30.09.16

credo                                                                                                                                   ...

in heaven hangs no harp, no cloud.  

the colours there are bright,  

            the music loud.

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james oliver wright

            © 2016

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28.09.16

so now to pin the meaning on the morning

and plant a period there beneath the perpendicular

heave-ho at heaven till you get it horizontal

suspicion; soup’s on the boil again

take another pint now from the pantry

and hold at point of entry...

how murals from the wall shall never fall –

it never fails; now with a sigh

i cast my eye

on former battlefields unconquered

unrelenting, this erosion of the moral

and the timeless march of vanity...

of any beast there in my barnyard

this one’s the best for bellow, bray or bark

– or even bleat; still on the mark

just waiting for the moment

that my pride comes into play, unrivalled

even with the fabric at my cuffs unravellled

racking up the changes ringing

just like billiard balls about to take the cue

and so they do (then thus do i) –

to keep in mind

this never-mending fissure in the fabric

james oliver wright

© 2016

...zum Raum wird hier die Zeit —

last Friday night was Parsifal in the Metropolitan Opera, and I can't remember how many times I've seen the work... Still it remains wonderfully satisfying, five (on this occasion closer to six) hours of spiritual renewal and greatest beauty (there are indeed those who find here only tedium and bellowing, but that's to be expected...)

I saw Parsifal for the first time at Bayreuth in 1976, and since then I go every chance I get. The one time I didn't enjoy Parsifal was at the Met some thirty years ago, the first time James Levine tried to conduct the thing, an evening redeemed/rescued only by Christa Ludwig, Martti Talvela and John Dexter.

and in the days since last Friday's premiere of the new production, I have read the reviews, and found them mostly fair and aware—and they leave me without much to add. Katarina Dalayman did very well as Kundry, both vocally and dramatically. And yes, you can tell that René Pape and Jonas Kaufmann come from different ends of Germany... And yes indeed, René Pape is a splendid and magnificent Gurnemanz, although not the only one—the excellent Korean basso Kwangchul Youn, last Easter in the Vienna Staatsoper, was every bit as fine. I thought having Titurel off in the distance someplace instead of singing from the box wasn't bad, and I suffered every moment of Amfortas's anguish with the brilliant Peter Mattei. And to remember last Easter in Vienna once more, the Staatsoper staged the very fine actor Wolfgang Bankl as a porno-film director in the role of self-emasculated sorcerer Klingsor. That was a great stroke of theatre, and I found that the Met's Act II wallowed on stage just a bit by comparison. In blood, of course, but no less a wallow. And nothing really special about the infamous Mr Nikitin.

the production was indeed dismal & drear—and meant to be; this didn't do any significant damage to the opera, because Parsifal is not a drama—more of a mystery-play—and therefore less problematic to stage than the Bayreuth master's other grand orgasmatrons. The text is very sober and gripping; it almost entirely lacks the tortured and bloated hysteria of old Wagner's poetry in the four Ring operas...

Daniele Gatti's touch with the stick pleased me greatly, and this orchestra is certainly the best in town.

and the only part of the evening I found truly disturbing was the very beginning. If there is more sublime music in our Western culture than the prelude to Parsifal, I haven't heard it yet. I felt it a colossal distraction to see folks arranging themselves on stage during this profound manifestation of the musically spiritual.

Die Winterreise I: Good Night ~

as a stranger I arrived; still a stranger now I must depart.

last May met me all merrily, with flowers so forthcoming... My girl said she loved me—even Mom thought me a decent catch.

first two lines the best two lines; it’s all downhell from there! I had an entire speech prepared to deliver as I made my grand and dramatic exit—but my throat choked shut in a strangle and a flush of anger—I could barely speak, and though I made my feelings clear, I delivered none of the style to which I aspire, red in the face and biting back tears. After such a departure, oh how, how could I ever return?

a shame with no shape to it, inarticulate despair. Silent sockfeet on the floor, careful not to slam the door...

but as soon as I got out on the road, my mood improved to a significant degree. The full moon was out, and I actually cast a shadow. This forest path I know quite well, and in the clearings I thought that I could almost see the tracks of red deer in the snow.

sometimes you know, when you’ve got to go—and you don't hang out till they show you the door. Sometimes you know; not a crime to go, serves both reason and rhyme to go... And then just tippytoe away in the middle of a silent night, the sweltering muddle of a welter of feelings both lost and found; some are crazy, others sound...

too vain to not leave a note, these clever valedictory airs—most relationships eventually come to an end—even many good ones, for reasons great or small, real or imagined, sane or stupid... And even when one feels embarrassed, has made fool, spectacle of self—or even ass, as well—’tis well to focus on the substance of the love, even in saying sayonara—because the relationship will inevitably and deftly add to the collection of attitudes and feelings that one ultimately is.

~

© 2011 James Oliver Wright

Die Winterreise XXIV: The Hurdy-Gurdy Man~

to overtone and underscore the mood and the many faces of it, the chasms and the chases of it, those halfheartedly-run races, traces of joy sown amid the sorrow and the sadness; and if that there organ grinder has a job-opening for a more-or-less reliable monkey, well then I'm his boy. Not to fit too fine a face to the farce, but such is indeed life in this little village here, the ass-end of nowhere where I’ve ended up. That’s me! Take me with you please, time for some new material to tie to your tatters, and let a new tune rattle... 
 

and so now at the last we walk widdershins among the lost; no more sense to make of it, truth to tell or to take of it, by the stream or the lake of it... Never mind—enough of that! Suffering from a surfeit of sorrows both latent and manifest, not likely to look away nor to even find respite if I could—and this was nodoubt how the blues was invented oh so long ago, as once more I write between the lines. And does such an action engender confusion, or rather offer any clarification? Taking my time, learning a new way around the shame old stuff, reliable misery, to be sure. Better the despair that we know, rather than the unfamiliar? All the salt water we can wring out of the same sad situation. In no sense frivolous, even though sometimes a little on the funny side, this sidewise slide, these questions of culture that we insist upon asking although we already know—an answer sure not to please us, like the dogs snarling around the old man, or the winter’s ice to freeze us... And good example—sometimes we make a wrong turn and have to dig out of a ditch, or just remake the miles we’ve lost, at such and such a ways a way... But at times, we might even get a right good song out of it—



© james oliver wright, 2011