The Prelude.

[luka]

We beat with thundering hoofs the level sand.

horse-faction across the world island/terrible speed &
the massed percussion of horse-hooves galloping &
the billowing shroud of dust .

 

[luka]

Midway on long Winander's eastern shore,
Within the crescent of a pleasant bay,
A tavern stood; no homely-featured house,
Primeval like its neighbouring cottages,
But 'twas a splendid place, the door beset
With chaises, grooms, and liveries, and within
Decanters, glasses, and the blood-red wine.
In ancient times, and ere the Hall was built
On the large island, had this dwelling been
More worthy of a poet's love, a hut,
Proud of its own bright fire and sycamore shade.
But—though the rhymes were gone that once inscribed
The threshold, and large golden characters,
Spread o'er the spangled sign-board, had dislodged
The old Lion and usurped his place, in slight
And mockery of the rustic painter's hand—
Yet, to this hour, the spot to me is dear
With all its foolish pomp. The garden lay
Upon a slope surmounted by a plain
Of a small bowling-green; beneath us stood
A grove, with gleams of water through the trees
And over the tree-tops; nor did we want
Refreshment, strawberries and mellow cream.
There, while through half an afternoon we played
On the smooth platform, whether skill prevailed
Or happy blunder triumphed, bursts of glee
Made all the mountains ring. But, ere night-fall,
When in our pinnace we returned at leisure
Over the shadowy lake, and to the beach
Of some small island steered our course with one,
The Minstrel of the Troop, and left him there,
And rowed off gently, while he blew his flute
Alone upon the rock—oh, then, the calm
And dead still water lay upon my mind
Even with a weight of pleasure, and the sky,
Never before so beautiful, sank down
Into my heart, and held me like a dream!
Thus were my sympathies enlarged, and thus
Daily the common range of visible things
Grew dear to me: already I began
To love the sun; a boy I loved the sun,
Not as I since have loved him, as a pledge
And surety of our earthly life, a light
Which we behold and feel we are alive;
Nor for his bounty to so many worlds—
But for this cause, that I had seen him lay
His beauty on the morning hills, had seen
The western mountain touch his setting orb,
In many a thoughtless hour, when, from excess
Of happiness, my blood appeared to flow
For its own pleasure, and I breathed with joy.
And, from like feelings, humble though intense,
To patriotic and domestic love
Analogous, the moon to me was dear;
For I could dream away my purposes,
Standing to gaze upon her while she hung
Midway between the hills, as if she knew
No other region, but belonged to thee,
Yea, appertained by a peculiar right
To thee and thy grey huts, thou one dear Vale!

 

[luka]

The word 'worthy' comes up a lot. In three ways so far. I can be or fail to be worthy of a scene or event. I can be or fail to be worthy of myself. Or a scene can be or fail to be worthy of the poet.

The sense I'm most interested in applies to a kind of sympathetic resonance, the kind of sympathetic resonance we find all through the prelude.

 

[luka]

The same principle, of being worthy, of being equal to, of sympathetic resonance, applies to reading or to listening. Heart strings.

 

[luka]

I don't want to stretch this too far because I don't have any music theory and I'll get it wrong.

 

[luka]

Thus were my sympathies enlarged

 

[luka]

This is the crux the whole thing, I think. This is still the only place where we can get real results. And it's still fraught with indissoluble contradictions. What is the perfect encounter?

We know that the face an object shows to us changes with each encounter. We know that sometimes we seem to see more, and sometimes less, sometimes with clarity and vigour, sometimes dimly and indistinctly. Sometimes the figure stands out bold and vivid from its ground, at other times it fades into it.

So that even if we reject the idea of the perfect encounter we at least have a scale implicit in this, degrees of clarity and strength. That we may be more or less equal to the encounter. The doors of perception more or less cleansed or cloudy.

And the same holds true for other qualities, for emotional resonance for instance, that we are touched or we fail to be touched. That we are roused by what is rousing, hushed by what is soothing, that we are saddened by what is sorrowful, excited by what is stimulating, aroused by what is arousing, or we are not. That that excitation crosses over into us, or it doesn't.

And also we have some sense of this emotion transmitted being either genuine or false, the true coin or the forgery. Some sense of it being worthy of us or beneath us, something we willingly share or something we are bound to reject, or that we feel cheapened and soiled by.

We have also an axis which runs from the mundane to the sacred and again, separate encounters with the same object can fall anywhere on this scale. Being now numinous, now banal.

