new dance

went out tonight
to see the new paul taylor piece

along with esplanade
which remains among the most beautiful things I've ever seen

phantasmagoria
brings half a dozen different things into the frame

and lets them sort of collide
except collisions break things

whereas what happens here
is an absolute harmony

in which the old yeats question
becomes totally incomprehensible

it's tremendous
but esplanade

man
I'm pretty sure that's one of the greatest things ever attempted by anyone

I've seen it twice now
and I like vivaldi & all

but I think you could perform this piece
without any music at all

and I'd still end up in the same condition
awed

wrecked
shouting with joy

I knew but didn't know
a guy who shot himself last summer

I feel like somewhere in esplanade
is the truth that would liberate the suicides

we all grow up
and endure partings that separate us from more things than one

our younger selves
our sense of play

the spectre of some internal divorce
from the self that makes us who we are

looms
and threatens to capture us in spreading shadow

we can't let that happen
we have to feel everything as deeply as we can

let it run through us
and then having taken in

as much as we can
leap into the air

with our friends by our sides
and if not with friends

then with the audience before us
knowing they're there

whether we can see them or not
in the often

blinding
glare of the footlights

the temple at the end of the cosmos

gonna go out on a limb here
and say that somewhere out beyond the final star in the universe
there is a building
standing on a grassy hill

suspended there in the final iteration of all seeing
like the cover
of some trippy science fiction
paperback

and since I am feeling emboldened to describe things
seen by few and remembered by fewer
let me further speculate that there is a record player inside the building
and speakers in the windows on the second floor

the speakers point out toward the small field
whose terminus is the void;
the turntable to which they are connected
plays a ride for revenge album

the album is called wisdom of the few
its sleeve is on hi-gloss stock
and it's an awesome record
no matter what anybody tells you

if you listen to it now as many times as you can
then when you arrive at that final floating island
it will feel very familiar to you.
on the other hand

if you wait
then you'll be really surprised
the choice is yours,
as mr. case, my algebra teacher, used to say

foam hands

the rain falls in early June on the green prairie that must somewhere have a beginning but the prairie if asked: "where was your origin?" wouldn't answer, not because it has no mouth to speak of or with but because neither it nor any of us on it have any idea the question resembles "what is zero minus zero" some places when you're there make a point of quietly and effortlessly erasing all that preceded them when we emerge from these places we find that they have congealed around a point somewhere in our thoughts and the point resembles a...

Read more »