music

swimming

and

“Music is the manifestation without activity. It is the pure act of swimming on

its own bosom. Music neither goads nor defends, neither seeks nor explains.

Music is the noiseless sound made by the swimmer in the ocean of consciousness.

- Henry Miller: Tropic of Capricorn

“…..that underlying mask on the blank face of oblivion to which

we are all doomed.”

- William Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom

so

yes henry

music is

as my ocean

as i am

sometimes

as i feel sometimes

always

a swimmer

and never

to swim to cross this ocean

or to swim not to drown

but how am i

as this ocean

often silent

as this swimmer

often noiseless

how am i

how am i such

and how am i now

i am as a lost little boy

random walking over the uncertain shore

zig-zagging the ocean’s beaches

in probability

paddling in the shallow pools

splashing in the cold

and warm waves

shaken and thrown back

and by the rough rejecting

heaving and insistent rollers

and the transient sound surf

on the beaches

and maybe lost

and i am always

yet sometimes sometimes

looking out at my ocean

i see no horizon

do i see a sky

in the dreams

perhaps my dreams

i have crossed the ocean

yet having crossed it

now

i am again on a beach

again

looking out at my ocean

there is no horizon

there is no sky

and

i am as a lost little boy

lost

but in our truth

i am an aged man

ageing

as i am

so in age

it is told to me

but i say

i am at the beaches

looking out

perhaps too far out

over the horizonless ocean

still yearning to swim out

swim and swim

perhaps too far out

and my ocean sustains me

a too salty fear

as i am

maybe

looking too far out

as maybe moses looked out

over a promised land

still yearning

as i am yearning

yearning

to swim in its darkening mysteries

to feel its depths

the savage tidal rhythms

its sustaining silence

but the waves

its wild restless skin

only freeze

as i am frozen

and i see an opaque crystalline continent

and now a sky

and now i

blinded and defeated

by some sun’s glare and thunder

smashing off its recalcitrant surface

i am as i am

i cannot swim on glass

so

and now for time

a questioning

in all its ineluctable redundancy

i feel the encroaching weariness

so i have to laugh

or perhaps not laugh

and now i ask

yes

so what

so what is my music

is it in what i hear

and often what i don’t hear

an inexplicable recognition recognising the unfamiliar

so what’s that

what is that

and on

and of course there is much more

and of course there is always one question too many

and on

is it as a wild horse

sometimes

and i am tempted

sometimes

to tame it

but it gallops footloose

as i can only try to hang on

it seems to know where it is going

i don’t

but of course

it is galloping straight across the beaches

and into my ocean

and i try only to hang on

and at some point

we all try only to hang on

as we are

but there is no horizon

there is no sky

in the time of miracles

there is a stillness and brightness

and lightness and calm

i laugh

they are inept imposters

but as i am

i am

fishing in my ocean

yes

a sea full of songs

and now for another time

a questioning as

what do i catch

is it the ocean’s gift

is my catch mine

but i know it is not mine

it cannot be a belonging thing

it cannot be thrown back

a too salty fear

as i am as the terrified fisherman

as the old man and the sea

and always the puzzlement

how the catch was caught

or offered up by my ocean

a bloody quivering sacrifice

sometimes

or as i am

maybe

as ahab

ahab

cursed and ranting

raving and driven

i fear it ends badly

in the time of miracles

yes henry

music is as my ocean

as i am

sometimes

and lost sometimes

so

and when having smothered it

in its anxious profundity

it laughs in my face

it laughs

yes

laugh with me it slyly cries

it cries

i am for dancing

music is for dancing

the joyful movement

of the remaining available limbs

limbs of body

limbs of mind

yes

my ocean instructs

dance and laugh you wandering and lost idiot

so

and all this

after the future

sam fendrich

january 2023