How I Read Aloud, 13

[And the accessibility of the "prayer" continues for you and your audience with the warmth of "just lending a helping hand."]

       The beauty of the next imagery is the lynch-pin of the poem for me.  I, you, any member of the audience is taking “a created day” and slipping it “into the archive of life,/where all our lived-out days are lying together.”  There’s something so right about that imagery, maybe especially for someone who’s built up a dossier of such days.  And the “our” wraps the speaker of the poem  (you or I) together with members of the audience.  It signals that we can talk with familiar tones, as though we and they were one.

How I Read Aloud, 12

       Look how slowed down it gets with that 4th and 5th line.  I can take the lines slow.  They’re “walk”ing lines.  There are four “you”/“your”s in those two lines, and they apply to both you and your listeners with whom you can be in direct contact.  Then in the 6th, the “words are golden” whether or not they’re real words, because the sunset is golden.

       The “you”s continue into the second stanza, with the informal “catch on” allowing you to keep an easy, direct relationship with your listeners.  And the hint of challenge in “if you don’t catch on” alerts all that they are to be participants in the grasping of this “secret.”   Of course it’s not really hard to “feel a little elevated,” and, besides, no listener would want to be the one not to catch on.  In any case, it’s only a little elevated.  And the accessibility of the “prayer” continues for you and your audience with the warmth of “just lending a helping hand.”

How I Read Aloud, 11

       Where are your sunset images derived from?  You must have a good one.  You could use it for this poem as I did.  Imagine yourself there, and each audience member will be transported, not necessarily to your exact location, but to that magical one of their own, because you are at yours.  Something happens to an audience when something happens to a performer.

       Perhaps naturally, I am near the Pacific, it’s Pacific Palisades; there’s some grassiness, and there’s the ocean; I’ve experienced sunset there a few times.

How I Read Aloud, 10

[Right away I am not a "reader," and right away the audience is not hearing "words" bur rather is being enticed to share in a secret.]

       As I read through the whole poem, I know I have not had the exact experience the poet Jacob Glatstein is evoking, but I have had some experiences keyed off by the poem.

       I have prayed, but I have also been put off by prayer; yet a sunset is so familiar I am teased to find out what comes next, and by that third line about “a juicy bit of praying,” I find it’s so disarming in its informality, almost subversive of conventional ideas of prayer, that along with the easy, pleasant sense memory of “strolling on grass,” it arouses my curiosity and makes it easier for me to think I could do the same with my listeners.

How I Read Aloud, 9

[The poem [see yesterday's post] is by Jacob Glatstein, "The Sunset Prayer."]

       This is a poem I was asked to read aloud at services.  Unfortunately, I was given only a handful of minutes to look it over before I'd have to present it.  I like much more time to prepare than that, but these are things I discovered during the ten minutes or so.
 
       The first line announces an intimate confidentiality between a speaker and his/her listener(s); the “I” and the “you” immediately let me know that I can have this relationship with my audience; I can let them in on a secret, taking a familiar tone we have all enacted or heard dozens of times.  And when I look up from the words, where do I look?  Right at the “you,” my audience; and how?  With that friendly conspiritoriality the words contain.  Right away I am not a ”reader,” and right away the audience is not hearing “words” but rather is being enticed to share in a secret.

How I Read Aloud, 8

[That art I don't know, but I would never have said to Calder, "How perfectly you balance all your mobiles!"]

       When it comes to reading aloud ... When there’s time to prepare a reading, every clue that’s there is valuable, everything that moves an audience’s attention toward important things and away from two obvious facts:  1. these are words and 2. a person is reading to them.  Take the following poem:

I’ll let you in on a secret
about how one should pray the sunset prayer.
It’s a juicy bit of praying, like strolling on grass,
Nobody’s chasing you, nobody hurries you.
You walk toward your Creator with gifts in pure, empty hands.
The words are golden,
their meaning is transparent.
It’s as though you’re saying them for the first time.

If you don’t catch on that you should feel a little elevated,
you’re not praying the sunset prayer.
The tune is sheer simplicity,
you’re just lending a helping hand to the sinking day.
It’s a heavy responsibility.
You take a created day
and slip it into the archive of life,
where all our lived-out days are lying together.
The day is departing with a quiet kiss.
It lies open at your feet
while you stand saying the blessings.
You can’t create anything yourself,
but you can lead the day to its end
And see clearly the smile of its going down.
See how whole it all is,
not diminished for a second.
How you age with the days that keep dawning.
How you bring your lived-out day as a gift to eternity.

