[D]enial is arguably the opposite of recognition. But even denial is based on a kind of knowing. A willful turning from devastating knowledge, perhaps, out of fear. Think of Khaldun/Dov [in Ghassan Kanafani’s novel Returning to Haifa], denying his parents who have finally returned to Haifa. Of Peter denying Christ three times. Think of climate change denial. Think of the slave traders and economists of the nineteenth century who claimed that ending the enslavement of human beings was economically and politically unviable. The strength of their stated convictions resembles the arguments of the gun lobby in the US today, and of governments regarding the use of fossil fuels, and arguments that sanctioning occupying powers on the basis of crimes they commit against humanity is impossible. We’ve seen evidence very recently that this is not impossible. In today’s crisis of climate destruction, there will be moments—maybe they are happening right now, maybe they happened recently—that will later be narrated as turning points, when the devastating knowledge hits home to a greater and greater number that we are treating the earth as a slave, and that this exploitation is profoundly unethical. We are still seeking a language for this ethics.
Isabella Hammad, Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative
In 1985 John Cage composed the work ASLSP, with the instructions that it should be played As SLow aS Possible.
Two years later, he worked on a piece for organ. The score is eight pages long.
Gerd Zacher prepared a version that is twenty-nine minutes long. The directions given by Cage, who was present in the auditorium, were that it should be played like ‘a gentle morning’ and that at the end ‘it should disappear’.
Years later, a conference of musicians, theologians, and philosophers came to the conclusion that the longest possible time is that of the useful life of an organ, or until the harmony of a society breaks down.
And for this new performance, the town of Halberstadt was chosen because that’s where the first modern organ was constructed in 1361. The first one with twelve notes per octave (which suggests that the space of music opened up before that of painting).
The concert began on 5 September 2001. Six days before the Twin Towers fell. It will continue for 639 years, seven more than it took to build Cologne Cathedral.
Each movement will last for seventy-one years.
As in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, the first note of ASLSP is a rest.
Luis Sagasti, A Musical Offering, translated by Fionn Petch
As for the wicked child who can’t remember
what Virgil said about the vanishing of the bees,he may have to witness sweetness
disappear from the earth in his lifetime
and never know why.
Li-Young Lee, “The Honey Alone”
To say or do
what you don’t think
you mean is scary—and embarrassing.
But you have to
put it in perspective.You have to wonder
how intentiondiffers from momentum
anyway, which onecame first.
Rae Armantrout, “Oops”
I thought by twenty-seven I’d stop searching
for the story, as if stories were simultaneous
with action, rather than events recollected
incorrectly, rife with holes. My character wades
waist-deep in the bay, waiting for a revelation.
I want the plot to start here, at the end
of the two-lane highway, and then in the moon-
like dunes, the scrubby grass we trudged through.
Madeleine Cravens, “Provincetown”, in The Pleasure Principle
Does the season match the birdsong,
did I hear the birdsong over the white noise machine,
who brought the white noise machine here,
was it the other, heaving next to me under a shroud,
for how many seasons has he/she been sleeping here
next to me, was there a logic of want to begin with
in a seaside town or a dark box rattling underground,
did he/she come through a revolving door like the termite
winding up through the drain of my sink basin,
was there a seasonal contract or perpetual exchange,
who installed this sour drain in my middle, is it time
to adjust my angles, for whom, whom today, tomorrow,
what is history cloaking, as burlap wraps around wet figs,
is there a logic of want, when will my season match my song.
Zoë Hitzig, “1st Trial for the New Aubade”, in Mezzanine
That’s how the May light changed
when it cut through the swarm
of ash leaves.Passing a house
that was once yours
it’s clear that things
don’t change, or just
as much as they have to.
Mariana Spada, “Passing By”, in The Law of Conservation, translated by Robin Myers
[W]hatever physical intimacy had opened up between us had dissolved with the storm […]. More than that: it was as though the physical intimacy with Alex, just the like the sociability with strangers or the aura around objects, wasn’t just over, but retrospectively erased. Because those moments had been enabled by a future that had never arrived, they could not be remembered from this future that, at and as the present, had obtained; they’d faded from the photograph.
Ben Lerner, 10:04
Good mathematicians see analogies between theorems or theories. The very best ones see analogies between analogies.
Stefan Banach, in S. M. Ulam, Analogies between Analogies: The Mathematical Reports of S. M. Ulam and His Los Alamos Collaborators
Unlike trees
or animals, we humans have to gather
to be real. When we’re together, we look
like more than shadows, we look true, we look like we could last
much longer than the fleeting lapse we really do.
Claudia Masin, “Nazareno Cruz and the Wolf”, in Intact, translated by Robin Myers
Perhaps this is why psychologist D. W. Winnicott’s notion of “feeling real” is so moving to me. One can aspire to feel real, one can help others to feel real, and one can oneself feel real—a feeling Winnicott describes as the collected, primary sensation of aliveness, “the aliveness of the body tissues and working of body-functions, including the heart’s action and breathing,” which makes spontaneous gesture possible. For Winnicott, feeling real is not reactive to external stimuli, nor is it an identity. It is a sensation—a sensation that spreads. Among other things, it makes one want to live.
Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts