'If art's acceptable evidence, mustn't what lies behind the world be at least as beautiful as the human voice?' - Mark Doty

". . . Here were people I saw every week at the post office, or the grocery store going about heir daily tasks and suddenly there they were in a different space in a new role and they opened their mouths and out poured all this glory. . . 

There's something about this experience, collectively, that makes it more powerful. We understand that we're not just by ourselves experiencing this sense of being uplifted but that we do that communally and that our fellows' voices do that for us. We are citizens together in that moment - a moment of a kind of rapture. . . " Mark Doty

MESSIAH (Christmas Portions)

   A little heat caught

in gleaming rags,

in shrouds of veil,

   torn and sun-shot swaddlings:

   over the Methodist roof,

two clouds propose a Zion

of their own, blazing

   (colors of tarnish on copper)

   against the steely close

of a coastal afternoon, December,

while under the steeple

   the Choral Society

   prepares to perform

Messiah, pouring, in their best

blacks and whites, onto the raked stage.

   Not steep, really,

   but from here,

the first pew, they’re a looming

cloudbank of familiar angels:

   that neighbor who

   fights operatically

with her girlfriend, for one,

and the friendly bearded clerk

   from the post office

   —tenor trapped

in the body of a baritone? Altos

from the A&P, soprano

   from the T-shirt shop:

   today they’re all poise,

costume and purpose

conveying the right note

   of distance and formality.

   Silence in the hall,

anticipatory, as if we’re all

about to open a gift we’re not sure

   we’ll like;

   how could they

compete with sunset’s burnished

oratorio? Thoughts which vanish,

   when the violins begin.

   Who’d have thought

they’d be so good? Every valley,

proclaims the solo tenor,

   (a sleek blonde

   I’ve seen somewhere before

—the liquor store?) shall be exalted,

and in his handsome mouth the word

   is lifted and opened

   into more syllables

than we could count, central ah

dilated in a baroque melisma,

   liquefied; the pour

   of voice seems

to make the unplaned landscape

the text predicts the Lord

   will heighten and tame.

   This music

demonstrates what it claims:

glory shall be revealed. If art’s

   acceptable evidence,

   mustn’t what lies

behind the world be at least

as beautiful as the human voice?

   The tenors lack confidence,

   and the soloists,

half of them anyway, don’t

have the strength to found

   the mighty kingdoms

   these passages propose

—but the chorus, all together,

equals my burning clouds,

   and seems itself to burn,

   commingled powers

deeded to a larger, centering claim.

These aren’t anyone we know;

   choiring dissolves

   familiarity in an up-

pouring rush which will not

rest, will not, for a moment,

   be still.

   Aren’t we enlarged

by the scale of what we’re able

to desire? Everything,

   the choir insists,

   might flame;

inside these wrappings

burns another, brighter life,

   quickened, now,

   by song: hear how

it cascades, in overlapping,

lapidary waves of praise? Still time.

   Still time to change.

MARK DOTY

An invitation from me and the sea

Dear friends 

I am nearing a comma - a place of pause - in what I'd have to name one of the most prolongedly challenging chapters of my life. For now, I will stick to the steadying process this maelstrom has called me to in my studio.

I cannot help but see you as mysteriously and powerfully linked to the way my work's unfolded during recent weeks and I want to thank you for this and for the countless ways in which you open my eyes to new ways of seeing and perceiving.     

This coming Monday, my exhibition titled Waters I have Known opens at The Diversion gallery in Marlborough. Marlborough is a watery region at the tip of our South Island that's perhaps best known for its delicious wines (carbon-zero, some of these ; )) and for its magnificent, moody Sounds. You may - actually, how could you; it's ages ago! - recall my posting a few entries from the Sounds when I was there on a writing retreat in August last year (a more-or-less unexpected treat after Questions of Balance opened at The Arthouse in Christchurch).

Anyway, yesterday afternoon I popped the bigger paintings for this show into the back end of a freight truck which means I have a wee bit of space now to complete the final few small images. These I'll carry underarm when I fly North this weekend. 

This body of work explores a number of different themes, perhaps the two primary ones being (1) the power, wonder and fragility of our world's oceans and (2) this blogging community. These may at first seem worlds apart but I don't believe they are. We are water; our different countries and cultures are linked by water.  . .

I'd like to extend an invitation to you all. . . It seems there's (at least) one more work that wants making and I'd love to make it a 'communal composite'. (You'll be able to get a good sense of the journey of this work by visiting the new blog I've been building specifically to accompany this series. I have yet to write up the background story/exhibition statement and will do that before the exhibition opens on Monday 18th.)

What I'm proposing is this . . . please consider the subjects of ocean and community (specifically, but not exclusively our blog community) and send me a few lines that encapsulate what they mean to you? You will notice in the attached painting that I have already quasi-/metaphorically painted you all into some of this work (this one's titled Group Dynamic and you can see the process of its making here). . .

