You searched the categories for: 'x',
Fantastically complicated machinery
Don Chihuahua spoke, but not to me - he addressed someone who was, in his mind, leaving.
"There is nothing romantic or beautiful about depression. It is fantastically complicated machinery, and yet an arbitrary scribble over life. An old friend of mine thinks of it as an unsolvable glowing blue hovering spherical puzzle, which credits it with some kind of aesthetic quality it does not deserve. I might say it was a circle, since it goes round, and around. But the circle is ugly, imperfect, not circular. Not elliptical or ovular, but erratic. Repeating endlessly, enough variation to deceive, but not enough for hope.
"Do not consider my choices to be considerate. Choosing not to die now is not a kindness. Suicide does not signify a soul, and living does not signify hope for one. Might I have forced your guilt to be over me and my death, rather than for him? I am a coward. I am unable even to usurp with absolute selfishness, and yet it is not because I am kind, but because I am already half-dead.
"Something aesthetically pleasing can inspire pity. You must see this as mere ugliness. There is no such thing as a beautiful episode. There are only shifts in the location of nowhere. This will not make sense and I will not explain it, since there is nothing to explain."
I held him in my arms, only to feel his repulsion.
Download Machinery mp3
Two Voices
BWV 996 is 'possibly' one of the suites we know Bach wrote for the lautenwerk - a harpsichord rather than a lute. Whatever the case, transposing from lute to guitar results in a substantial reinterpretation, because they are quite different instruments. What is clear about the Allemande, though, whatever instrument it is played on, is that it has two voices, which combine, separate, desist and return, cross over each other, and anticipate each other's transition from minor to major.
Segovia tuned his interpretation 5 semitones above the Em in which I have learnt it, and it would be nice to think that helps to make the separate voices clearer, though I suspect his technique - not to mention his enormous talent - has much more to do with it. In my interpretation there is somewhat more muddiness, and somewhat less clarity, which I can't blame on the key. That transposition does, however, alter the octave in which one of the final runs occurs (particularly the bass run of, in this case, the G up to the D#), making Am (in that case, C down to the G#) a more sensible key to play in. Maybe one day I'll try it.
Whose are the two voices? I played recently for the muse for whom the poem was written, and was asked what I thought of when I played. Impossible to answer that I thought of her. There is always an audience. There is no point in speaking, if not to someone - however imaginary - or even to oneself. If one voice is my own, is the other my imaginary friend, the Don? Is it the muse? Is it Bach? Are the two voices myself and the guitar? In any music interpreted from someone else's score, there are always two of us, since we require each other to complete the piece.
This is an exponentially proliferating polyphony of imagined voices, but there are only ever two halves of a whole, two hemispheres of one world, two people exchanging glances and gestures, censored as much by each other's conflicting pulls when they are alone, as they are by a third presence. I think that is what is in my mind when I play the Allemande from BWV 996 - and so grateful for that transition from minor to major.
Allemande
Muse
I shall make you my muse -
since sly smiles and kinds words
that may mean no more than they appear,
now reveal me
no longer on a plain of certitude,
but on a precipice of potential.
The sideways glance of your laughing eye,
the hand resting on the table
are the seeming mirror of the flooded plain -
the unspoken invisible charge
is the white spray crest of the edge
and then nothing
- but muse -
that is the vertigo
of the waterfall.
(And the way you call me 'boy'
hints cascades of possibilities)
I have made you my muse
Download Bach - Allemande (BWV 996) mp3
Sarabande
The Don shares his wisdom, and for that I’m grateful – but I wish he could impart his courage as well as his experience. I told him of my dilemma – my paralysis of inaction, which afflicts me each time I find myself wanting to speak of my feelings: I am rendered mute before the very object of my emotion. He looked at me kindly.
“There have been so very few people who were rays of sunshine in my life. I knew someone who was just such a shaft of light. She came into my life, and her joy threw shadows from everyone around her. Her smile flung away the clouds and her laughing eyes made the world a better place.
“I was in what I thought was my heyday. I thought to distinguish myself, my witty barbs and unconventional manner were magnetic. I revelled in my sharp limelight. My dart words hooked and dazzled, and I held myself guru-like in my acolytes' esteem.
“She had been away for some time, and I felt her absence as though it were a long dark night. When she returned, I put on my display. I was, I thought, on fire. My wit was my peacock feather, and in response to some small remark from a voice behind me, I shot off an offhand and withering remark. On turning round I saw it was her. She lowered her eyes, said nothing, but politely listened to me as I continued to excavate caverns of shame with my foolish words. And then, she left.
“I heard that she had spoken of my insult, and had said she thought me a brute. When I saw her a few days later, though I wanted to scream my sorrow and beg her forgiveness, my anger and pride kept me from it, and she left me in silence - a proud man guarding my horde of nothing.
“I never saw her again. I looked for her, every day, until it was time for me to leave that place. I accepted that it was too late. I never told her what I thought she was; how she lit up my eyes as though I were only half-alive when she was not with me.”
Though I could see he was drifting into a reverie, I asked, “Do you think she would be surprised, looking back on this, if you could tell her now?”
“I hope she has forgotten me entirely. But you – you should not hesitate.”
For Jo L. - wherever she may be
Download: Bach - BWV 1002 Sarabande.
Ejercicio
To laze is to not exercise. Hence it is not possible to ocioso during ejercicio. The task-master is always there, insisting you do not slur, waver, or diverge from the proscribed path laid out by the demi-god fitness-instructor.
Are you fit for purpose?
Download: Jose Ferrer - Ejercicio (Vals) mp3
