Inspiration Chains, or, Free Association

On December 23, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Journallings, Traces2 Comments

Prompts, shared. Whether images or music, language or film, it is delightful to hearken others’ cherished influences, themselves becoming common grounds, points of congruence for these virtual-seeming communities of blogosphere. Recursive and reciprocal correspondences, often represented via comments, but probably present in many less conspicuous ways, are, in my opinion, the likely meaning-manufacture points of this medium. Circlesunderstreetlights has passed on some lovely and instigative musical prompts over the past days, each of which I’d love to interact with via language, but haven’t found the coveted chain of moments that might allow for it. However today’s prompt from her:

tripped off a chain of evocative discoveries and resonances for me… including, but not limited to:

which led to a combo with one of my favoritest crooners:

leading onwards to more of Patrick Watson:

may these bring some moments of holiday PEACE and reflection

and perhaps even inspiration and production!

Cheer

The Gift that Explodes, 5 : Whispered Leavings

On December 23, 2012December 23, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes12 Comments

This constitutes the 5th page of the Notebook given me by my daughter…here it is in typescript:

In Which the Leavings Whisper

Indeed there are times of leaning toward cold and the dark. We huddle close, our woods seem silent, even emptied, so we hush and sound our whispers, to blend them into wind, its Winter.

I speak of the dangers – presumption and preference – too-devoted attachments to our particular woods. You hear us sing their praises, we dance like them in breezing sunlight, pattern our coats according their colors, entrust them to shelter and shade us, providing our true light and fire. We claim them the hardest and strongest, the Durable Ones. We come to cling to our woods as life. Dear child, it is not long before we view them as the “only.” The Most and Highest, the Broadest, Richest, Rooted Deep. We worship their hold, celebrating their fruit. Develop our rituals of cultivation by tending them daily, each of us making our rounds, repeating the woods until they are all that we know, all that we love, the scope of which we are able to see.

Hush and beware, my splendid dear, for here is where the quiet comes. The times we call The Leavings. These very woods to which we cling, within and upon which we build our homes, nourish our bodies and fuel our fires, compose our messages and texts, which provide us with movement over long waters and vast mountains of snow – keeping us warm all the while – just when we revel most confidently in their glorious splendor, their rainbows of color and light-glowing hue…they begin their wandering away. Day by day, as the cold is approaching with its elongating nights, they drain of their colors and begin letting-go. These, my child, are The Leavings.

As we cuddle near their time-trusted fullness and warmth, they appear to us bare, barren, and grey. We look up, we cry out “the woods! the woods!” and our sound shrieks right through, we are staring at stark and the Gone. Seeing past in icy clarity, our woods exposed and stripped – if we do not close our eyes in terror, but look far, far beyond our own tangled thicket of woods…far, far beyond, my lovely, farther even than the eye can see…are more woods, and more, everywhere woods making scents for their peoples, sheltering and shading them, burning and abandoning them as well. If we hush and refuse ourselves despair as we see our woods give out, in turn setting ourselves silently to listening and keenly looking out – we can know the lessons of the Leavings. That there are further woods than ours, many woods and other, only farther out.

We grow easily impatient of our woods in our discomforts and our panics and our fears. Yes there are countlessly many Leavings – you can count on them, and by them, but my tender one, if you will persist and endure, if you are open to their lessons and their silence, the woods will come back to you, freshly and new. There will be young woods you never knew before, and the old ones return too.

Our woods are never so much lost as that they undergo strange changes. They break and wither, shrivel and drop – they must shed themselves of their embellishments and gathering continually – so they might produce themselves again, altered and renewed. Their many uses over untold years are logged within their roots and cores, marked and divited, scarred and sapped – it is for us to remember and adapt, let go with them and wait, wait, enduring the Leavings with all that we have, slogging onward toward new growth.

Oh yes it is frightening to feel all is lost, sweet child of wonder, but our woods never fail us finally, they leave us to be born.

And this is why I gather samples wherever I happen to go – fruits and nuts, leaves and needles, parts of any woods I chance to see or hear – in order to remember and remind in times of Leaving that somewhere, and at any time, we will live again in woods that will be full and bright, returning the woods that we’ve known toward our unknown need.

Now rest, child, rest…the night is quiet and cold, let the woods hush and whisper through your dreams…

click this image for the document in its current entirety:

What a Way to Survive!: Readings 12/22/2012

On December 22, 2012 By NW FilbertIn WritingLeave a comment

all worth living for!

The Ecstasy of Influence

The Gift that Explodes : 4 : a Loose Leaf

On December 21, 2012December 21, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes6 Comments

Here is page 4 of the Notebook from my daughter, which was a loose piece of notebook paper inserted into the stapled set. Here is what’s become of it thusfar:

and the typewritten text

In Which Is Inserted a Loose Leaf

Becoming aware of the change. My little one, as we let (or made) our woods carry us far, we discovered beings everywhere – and all using woods. Having named our woods and defining ourselves by their usage – we had thought ourselves the only ones – the People of the Woods – and were surprised and astonished at the purposes others would put them to, at the sounds they were able to emit, at their shapes. Even the structures they built could seem odd, and their burning came from strange fires.

Everywhere we ventured we found the woods relating to life. Its giving and taking. Beings used them for weapons and tools, they used them for shelter and warmth. As our knowledge of woods grew enormous – the kinds and environments, uses and names – the Mysteries of the Trees began to grow.

In places they were pulped to a gum and let dry, then marked with a rock or hot iron. Other places they were chopped into boards and large planes and smeared with designs from animal blood. It came to seem the whole world was made of beings and woods, each defining themselves by particular use. Battles were waged over woods, clans and families splitting apart, even lovers argued over true uses of woods – what they purposed, how they worked, why they mattered, which ones, what was proper to do with your woods. Little one, woods came into conflict, everywhere. People fought over which woods were best, or which had more power or weight, which cores were pure and which garbage, what woods should serve for what.

We wanted our woods to do everything. To solve and evolve, to stand and retain. But our woods continued to change as we lived them. Some grew smooth and slipped from our hands. Some hardened like rock and got to heavy to carry. Some simply crumbled to dust. As their variety grew, so our experiences – we encountered moments when we could not find the woods that we needed. It distressed us and we cast about in clumsy silences and jerky motions. We grew hungry for new woods that were different. We began to play with the roots and the seeds, combining and grafting or trying new soils.

In times like these, there was speech of The Leavings, of infinite limits of life. The old among us would point out the woods where we no longer dwelt or visited, had let rot or decay, and would question our strange new graftings. The woods were always changing, dear child, there are always new things to learn.

It is time, then, to speak of these Leavings…draw near…it is our custom to address them in whispers and cold…

the Notebook as it is filled as of now, can be read here:

The Gift that Explodes: A Notebook

Continuation of the Gift that Explodes: In Which the Wood is Entered, Entering

On December 20, 2012December 20, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes4 Comments

Here is page 3 of my blank-book daughter-gift “The Notebook” (click here for parts 1 and 2)

and the typewritten text:

In Which the Wood is Entered, Entering

As we grew we noticed things. The more we interacted in the woods, the more we found in common. Or perhaps the woods created them – our commons. In any case, as we examined the woods we came to see ourselves, or began to think we did. It appeared to us that very little passed us by without record. Hewing through a heavy trunk we remembered an ancient drastic storm, here marked as darkened whorls, ripples in an inner ring, where many limbs were lost. Currents of nourishment functioned over years and years, flowing from the core in hairline strands, outlasting generations of leaving. At times there were traces of trauma strong enough to redirect the growth entire. Yet nothing was not useful, productive of something in its life.

Environmental fluctuation sometimes twisted us, never to grow “straight.” Sometimes the changes came from inside – the patterns of our roots, or pockets of dis-ease, a particular yearning for warmth or rain. We accumulated, and let go. There were portions of the wood which had been razed or burned, only to spawn shade for mushrooms and ferns in some other direction. Often the old laid down to serve as hosts – life drawing life as it waned. We almost recognized a cycle. We seemed to grow in all directions at once, to haphazard effect. We found dead spaces and hollows, troubles to be grown around. In fact some things were incorporated entire, as if a self-devouring, like a snake would swallow its tail if it could, all the while producing another layer.

We came to view the wood with mystery, ourselves. Through injury, joy and terror we believed our bodies re-stored it. Swallowing pockets, harboring knots, runneling roots across ages. We seeped or scabbed where we were cut, at times remaining open and leaking a kind of syrup or salve, at times hardening over in projects of defense. We began to be known as “the woodsmen,” and, later, The People of the Wood.

We were tuned to the life of the tree, which we revered as The Tree of Life.

Writing the Prompts

On December 19, 2012 By NW FilbertIn ExperimenctesLeave a comment

All that Remains (inspired by Josh Kramer, for Simon H. Lilly)

In the silence that becomes now, it was undeniably clear – there had been things we considered precious. Recalling faces, moments, landscapes. Evenings. Not like nights or day, but poignant equilibria. These felt like memories, or nostalgia, even tinged with griefs or longings, but mother said the past lacks such power – that we were feeling presently. Simon says. Says “grasping after full resonances” by losing them, turning them to language, participant only always in passing. Says “left side.” “Right side.” “Simon says.” I, at least remember. Forgetting, and then the buckled alarm. The tacking it on at the end. Too lately. But not quite. So that all that remained was the grasping.

please feel free to create responses with this music – visual or verbal or otherwise

On December 19, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Writing2 Comments

I keep rereading this post by Simon. It is one to take in slowly, repeating the lines, offering bounty. I am humbled and honored by the dedication. These places – “(What I cannot grasp – that resonant fullness / of a dying chord).” “Sketched, grasped / but lost.” “Reachable, / Signifying / What is no more.” and yes “Attack, decay, sustain, release” (repeatedly) – a significant writing. Thank you so much Simon.

simonhlilly

OUR MUSIC
( for n. filbert)

Spiraling.
But up or down?
The heart moves in and out.
Its own rhythm.
Has no memory, no sorrow, no joy
(the wild geese cry, flying away,
Away to the horizon of light).
The heart has no words, no tears.
(What I cannot grasp – that resonant fullness
Of a dying chord).
The heart has no words-
The reason music is.

First words
laid down in thought,
Sketched, grasped
But lost.
The path between breathing in
And moving out,
A pull, a chord
A melody.
Formless form,
Existent for an instant.
Possibly enough to light a light –
A dying arc in the bubble chamber,
Proton, antiproton, quark –
A path measured but no longer
Reachable,
Signifying
What is no more.
(embellish, embroider, garnish,
In the end all stories are a rope
To cling to in our vast uncertainty).
The beautiful line of that…

View original post 42 more words

Continuation of the Gift that Explodes: In Which is Entered the Rich Thicket of Woods

On December 19, 2012December 19, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Experimenctes, Writing10 Comments

Here is page two of the blank notebook from my daughter as it fills:

and here it’s typeset form:

In Which is Entered the Rich Thicket of Woods

In the beginning was the wood. It took us much time to discover its uses. We ate its tough skin for roughage, we mashed its soft heart into pulp. We chopped it to bits, we rearranged them. We played games with it. Sometimes it was all that kept us afloat. Sometimes we structured them carefully and turned to them for shelter. As we learned what woods could do, we began to comprehend their value. At times we relied on them for everything necessary to survive – the fruit of a tree gave us sweet liquid and meaty flesh. The fragility of the dead still warmed us as it disintegrated in the flames. They grew to be almost sacred – the world as we knew it came to rely on them. We crafted them into signs and created many sounds from them – enabling us to communicate over vast spaces. We were capable of traveling quite far, able to reach one another over distances before considered impassable. Woods made this possible my dear! Some days I might spend hours simply admiring them – looking them over – taking them in. Each with its own fine shape, and own specific range of uses. Some were embellishments, some anchored the whole forest together, some provided seamless access or served as bridges to crawl carefully across great dangers. We constructed some for fences and walls – they helped us keep the unwanted out. Others we piled up like babble in the sheer joy of conflagration and release – it seemed they could life our heavy spirits like colorful smoke. Oh the woods, my darling, the woods! It is they that really enabled us to become what we are today. To reveal our capacities, our feelings and thoughts, intentions and dreams. In woods we could concoct our plans and rest in their leafy comfort. There are times when all one needs is woods. Things can seem overwhelming, catastrophic or of unmentionable sorrow or fright, and yet finding the right type of wood, or clinging to a wood that is kind and safe and strong can sometimes leverage us through great storms. My precious dear, learn as many woods as you can – make peace with them – seek out their countless paths that you might always have a place to go, a world to be.

A Prompt for all

On December 18, 2012December 18, 2012 By NW FilbertIn Traces20 Comments

This song compels me into verdant places imaginatively again and again…any and all who would like or be willing – it would intrigue me to see what you each might blog/create or what is evoked for any and all of you when you engage in this beautiful piece…