ice and snow,
Dead weeds and unmated birds,
And little of love could know.But he sighed upon the sill,
He gave the sash a shake,
As witness all within
Who lay that night awake.Perchance he half prevailed
To win her for the flight
From the firelit looking-glass
And warm stove-window light.But the flower leaned aside
And thought of naught to say,
And morning found the breeze
A hundred miles away.
—Robert Frost, Wind and Window Flower
“Requiem”
Requiem
a long time ago
you mailed me your copy of Ulysses
and I tried but
now
many years later
I realize
you were
summoning my muse
to sing.
–J.S.
“The other was an earthenware pot, coarse and common, but which had preserved all its water, and its flowers remained fresh and crimson…”
Esther Bubley, “…talking with some friends near her locker…” (1943)
Sometimes, in the evening, she heard a voice, concealed beneath the wind screen of the bell tower, singing a sad, strange song, as though to lull her to sleep. The lines were unrhymed, such as a deaf person can make.
“Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart.
The heart of a handsome young man is often deformed.
There are hearts in which love does not keep.
Young girl, the pine is not beautiful; it is not beautiful like the poplar, but it keeps its foliage in winter…”One morning, on awaking, she saw on her window two vases filled with flowers. One was a very beautiful and very brilliant but cracked vase of glass. It had allowed the water with which it had been filled to escape, and the flowers which it contained were withered. The other was an earthenware pot, coarse and common, but which had preserved all its water, and its flowers remained fresh and crimson…
—Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
“I dwell in a lonely house I know…”
John Dillwyn Llewelyn, The Upper Fall (1853–56)
I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow…
–Robert Frost, Ghost House
Prometheus Unbound
cf. from “Rockefeller Center” (1930)
The echoes of the human world, which tell
Of the low voice of love, almost unheard,
And dove-eyed pity’s murmured pain, and music,
Itself the echo of the heart, and all
That tempers or improves man’s life, now free;
And lovely apparitions,–dim at first,
Then radiant, as the mind arising bright
From the embrace of beauty (whence the forms
Of which these are the phantoms) casts on them
The gathered rays which are reality–
Shall visit us the progeny immortal
Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,
And arts, though unimagined, yet to be;
The wandering voices and the shadows these
Of all that man becomes, the mediators
Of that best worship, love, by him and us
Given and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow
More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind…
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
“Defying Gravity” – Wicked The Musical
“But the most important thing that you can take advantage of in the world of music is to see yourself.”
Carol M. Highsmith, “Playing for $1 in a hat…” (2011)
“But the most important thing that you can take advantage of in the world of music is to see yourself. I eventually got to the point where music meant to me self-exploration more than anything else…and I encourage everyone here to be brave in that respect, to be fearless in that respect…that album ‘A Wizard, A True Star’ which was such an abomination to everyone at the time it came out eventually became the signature moment in my career…”
Todd Rundgren – Berklee Commencement Address 2017 – YouTube
Can you hear me, the sound of my voice?
I am here to tell you I have made my choice…
“Just One Victory” by Todd Rundgren
“Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!”
Wilhelm von Gloeden, Man (ca. 1900)
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
–Whitman, Song Of Myself
“The meaning is what the poem means to different sensitive readers.”
Albert Bartholomé, The Artist’s Wife Reading (1883)
“But as for the meaning of the poem as a whole, it is not exhausted by any explanation, for the meaning is what the poem means to different sensitive readers.”
—T. S. Eliot, “The Frontiers of Criticism”
Neglect not the gift that is in thee
Brady-Handy Photograph Collection (Library of Congress), Thomas Edison (between 1870 and 1880)
Neglect not the gift that is in thee…
—Timothy 4:14 King James Version
Corner Of The Sky
“I too am sometimes sad and lonely, especially when I walk around a church or parsonage.
Let’s not give in, but try to be patient and gentle. And do not mind being eccentric…”
–Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, March 16, 1877
“He noticed nothing in it to remark. He was not used to handling stars thrown dark”
cf. Photograph by Dewang Gupta via Unsplash
Never tell me that not one star of all
That slip from heaven at night and softly fall
Has been picked up with stones to build a wall.Some laborer found one faded and stone-cold,
And saving that its weight suggested gold
And tugged it from his first too certain hold,He noticed nothing in it to remark.
He was not used to handling stars thrown dark
And lifeless from an interrupted arc.He did not recognize in that smooth coal
The one thing palpable besides the soul
To penetrate the air in which we roll…
—Robert Frost, A Star In A Stoneboat (excerpt)
Only shooting stars break the mold…
Why do I feel I don’t fit in anywhere I go?
George C. Laur, Students Arriving for School… (ca. 1975)
“Insist on yourself”
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these…
–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Ain’t no jive – it’s no surprise
You are born to synthesize…
John Sapiro 
