Journal Entries
I've just seen a face I can't forget. . .
Posted Nov 10, 2001
So far it's untitled, and just a draught.
“Armas virumque cano. . .”
The Aeneid of Vergil
I. The Merchant
The marketplace is full of sounds this morning,
every morning, clear and indistinct, inconsequential
and important, focused and diffuse,
real and remembered from fantasy—
I often stand here and listen, out of doors,
beyond shelter. The dust often bites
against the leather of my face. But I must stand
and take in the brilliant tones: the sheep baahing,
the call to prayer, the canvas flapping, the heavy
thudding of the butcher-knife, three thousand sandals
on the baked dust. I must collect these in my basket
of reeds which I gathered from far-away rivers.
The sounds of men speaking and the sounds
of children talking rub against each other.
Their indistinct resonance grows heavy with dew.
Their grasshopper-legs music drowns the spheres
but not the earth. This point of unfocused tangency
will perhaps overfill one day, burst and spill a flood
across the melons and animal droppings. But
for that there is no room at this inn. You must
go along down the road. There is a little
stable a little down the road, carved
from the living rock herself.
Seek your rest just a little farther on.
We are full here. There are sparrows in our beds.
II. Sojourners
A flock of sparrows are playing
in the brush-pile again, Phlebas.
You were supposed to break up
the furniture for fuel and use the brush
for kindling. Stop playing with
your books. Start practical
fires instead. Let the mind-fire
burn down into ash and scatter it.
Tear up your basket for kindling,
burn your books. But there is no fuel,
Phlebas. You have let the brush-pile go,
and the furniture remains whole. And
you have forgotten to turn our ancestors’
ashes again. You have forgotten our ancestors.
You forget the nights huddling
so close around the smaller fire,
whispering long-lost truths
to each other during the Rite.
You forget, Phlebas, nibbling on mouldy
bread and sipping the cheap wine.
We do not want your beds.
III. The Shoah
At first there was only a white-hot bead of slag
quivering on the dusty crucible. The man on the roof
dragged a line of pilgrims out of it with his
wrought-iron eyes. They did not know why.
The man on the roof did not say, only stretched
until the thread faded into nothing and broke off.
Gather us up, said the pilgrims. Do not let us
be swallowed up by the horizon.
The pilgrim men talked among themselves.
The sparrow-children talked among themselves.
There are men on the roof, shouted the pilgrims.
Phlebas, come down from there. But the man on the roof
spat in the dirt. He held up his basket and poured
it out, loosed his flooding lies.
Save us, we are drowning, cried the pilgrims.
There are men and women on the roof. Save us.
We are your children. Save us. We are.
He leapt down into the torrent. He did not know.
Why, asked the pilgrims. But the man in the torrent
did not answer, could not answer.
The muddy horizon swallowed him.
IV. The Next Generation
We are the sparrows on the roof.
We sound the Rite.
We are the children on the roof.
We sound the call to prayer.
Discuss this Journal entry [2]
Latest reply: Nov 10, 2001
It's only love, and that is all--why should I. . .
Posted Oct 28, 2001
Hate to post twice in a day.
Mike and I just jammed for about 4.5 hours. That was great.
We worked on "All along the Watchtower" (guitar and vocals: Mike, sax: Cooper), a Pixies song (the same), "Pick a Bale of Cotton (Unplugged)" (harmonica and backup vocals: Cooper, guitar and lead vocals: Mike), and a few of our own invention: "Statutory Rape Blues" (it's not all that bad, just an ironical statement about 'blues guys' being dirty; sax: Cooper, guitar case and vocals: Mike), "Untitled Makeout Music in D" (sax: Cooper, guitar: Mike), and "Man vs. Nature" (lyrics and lead guitar(!): Cooper, vocals and rhythm guitar, Mike).
We recorded a few tracks, and they're pretty good for a demo.
We're going to see if we can play a local club once we get a few more songs cranked out.
--Cooper
(fearing Carnivore and music critics)
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Oct 28, 2001
I don't want to think about it; I don't want to talk about it. . .
