Because it promises so much, a trip to the bookstore can be irritating, even downright frustrating when it happens to not shelve a particular book one is looking for. I sometimes find myself cursing whoever is in charge for the oversights ("You don't have Slaughterhouse Five?! Really?!"). At moments like that one grumbles, but is reassured that the book can be found online, at least. Back home, it's only a matter of seconds for Amazon to dutifully ship it to you the next day.

Yet one is missing something if they cite this as reason for shutting down the physical stores. Sure, the stocks there are finite, and sure, it sometimes lets you down because of that. But where else are you confronted by a great mass of books, staring in you the face, leaving you in awe of both your ignorance but also instilling you with a yearning to read until time runs out? Standing in the middle of the store, all around you are nothing but pages and pages of other men's thoughts, confessions, lives. At a particular author's section - if you're lucky! - you get to see his works neatly laid out, all those years of work sitting quietly next to each other. Flipping through the pages of any book, for a second, one is half tempted to sit down then and there and read through the entire thing. Even if the book is only vaguely familiar, it can be cause for hope: the sound of the title, the direction implied by the dust jacket, and the style that jumps out from a few pages picked at random - the excitement it generates at the possibility of this being one's next ticket to bliss!

Of course, one can conjure a similar sensation online: browse through the Amazon archives of literature and find yourself weeping at how there simply is no time for all of it. But does it have the same visceral feeling as when one is overwhelmed in the physical world? Hardly. No doubt the online store has its place. But it's purely a commercial affair. At the bookstore, sure, I'd like to buy something, but I'm also there for the experience.

I don't mean to suggest that the death of the physical bookstore - not as imminent as that of the record store, but definitely somewhere on the horizon - signals the death of books themselves. Ultimately, if you have the thing in your hand, you spend your time going through the pages rather than thinking about where you purchased it. (The electronic reader, of course, now that is the death of the book ;-)) But like a book itself, the trip to the bookstore offers an escape from the world. When it's just you and a shelf of books, the possibilities seem limitless. Life seems not so bad. There is the promise of satisfaction till the end of all time. The ego yields, the mind warmly accepts the limits of its own knowledge, and is thirsty for answers.

I recall the same -

A reply
A plan you once had
From time down to mine
That time was bad
So I knew where I was
Alone
And so at home.

The words lift me, and I am no longer walking, but instead flying up high, leaving behind my mind, floating away from the bad dreams, the chatter of unwelcome voices, the black that my steps were leading me to towards. Once up here, it seems remarkable that I haven't stumbled already, that I've made it so far without falling down and breaking apart. All I have now is the song. I can imagine myself singing the tune to infinity, till the stars run out and the moon has no more light to give. Perhaps this is no beacon taking me back home, and perhaps I will have to come down again and walk on. But carrying the song gives me hope, for at least I know my notions are not wholly my own. Whatever my feelings, some scrap, some shard has blossomed in another heart, and some other soul has felt the longing I grapple with every night & day. After a long time, I remember what it is like to pause and gaze longingly at the heavens. The moment is alive, the sky lit up. In every direction, there is only light.

I saw you sitting there, in the tower beyond time, watching the entire universe unfold. As I entered from the savage lands outside, soaked in fear and perspiration, I immediately felt time stop and take a breath. Before I could explain what had happened, the sight of you sitting in contemplation was everything. Your gaze slowly met mine, and I received the most knowing smile of my life. I could only melt under its power. Without words, you confirmed that each of us has a fate, and that you know mine. I knew then what I always suspected: fairest, it's you who rules our world.

You must realize that no one teaches me these things. That I know of, I've never actually met anyone dabbling seriously in writing; finding a reader is tough enough, a writer nigh impossible in the circles I move around. Whatever improvements in my pieces that are apparent through the years are the product of some form of common sense, but it's one that I've had to work hard for. Even now, I'll admit that there are times when I imagine that I've outgrown most of the problems that plagued my early writing. I'll write a particularly satisfying piece and pat myself on the back for the accomplishment. The darn problem is, it isn't always that easy. Heck, a good 50% of my drafts are either deleted or become posts I purposely avoid when perusing my archives. Much as I'd like to think otherwise, it isn't the case that with time my first drafts are somehow magically better. Perhaps all that has changed is my understanding of what makes something good; where once I would have published straight away, citing the trueness of emotion as reason enough, now at least I spare you, dear reader ;-)

