Nobel Prize winning Poet, Wislawa Szymborska, died today at the age of 88. Her poetry is shockingly beautiful and moving. This is my favorite of her works.
A Few Words On The Soul
We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.
Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.
Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.
If you are to write well you must come to terms with the enormous and powerful part of your nature which lies behind the threshold of immediate knowledge.
- Dorothea Brande, Becoming A Writer, pg. 151
I’ve been enamored with the writings and films of Alejendro Jodorowsky lately. This also rekindled my interest in Surrealism and Andre Bretón.
The intellectual improvisation of mind, following it’s natural curiosity, has led me to some of my greatest discoveries of music, film and culture. Any time I encounter an artistic form that speaks to me, I listen intently and let myself meander and traverse whatever path the Daemon wants me to take. I am always astonished where I end up.
Years ago Trane led to Miles. Miles led to Bird. Bop led to Sonny Rollins and back to Trane which led to Mingus, Monk, Rouse, Blakey, Clifford Brown, Dolphy, Ornette Coleman and scores of other jazz giants. The same has been true in literature and philosophy, even spirituality which went through paths of Buddhism, Zen, Tao, Gnostic, Alchemical, Western Esoteric, Vedic, and on and on and—
To never limit the possibilities of what might be just around the next curve is infinite in its potential for growth and self-discovery. That curiosity is the greatest gift. The illuminative. Even the most shattering and paradigm shifting. But, that’s the idea, right?
The sonic genius of John Coltrane (via openculture.com)
After just winning the Booker Prize, I had push a few other reads aside (Sorry Hermann Hesse and Philip K. Dick but you guys are up next. Promise.) and jump this one to the front of the literature que. More on this book after the brief, but expectedly dazzling read.
Way to go Julian Barnes. I just ordered your Booker Prize winning book, The Sense of An Ending. Can’t wait to read it.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.
