Somewhere Between Chicago And Paris

“All that we see dissipates, moves on. Nature is always the same, but nothing of her remains, nothing of what appears before us. Our art must provide some fleeting sense of her permanence, with the essence, the appearance of her changeability. It must give us an awareness of her eternal qualities. What lies below her? Nothing, perhaps. Perhaps everything. Everything, do you see? And so I join her roaming hands.”

Paul Cézanne
quoted in “Painting with the Impressionists”
by Jonathan Stephenson

Somewhere between Chicago and Paris
not as the crow flies I mean looking up
and seeing hearing a dirigible
somewhere between Chicago and Paris
as the dirigible flies through the space
between here and there humming like music
or musique concrète between here and there
there must be a song and a special sound
a special sound made up just for the song
somewhere between Chicago and Paris
not the ones where no dirigibles fly
I mean the ones where painters stand looking
and asking “If parallel lines are not
aligned parallel to the picture plane
if they angle away from here to there
can I still paint them as parallel lines?”
and answering themselves by painting them
somewhere between Chicago and Paris
I mean the ones where dirigibles fly
above painters painting like scientists
where industry hums like musique concrète
a man is sitting in bed writing verse
and the sound of his pen against paper
recorded digitized and synthesized
and then played but synced to another time
sounds like it’s a song from another time
a dirigible from another time
hums musique concrète from another time
somewhere between Chicago and Paris
now and then like parallel lines crossing
now and then this time and another time.

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Saturday Morning Note:

I don’t like to change a post after I post it
but this morning—even before anyone
emailed me, I swear!—I realized that last night I
used the word “perpendicular” in a way
that didn’t make sense with what I was saying.
So I changed that line about the painters wondering
how to handle perspective to mean what I meant
and I added a line. I need to shake up
my editorial staff!


*


Somewhere Between Atlantis And Los Angeles

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Digging Britney Redux


Los Angeles, Nonetheless, Is

A Piece Of Paper Above An Asteroid