And we have some implicit sense of how all this might be coloured by our own moods and prejudices, fears and desires, what we might project onto it or filter the perception of it through.

There's a phrase in Northrop Frye's book on Blake, Fearful Symmetry, that reads, 'perception is self-development'. I think that's right. I think we can learn from Blake here. And from all sorts of other people, particularly those concerned with perception and relationship. From Martin Buber and his notion of I and Thou, and from the whole psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic tradition and the various ways they have tried to facilitate a kind of perception which is free, as free as possible, from the kind of delusions and pitfalls and failures we have described. Even from notions which perhaps seem messianic, like Carl Rogers demanding unconditional love towards the client. Can we adopt that attitude towards what is before us?

To not interrupt the stimulus before it reaches the heart, to avoid rushing to name it, categorise and define it. Keeping that openness and suspension of judgement as a way to let it work upon you and unfold in its own time-span and time-pulse. To see more of something is always to see it better, to see it in its full magical dimension, as a thing which exists, a part of the fabric of the universe, to see the full extent of its implications and the forces and modes of being it partakes of.

There's a kind of valve, an aperture which can dilate and close, as faith expands and doubt contracts, which governs the immediacy and intensity of the encounter. To what degree we allow it to touch us. What is demanded of us is attention, not a critical, guarded attention but a surrender. This is gestalt's contact boundary, Reich's armouring, any conceptualisation of closing down and opening up.

This work is what the 'listen to this thread' was for but as soon as trust is broken it falls apart which is where the Carl Rogers comes in, where the necessity for an attitude of good will becomes vital. It's very tricky and any impatience or irritation or suspicion of motives makes it impossible. Mostly we fail. Mostly we are inadequate to the encounter, not equal to it. Personalities intrude and position coarsen and harden.

We don't read what people write, we alight on this or that word and fill in the blanks ourselves. We hear assumed intentions and not what is actually said. We don't wait for the stimulus to reach us, we preempt it before it reaches its target define it and calcify it.

And the rock all this founders on, or at least what makes this problematic, is what is discussed in prior posts, how does this relate to an encounter with what we hate, or what we consider second rate, or fraudulent, or pernicious? What happens when we recoil, or sneer or snarl. How do we marry this ideal with our desire to value and to judge, to rank and order and condemn? We don't want to become pious and we don't want to only see 'the good in everything.' We have to be able to see what is rotten too.

I'm not sure how that works yet but I am sure that the old model of music criticism, of liking and disliking and the attempt to impose our own subjectivity on the world at large, has been exploded, is completely defunct and good riddance.

"What'" it will be Question'd, "When the Sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a Guinea?" O no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty."

 

[luka]

My tendency has been to think in terms of a convergence. So instead of beauty inhering exclusively in the beautiful object or solely in the subjective experience it's a product of a meeting.

This allows me to deny that these experiences are wholly subjective thus letting me cling on to a notion of value or if not of value then at least of objective difference, while at the same time helps account for all those occasions on which encounter with the beautiful object fails to engender an experience of beauty.

Why this song here, which on one occasion moved me profoundly, today is dross. Why this landscape, which I know in my heart is beautiful, can't induce me to lift up my eyes from my phone.

The encounter becomes the point at which beauty is situated, and dependent on ourselves being equal to what if offered. Being able to switch into the I-Thou mode of Buber, not just towards people but towards place, towards the artwork etc

 

[luka]

One of the things I keep saying is that reading, like listening, is terrifically hard. The times during which we are equal to the act of reading are few and far between, it hardly ever happens. Hardly ever. It's a kind of grace.

"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”

How often can you say that?

 

[luka]

I often don't feel equal to a view. Just as I don't always feel equAl to a piece of music, book, painting, conversation. Sometimes I'm not tuned in. Not open enough.