"Trueness of emotion", now I think I can make that claim about what I write. I certainly don't find myself sitting at the desk and manufacturing things to write about. But it takes time to realize that there has to be something more than just an emotion, however valid. In Tobias Wolff's Old School, there is a beautiful little section where Frost himself (!) defends his school of aesthetics against claims of it being insufficient to capture the complex uncertainties of modern life, circa the early '60s. In particular, he rallies against the notion that form, most prominently rhyme, is somehow naive in its belief that everything has a neat resolution: words join together, the poem has finality, and as a result the world inside bears no resemblance to the real one. "Form might be all we have", he says, and it made me think. After all, it really is tempting to argue the counterpoint to Frost, namely that structure implies a certain...sense underlying things. Heck, isn't this part of my defense of Berryman a few posts ago? Regardless of how true that statement is, throwing our hands up at the brutality of the world and giving in to anarchy (blank verse ;-)), well, as he says, perhaps that is mere laziness!

Why this topic is particularly interesting to me is the case of music. I've often thought that classical is simply incapable of addressing the emotions that popular music does so well. When pressed for details, I usually say something about the uncertainty of life that's captured in, say, a Tom Waits song. It's to be expected - were our nature of expression the same as two centuries ago, it would be cause for concern - but are these changes or, if you will, improvements? I used to learn towards the latter, insofar as I thought that the classical form was simply antiquated after a point. Yet, perhaps it is me who is antiquated! It might be that the emotions I champion are simply unable to stand by themselves. Without form, perhaps the emotions and feelings crumble into dust when faced with the ravages of time. I'm willing to admit that it could all be a matter of time before I realize such things. Not that I've completely switched sides, mind you, but I'm now wary of having a firm stance on this issue.

I don't know if there have been many books that have changed my life. But in several instances, like this one, literature has made me pause and think deeper about things I took for granted. Long may it last.

1) Ween, "She's Your Baby". With time apart from the wonder duo, one forgets that even minor songs display a remarkable acuity. To think I once found this a weak end to an otherwise fine album! It strikes me that, if it wasn't obvious already, the band is now firmly in the category of the great mystics for me. Songwriting whose source I simply cannot fathom, but lord bless it doubly for it.

2) The Go-Betweens, "As Long As That". Another potential wonder duo in the context of my life, but it's too early to say. There's something special in the care displayed in the lyrics, which tempts one to use the phrase "poetic"; but given the term's associations with popular song, the intent is diffused. Anyhow, the same care undeniably makes proceedings a bit dry, in general; refined, but with none of the electric energy the medium conducts so well. But "I've got a feeling / It sounds like a fact / It's been around / As long as that"? Lines like this are why I once wanted to be a songwriter.

Through complete chance I came across the following article on Berryman's legacy resulting from the Dream Songs, and on the reasons for the popularity of the latter. The conclusion is pretty dim: the popularity is attributed more to sociological reasons (put crassly, the "cool" factor associated with reading poetry that initially seems resistant to easy interpretation) than any inherent worth in the poems! In particular he claims that they represent a school of thought that is fundamentally incompatible with good poetry, namely, obscurity and the lack of cogency. What the school allows is the for the glorification of snippets of phrases and lines that appear among the weeds, with the rest being vaguely cited as realistic or the like. The school's approach is to avoid the difficult road of creating something with meaning and coherence; instead it is akin to randomly spraying a jumble of words and leaving it to the reader to affix meaning to them.

It makes for fascinating reading, and I embrace the idea that we must at least be willing to point out when something is championed for reasons other than self-worth. I think a lot of my qualms with certain strands of popular music can be characterized by the arguments made in the article: once we let go of structure, it can be thrilling but it's difficult to tell one item from the next. Perhaps that explains the lack of consensus on such things. The author makes this point when he states his belief that no two people will have the same notion of what any particular Dream Song is about. I don't think that there is necessarily any inherent meaning to poetry - there is space inside the words and their texture to let the reader insert his own mind and experiences - but there's a difference in having space between valleys and just having a blank slate. One can affix meaning to anything; but when we are hinted as to which direction to travel, the results are much more resonant, as a general principle. So even forgetting the fact that the latter requires more skill on the poet's part, in terms of what is more powerful, it's clear that the poem with meaning is the one with greater intrinsic worth.

