In the wake of going to Norway, where I can indulge my major regrets for not having become either this or that – a mathematician, which I’ve always had a fancy for, or a Bach cantatas singer, which I was once – I listen to music which makes me forget about myself.
Here is a sample from a live recording of the original pieces on the CD Baroque Duet: Battle – Marsalis (Anthony Newman, orchestra of St. Luke’s, John Nelson, 1992).
For Johan Schimanski
Norway! – you make my passions stream through my nostrils while also making me think that whatever thought is, it doesn’t matter.
Norway! – your mossy green sticks to my eyes and your smell hits me hard in my gut turning it into Babylon.
Norway! – I speak your tongue but my phonetic rules are transgrammatical.
Norway! – your sheep and goats acknowledge my presence which makes me grab them by their hind legs and turn them on their heads so that their bleating scores a higher pitch. The less banal is constructed without sacrifice.
Norway! – I want to go to Tromsø where all the boa-deconstructors went. Su-pli-ca-tion. They all believed in supplication. I want to believe in supplication. The boas in the temple of silence, counting on meshless methods.
Norway! – your aurora borealis makes me crazy. Cra-zy. I point three fingers at the absent trees and think that I’m Huldra. Invisible to all, but my own fingers. Your winds touch them, your waters love their caresses, your forests eat them getting intoxicated.
Norway! – if you were not Norway, I would be Norway, allowing tourists and lovers like myself to enter me only on the 12th of the month, each year, each century, each hour. On the 12th hour love time is camping time. The million of Dutch drivers passing through you can testify.
Norway! – I want your peaks to be hot saunas, and your lakes monoi oil on my body.
Norway! I love you, as I spit into your rivers thinking: Panta rhei.
For Geoffrey
“Thing”: id est, thinking or think’d. Think, Thank, Tank – Reservoir of what has been thinged. – Denken, Danken, – I forget the German for Tank/The, Them, This, These, Thence, Thick, Think, Thong, Thou” Coleridge in his Notebooks didn’t put a full stop after this string. So this is not hermetically closed. Thinking knows no hermeticism. Silent speech aims at a punctum. “AND YET: is not writing too much with us?” asks Hartman in Saving the Text. So, no full stops after the inscription on the body. The palm carries the lines of the “Thing.” I drop my ring into my glass. The thought is not hermetic. Outside my house, near the supermarket, there is a huge circle on the pavement. Every day I’m waiting for “Them” to paint the letter H inside it. The “Thing” is a helicopter. The “Thought” is militaristic: “you are ordered to come now.” And “Thou” shall not ask “This” stupid question again: “Really?” “Danke” I say. For what, I don’t know. I’m saving the revelation for later.
My brain doesn’t work in summer, but here’s a thought on Vincent’s penultimate talk in the series The Power of Thought – this time around. The topic is related to political philosophy and the guest is Ole Kværnø who is the director of the Defence Academy. The two talk about current perceptions of war and how they unfold against the background of older definitions of notions such as the state, sovereignty, and civil rights. I like the fact that Kværnø didn’t come to the studio unprepared. And he even addressed the issue of how we legitimate claims to going to war from a philosophical perspective. Symmetry and asymmetry were the main operative keywords in a discussion about structural and normative codes that involve agents going to war not against other agents but against concepts. If in the cold war the situation was one of symmetry where two parties were concerned – each wanted to beat the other leaving from the same premise or using the same intelligence apparatuses – nowadays states such as Denmark go to war also against people who do not possess either the same belligerent culture, or the same military intelligence, or the same type of weapons. Kvarnø made a reference, on the one hand, to Kant, for whom going to war when one state has too much power over another is not a sign of good, ethical and moral behaviour, and on the other, to Hobbes who basically claimed the opposite.
So, yes, the military. What can one say? Things are always quite mechanical where strategies and the like are accounted for in philosophical terms that avoid the work of deconstruction. I was thinking how the whole discussion would have been infinitely more dynamic if Vincent or Kværnø had said something about Carl Schmitt or Giorgio Agamben’s idea of the homo sacer, sovereignty, and how we deconstruct political concepts and show that, at their base, they are secularized theological concepts – which is what Schmitt originally claimed. Agamben, following Schmitt, suggests some pretty intelligent things about the relations: subject against subject and subject against object, when he claims that the "so-called sacred and inalienable rights of man prove to be completely unprotected at the very moment it is no longer possible to characterize them as rights of the citizens of a state.” (Means without an End,19-20; revised version in Homo Sacer, 2002). Obviously the consequences of Agamben’s postulate have implications for the way in which we thematize free will – which, just for the record, I don’t believe in myself – and it complicates Kværnø’s statement that governments today, when thinking about going to war, pick and choose as if they were at a supermarket. The association is good, but things are more complex than that. In the face of thinking that just because one doesn’t have a well defined enemy, one can afford to invent things and then go to the supermarket and get the bullets according to the invention, I thought that particularly Schmitt’s idea that “Everything must be forced to the extreme so that it can be overturned out of a dialectical necessity” (The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, 1924/1988: 59) is relevant to consider for a few seconds. Vincent, who knows about ‘forcing’ even though in another context – will understand what I mean. The rest, enjoy your summers, your Riviera suits, gray soft cottons over white shirts, and white pants – don’t go black – or think strategies, or career moves, by donning dark stripped suits and red ties – don’t forget about human causes though, which you can mark by penetrating your lapels with a pin.
On the plane from Rome to Copenhagen I was surrounded by kids. They were restless and yelling. I thought to myself, you have two options: to be annoyed for 2 hours or go with it. My idea of going with it was to enjoy a bottle of champagne and see what happens. It didn’t take long until a 4-year old, right in front of my seat, turned to see who was sitting in the back. He was looking at me through the crack in the seat, as it were. I pretended not to see him, but smart kids know when you pretend, which for them is a clear indication that you’re in for a game. And indeed I was. We played a game of gazes and hands. Every time I gave him a look, or pretended to grab his nose between two of my fingers he would go wild with laughter. Half of the people on the plane were annoyed at such noise. I could have been one of them. Between the looks and the touches, he would tell me: “you’re so boring.” I told him in return that he was equally boring, and then he went: “and your glasses are so bad.” Then he started serenading me. When he finished with the singing, which involved a lot of yeah, yeah, yeah, and da, da, da, out of the blue he told me: “but you can’t kiss me.” Now, there was a thought. I instantly devised strategies for that act precisely. I succeeded, of course. He looked surprised, but also triumphant. This latter look on his face puzzled me. It occurred to me that he was already ahead of me. It occurred to me also that he wanted me to steal a kiss from him all along. “I’ll be damned,” I thought to myself. “Not bad at all.”
