sensitive silence: a poem.

The silence of the sea. Random music musing. War=Wall between two humans.*

“How lucky you are to live by the sea. What I like most about the sea is its silence. I’m talking about what is hidden. What can be perceived underneath. One must learn to listen to it.”

I want to say something but I just cannot vocalize because it is too sensitive to talk about. Silence is a great wall. Sometimes some music can break through the wall. If only more have ears to hear. Pure music is always without words, without singing. It is a form of silence. The sound of silence. Yet it tells stories that touch the heart. If only more will write the kind of music of yesteryears. Music that can break through walls and wars, time and space. But we each hear a different beat. So there is no condemnation for any differences if need be. We are designed to be different.

Here are just my rambling phrases being strung together in the name of a poem:

<a random rambling poem>

hear the music in your ear

sounding soft and clear

enduring endearing until you shed a tear

will not bend under tyrannical smear and tear

only the strong heart can bear

to the very end

if land does end

yet hope does not despair

hark ahoy a land

ocean’s heart’s prepared

blue beyond

for all anchoring wayfaring sons

not forlorn

surely you’ll hear

a horn

friends or foes

come what may

all sailor men must bear that day

with one heart they do not fear

nor ever by dismayed

fogs will clear

wars will end

at land’s end

for all

adieu

Ka, 2021-05-03

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*le silence de la mer: Bach 8th. Prelude & Fugue – Le Silence De La Mer (2004) [https://youtu.be/-FZhYsfyeTg] (movie excerpts)

[https://youtu.be/UqYAGUc4EmY] BWV853 WTC 1-08 Prelude & Fugue in eb & d# Rosalyn Tureck 1953 mono

Don’t look back, she says, I am not there

a Nostalgia look.
He likes to look at some old things, things of another era. Of course neither she nor he belongs to those ages. They are far too young to have any idea of what life was like in those times. But he has heard stories from parents and grandparents of the time they were. It is hard to imagine that these loved ones had been through another time and space of which he has no part. Like this old car, sitting calmly in a museum as an serene early retiree who has maintained herself well. Yes, 1953 is not really a long way away. Nostalgia is a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Somehow when he walks into this old car museum he seems to have met these cars before. He can feel a sentiment of something, like a long gone association which has come back. He has never owned an old car. Was it in a movie when he imagined him driving one with her beside him? Somewhere in time? No, she always says, don’t look back, I am not there.

It takes a very long time to become young.

“It takes a very long time to become young.” I agree with this wise statement from Pablo Picasso. It sometimes takes a whole life time to become young. As I searched the internet for the word, “YOUTH”, I came across this movie called, Youth (Italian: La giovinezza), a 2015 Italian comedy-drama film written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino. The song called, Simple Song #3, really touched me. I did not cry buckets of tears which perhaps the director did when he finally chose this song among the many the composer David Lang sent him. According to a story he wanted David Lang to send him a song that could make him cry more than just a bit. But I have tears in my heart when I listened to the song.
It is a simple contemporary classic song sung in simple lyrics but beautiful when sung with passion. The song plays an important role as it is both the hero, a retired composer, Fred’s most beloved work and one that transmits a hidden emotional message to his wife. His wife is senile, and living at a care home in Venice. He wrote the song in younger days for her to perform.

It stars Michael Caine (83) and Harvey Keitel(77) as best friends who reflect on their lives while holidaying in the Swiss Alps. “It is a story of the eternal struggle between age and youth, the past and the future, life and death, commitment and betrayal.” The cast also includes Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, and Jane Fonda.

Fred turns down an invitation by an emissary for Queen Elizabeth II to perform his popular piece “Simple Songs” at her husband Prince Philip’s birthday concert, claiming he is not interested in performing any more – although he still composes pieces in his head when alone. Later when approached again by the emissary, he explains (and heard by his daughter) that he won’t perform “Simple Songs” because the soprano part belongs only to his wife and she can no longer sing.

When I ponder on the subject of “Youth”, I have no words but words already well expressed by others, such as the song and the bit of the story concerning a man and his wife who is no longer singing. I also quote below words expressed by a writer and a poet who mean what youth really means to me in this season of pondering over life and the inevitable aging of youth.

Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you’ve been.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile”
― E.E. Cummings, Complete Poems, 1904-1962

Youth

a long goodbye: a haiku (and a prose)

like a movie scene

they pose and say long goodbye

captured time and space

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Their relationship is at an impasse. Neither gives way. At some points they have to say goodbye but no one will say it first. Like a movie scene, the moment of freeze is captured on screen. Yet movies often promise good endings. Some of the famous ones are as follows:

Casablanca had its world premiere on November 26, 1942 at the Hollywood Theatre in New York. The final line of this brilliant film was spoken by nightclub owner Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) to collaborationist police boss Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) as they leave vanquished Morocco to join the Free French army in West Africa.

“Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” said Bogart.

In the first Back to the Future, a 1985 film directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg, Dr. Emmet Brown (Christopher Lloyd) says to Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox):

“Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.”

Unashamedly tear-jerking – the final lines to Frank Capra’s 1946 film ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ are spoken by Zuzu and then George Bailey (James Stewart).

“Look, Daddy. Teacher says, every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.”
“That’s right, that’s right. Attaboy, Clarence.”

In the final scene of the Oscar-winning 1939 weepie Gone With the Wind, southern belle Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) is left standing in the hall of her mansion after Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) walks out on her with the parting shot: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”. The words O’Hara utters – almost the same as in Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 book – are optimistic:
“I’ll go home and I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day!”