Group Dynamic (detail)
Oil on board - 2010 -  910 x 910MM

It occurred to me once I'd finished this painting that these 'featureless' web-style portraits are as they are because this is a place where the ego resides 'elsewhere/outside', so long as we turn up here and meet each other openly, with warmth and curiosity and without judgement or expectation. . .  There's a particular energy inherent in this modus operandi that enables us to take our place as individuals and as equals at our virtual, communal table. The portraits (each one tinged with light from its interaction with whomever happens to pull up a chair beside him/her) become keyholes to rooms and worlds we might ordinarily not have access to. To my mind, this is a facilitative process, one that has all the elements of privileged encounter.

The web is an extraordinary tool for communication. As a portal, it offers us so much more than first meets the eye. Each time we enter this space - this curiously intimate, electronic space - we open doors to unexpected new places. Something mysterious happens whether or not we intend it, I think. I acknowledge your generosity in this - and, too, appreciate the vast wealth of complex material and layered landscapes that continue to beckon with your invitations to ponder, research, engage and explore. How much of life enacts itself beyond the eye, beyond the ear, beyond our rational comprehension, and yet there can be little doubt that despite our various dramas and our different realities, worlds of wonder and glory are out here, ready and waiting to meet us.

With your permission, I would like to incorporate the lines you send me in a composite image (part painting, part text) that'll say something about us all and take its place as a kind of communal breastplate. . . I'm not sure what follows on from this, only that this work will carry all your names and if it finds a home somewhere, you will all receive a piece of it, somehow or other. . . (this is about as far as I've got to date. . . does this make sense/sound okay?)

More from me as more arises. Meantime, if you would like to participate in this spontaneous and possibly (but hopefully not too) hair-brained project, please write, reflect and write some more. . . ?! We have just three days to make this work and I'd dearly love it to be a part of this show. . . time is of the essence!

Thank you all v much - Claire
(otherwise known as A Relic)

detail

(PS. Words can be posted on either blog - I will be sure to check both places ~~~ and here's my email address ~ clarab@earthlight.co.nz )

XXXXX

Well, well, well. . . I turned fifty today!

And yes, I very much like the sound and fit of it.

If I write the years out like this

. . . i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix xx xxi xxii xxiii xxiv xxv xxvi xxvii xxviii xxix xxx xxxi xxxii xxxiii xxxiv xxxv xxxvi xxxvii xxxviii xxxix xxxx xxxxi xxxxii xxxxxiii xxxxxiv xxxxv xxxxvi xxxxvii xxxxviii xxxxix xxxxx . . . then fifty looks young and swarming with potential.

Perhaps we're all newborns, old as planets and with the density and lightness of stars?

*

Last night, we gathered to celebrate - fifty, yes, but so much more than that. Life. Love. Community. Health. Music. Trees. Root vegetables. Time... this time, with all its complexity, mystery, bounty and unpredictability. We talked and sang and ate by candlelight.

We read Jeanette Winterson's Why I adore the night and my old home's flood-damaged 'dreaming wall' welcomed being turned into a notebook for drawings, jottings and considerations of Now.

*

Thank you, too, dear blog friends, for being a part of my life, my soul group. You help make the intangible tangible and the impossible seem possible - and so much more besides.

I am grateful.

*

Tuesday Poem - Coaxing a bridge out of the sands of a desert

Consider the body, loud with sound
yet it must wait in silence. Explain
the mind so dense with words
it would mouth the alphabet into the lap
of a listening hand. Observe the heart alive
with language, yet without a single adjective
or verb to be found; no joining words, no
clever nouns lining up for the taking.

Notice the ear resting, as it does
on an outer edge, leaning against the dark
in a place older than speech. Listen. Hear
those swarms of echoes rising? They climb
the walls, pound the air. Imagine. 
All that sound
and not a word out of it.

CB

Return - Pastel & charcoal on paper - CB 2009

Over the weekend, I was thinking ahead to today's TP and got this poem typed up and ready to go. Then I found myself dithering, so I changed my mind and posted Rilke's Live the Question instead. And then I dithered some more. I've been like this lately - dithery. It's disconcerting. Indecisiveness tends not to be part of my usual modus operandi, but then again, neither is the deeply creeping fatigue that's been an unwelcome but insistent companion these past however many weeks. Words - both written and spoken - have been taking on peculiar shapes. They've looked strange on the page and sounded odd on the tongue. Sometimes ordinary language seems intent on eluding me altogether.

Anyway, when I woke in the wee hours this morning, I reached for my lapdog and started reading the first few Tuesday Poems that had been posted, beginning with T. Clear's chosen poem at the TP hub - The Shape of Words (desert love poem) by Odawni AJ Palmer. Each week's set of Tuesday poems seems to demonstrate an overarching pattern or unspoken understanding, suggesting our wider preoccupations are in synch. I find the way this expresses 'community' inspiring and comforting. Connections are made. Poems become bridges or stepping stones tossed into the oceans between North and South, East and West. Spontaneous conversations rise up. In light of all this, I've decided to keep Rilke for another time and to post Coaxing a bridge out of the sands of a desert as originally intended. (Whew, I eventually got there!)

Click here for more Tuesday poems