I blamed myself, however, for having missed his intention. I was coming from a psychoanalytical gathering where one never talks about anything other than desire, intention, and attraction, so I should have been faster at registering what he was doing. When we parted, he told me his name was Anton. He gave me a small board to write his name on it as he was spelling it to me. As I put my own name next to his, his mother was thanking me profusely for what she called “fantastic and fabulous entertaining.” I rather thought that I was the one who had a good reason to be thankful. Especially for the kiss. Apparently I was the first. Anton’s father informed me that Anton never let anyone kiss him before. Not even his parents. Ah, such mythical first acts! The thought of being the chosen one grew as bubbly in my head as the champagne, and I didn’t even think it a hassle to drag the heavy suitcases all the way from Kastrup to Roskilde.
One of the good things about being in a big city like Rome is that if you go out for a drink anywhere, you can easily happen to sit next to people you’ve seen before. Like actors, for instance. Today, after doing the major sites in the Eternal City in hot sun, after having done my wishing to be eternally loved by throwing coins into Fontana Trevi, I decided to get a beer at one of the local joints near the Spanish steps. As I was leafing through my Italian copy of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, which I had just mentioned in my previous post, and which I had just bought, I noticed a man and his son at the opposite table. I thought, gosh, either this guy is Tim Roth or he really looks like him. As Tim Roth is one of my absolute top favourite actors and his work in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is absolutely beyond top class, there was only one way of finding out whether I was sitting next to a very intelligent actor, or a fake. I took my book, and went up to him with these words: “Tim Roth, if I ask you to give me an autograph, are you going to curse me?” He signed ever so courteously. Don’t ask me why I thought - after I had left the two, who, as I passed them in my big hat, were smiling grand style at me, yet also mysteriously - that if anyone should have signed that book, then it would have to be Roth. Cosmic things indeed, and a sense of falling. Come dice Calvino: “Cadere nel vuoto come cadevo io, nessuno di voi sa cosa vuol dire.” (La Forma dello Spazio)
I’ve just had the best sailing time in my life in the North Atlantic, around the Faroe Islands. The islands in themselves have a smell that keeps you thinking of the great Beyond – you basically walk around while being in a constant state of swooning. It makes you think of silly religious revivals when people thought that they would get transposed at a touch, to where I have no idea, but transposed they all believed they were. There isn’t much religiosity left on the islands, apart from a regimented alcohol prohibition that no one cares much about in this globalized world full of traffic opportunities – let’s face it, I had no problem getting into the country a whole litter of Fernet Branca that I know goes very well with dried fish and lamb entrails that I bought on the ferryboat with money won in the casino, also on the boat. So, between eating, drinking, gambling, and smelling, once on the main island, Stroymoy, I also got to sail in a large boat, a sloop with sails from the 40s. The waves were high around the corners of the cliffs. I experienced an altogether different type of G-force created by the mighty boat hitting the waves, after the bow had been 10 meters in the penetrating air of the North Atlantic. This was not a hit and run, but a hit and glide. I thought I was going to die, but I laughed, I so laughed.
I was among the few on board who was neither cold nor suffered from sea-sickness. I used my adrenaline as an energy weapon against the wind which cut through you. I thought of salted energy. “Of course I’m not cold,” I thought to myself while watching the green faces and tormented bodies around, and I was convinced that this resistance had to do with Italo Calvino’s short stories in his Cosmicomics. “The Distance of the Moon,” “Games without End” and “The Form of Space” came to my mind. These are stories about captains and other good folk whose names, derived from mathematical formulae, throw you into interminable laughter on the spot and you are right there with Qfwfq when he tells you: “Climb up on the Moon? Of course we did. All you had to do was row up to it in a boat and, when you were underneath, prop a ladder against her and scramble up.” Captain Vhd Vhd, his deaf wife, and their daughter Xlthlx, can never resist the attraction from the moon – so they climb it all the time also to collect moon-milk. This is the time when the moon was close to the earth and the earth had not lost almost all of its energy, claims Calvino. I liked this thought. On my boat, it made me think of what name I would assume, the minute I would plunge into the cold water of the Atlantic, the minute the ocean would become a pink sky, the minute physics and smell would replace the desire to have the moon, and not just climb it: SQRT. 
For Ursula Renz
Between the Arctic and Austria we step on stones made out of chocolate truffles. “How did you know, I ask?” and the wise woman says: “I just did.” You know, she then says, “absolute nothingness is not an abstract.” "I know," I say, “abstracts have forms, absolute nothingness doesn’t.” She nods and takes a deep breath. Mountain air is between us. We climb high and agree that closure is not in our vocabulary. I see Spinoza as the Hunchback of Notre Dame. She can also see that. Three weeks in the mountains carrying Spinoza on your back will do that to you – make you see things. Moses Cordovero is shaking his head. “Crazy women,” he thinks. And I go: “hey, you’ve got exactly 3 minutes to state your case.” “Form is stripped away by the power of ayin,” he says, and I ask: “where did you get that from?” But he keeps silent. “Can Kierkegaard have a word?” the other woman asks, and then says: “Don’t go cosmic. Kierkegaard thinks it’s a bad idea.” But Kierkegaard didn’t read any Freud or Lacan, so I’m not afraid. I lose my patience, and say: “all I ever want from you, men, is to answer this question: “what does it mean to say: ‘I’m here,’ in the light of nothingness, no point, and no form?” Isaac the Blind has an insight: “The inner, subtle essences can be contemplated only by sucking… not by knowing.” We are childless women. The wise woman eradicates the materiality of time: “even if seven years pass, seven mountains are climbed, and seven oceans crossed, you come to me and say, ‘I’m here,’ and it will be enough.” We divulge no secrets, for we are thieves in hiding.
For Hélène Cixous & Kathleen Ferrier
From where we stand – always in square one – always before the beginning – always before the end – always under the spell – always in the middle of the greatest passion – always dialectically vigilant – but deconstructive – you give me your love – always conditioned by the unconditional – by everything and nothing. We are in the subplot of Don Quixote, when Quixote reads about himself – in Hamlet’s subplot, when Hamlet gazes on himself, how spectacular! – in the 602nd story of the Arabian Nights 1001 cycle, when the king hears about the murderous but desirous king, himself. It’s all about penetration. “I can’t let you be part of my life, you say,” while penetrating mine, while doing it all the time by opening a door made out of flesh and bones. My clavicle feels the warmth of your hand like a penetration. My hand on your hand consolidates the magic. – Salve! Orbis terrarum est speculum Ludi. We are X-ing the geometry of the point, repairing the intentional fallacy that left Achilles’ heel without coverage. Spot on, we penetrate the heel with our gaze, healing it, so Achilles can run faster from the time that stands still. From where we stand, we read about ourselves in the most magical of all touches.