Posted Oct 27, 2001
Hey, wow, I randomly chose a lyric that's appropriate to the piece. Score.
Again, the most recent draught, likely to go through a number n more revisions, where n>2 and n is a member of the set W.
Oh, and if anyone have a suggestion for the title, let me know. This just a working title until I find the truename.
In Your Arms
I long to sing the old, old songs,
to growl the unexpected utterances.
I wish to revel in the gloss-black excuses
and bend, perhaps crack, the veneer apologies:
yet whispered prayers in unison
are obsolete here. No word,
no sum of words greater than its parts
can exceed this primitive purpose.
That which here and now supersedes speech
serves only to make words so sweet
later, elsewhere.
What can justify this hunger?
Only satisfaction of hunger itself.
--Cooper
(fearing Carnivore)
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Oct 27, 2001
In the white room with black curtains near the station, there's. . .
Posted Oct 23, 2001
Today was a great day. I jammed with my friend Mike (I on sax, he on guitar) before school and thus made enough money ($1.71) to buy lunch. Mike is an awesome guitarist. He says we're "redefining hardcore punk". Whatever that means. I play sax, harmonica, bass, percussion, woodflute, and whatever the hell else I can find for cheap at the music store, and he plays guitar, bass, and mandolin.
We've formed a band called Lemniscate. Our motto is "Nerdy Music for Nerdy People", and we pretty much play anything that comes to mind. Today, for example, we borrowed a guy's electric guitar (with Metal Zone pedal) and did an hardcore-System-of-a-Down-type version of the folk song "Pick a Bale of Cotton". That was funny-- "Me and my {screech} Pa done pick a bale {screech} of cotton". But my throat was bleeding a little bit. All's good. It's all about the music
*collapses in a fit of laughter*
I also got the first one hundred my history teacher has ever given on the first practice AP Document Based Question of the year. That was cool. The essay was about how Americans before 1776 weren't united at all.
I turned in my (extremely pacifist) short film "Garibaldi the Butcher" to the NESA Cinema/Animation Department. Hopefully it'll be produced by February or so.
Oh, and I'm moderately in love.
--Cooper
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Oct 23, 2001
Oh, dear, what can I do? Baby's in black, and I'm feeling blue. . .
Posted Sep 17, 2001
More draughts (I finally worked up the cahones to spell it that way!):
Vanishing-Point
for Rrose
When he looks into the mirror,
he wishes she were something other,
something higher, than charcoal
against taut canvas.
Through the lens
he sees her light silken hair spiralling
back behind her into the infinite
abysmal asymptote
of distance.
She becomes perfect
in each dimension,
perfectly flat, hair flowing
in the noiseless wind of her passage.
The banalities of life
sing her existence at the corners
of his eyes.
In the periphery he watches
as his brush leaves a dampness
across her, leaves wet silk
trailing behind her, sagging
back behind her.
He watches
as she passes, and the world
is full of brilliant noise,
brazen against the darkening
clouds of him.
He turns to face her,
catches the feel
of crisscrossing axes
light on his skin.
She is gone.
NOTES:
1. "Rrose" refers to Rrose Selavy. Look it up, if necessary.
2. "axes" as in the Cartesian plane, not as in the wood tool.
Dryad
She stares out from the inkiness
of the battered writing desk,
speaks arcane words—
wisdom that I wish were mine.
She is familiar, cropped hair falling light
across her chipped-paint forehead, arcane
sea-salt dripping from the upper lip,
sea-salt of tears that fleck onto my face.
Her words scatter within the heavy obscuring
grain, distant in this falling light,
in this atmosphere of salt flowing
into wounds that I wish were mine.
Her eyes shine bright against
the sunken shadows, but they, too,
scatter, lose definition across the heavy
lacquer of confusion.
She recedes against the grain, unnoticeable,
unnoticed, and foreign hazy drops of salt
fall back against the safe definition—
cool battered wood that I wish were mine.
--Cooper
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Sep 17, 2001
Cooper the Pacifist Poet
Researcher U172180
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