       The poem is by Jacob Glatstein, “The Sunset Prayer.”

How I Read Aloud, 7

[What makes those words come alive for an audience isn't the "ideal voice,"...]

       I think of Alexander Calder whose mobiles I fell in love with decades ago.  I even felt encouraged to try my hand.  It’s been fun but strictly amateur.  Whatever success I’ve had has, again, been due least of all to what people seem to think is most crucial about making mobiles, balance.  How does Calder get all those elements to balance that way?  How do you do it, people ask.

       Well, of course, the invention of the suspended, moving work of art is Calder’s, and he is a genius.  He is both engineer and artist.  But once the great brainstorm of the idea for mobiles was his (and he did elaborate the idea with great creative zest), the balancing of elements is fairly rudimentary at core.  It’s the wonderful elements themselves in their wide diversity of materials from mobile to mobile, the uncannily contoured shapes he created for a given mobile and the subtle variations in form within it, it’s the vibrant color choices he made for the elements, it’s the whimsicality of his imagination in both the creating and the naming of the mobiles, all these things that make Calders the wonders they are.  I can do the balancing, but it’s the “art” of the mobile I keep “having at” and which keeps escaping me.  That art I don’t know, but I would never have said to Calder, “How perfectly you balance all your mobiles!”

How I Read Aloud, 6

[The last thing this page is--chronologically as well as in importance--is words!]

       So when you read, you’re reading the world into existence, you’re putting something on everyone’s plate, something that’s already there, from their own experience, ready to be activated into the new slant on life contained uniquely in these words and no others.  If we’ve been read well to, we’re not left with words, but a changed life.

       What makes those words come alive for an audience isn’t the “ideal voice,” it’s everything else nonvocal, nonverbal that makes the voice spring into action responsively, turns on the mind, turns up the juices, puts one into the game with a new frame of reference--first of all the reader and because of that, the listener!

How I Read Aloud, 5

       When others are asked to read aloud in front of a group and do have time to prepare a passage, I find the usual response based on the evidence is “This is a piece of cake if all I have to do is read it aloud.  I’ll just look it over a couple of times, and that’s it.  After all, it’s words, and I can read.”
 
       But whether there’s time to prepare in advance or not, the last assumption I make about a sheaf of language is that it’s words!

       The words are only pointing through to other things which are distinctly NOT words, namely some kind of experience: textures, sounds, images, attitudes, desires, fears, aspirations, tenderness, vulnerability, hate, awe, doubt, wonderment, affirmation, the grit and gristle and marvel of life, our own life.  We read this page with our own existence--up to this moment in living.  The last thing this page is--chronologically as well as in importance--is words!

How I Read Aloud, 4

[engaged in the tensions of discovery as am I.]

       The main difference between myself and some other readers in the room is that I am not self conscious, wondering and worrying whether I will stumble or how my voice sounds or if I can read well enough given that others are listening to me, but only concentrating on the unfolding play of meaning and situation and attitude that faith tells me holds some increased understanding and wisdom and delight--if I only stay with it--both for myself and others.  While we’re getting to that place of understanding, the provisional undulations of tone and meaning themselves can hold interest from moment to moment because we are mutually engaged in this joint tracking through the black marks on the page, trying to decipher what they hold.

How I Read Aloud, 3

[what's going on that makes it listenable isn't what most people would think it is.]

       I was simply following the story along from word to word as I was reading it, putting on a vocal attitude here that might be called for based on the previous few words and seeing if it works, and if it does, continuing in this vein to the end of a thought or end of the sentence, provisionally testing the ongoing flow of meaning for what it might possibly be heading toward, guessing right enough of the time to build up a bit of steam with the gathering context and implications of the story.

 
       What is making it listenable?  That my listeners are identifying with me in this impromptu situation, trying on the attitudes and tones with me, engaged in the tensions of discovery as am I.

How I Read Aloud, 2

       [The voice is incidental.]

       I’ve discovered this is true whether I’m reading something I’ve prepared and worked hard on and thought and experimented much with before reading for others, or whether I’m doing a sight reading with everyone in the room including me being exposed to material for the first time.
 
       Let’s say it’s a Chasidic tale in a class where we’re all studying to learn what it is this part of Judaism has to offer us.  Each of us reads some part aloud that’s just been handed to us, and then we talk about it.  Some appreciation of my reading is expressed by others, and yes it was fluent, and yes the guy’s got a pretty good voice (God given of course; so who could take a compliment on this personally in any case), but what’s going on that makes it listenable isn’t what most people would think it is.

