The Half-Remarkable Question

I was introduced to the music of the Incredible String Band in the fall of my Freshman year at Ohio U. The playfulness of their unusual instrumentation, Scottish accents and metaphysical themes all combined to resonate with some part of my own interior quest for meaning. To this day I still smile when the climax of "Ducks On A Pond" is playing on my inner soundtrack.

"Following my fortune now the Holy Grail is found
and the Holy Bread of Heaven is given all around;
Farewell sorrow, praise God the open door
I ain't got no home in this world any more."

In literature, the word Onomatopoeia refers to words in which the sound of the word echos the thing itself. Examples might include words like sizzle, splat, eek, boing, gurgle.

The other night I was thinking about the Incredible String Band's song "The Letter", how the song itself was delivered in a style that reflected the song's message, much the same as those words that sound like what they are. "The Letter" is about how light-hearted the recipient became when he received it and that even the plane that brought it "must have been a little bit lighter."  

The lyrics sparkle and the song sprinkles some of that sparkling into one's very heart if you let it. 

* * * 

"The Half-Remarkable Question" is the last track on Wee Tam, which was sold as a double album, the second disc being called The Big Huge. The questions make me think of Paul Gaugin's famous painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? 

These really are the big questions, and I sometimes wonder if anyone is asking them any more? And if not, why not? 

The Half-Remarkable Question  

Who moved the black castle
Who moved the white queen
When Gimme and Daleth were standing between?

Out of the evening growing a veil
Pining for the pine woods that ached for the sail
There's something forgotten I want you to know
The freckles of rain they are telling me so

Oh, it's the old forgotten question
What is it that we are part of?
And what is it that we are?

And an elephant madness has covered the sun
The judge and the juries they play for the fun
They've torn up the roses and washed all the soap
And the martyr who marries them dares not elope

Oh, it's the never realized question
What is it that we are part of?
And what is it that we are?

Oh long, oh long ever yet my eyes
Braved the gates enormous fire
And the body folded 'round me
And the person in me grew

The flower and its petal
The root and its grasp
The earth and its bigness
The breath and its gasp

The mind and its motion
The foot and its move
The life and its pattern
The heart and its love

Oh, it's the old forgotten question
What is it that we are part of?
And what is it that we are?

* * * 
You can listen to the song here.

I still enjoy their music and listen from time to time. Here's a favorite, simple and profound: Air. Keep in mind that, like Dylan for some, the Incredible String Band is an acquired taste. I won't hold it against you if they aren't your cup of tea. 

Throwback Thursday: Remembering the Poet Thomas Traherne

Thomas Traherne Stained Glass by Tomm Denny, 2007.
Photo Pam Fray, Creative Commons license. 

You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars.
~ Thomas Traherne

He was born the son of a shoemaker, but went on to college and ultimately became a parish priest and a poet. I discovered him through a reference in a song by the Incredible String Band called Douglas Traherne Harding, which begins....

When I was born I had no head
My eye was single and my body was filled with light
And the light that I was, was the light that I saw by
And the light that I saw by, was the light that I was

The song's simplicity and mysticism had great appeal, and the last verse ends with the Traherne quote at the beginning of this blog entry.

It was not easy to locate much information about Traherne at the time, or at least not so easy as Google has now enabled. But I did find some of his poems at the time and enjoyed them. What's interesting is that he was a writer of relative unimportance during his lifetime in the 1600s, but afterwards his work lived on and lives to this day.

Last night I watched a short film in preparation for the global introduction of Valtari, the new album by Sigur Rós, an Icelandic group with more than a million Likes on Facebook. I was moved by the film's simplicity and beauty, and afterward it triggered impressions and connections to other beautiful moments, ethereally conveying me by memory to Traherne who once wrote, "This moment exhibits infinite space, but there is a space also wherein all moments are infinitely exhibited, and the everlasting duration of infinite space is another region and room of joys." This moment... is now.

Follow this link for more information on Thomas Traherne, and to read a few of his poems with titles like Eden, Innocence, Aspiration and An Hymn upon St. Bartholomew's Day.

"Love is the true means by which the world is enjoyed: our love to others, and others' love to us." 
~ Thomas Traherne

* * * *

Originally published 7 December 2012.

The Half-Remarkable Question

"The Sybil In Wonderland"

Philosophers and artists have this in common: they deal with the big questions. Post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin's wrestling with the big questions probably contributed to leaving the Paris arts scene to take up residence in Tahiti where one of his most significant works was painted, "Where Did We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" These really are life's big questions, and it is a good thing when they stir in us. Not so good when we lock them away in the recesses of our souls. (Some philosophical ponderers deny the existence of "soul", but that is another discussion.)

