moon
light
from the window
seeps
around the ghost
envelops it in a milky aura
folds into its body as it glides
through walls
in a cowl of ghosts, I would
twirl in slow motion around
their twirling pirouettes
their disconnected
hands and feet
dangling from bodies
that radiate a white gauze of light, the
fingernails of silver scratches
that graze the furniture
hovering in the air
of our mutual dreams
A woman with an old Olivetti
on the street corner. Brunswick and Bloor, across from
Future Bakery. She wore a floral dress of orange and
pink flowers on black. I wasn't sure she was real,
her sign read, "Prose Services." A man had
paid, and she was typing.
Surely a prose poem with the heat of the city's
pavement coiling in tendrils of green ivy, sweat
dampening the pulse points under her dress. Her
hair, red and swept back like Lucille Ball's, her lips full
and dark as an espionage spy.
What can a writer offer passersby for a few
coins in the cap?
I almost asked to take a picture of her clacking
away on the old typewriter keys, but thought she'd
charge me, demand toll from the faint
woman disappearing into the moon
hanging in half
over the alley.
These Oriental chants, with influences of Dead Can Dance, Byzantine Church, Bedouin (tribal, Arabic), folk music, and singing in the Alps to the forces of being itself, are beautiful. A Bulgarian group with a female lead solo whose unearthly yet earthy voice I could listen to endlessly. This album takes me to places I've never been before. My soul sang a strange and beautiful song with them. Each track superb. It starts slow, with instrumental, and then builds into a series of Oriental chants. A tour de force of an album. Kudos. A stunning offering, indeed. Thank you, Irfan, for sharing your considerable talent.
"Irfan is a Bulgarian band that was founded in 2001. The band’s name is taken from the Arabic/Persian word ‘Irfan’, meaning “gnosis”, “mystic knowledge” or “revelation”.
Though similar in style to established bands such as Dead Can Dance, Love Is Colder Than Death, Sarband, and Vas, Irfan is known for its extensive use of a choir of male singers in addition to the female vocals of Vladislava Todorova, and in in combination with an assortment of traditional mediaeval percussion, stringed, and wind instruments, including the darbouka, daf, bendir, oud, saz, santoor, ghaida, duduk ,and bass viol. Irfan’s music and reliance on traditional instruments is based on a blend of the musical influences common to Bulgaria, and thus represents a blend of mediaeval European, Balkan, and Middle-Eastern styles."
Granted, it may not look very interesting. But the pattern was on sale. Nightgowns in stores are usually too short, and the fabric thin enough to see through. With grown children about, I prefer long and opague. I'm not crazy about Victorian-style nightgowns due to the amount of material and how long it takes to get all the creases out as you yank and toss and turn getting comfortable to sleep. Besides, I nattered to the dubious-looking saleswoman, it's all in the fabric.
And I learnt how to turn a regular 5/8" seam into a French seam after you've sewn it. Turn in carefully, and pin. Edge sew. No ends to fray. Perfecto!
I went to Queen Street in Toronto, the 'garment district,' and found the African-style print below for $4./yd - at 3 yards, that's $12.00! I liked it so much, I went back and picked a floral. I think it makes me look Pre-Raphaelite.
There are a few reasons why I like this particular style in 'unexpected' fabric. It's like a lounge-gown. Very comfortable in the mornings and evenings. Also, with a belt quickly snapped or buckled on, I feel comfortable letting the dog out. Who would know it's my nightgown?
How perfect is that?
My daughter took these photos late last night and perhaps we should have had more lights on. Still, fun!
Why does it take like 8 different tries, and each of those tries, well I can't tell you how much work, before... the voice, the emotion, the content, the meaning, the whole gestalt of it comes together in a reading that's beyond the-me. Criteria? If I can stand to listen to it.
I know I have to strip myself bare. Be wholly vulnerable. Ouch...
Comments are rare, so I have no idea if it works for/on anyone else. Only occasionally, years after, I'll get a phenomenal response in a private email where the listener found the recording opened them and then they matched the intensity of the original with their own intensity - and their own interpretation that spilled into their own work.
Truthfully, I like a bit of emotion in a recording, even a little bit dramatic. This connects me to the poem in ways a cerebral reading doesn't. And I remember the recording and the poem better after.
Something to do with that amygdala's processing of memory through our emotional response to someone else's emotion? :)
But it has to hang by its shreds on the emotional, over the gaping void, and can never be too emotional, for that would ruin the quality of the poem.
See previous post for text. I wrote the words of the prose poem from what I was thinking about while drawing this drawing. I am hoping to create a short video of the drawing and some other moving images I have found on the NET with this reading.
whaleskin, 2011, 20cm x 25.5cm, 8" x 10", India ink, graphite, watercolour pencils, Moleskine Folio Sketchbook A4. (Click on the images for a larger size.)