Nothing has changed in me, but sometimes I hesitate before pronouncing the name of the enemy. Philosophers to hold others down with: Hegel. Philosophers for inflation: Nietzsche. For breathing: Chuang-Tzu. The philosophers condensed into a pack of cards.
On occasion, one would like to say that there is nothing more to say. But those of us who know better also know that there is no such thing as silence – except for the kind we can conjure in our own heads if we are smart enough. For, as John Cage once remarked, even if you were to isolate yourself in a room completely devoid of sound, you’ll still hear your heart beat and your blood running through your veins. This being said then, and remaining true to the deconstructive aim to denounce stupidity every time we spot it, here is a thought on Vincent’s encounter with Frederik Stjernfeldt – a personnage who, on his academic website with Aarhus University, declares is “against scepticist, vitalist, and deconstructivist views of many kinds,” being more “predisposed to a realist view of semiotics.” Right.
Now, one would like to know why I choose to quote from Stjernfeld’s webpage rather than report on what he says on screen. There is a reason for this. I’m bewildered. What I’m watching is a re-run – the last episode in The Power of Thought series from last year, in which Vincent and Stjernfeldt talk about epistemology and logic. I can’t help thinking to myself: this is fucking déjà-vu, twice over: while Vincent and his guest are not absent from the program as such, they are not present either. They are on my TV, all right, but not with something new; not with what was announced: Vincent with Stjernfeldt on multiculturalism. From a pragmatic point of view, there is only one thing to say: someone is being very incompetent. From a deconstructive point of view – the kind that Stjernfeldt is against – there are many more things to say.
So, let’s say something, now that we’ve got ourselves so worked up. However, as I’m not interested in talking nonsense behind people’s backs, as it were, I’ll make this remark only, sparked by Stjernfeldt’s webpage where he rejects the school of deconstruction in favour of adopting a neo-conservative stance. While I would have been interested in hearing what he has to say about multiculturalism, I am quite certain that I would have pointed out this irony: that the best definitions of multiculturalism are provided precisely by scepticists – (see Multiculturalism from the Margins by Dean A. Harris), vitalists (see Gilles Deleuze’s Vitalism and Multiplicity) and deconstructivists (read all of Derrida, and don’t cheat). Insofar as deconstruction dismantles imperial ideas from within, through identifying the aporias and inconsistencies within the system of ideas itself, dismissing deconstruction is, to me, nothing more than an act of folly, for what is more refreshing than the fact that deconstruction, in its enabling a democratic multicultural discourse also identifies that very democracy perhaps even as a dictatorship of multiculturalism? The same goes for the metaphysics of presence, indeterminacy, and cultural paranoia.
By way of closing this post, let’s end with the words of an intelligent man, Elias Canetti, who, in his brilliant book, The Secret Heart of the Clock, has this to say, hinting, of course, at acts of silence and absence, also embedded in writing strategies such as quoting:
As I write this, I discover, however, that some things remain consistent, in spite of everything. The TV is still on – and lo – Vincent is on again, with another topic from a previous program, the turning of reality program, namely, the 6th VVV instalment on infinite love....... As I watch it again, I think to myself: there are two possibilities here: either Vincent is very smart, and uses all sorts of strategies to keep us interested including deciding which instalment to be repeated when, even when there aren’t any new ones to repeat; or else (2) he’s very lucky. For, you see, the idea of infinite love is bound to make at least some of us less bewildered, and yes, keep us interested. But whatever the situation, let’s just say that today’s absence has been saved by the clock, not care. Where deconstruction itself is concerned, the fact that the show seems to dismatle itself, by never being consistent with what it announces, nor with when it airs, is a brilliant example of how, while one may not have the adequate theoretical knowledge of how deconstruction works, one can see it in action all the time, like clock-work indeed.
From Wittgenstein’s: “Vermischte Bemerkungen”:
“The proper greeting among philosophers should be: Give yourself time!”
“The philosopher finds more grass in the valleys of stupidity than on the barren heights of cleverness.”
Philosophers one gets entangled in: Aristotle.
For Andra Jakstaite
I am the diviner. The wandering rabbis search for wells, but only I know how deep they are and where they are. In their order of things, they go ahead, I go behind. In my order of things, they don’t even exist – lavish absence. This is a syllogism of the suspended middle. I integrate faith and reason in a way that the patriarchs don’t. But they still need me to tell them how grace can remain a free gift. The word is made strange in their scrying. “Who has ever heard of a feminist diviner?,” they ask. That’s because I don’t believe in their stolisomancy, sortilege, and scarpomancy. “What’s the word for today?” they ask. And I say: “Mercury. Have you ever wondered why he’s always depicted on one foot? On top of a building, if a statue? Get your cameras and shoot the one in Copenhagen.” “Oh, come on,” they go. “Why do we have to do this?” – Because it’s spring, and because you’re poets.
As an amateur psychoanalyst in my spare time, I often get confronted with one problem which seems to override all others: the question of people’s lack of ability to understand what their emotional and intellectual range consists of, how far it stretches, and to what extent it can be expanded without the ensuing feeling of guilt conditioned by culture, usually manifested in the exclamation: ‘my god, I’ve just transgressed orders!’ (tradition, rules, morality, or some other such idiotic constraints which have nothing to do with what one can experience if one allows oneself to see past ideologies that cannot legitimate their existence). What I do that is successful is put people on a path that enables them to understand that the only thing that can escape guilt and regret is art.
Today, for instance, I told someone that when I came to Denmark and was eager to continue my education, my choice of study was very much the result of my inability to speak the language. I ended up picking neither law, nor theology, nor math. Initially, with law, it was Kafka who did it. With theology it was the ancient text that did it. With math, it was infinity that did it. Now, discarding law and math was not so difficult, as both subjects were more the figment of my fantasy about concreteness, in the case of law, and mysteriousness, in the case of math. Discarding theology was more difficult as I even thought of going all the way – that is, I actually imagined myself as a Lutheran priest. In spite of its paradoxical nature, I also ended up discarding theology not for its unreality – for, let’s face it, institutionalized doctrines have as much legitimating ground as any Sci-Fi novel when it comes down to it – but for its reality: I said to myself, you’re going to pass the Greek, the Latin, and Hebrew exams, but you’re never going to pass the Danish exams. So much for my triumvirate! Off it all went. So, I have regrets. That is, until I pick a work of literature that makes up for it at least threefold. Thus my advice to all those who have regrets is this: read something intelligent and thoughtful or look at or create yourself images that are intelligent and thoughtful. That’s all.