There are many ways of looking at the world. There is the scientific/objective method and there are a variety of mystical methods. For some reason, our schools favor the scientific, but it would be more honest to acknowledge that a majority of history has found humanity captivated by mystical interpretations of the nature of reality and the meaning of life. "Why am I here?" is a seriously profound question that no rock or plant or salamander or wildcat asks, as far as I know. Where does this question come from? And where does the idea of good come from? Or the idea of God? Rene Descartes, who himself did a lot of thinking about the big questions, stated, "The thought of God is the Maker's mark on us."

When The Incredible String Band performed at Woodstock--as foreign and original their sound--the Scottish psychedelic folk band made an impact.

I was introduced to the group by a friend who had been to Woodstock the previous year, and over the next few years acquired several of their albums including I Looked Up and Wee Tam and The Big Huge. "The Half-Remarkable Question" made an impact on me as an addendum to the other philosophical questions swirling through my head at that time. The questions remain good ones, whether posed by artists or philosophers.

The Half-Remarkable Question

Who moved the black castle
Who moved the white queen
When Gimme and Daleth where standing between?

Out of the evening growing a veil
Pining for the pine woods that ached for the sail
There's something forgotten I want you to know
The freckles of rain they are telling me so

Oh, it's the old forgotten question
What is it that we are part of?
And what is it that we are?

And an elephant madness has covered the sun
The judge and the juries they play for the fun
They've torn up the roses and washed all the soap
And the martyr who marries them dares not elope

Oh, it's the never realized question
What is it that we are part of?
And what is it that we are?

Oh long, oh long ever yet my eyes
Braved the gates enormous fire
And the body folded 'round me
And the person in me grew

The flower and its petal
The root and its grasp
The earth and its bigness
The breath and its gasp

The mind and its motion
The foot and its move
The life and its pattern
The heart and its love

Oh, it's the half-remarkable question
What is it that we are part of?
And what is it that we are?

The Poet Thomas Traherne

You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars.
~ Thomas Traherne

He was born the son of a shoemaker, but went on to college and ultimately became a parish priest and a poet. I discovered him through a reference in a song by the Incredible String Band called Douglas Traherne Harding, which begins....

When I was born I had no head
My eye was single and my body was filled with light
And the light that I was, was the light that I saw by
And the light that I saw by, was the light that I was

The song's simplicity and mysticism had great appeal, and the last verse ends with the Traherne quote at the beginning of this blog entry.

It was not easy to locate much information about Traherne at the time, or at least not so easy as Google has now enabled. But I did find some of his poems at the time and enjoyed them. What's interesting is that he was a write of relative unimportance during his lifetime in the 1600s, but afterwards his work lived on and lives to this day.

Last night I watched a short film in preparation for the global introduction of Valtari, the new album by Sigur Rós, an Icelandic group with more than a million Likes on Facebook. I was moved by the film's simplicity and beauty, and afterward it triggered impressions and connections to other beautiful moments, ethereally conveying me by memory to Traherne who once wrote, "This moment exhibits infinite space, but there is a space also wherein all moments are infinitely exhibited, and the everlasting duration of infinite space is another region and room of joys." This moment... is now.

Follow this link for more information on Thomas Traherne , and a few of his poems with titles like Eden, Innocence, Aspiration and An Hymn upon St. Bartholomew's Day.

"Love is the true means by which the world is enjoyed: our love to others, and others' love to us." 
~ Thomas Traherne

Air

Swiss Miss

In the fall of 1970 I was introduced to the music of the Incredible String Band, unaware that they had been introduced to U.S. audiences by virtue of their appearance at Woodstock the year before. The simple character of their songs expressed a joyful celebration of life and seemed to express that awe-attitude with which children first see the world, unfettered by social games and pre-conceived expectations.

Every now and then this song from their album Wee Tam returns to me in its entirety.

Air

Breathing, all creatures are

Brighter then than brightest star

You are by far

You come right inside of me

Close as you can be

You kiss my blood and the blood kiss me

It's a wonder how the air we breathe goes right inside of us, not simply into our lungs, but all the way into our very beings. The wonderful, incredible way in which oxygen is carried by the blood stream and its tributaries and capillaries to nourish and cleanse every cell in our bodies is a wonder of creation.

Breathing is something we usually take for granted. But until our last breath, it’s the ongoing miracle that sustains us.

At the end of a busy day we can sometimes collapse in our beds so weary and spent we have no energy left for anything, even reading. Yet we go on breathing, replenishing our cells, sustaining our bodies with vital air.

I am reminded of the instructions Tom Hanks gave himself in the film Castaway. “Just keep breathing.”

And I am likewise reminded of Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, a book whose opening chapter was initiated by visits to a sanatorium high in the Swiss Alps while his wife was suffering from lung issues. The thin air at high altitudes was likely more accessible to lungs whose passages have been swollen or constricted by asthma or tuberculosis. In other words, breathing is something most of us take for granted, but many can not.

Air is something real that we all believe in yet seldom see. That, I find, is a fascinating concept.

Whatever else you're doing today, please keep breathing