How I Read Aloud, 1

       I have been blessed to have a pretty good speaking voice, but my enjoyment of and success at reading aloud has almost nothing to do with this.

       Yet people are all the time coming up to me and praising my voice as though that somehow contained the secret, as though that were the secret of my ability to read well.
 
       Maybe none of us quite has a look-in on each other's abilities and strengths; what we take as the knack or secret or ability is quite far afield from the real gift.


       In a sense the real gift is a deficiency.  I pretty much assume I don’t understand anything.  From the beginning, my reading aloud was an attempt to make out what was being said here.   The goal of getting things into my head, and sometimes into my bone and gristle, is what the reading aloud is usually about for me.

       And what I discover is, foraging through the language to try to “take” its meaning is what allows others to take the meaning, and often the coloring, and pleasure, and feeling, for themselves from my reading.  The voice is incidental.

Venice, Italy

       "The mere use of one's eyes in Venice is happiness enough."
                                    Henry James
                                    Italian Hours, 1873

       I remember asking a friend who'd been there, "What's so special about Venice?"  She responded, "Oh, my dear, it's an opera."  I knew I needn't ask more.  But I didn't really know what she or Henry James meant until Connie and I visited there.

Suburban Stonehenge

Click on photo to enlarge.

"Attention, mes éleves!"

       My post about Spanish words yesterday reminded me of something delightful while driving a road through deep forest in Southern Canada.

       Warning signs can take time to read, and you might miss their important content flying by in an automobile.  Not this one.  This one was a cutout; the whole sign was jigsawed into the clear, unambiguous shape of an elk, antlers included, easily identifiable and visible from either direction you were traveling and from either side of the road.

       And on both sides of the sign was a single word:  "Attention," which sufficed for both English and French, perfect for Canada, the whole being unmistakable in its meaning, visually and linguistically, in a single glance:  "Look out for elk on the road!"

"Olé!"/"Hola!"

       (Written last night.)

       I hope I don't do tomorrow at tennis what I did last Sunday.

       Every time my partner and I executed a winning point, I'd yell out "Hola!"  (Pronouncing it [ho-LAH].)  I didn't know what I was saying. 

       Sounded Spanish, of course, but I wasn't sure.

       AFTERWARDS.  I discovered the word I thought I was saying but wasn't: "Olé!" [o-LAY], which is Spanish for "Bravo!"

       And then I discovered the word I was saying last week, "Hola."  It is Spanish, but for "Hello!" which I shouted in triumph and self-congratulation; plus, the "h" is silent [o-LAH]!

       Now I know why they were snickering on the other side of the net.  They lost that set of tennis, but they had a laugh on me.  

Provocative sign: "Language Line"

       "Language line"--discovered on a wall near a nurses' station at Kaiser Hospital.  What's that?  Somewhere nearby, another phrase, "interpreter services available."

       Oh, a phone line to an interpreter to help translate, communicate with patients.

      But the phrase has other suggestions in it--"language line":  Wait in line to get a language?  Or "language line":   like clothes?  all of 'em hanging out to dry?

        

"Criminently"

       The word suddenly popped into my head yesterday.  I haven't thought of it for a long time.  Something from a children's book, Connie said.  Maybe a comic book, I thought, something Robin might have said to Batman:  "Criminently, Batman, that's one of the biggest thefts ever in Gotham!"

       Yes, a U.S. expression of annoyance or astonishment, but what did it come from?   Wiktionary says, "Probably formed by infixation of nonsense syllables into 'criminy'."  And "criminy"?  The OED says "crimine" or "criminy" is a late 17th century interjection which is an alteration of "Christ."

       I get it.  Discomfort at taking Christ's name in vein; so altering it into "criminy" and even more removed, and maybe sillier,  later into "criminently" (or "criminetly").

       Wiktionary cites Ray Bradbury and Tennessee Williams putting the word into characters' dialog.  [CRY-mihn-EHNT-ly]!  

Don't ask too many questions, Don.

       Sitting waiting for a blood pressure test today at the "Thrive" area of Kaiser Permanente, I looked up to see this hallway leading to what?




       I could barely discern the sign(?)  with letters through the doorway, and it looked like an optometry eye chart.  Oops, maybe I needed that test too.  The letters were a little blurry.  Could I read them?  "G..H..J..K...DEF"  But they were Conference Rooms!

       Then why didn't they put them in alphabetical order? 