Here’s what I read today, which then I immediately associated with the epic of Gilgamesh, particularly the eleventh tablet in which we are told the story about how Gilgamesh fucked up twice in his attempt to prove that he was worthy of the gift of immortality. And boy, did he regret that!
But first, and last, for today, a text from the Zohar (Lech Lecha 77a). Its mathematical order and appeal to interpret it kept me busy the whole day. Here’s a self-evident statement: when you’re busy thinking about texts or visual art, not only do you not have any time to get bored, but it is quite impossible to have regrets. The only regret you can have is that you cannot shut up. As Jabès once pointed out: “our decision to write, to talk, springs from a lack.” And boy, how I want to be complete right now, even though completeness is the biggest fiction there is. But then, so it goes. We have as yet to earn our right to immortality and all that continuity and completeness that goes into it.
1. One climbs to one side.
2. One climbs down on that side.
3. One enters between these two.
4. Two crown themselves with a third.
5. Three enter into one.
6. One comes forth in many colors.
7. Six come down on one side and six on the other.
8. Six enter into twelve.
9. Twelve agitate themselves to form twenty-two.
10. Six are contained in ten.
11. Ten are fixed in one.
Here’s my idea of a natural death: getting a heart fibrillation or some such high electrical impulses in the middle of a string quartet concert. Ever since I’ve discovered chamber music at the age of 9, I’ve been thinking about it. Call me a conservative. After a tour in the Tivoli gardens with my sister, who can never get enough of the meanest roller-coasters – none of those in Tivoli, alas – we got pulled by gravity while swerving over high class performers, The Emerson String Quartet, at Tivoli’s concert hall. “Give me NASA”, my sister said, just before the beautiful Dvorak – and thinking about floating in space as an astronaut – she can take the real G-forces like no one I know. But I got whirled into the supremely rendered Bartok. I told my sister: “you know, it’s not enough to have good coordination in a string quartet. You need good flow. If you can hit it, and suggest a flight towards infinity, then you’re a master.” My sister believes everything I say. So we had a good night – no deaths yet. Meanwhile, this thought, that if we stay with it, the flow, that is, we may even get famous before the finals, resounded on another level too.
For as it happened, earlier today I got pulled into another world as well. An Italian literary salon, featuring the art project Immagine & Poesia, a project based in Turin that aims at promoting what the curators call ‘creatività incrociata’ – or cross creativity – asked me if I would share my paintings that have a poem tagged to them on their various websites. “Sure,” I said, “I’m all for open source” – and I like coincidences: one of the leading figures in the project is Dylan Thomas’s daughter, the writer, Aeronwy Thomas. “Which painting do you want,” I asked, and suggested one which is special to me, and which inspired my whole pictorial inceptions. “Yes,” the curator said, “but to begin with, we want Infinity A-1.” Ah, I thought to myself, there is a chance to escape to infinity in a Newtonian potential in which boundedness is ensured under the action of the force field. I wanted to tell my sister something about escape velocity, which is the speed that gets you to infinity – well, barely – and the sense of what getting there at zero residual speed might be like. But I kept silent. I’ve always liked the idea of “to begin with.” The strings evoked that, and more.
Here’s INFINITY A-1 – in Salotto Letterario, in La Stampa, and in Image and Poetry.
The Finns are in love with me. And I in love with them. This also goes for the Finns who are not really Finns, but have lived long enough in Finland to pass. Say, at least 30 years. There are reasons for the love. But, keeping with the Finnish custom of not saying much, they shall remain undisclosed. There'll be hints. Those with the necessary cultural competence will know just what I mean. At conferences we congregate in silence. We sit together. We touch. If there is talk, or whispers – as the case may be during other people’s talks – then they are produced by me. The same goes with touch. Such bodily or silent discourse usually takes place on a higher plane of understanding than the ordinary. I talk, they listen. I touch, they watch. The Finns are into rescuing. When I go, boldly addressing the now former president of NAAS, “Jopi, write me a note” – during a dry talk – “lest I should die from boredom” – he obliges. When he doesn’t, he gives me a special look, and with his arms demonstratively crossed over his round belly, he says, “I resist.” When we have beers, and another one goes, “my dear, you look tired” – I go: “say something interesting right now, and in an elegant formulation, lest I should feel so old,” he obliges. The Finns always do what I tell them. They know why, and I know why. We acknowledge each other’s presences and powers. My power over them; their presence over me. There is also consensus. I go: “it has to be perfect” – the rhyme – when we invent poetic lines that have rhyme and meter in focus. They agree. But it’s still my consensus. And they know what it means not to be let off the hook. Things are intense. The gaze is intense. Listening is intense. And the laughter fantastic. I go: “all my questions are stringent. I keep it simple these days. Very simple. We approach what we approach.” They go: “good for you” – imperceptible additional nods supply the rest. “We’ll have more of epistemologies of creative writing” – Jopi says, picking on the subtitle of the work that will make me full professor by the end of the year. “Ah,” I say, “creative we shall be, right here and right now.” Leaning on masters. “Which deadly sin can we claim represents us?” I ask. “We’ll suggest it in a limerick right here and right now, over Kilkenny pints and half pints. Sex has to be in it, subversive and implicit – as in any good writing – lest we should all impress each other very little …almost nothing. “And you’ll put it all on your blog?,” the big professors ask. And I say, “but of course. When licence is given, there will be no reason – not to.”
There was a professor from Helsinki
Whose tricksterish ways were quite slinky
He thought he was great
And never came late
But in truth he acted quite kinky.
There was a young bugger named Bent
Whose genius like Poe’s came and went
While writing a paper
His brains turned to vapour
And found all his passions were spent.
A literary critic named Søren
Had views incredibly stern
He hated all queers
And even old dears
Like Ashbery, Keats, and his urn.
There was an old bugger named Jopi
Who came from the shower all soapy.
Rubbed the suds from his eyes
Looked down in surprise
And exclaimed, my dick is a Moby!
There was a high priestess, Camelia
Who people compared to Ophelia
She just loved to touch
It was never too much
Don’t stop don’t stop, let me feel ya.
For Gabriel Josipovici
Two doors.
Glass first. Seeing through.
Then stone. Silence.
Two people on the threshold.
Two fingers on the buzzer.
One to the left. One to the right.
Going through.
Smiles. After you, Madam!
Nodding. Silence.
A touch on the door-handle. Untouched.
A ring. Unrung. Silence.
A page. Ripped out. Passing through.
Everything passes.
The wind in the hair. You’re obsessed with my hair. Silent.
Under the hair is the head. Silent.
Pure thought.
You would give anything to have me. Silent.
I chair the panel on cosmic relations.
He says: Cormac McCarthy says, “so be it.”
I think Vonnegut says, “so it goes.”
He says: Cormac McCarthy says, “there is hope.”
I say: in the face of “so be it”?
He says: Joseph McElroy says, “there is energy.”
Everything passes.
He says, “cosmic obsession doesn’t.”
I say, “is that of love, of writing, or doors?”
Silence.
He says, “Shakespeare knew his audience. Rabelais didn’t.”
He says, “Shakespeare was obsessed with love. Rabelais with writing.”
I, with doors.
I would think anything to touch you. Silent.
Writing is silent. You step behind the curtain of the French window. My shadow is grey. Silent. On my sleek stockings with a black seam that ends in a doodle it is written: “Stop,” on one leg. “Go,” on the other.
I pass, but not from your mind.
For P.D. and M.A.
The mountains that I want to climb, and the tightrope that I want to walk, and the silence that I want to listen to – I’ve done it all. I go preaching in the valley: “the very condition of existence is nothingness. No-thing-ness.” “Whatever,” the crowd says. But this is not the same crowd as the one in Monty Python’s Life of Brian shouting: “we are all individuals,” but “oh, master, give us a sign, we ARE all individuals, just as you say.” And Brian goes: “really?” And I go, “oi!” This is the global crowd charging me with Maxwell’s equations. I have no unconditional love. I have no sons to give it to me. In reverence or hatred. And Maxwell goes, “It doesn’t matter.” The internet is here, the lovers are here, Die Zauberflöte is here, Wagner is here. Some Vivaldi, some Schubert, a shit load of Bach, and then more Bach, and yes, always and of course above all Bach – we are all individuals – yes, we never search for ourselves on google, and we never stumble on lines that insist on popping up in connection with our names, even though there’s no connection. The daughters of Israel shout at me in the link: “point of no return: and you shall tell your children about Egypt.” I go counting, "what are the odds?" – but probability theory has never heard of the fullness of being. And my being has been zapped. And Mozart goes, “but that’s a very good thing, to be zauber’ed, meine liebe.” And the lover goes, “whatever it is that you want, it’s never gonna happen,” but what does he know, the schmuck. And then Keats goes: “I must confess, - and cut my throat, today? Tomorrow? Ho, some wine!” and Die Walküre goes: “Ho-jo-to-ho!” “and evenings steep’ed in honeyed indolence…” Such are the times when thoughts go electrical, and I can’t find my mineral water.
All Things Dull and Ugly. This is the line I get up with in my head this morning; Monty Python’s brilliant spoof on the hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful. I read this as a sign. I don’t believe in such – I’m a rationalist for Christ’s sake – but the idea of reading signs allures me. It makes life less dull and less ugly. So, I read it as a sign. A sign that I have to go see my sister. This is not a problem since she now lives 10 minutes away from my apartment. She is a Monty Python expert. As mentioned earlier on this blog, not only does she know everything by heart – especially The Life of Brian, which she recites with the necessary intonation in all places dull or beautiful, but she also has the stuff near hand, or ear, downloaded on all the gadgets that can be put in her bag – “in case memory fails,” she argues. She will cook lamb schnitzel – Romanian style, turned in flour and egg and fried at high temperature. We will have a good Merlot with it. And a Norwegian snaps. Then she will put a Monty Python DVD on her computer – she doesn’t have a TV (she hates the damned thing) and she will sing, whatever singing there’ll be to be sung, from the bottom of her lungs. I will be on the floor rolling myself over from too much laughter. Enhancing the digestion.
I make my own contributions to such events. You see, the thing with reading signs – and, all right, all right, I’ll grant you, as a rationalist you’re bound to believe in signs if not all the time, then some of the time; “never” has its own set of possibilities – is that it allows you to embellish your knowledge of facts. So, I make space in my own bag for the book which I picked at random to read in the bathroom this morning. Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband. My sister should like this, as neither of us is married. The poem I read falls quite beautifully between Monty Python’s profane hymn and Alexander’s institutionalized religious piss. Carson’s fictional poetry is an essay in “29 tangos” on Keats’s idea that truth is beauty. Number XI has this title: “Make your cuts in accordance with the living joints of the form said Socrates to Phaedrus when they were dissecting a speech about love.” I’m thinking of numbers: there’s definitely something about nr. 11 (29 tangos, 2+9 makes 11; in her house my sister has 10 poetry bookshelves downstairs; today she’ll get another one from me, so 11. And so it goes, so it goes, indeed who needs a TV, who has time for a TV?).
My sister and I believe in much simpler things than truth and beauty. We believe in habeas corpus. Let us then join hands and read a good poem – for the meaning of life (a student of mine at an oral exam last year said to me, after a longer discussion of very interesting things: “why, the meaning of life is poetry, of course” – she scored the highest, as I approved 150 percent. And so it goes indeed).
“MAKE YOUR CUTS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LIVING JOINTS OF THE FORM SAID SOCRATES TO PHAEDRUS WHEN THEY WERE DISSECTING A SPEECH ABOUT LOVE.”
Why did nature give me over to this creature – don’t call it my choice,
I was ventured:
by some pure gravity of existence itself,
conspiracy of being!
We were fifteen.
it was Latin class, late spring, late afternoon, the passive periphrastic,
for some reason I turned in my seat
and there he was.
You know how they say a Zen butcher makes one correct cut and the whole ox
falls apart
like a puzzle. Yes a cliché
and I do not apologize because as I say I was not to blame, I was unshielded
in the face of existence
and existence depends on beauty.
In the end.
Existence will not stop
until it gets to beauty and then there follow all the consequences that lead to the end.
Useless to interpose analysis
Or make contrafactual suggestions.
Quid enim futurum fuit si… What would have happened if, etc.
The Latin master’s voice
went up and down on quiet waves. A passive periphrastic
may take the place of the imperfect or pluperfect subjunctive
in a contrary-to-fact condition.
Adeo parata seditio fuit
ut Othonem rapturi fuerint, ni incerta noctis timuissent.
So advanced was the conspiracy
That they would have seized upon Otho, had they not feared the hazards of the night.
Why do I have
this sentence in mind
as if it happened three hours ago not thirty years!
Unshielded still, night now.
How true they were to fear its hazards.
For Vincent F. Hendricks
Incantare
I’m waiting for the logician to plug himself into some fake deconstruction on my TV. Instead we get the God talk, a second time around: “perhaps we are not meant to know certain things.” Oh, really? I left my professorship in the Arctic behind for a pink meteorite hitting the Grand Canyon. What explosion of yellow light! Not even the aurora borealis can compete – I try to convince myself. If this is a game we play, who is teaching who about the law of absence?
Convocare
Epistemology of citation: there’s nothing new under the sun. “Would a book of knowledge be a sacred book?” asks Jabès, only to answer to himself, “No, because knowledge is human.” The pink meteorite hit a surface creating a splashing sign. V spreads its long legs. Everything is contaminated. Says Frère Jacques: “Of course – as is always the case as soon as there is a law, the law – all deceptions, transgressions, and subversions are possible.”
Excitare
In the church of deconstruction every word that afflicts is made to symbolize something, look like something else – that something else which is always already something else. Women as the high priests demand explanations from men. But men confuse them with Brunhilde, The Valkyrie. But this is good enough. Close enough. Nicholas Royle takes the stand: “Excitation: This term, in so far as it could be described as such (it would be no more a term than “the unnameable,” or “deconstruction”), is pronounced so as to conceal as best as it can the heterophonic pun it nevertheless harbours, like a foreign body. Excitation, that is to say, cannot be read without a logic of ex-citation, of that which dispossesses, ex-propriates, or para-cites every citation. Excitation would have to do, among other things, with an absence of quotation marks. Be alert to these invisible quotation marks, even within a word: excitation.” The V takes her sword and swings it over the black head. Siegfried, or Sigmund, asks: “What do you want from me?” – To deconstruct “nothing.”
At my sister’s this weekend, for a good soaking moment in her bathtub at her new house, we did something we haven’t done for ages. While wrapped in salts, lavender, and oils, we talked about poetry. I, with my eyes closed and immersed into water; she, sitting on a stool, head buried in a book, reciting verses aloud. Occasionally I would offer a comment in the form of a quotation: “Only what touches us closely preoccupies us. We prepare in solitude to face it.” She asked, “love or death?” I answered: “death of course. Love is a gift, death a reality.” I kept quoting Jabès as his Little Book of Unsuspected Subversion came to my mind: “To live without asking: “Why?” means dodging in advance the question: “How to die?,” means accepting a death without origin.” We thought of our parents. Neither of them died a good death. She asked me: “how do you think of doing it?” I told her that I vacillate between gas and sky-diving without a parachute from a tall cliff. “What about you?,” I asked. She said: “When I’ll turn 90, I’ll buy a fast motorcycle and drive towards an abyss at 290 km an hour.” “Wow, how wonderful,” I replied, and then murmured to myself: “Merde, why didn’t I think of that one myself!” We started laughing. We are both visual. She almost got a stomach ache, as she was cracking up. “Oh, ho, ho,” she went: "I can see you with your head stuck in some oven and your thin legs sticking out of it like those of a fat goose, caught in a frozen, awkward moment.” “That is just so unromantic,” she then said. “Exactly,” I said. “That’s why I vacillate.” I also laughed at imagining my little sister, with her petite figure and white hair stepping on it, giving the motorcycle gas. “Broooom!” I was jealous of her optimism, especially since I told her that where I was concerned, I have no intention of sticking around so long. No point in it really. She said: “the optimists see a point, the pessimists see none, and the realists, now they see one, now they don’t.” I asked her: “what about morons?” “Morons don’t think of such things,” she said. Then she continued: “we talk as if we’re being suicidal.” I was quick in my reply even before she managed to pause: “I certainly hope that we are. Indeed, only morons don’t think of death, or dying.” She nodded. We took another sip of champagne and we both sank into silence.
Yesterday I went to a concert with The Stamic String Quartet. Ever since I’ve met the Czech ambassador, Zdenek Lycka, when I first expressed an adamant wish to attend concerts of this kind organized by the embassy, he has most graciously and consistently invited me to all of them. With some people, I like to say that there is ‘something’ there. With Zdenek, it’s about remembrance of things past. Not that either of us is stuck in any kind of time, but there is a certain energy that takes place when we talk about culture, both timeless and time bound. Our countries of origin are both known for a certain cultural belatedness in relation to most of the Western world, so what we like about our encounters is that when we show a genuine interest in Schubert and Schopenhauer we don’t feel odd, or like talking to people twice our age simply because they are the only ones who get it. In other words, we talk about completely useless and irrelevant things most of the time. That includes relationships with men, women, and books. We also do politics, mind you, but it is more the kind that was formulated and devised by Machiavelli.
The beauty of such moments, when the past meets the present but in a Greek sort of way, when things to come are predicted randomly through our equally random consideration of some artistic expression, is most precious. Zdenek, who is a polyglot, writes poetry, and draws, told me at another point in time that his drawings never come out right. I asked him why. He said that it was because he can only do completely photographic representations. He said that although he always tries to capture some essential quality in a model, it is not often that it happens. Where I’m concerned, he told me that he would be interested in capturing my energy, but that he wasn’t sure that he dared. Now, knowing that he wasn’t just flattering me – people with a sense of belatedness know better than that – I decided for myself that he is a very perceptive and clever man.
At the concert yesterday, held at the Black Diamond in the Danish Royal Library, there was energy. Connections were made across the sounds of music led by the strings that almost ripped your heart out, slashing it to fragments, the ambassador’s gaze, and a dancing devil. The intriguing medieval Codex Gigas was on display outside the concert hall. At the reception, people were raising their glasses to the figure in the 90 cm Big Book. This silent music that the glasses added to the still vibrating tones of Dvorak, Smetana, Martinu, Nielsen, and Haydn made me think of the reasons why I left Romania 20 years ago. I was happy. Especially since my sister has now also left Romania. For the arts. Sophocles came to my mind: “It is the dead not the living, who make the longest demands. We die forever.”
Your excellency, a very fine ambassador of the country and the arts, many thanks for another splendid night.
Although the new sequel to Vincent Hendricks’s program The Power of Thought (Tankens Magt) has neither women in it, nor does it treat any of the subjects I proposed in my last post on the series, should there be a sequel – which lo and behold, here it is already – I’ve decided to continue devoting some words on it at least for two reasons. (1) It’s been a while since I’ve stopped believing in the benefits of exercising my power to influence others in their acts, hence I have no expectations that anyone should consider whatever I may propose. Ergo, I didn’t hold my breath, and all the better that I didn’t; (2) the show begins with a poet and lists a number of deconstructivists among the guests.
This is already quite interesting in itself, as I find it rather amusing that the poets and the deconstructivists are called in to contribute thoughts regarding matters of ‘relevance’ in current societal debates. Not that they can’t rise to the task. Oh, they certainly can, the better of them, anyway, can, but they often use methods that go against the grain of anything ‘current’, ‘important,’ and ‘useful.’ If there’s anything compelling in deconstructive and poetic philosophy is the very idea of resistance. So, when the governments today shower us with injunctions against doing anything useless, old-fashioned, or unimportant that will not serve the lowest common denominator, or the liberals, the poet and the deconstructivist would first cross himself three times at having to listen to such stupidities, then make a point as to the usefulness of keeping the useless, and then throw himself off a cliff, after realizing that his words make no impact whatsoever, when and if impacting is nonetheless desired.
My reason to be amused at the situation is also due to the fact that just before Christmas it so happened that I was having a conversation with a colleague of mine about deconstruction. At a coffee and glögg gathering at the institute, I was almost late, yet in spite of being out of breath I managed to grab a seat at a solitary table, just before the welcoming speech. Not long after, I got flanked by two philosophers, a younger and an older colleague. The young one wanted to know why I was in such a hurry, and when I disclosed the reason, I caught the attention of the older one. I had just attended a PhD defense in the math department, and my older colleague wanted to know what it was on (something on parabolic lines in the moduli space of quadratic rational maps). We had met at such events previously, so I gave him the gist of the argument. As the younger philosopher only knew me as the Americanist he asked what I liked about math. I said: “its mystery.” To this he replied: “but math is not mysterious, it’s the most concrete discipline.” I ended a potentially disagreeing moment with the statement that we obviously don’t read the same math books. Then I ventured into some discussion about formalism and deconstruction, to which he said: “oh, you know, some of our formalist colleagues are not very keen on Derrida.” Vincent’s name was mentioned. I asked him: “are you sure about Vincent?” to which he replied cautiously – he thought I knew something he didn’t’: “well, I think Vincent likes Derrida on some days and on other days he doesn’t.” I asked him again: “are you sure about that?” And then I continued: “any formalist who doesn’t like Derrida on all days is a bad formalist.” I was being impolite, and he was baffled. Too bad he didn’t ask me to elaborate. I would have made a beautiful exposition.
So, then, all the more, let’s see it: Vincent, the poets, and the deconstructivists. Søren Ulrich Thomsen, a bona fide Danish poet talked about civility, or rather the importance of being earnest. In his argument, one simply has to be as sincere as possible in this globalized world in one’s encounter with the other, if civil order is to be maintained. Using as examples of formal politeness comparing driving in a taxi in the US and Denmark, he talked about the consequences of the lack of good manners, or excessive politeness. In the US, the black driver says to the white guy who leaves a tip: “Thank you sir, I truly, appreciate it.” In Denmark, it’s the opposite. If it’s not uttered, the following adjacent exchange is certainly felt on another level: the Turk, with olive complexion and bad Danish accent thinks: “racist pig.” The racist pig thinks: “bloody foreign pig.” All the while the car swifts by at considerable speed. And so it goes.
Now, while the poet wasn’t making any poetry today, in his call for a return to keeping old politeness values, as they are mechanisms for mutual recognition, respect, and equality, the historical context of the roots of politeness in the Enlightenment was mentioned, and the benefits of keeping anonymous in the modern city was mentioned. In other words, where in pre-modern class based societies saying to the mayor of the city, “hi sir, yes sir, I acknowledge your presence, sir,” is a good idea even though you think he is a pig, in the city, saying nothing at all to the lady at the cash registry is also a very good idea, even though you think she’s dull and may benefit from a piece of fashion advice. No boundaries are transgressed. And we should keep it that way, it was suggested.
Now, this is all very good. Imagine if we didn’t have any rules to go by. My goodness, there simply aren’t enough mountain peaks around for all of us to inhabit where we can just do our thing, without having to think of others. But no solutions were offered as to how one might replace an old-fashioned system of politeness with a new one. Vincent made an attempt, and his proposition that courteous behavior devoid of cultural manners and classical formation and education makes everything sound trivial, and banal, could have been picked on, but what Thomsen had to offer was rather trite, more descriptive than analytical, and based on anecdotal evidence and cluelessness about pragmatics, anthropology, or cultural studies. Basically he was merely voicing the concern that the conservative class and the establishment have entertained for ages: a multicultural society marked by difference rather than homogeneity is complex. Doh! (Actually at this point I rather missed the 60s, a decade when, both in Vincent’s and Thomsen’s view, a lot of deplorable things happened - but the whole 60s lot sure knew a thing or two about diversity, even though not all theories were as succesful as feminism, and queer movements).
The only really interesting thing Thomsen did say, however, and which could also have been seen in a philosophical context, but wasn't, was that a truly authentic person, who presumably is also cultured enough to be capable of avoiding dead metaphors, is the one who will at all times say absolutely nothing. Finally he was on to something. This was music to my ears – the music that nothing makes – but, unfortunately nothing was offered in support of formulating something interesting about that theory other than laughs – both Vincent and Thomsen laughed, and I’ll stake my head on the fact that neither of them had any clue as to what they were laughing at. So, on to solutions. But what was it that I began with? That if I said this or if I said that, no one would give a flying shit, so I’ll refrain. I did though comply with the rules that the show suggested: that we need to exercise more the personal touch. I gave you a personal story at the top of this post.
Apart from that let me also leave you with a fragment of a much more informed verbal discourse that I would have enjoyed more, had it happened. Here are some lines from a live interview with a deconstructivist woman, one of finest wit and intellectual caliber, the proponent for écriture feminine, philosopher, and poet, Hélène Cixous. She was asked to ponder on the significance of silence in a courteous exchange and the way in which it links to the importance of music for the poetic writer.
“I would say that the moment you attribute to a writer the poetic quality, music is there. Poetry is music. Poetry is the music of philosophy. It’s the song of philosophy. It’s primordial: it begins with the singing of philosophy. So I can’t even say that it’s important, it’s essential. It’s there. It precedes everything. That’s one thing. But what kind of music? That's why I say if you refer to music as a body of composed works, it's different. If you refer to music as the soul of philosophy, the singing soul of philosophy, then it’s everywhere. I can't write without it” (Cixous, Live Theory, 99-100).
Cixous’s thought made me think of how, if we cannot archive old manners, or invent new ones, we can perhaps turn to music, or to “the silent [that] makes the sound.” Principles in general – if incorporated without our exercising the capacity to distinguish – more often than not stand in the way of open-mindedness. Therefore I would prefer it if in a multicultural society we all started talking about how we can listen to each other beyond prescriptive and established principles, through listening to the music that we all are capable of producing via elegant, intelligent, and thoughtful prose or verbal discourse. Music cannot be buried. And if poetry is the music of philosophy, then philosophy cannot be buried. In other words, keep on thinking. Thinking is the only reality we’ll ever know.
For Charles
With the books it’s always the same. You read, you read, you read. History repeats itself. All the time. Once there were angels as many as flies, Simic tells us. Then there were the young ones who died with passion in their blood, Blaga tells us. And I, I. I am someone’s secret. I live and fly. I vacillate between the boots and the books, the cantors and the kisses. I’m forty, how can I still do high performance alpinism? I paint instead. People want the works. But how can I sell my Nureyev? I put on my Ralph Lauren organza and sing a Bach cantata. From the shelf that faces me, the history of madness winks. Gödel didn’t think Leibniz wrote his works. Just like his precursor, who didn’t think that Shakespeare wrote his. Whose works do I write? Who do I call a liar? Inside me, you’re playing all of Schubert’s string quartets. The cello vibrates in my head, and I can’t count anymore.
Today I fell asleep while doing a nice headstand. This never happened to me before. I almost couldn’t believe it myself, but then, when one hears about people falling asleep in all sorts of positions and situations, I decided that it wasn’t a big deal after all. I usually stand on my head about half an hour, so the REM time must have been a fraction of that. I don’t think I had any significant dreams, though. If I did, I don’t remember.
What I did think however, just before and after, was the relation between being out of consciousness, as it were, and the capacity to focus. It dawned on me that in my yoga practice, which doesn’t rely on anything demanding, even though there are some people who would swear that they’ll never be able to do what I do, I often focus not on some idea of a whole experience, but parts. I decided that the only reason why I fell asleep on my head today is due to the fact that I’m an expert in fragments – or so I like to believe. Sleeping is itself one of the most fascinating fragmentary activities, as its experience relies entirely on a radical break with conscious consciousness. When you are asleep you are out of it – unless you possess some unusual mental power that enables you to think otherwise.
Now to the interesting part. Some of you might like to know what I was focusing on before all these dreams on their heads got their energies channeled through fragments. While listening to Bach’s cello suites, I thought of just how much some people want us, by whole not by part. The strategies they devise can be mindboggling. Particularly acts whose articulations are unambiguously invisible but whose manifestations are ambiguously visible are interesting. They are most fascinating insofar as they allow us to dissociate the agent from the thoughts that the agent provokes in us by doing nothing, saying nothing, or saying everything at once. Thought thus dissociated from its container, as it were, can be considered as full of itself as anything. As such, you approach it with reverence, as if it were a God. You pose questions to it. You know it will not answer, but you believe that it can give you a sign. For those of you ready to go to bed, but who can’t think of a question, try this one: how do we distinguish between head-thoughts and head-stands? Bach will answer that one in your dreams. Hammering thoughts with a toccata will not be the worst that can happen to your heads.
For Julie Kavanagh
Some years ago I taught some sessions in a class on Canadian cross-aesthetics. Three of my colleagues at Aalborg U and I went from philosophy, especially Charles Taylor, through the singer Leonard Cohen, the novelist Margaret Laurence, to other types of artistic manifestations. The class was a joy, especially as I had the privilege to close with Glenn Gould playing Bach. Now I can’t remember what I said, between showing enthusiasm for Gould’s own enthusiasm for Bach’s mathematical compositions and my own fascination with the cross between numbers and noumena, but I do remember that one of the things I emphasized was the fact that what made Gould’s performances so über brilliant and without equal is his ability to approach the musical subject without prejudice. In terms of method, he never approached a score without first learning it by heart, then thinking about it long and hard, and then playing it not on the piano, but in his head, as his fingers would tap on any board – without the keys. Such reverence inspires me.
The other thing I remember is one remark made by one of the students. As we watched some video clips with Gould’s only re-recording of the Goldberg Variations, something he rarely did – re-record, that is – the student let me know that what he found the most fascinating thing of all was watching me watch Gould’s hands as he folds them after the last variation (nr. 30). I wanted to shout: but how can one not notice what he does, and not feel moved down to the innermost core of one’s being?
Interesting business, watching others watch such moments of standing in close proximity to genius! I decided then, that that one student went home with a lesson learned. What this lesson was all about was precisely the rare kind that teaches us to be non-prejudiced. When one opens one’s mind to catching glimpses of the intricacies of the workings of another’s mind, one learns to ride an energy wave that has both gravity and grace in it. The function of experiencing passion in itself implies a tearing asunder. Performers that are bold enough recognize it in their audience, if the passion is felt in them. Some even choose to let you know that they’ve spotted it. It’s always a rewarding exchange when it happens, as what is mutually recognized is the transcendence of the thing-in-itself which is mediated not only by the performer but also by the listener. Such remediations enhance the intensity of passion and learning. I remember a couple of times what such closeness, brought about by the passion to transmit a thought, felt like, when I sat right behind Daniel Barenboim in a concert. After he finished, he gave me a straight and deep gaze, and with his head slightly bowed, he was almost making an imperceptible gesture of a salute with his hand.
The closest I came to experiencing other manifestations of the tearing asunder of passion, thought, and mediation, was not in a performer of music but in a lecturer. The late professor Michael Riffaterre from Columbia U, after having delivered a lecture in 1999 in Aalborg looked for me in the lecture hall in the break before the questioning session. He came up to me and without any introduction asked me if I wanted to go to New York. I said yes before he explained. The only thing he said following such bluntness was that it had been years since he experienced a burning gaze also at his back from someone sitting in the last row in a room where 300 other people were also sitting.
I had a good time in New York, and Riffaterre invited me back after my initial stay, so energy (and synergy) is not only something that happens in one’s own head.
Now I try to teach my own students to master not only a certain way of looking and listening, but also re-master their own performances in terms of showing reverence for that which deserves superior attention.
Enjoy Glenn Gould, the master of enabling us to ignore the times when we fall – out of grace, or into oblivion – and appreciate the times when we burn for others, and let others burn for us.
