a game of chess

“My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
I never know what you are thinking. Think.”
I think we are in rats’ alley	115
Where the dead men lost their bones.
“What is that noise?”
The wind under the door.
“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”
Nothing again nothing.	120
“Do
You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
Nothing?”
I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.	125
“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”
But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent	130
“What shall I do now? What shall I do?
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
What shall we ever do?”
The hot water at ten.	135
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

- T. S. Eliot, excerpt from "The Wasteland: II. A Game of Chess"

the problem of audience and purpose

When I started posting in this blog in earnest, in September of 2010, I had a fairly clear idea of what I wanted for it, and what I didn't. I didn't want what essentially amounts to an online journal, with litanies of day-to-day personal details that mean next to nothing except to the people you already know in real life. I didn't want it to be exclusively my poetry and/or personal essays (there isn't nearly enough of it for that), and I didn't want it exclusively a tumblr-style image collection, but I wanted room to include those if I wanted to. What I settled on was, as the title suggests, basically everything; I wanted a kind of lifestyle blog - or a blog that conveyed my personal taste - that would have a larger appeal.

Of course, what dictates what I am enjoying or ruminating on is still my own life and my own experiences. There have been many times over the years that I have posted a particular song or photo because it reminded me of someone or of a situation - small associations that probably only I would make. A blog often feels somewhat like writing into an impartial void, and what's nice about a void is that it takes whatever one says at face value, and so my internal motivations were easily still completely anonymous.

But once one becomes aware of a particular audience, one starts writing to that audience, because that's what good writing does - it orients its content and delivery to who is receiving it. Much like the observer effect in quantum physics, it is completely unavoidable, even if one wishes to suppress the tendency for one reason or another.

There are love letters on this blog. There are expressions of pain and hope and longing and anger and many other emotions. But even then, this blog, in its detached and mostly anonymous form, is an attempt to convey something about myself, not something I use as a tool to expose or hurt anyone else.


[the title of this post is actually the title of my friend's blog . . . so we'll call it an allusion, because I could not think of a more apt phrase]

amanda palmer on art

(from her twitter)

i think the intent of the Artist can and should be appreciated, and it often helps the audience think and feel MORE about the Art. BUT once a piece of Art leaves the Artist and goes out Into The World - it's not longer theirs. it belongs to the world, and people can and will interpret things however they want. the Artist has no true ownership of the interpretation of their Art...only over the act of Creating. 

[presumably after responses from her followers]

no. never. not once.

on miscommunication

things I like this week, vol. 30

Steve McCurry, again. The entire post was beautiful, but this one was my favorite.

. . . 

Insight from Oscar Wilde:

All women become like their mothers.  That is their tragedy.  No man does.  That’s his.

- The Importance of Being Earnest 

. . . 

I have been craving tango dresses instead of shoes, lately - flowy ones. This is from INDI Apparel's recent line. There are lace insets along the sides of the skirt, too.

. . .

Allen Ginsberg's "An Eastern Ballad" is a fitting description of how I've felt the last six weeks or so, and much better than I could articulate it, even if I had tried:

I speak of love that comes to mind:
The moon is faithful, although blind;
She moves in thought she cannot speak.
Perfect care has made her bleak.

I never dreamed the sea so deep,
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,
I have become another child.
I wake to see the world go wild. 

. . .

It says "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," which is from Harry Potter's Marauder's Map. It's a clever touch to do it in black light ink (although why the random purple spots in the background?).

 . . .

This line, in a post about a Black Keys concert:

The music performed a miracle. It made the seats disappear.