 

[luka]

Those incidental charms which first attached
My heart to rural objects, day by day
Grew weaker, and I hasten on to tell
How Nature, intervenient till this time
And secondary, now at length was sought
For her own sake. But who shall parcel out
His intellect by geometric rules,
Split like a province into round and square?
Who knows the individual hour in which
His habits were first sown, even as a seed?
Who that shall point as with a wand and say
"This portion of the river of my mind
Came from yon fountain?" Thou, my Friend! art one
More deeply read in thy own thoughts; to thee
Science appears but what in truth she is,
Not as our glory and our absolute boast,
But as a succedaneum, and a prop
To our infirmity. No officious slave
Art thou of that false secondary power
By which we multiply distinctions, then
Deem that our puny boundaries are things
That we perceive, and not that we have made.
To thee, unblinded by these formal arts,
The unity of all hath been revealed,
And thou wilt doubt, with me less aptly skilled
Than many are to range the faculties
In scale and order, class the cabinet
Of their sensations, and in voluble phrase
Run through the history and birth of each
As of a single independent thing.
Hard task, vain hope, to analyse the mind,
If each most obvious and particular thought,
Not in a mystical and idle sense,
But in the words of Reason deeply weighed,
Hath no beginning

@constant escape

 

[luka]

succedaneum
/ˌsʌksɪˈdeɪnɪəm/

noun
DATED•LITERARY

1. a substitute, especially for a medicine or drug.

 

[luka]

Blest the infant Babe,
(For with my best conjecture I would trace
Our Being's earthly progress,) blest the Babe,
Nursed in his Mother's arms, who sinks to sleep
Rocked on his Mother's breast; who with his soul
Drinks in the feelings of his Mother's eye!
For him, in one dear Presence, there exists
A virtue which irradiates and exalts
Objects through widest intercourse of sense.
No outcast he, bewildered and depressed:
Along his infant veins are interfused
The gravitation and the filial bond
Of nature that connect him with the world.
Is there a flower, to which he points with hand
Too weak to gather it, already love
Drawn from love's purest earthly fount for him
Hath beautified that flower; already shades
Of pity cast from inward tenderness
Do fall around him upon aught that bears
Unsightly marks of violence or harm.
Emphatically such a Being lives,
Frail creature as he is, helpless as frail,
An inmate of this active universe.
For feeling has to him imparted power
That through the growing faculties of sense
Doth like an agent of the one great Mind
Create, creator and receiver both,
Working but in alliance with the works
Which it beholds.—Such, verily, is the first
Poetic spirit of our human life,
By uniform control of after years,
In most, abated or suppressed; in some,
Through every change of growth and of decay,
Pre-eminent till death

 

[luka]

It's funny when you're a little kid you want the experimental weird stuff then when you get older you want the classics, the stodgy bread pudding of English literature

It's like when you grow up with hiphop and jungle and hear the samples before the originals

 

[luka]

The Prelude.

 

[pattycakes_]

It's like when you grow up with hiphop and jungle and hear the samples before the originals

The source is usually richer in nutrients

 

[luka]

The source is usually richer in nutrients

Maybe it is. There's a special magic in going backwards in time though, and reading the first chapter last.

 

[luka]

Maybe it is. There's a special magic in going backwards in time though, and reading the first chapter last.

Reading the magicians nephew after the lion the witch and the wardrobe made me feel like this when I was a child.

 

[constant escape]

Those incidental charms which first attached
My heart to rural objects, day by day
Grew weaker, and I hasten on to tell
How Nature, intervenient till this time
And secondary, now at length was sought
For her own sake. But who shall parcel out
His intellect by geometric rules,
Split like a province into round and square?
Who knows the individual hour in which
His habits were first sown, even as a seed?
Who that shall point as with a wand and say
"This portion of the river of my mind
Came from yon fountain?" Thou, my Friend! art one
More deeply read in thy own thoughts; to thee
Science appears but what in truth she is,
Not as our glory and our absolute boast,
But as a succedaneum, and a prop
To our infirmity. No officious slave
Art thou of that false secondary power
By which we multiply distinctions, then
Deem that our puny boundaries are things
That we perceive, and not that we have made.
To thee, unblinded by these formal arts,
The unity of all hath been revealed,
And thou wilt doubt, with me less aptly skilled
Than many are to range the faculties
In scale and order, class the cabinet
Of their sensations, and in voluble phrase
Run through the history and birth of each
As of a single independent thing.
Hard task, vain hope, to analyse the mind,
If each most obvious and particular thought,
Not in a mystical and idle sense,
But in the words of Reason deeply weighed,
Hath no beginning

@constant escape

It does often seem like, if the distinction between map and territory is kept in mind, that certain ceilings to hubristic libidinal ascent are lifted.

 

[constant escape]

That quote that @woops shared, about genius being an unlimited reserve of pains to be taken, really clicked with me. I had not thought of those two things being so intimately connected, yet alone identified with one another.