Untitled (Ecstatic Singers Of Contaminating Songs)*

Fig. 1. Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes - Grotesque Dance (from Los Disparates), c. 1820-24


'Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.'

Jules Renard

* 'And I join my slime, my excrement, my ecstasy to the great circuit which flows through the subterranean vaults of the flesh. All this unbidden, unwanted, drunken vomit will flow on endlessly through the minds of those to come in the inexhaustible vessel that contains the history of the race. Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song. Out of the dead compost and inert slag they breed a song that contaminates.' Henry Miller (from Tropic of Cancer)

Your Ears Will Orgasm #36: El Camaron De La Isla - Soy Caminante (MixPod Player)

The Efflux of Beauty Is Not A Torrent, But A Trickle

Fig. 1. Robert Irwin - Untitled (Disc Colored Pale Grey Green Pink Violet), 1966-67


'Rationalists must pardon those who harken to the demons of the inkwell.'

Gaston Bachelard

Your Ears Will Orgasm #35: Arvo Pärt - Spiegel Im Spiegel (MixPod Player)

And The Words - All Of Them - Were Now Made Flesh

Fig. 1. Julian Opie - This is Shahnoza in three parts 01, 2008

'That's what writing is. It's the pace of the written word passing through your body.'

Marguerite Duras

Your Ears Will Orgasm #34: Philip Glass - Knee Play 3 (MixPod Player)

Music Is The Sound That Silence Makes In Our Souls

Fig. 1. Paolo Veronese - The Wedding at Cana (detail), 1562-63

'There is something about music that keeps its distance even at the moment that it engulfs us. It is at the same time outside and away from us and inside and part of us. In one sense it dwarfs us, and in another we master it. We are led on and on, and yet in some strange way we never lose control.'

Aaron Copland

Your Ears Will Orgasm #33: Corelli - Trio Sonatas (MixPod Player)

1. Arcangelo Corelli - Trio Sonata No.1 in F Major

This Is Why The Resurrection Cannot Be Televised

Fig. 1. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio - The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, 1602-3

'Sacrifice restores to the sacred world that which servile use has degraded, rendered profane. Servile use has made a thing (an object) of that which, in a deep sense, is of the same nature as the subject, is in a relation of intimate participation with the subject. It is not necessary that the sacrifice actually destroy the animal or plant of which man had to make a thing for his use. They must at least be destroyed as things, that is, insofar as they have become things.'

Georges Bataille

Your Ears Will Orgasm #32: Arvo Pärt - Psalm (MixPod Player)

1. Arvo Pärt - Psalm

If The Sacred Isn't Everywhere, It Isn't Anywhere

Fig. 1. Pierre Bonnard - The Dessert, 1940

'Painting has to get back to its original goal; examining the inner lives of human beings.'

Pierre Bonnard

Addendum: Belatedly (Here), Timely (There) - Holocaust Memorial Day (27th January)

Fig. 2. Ghetto armband, early 1940s

Your Ears Will Orgasm #31: The Tsinandali Choir - Orovela (MixPod Player)

The Lever Of Your Suffering Can Also Be A Passport

Fig. 1. Giovanni Bellini - Dead Christ Supported by Angels (Pietà), c. 1474

'The poetic work is sacred in that it is a ... "communication" experienced as nakedness. It is self-violation, baring, communication to others of a reason for living, and this reason for living "shifts".'

Colette Peignot (aka Laure)

Your Ears Will Orgasm #30: Not Simply Blood (MixPod Player)

1. Josquin des Prez - Miserere mei Deus, c. 1503-4

Addendum: Katie's Gift and Our Good Fortune

The gifts that come to us from far away, and which arrive without our expecting them, touch us far more deeply, and inexplicably, than those bought locally and with our foreknowledge. This one has been sent to us by our esteemed friends Katie and E.S.V. Millay:

I'm not sure if the Miserere mei Deus is helping to keep your atrabiliousness at bay, but it sure is a pretty piece.

While I'm not a religious person, the Bellini painting is quite powerful. And it leads me, of course, to an ESVM poem:

Song of the Nations

Out of
Night and alarm,
Out of
Darkness and dread,
Out of old hate,
Grudge and distrust,
Sin and remorse,
Passion and blindness;
Shall come
Dawn and the birds,
Shall come
Slacking of greed,
Snapping of fear -
Love shall fold warm like a cloak
Round the shuddering earth
Till the sound of its woe cease.

After
Terrible dreams,
After
Crying in sleep,
Grief beyond thought,
Twisting of hands,
Tears from shut lids
Wetting the pillow;
Shall come
Sun on the wall,
Shall come
Sounds from the street
Children at play -
Bubbles too big blown, and dreams
Filled too heavy with horror
Will burst and in mist fall.

Sing then,
You who were dumb,
Shout then
Into the dark;
Are we not one?
Are not our hearts
Hot from one fire,
and in one mold cast?
Out of
Night and alarm,
Out of
Terrible dreams,
Reach me your hand,
This is the meaning of all that we
Suffered in sleep, - the white peace
Of the waking.

E.S.V. Millay