"This early morn": a poem

       Last month my daughter Elizabeth celebrated her 50th birthday, and Connie and I sent a card with her natal photograph, also one taken at 50, and the following poem I wrote on her natal day:

                                        Are you blue eyed?
                                        Are you red haired?
                                        Are you whole and alive?
                                        Are you the nurse’s or mine?
                                        And what’s that chalk on arms?
                                        No crying?
                                        So complete and ready-made?
                                        Yet through suffering arrived,
                                        This early morn.
                                        That chin--it’s hers
                                        My wife’s and her whole family’s.
                                        Their chin and face.
                                        Am I in on this?
                                        Sire an offspring to my wife?
                                        It’s hers, not mine.
                                        And it’s a girl.
                                        I said it might be.
                                        But all that activity,
                                        Yet I said it might be,
                                        I suppose not believing it.
                                        Now, a girl, and hers, not mine,
                                        Yet alive, and whole,
                                        Maybe even beautiful
                                        Certainly not that ugly thing                                                I was told to expect
                                        But ours, yet ours--a girl,
                                        And ours.                                        

Bill Maher...in his Own Words?

       Connie and I watch and listen to Bill Maher "religiously" on HBO, though religion is a dirty word to Bill.

       But on the opening monolog of his most recent show Friday, February 28th, I caught Bill Maher in an ironic if not heinous phrase from his mouth.

       In reassuring us that Arizona had come up with another outlandish proposed law we would hardly credit, surprise inspections at abortion clinics, Bill said, "I swear to God."

       Bill, shame on your tongue to have uttered such a "believing word," Mr. Religulous.

Calder, 3: The words that capture the experience

"Little Face," 1962, 42 x 56 inches

     
       "But suddenly, when the agitation had left [the mobile] and it seemed lifeless again, its long, majestic tail, which until then had not moved, came to life indolently and almost regretfully, spun in the air and swept past my nose."

                              Jean-Paul Sartre, 1946

Calder, 2: "Hello Girls," "Three Quintains" (the words that title the picture)

(Please click on image to enlarge)

       "Three Quintains" is Calder's intended name for the work.  Note the three parts.  Previous post shows the main quintain alone.  Calder jokingly called the two black circles on top (semaphore-like) "Hello Girls" because they were added to be easily visible from the balcony dining area next to the pool.  LACMA thought Calder wanted that as name for the whole; a recent discovery revealed his true intentions.

       The word "quintain" dates to Ancient Rome, "fifth" street in Roman encampments, where military exercises were held.  In medieval times the word designated a crossbar on a post, able to turn, with a target on one end and a sandbag on the other, to train men on horseback for jousting.  The image is carried forth in Calder's colorful art work; here water jets and wind keep the mobile parts swinging interestingly, unpredictably.

Calder, 1: The picture worth a thousand words?

Click on Photo to Enlarge

Alexander Calder's fountain mobile, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

O, No. So Bad.

Diplomacy Begins with the Tongue

      Kind of glad to see L.A.'s new Mayor Garcetti speaking Spanish while visiting Mexico and doing a pretty good job of it from most accounts.

       Of course he had some lapses, not being a native speaker.  In one fairly notable instance, he was trying to say "the social fabric," and his Spanish made it fabrica social.  Unfortunately, el tejido social would have been correct.  What the Mayor uttered translates as "the social manufacturing plant."

       Writing for the L.A. times today, reporter Richard Fausset said:  "If Garcetti had been speaking French on a diplomatic mission to Paris, he might have been harangued--or even hanged--for his errors.  But Mexicans tend not to be such purists, and they have built up decades of tolerance for visitors from El Norte mangling their mother tongue."

Calder's Universe, and Einstein's

       I'm looking forward to seeing about my fifth Alexander Calder exhibit this coming Friday.

       LACMA curator Stephanie Barron noted in the L.A. Times this week that when Albert Einstein saw Calder's work in 1943 at MOMA, he "spent 45 minutes looking" at one mobile, watching it go through its total pattern of changes.

       Finally Einstein said, "I wish I had thought of that." 

Nostalgia Is Setting In...

Johnny Ray/Justin Timberlake, Take Note

       With Crimea and Ukraine in the scary news at this time,  my son David told me that there is indeed a place called "Crimea River."

Reigning Smart Phones

       Connie and I each purchased smart phones yesterday for the first time and learned that we're protected by the "cloud."

       In other words, the way I understand it, if everything we put into our phones evaporates somehow, we can still get it to rain down on us.