Given my limited exposure to the poems in the Dream Songs - I've been through the original batch, but with some generous skipping - I'm wary to comment too much on his specific criticism of the writing. I completely agree that #44, say, is tough to figure out. But had he chosen any of the well known ones - say, #1, #14, #29, #50 - I wonder if you could draw the same conclusion. Which would refute his stance insofar as it shows that there is something substantive in the poems; it just may not be there in all of them. It seems more reasonable then to explain its popularity based on the good ones rather than chalk it up to a form of mob mentality. If you were to press me further and ask why I like those poems, I might concede that in some cases there's a particularly good line that makes the poem memorable, but by no means are these good lines amongst an array of impenetrable ones: they're just neat summarizations of the feeling of the dream song in question. Quite often they're funny, too, which it strikes me must be another explanation for the popularity of the work. I can't imagine too many people laughing at Tennyson the way they might at a dream song, and so that gives it a certain novelty. Given this, I'd imagine that there are quite a few readers today for whom this style of poetry seems more, well, real than the alternatives.

The article did its job in one sense, in that it made me pause and reconsider my stance on art in general. I'd like to think I'm above the mass that is attracted to something just because it is strange or different - I'm much more interested if the thing is resonant. But is there some part of me that is excited by the idea of the Dream Songs more than the poems themselves? Is the kick I get out of "Are you radioactive, pal? / Pal, radioactive" not much more than the thrill of absurdity? Sure: these things are just human nature, as the author points out. I'm not sure that as a mere consumer of the arts, one should take pains to be dispassionate and clear about why one likes something; but of course the other extreme can mean that you shut yourself out from what's genuinely good, in favour of something that satisfies a more easily pleased impulse. I think the important point to be made is that often, one can sense there is a reason behind liking something, but it is just out of reach; that is different from liking something with no concrete understanding of why that is. Not a warning sign necessarily, but certainly a common occurrence when the item in question is of questionable intrinsic value. I suppose my take is that it's fine to get taken in by things head over heels, but every now and again it pays to stop and reflect.

Between pages, on the right day,
Sometimes I find my mind stray
To your question
And a younger man's reply.
Oh, there's no plot without you,
Every word sounds untrue;
I close my book,
Curse my mouth and sigh.

To begin by asking whether I exist on a different plane is rarely a good sign. But sometimes...how else can I put it. I find myself capable of what one could call the ability to abstract, but it's only in the things that count; that is, life and people. I am triggered by words, phrases, a certain look that reveals pure innocence in contrast to a world consumed by noise and ambiguity. These lead me to uncharted moods where I can almost imagine what is happening in another heart, where I can sense its consonance to the spirals of my own mind. By understanding just one person outside the self, even if for a moment, all of mankind appears illuminated. And what a beautiful sight it is.

Sister I'm a poet

Hiding behind those sweet spectacles was an astonishing heart. I was already confident of his innocence of spirit, but I never thought his interests were of a literary bent. He expressed this fact with a line so concise, so beautiful, that I will never forget it. To think, all the hours I've toiled over verse, clunkily making words rhyme, and yet never once have I broadcast this hobby to the world at large. When faced then with such a free statement, so lacking in pretense, I was simply left in awe as it glided past my many layers of cynicism. In just a single line, he reminded of a fundamental truth: what beauty in mankind.

1) John Prine, "The Torch Singer". I've underestimated Diamonds In The Rough for quite a while. I now think that side A may be as good as the debut. With songs like these, he conjures up a lazy, dusty feeling that I imagine many songwriters make it their life goal to capture. I can't imagine anything else in music, let alone art, that's imbued with the same state of mind. He makes a strong case for folk-rock turning out to be favourite genre after all.

2) Morrissey, "All You Need Is Me". As long as the old master can write lyrics like these, all will be well with the world. It brings me a smile that recalls "Suedehead".

3) Neil Young, "Thrasher". I've mildly oscillated with Young over the years, but hearing this after a long time was a revelation. I always admired the prettiness of the tune, but used to prefer the direct lyrical punch of "Powderfinger". But with time that stance has shifted somewhat, and I see a new subtlety in the song. Once more, it's all about the feeling. In the rise and fall of the melody, we discover that perhaps there are more roads than we once thought. In the clarity of the morning sun, one realizes that there is a life somewhere out there, and all we have to do is accept it.