Desautels

Waking

When Goldmund woke it was dark.  His head swam, no thoughts came into it.  He could feel himself lying on a bed, but where he knew not.  He strove, and yet nothing came to him.  How had he travelled here:  from what strange country of new knowledge?  He had been in some far-off place, where he had seen some rare and glorious sights, terrible, and never to be forgotten.  Yet now he was forgetting them all.  When was it?  What was this thing that had risen up before him, so dolorous, mighty, full of beauty, to fade again?  He strove to see far down into himself, to the deeps out of which this thing had come.  What had it been?  A covey of vain images swirled around him.

--from "Narziss and Goldmund" by Hermann Hesse  

It is interesting the way that Hesse makes this waking state so vivid.  The use of so many questions in sequence evoke so much without assigning a precise interpretation of what has taken place during Goldmund's sleep.  This passage so beautifully leaves you suspended with the character, hovering in between the reality of a dream and consciousness.  These ideas always seem to be what Hesse is driving at, maybe balance or the idea of it, or maybe its birth.

Balcony

When you are away from your notebook, guitar, or device, you have to preserve.  Find things that let you preserve an image or an idea, and find places that help you remember something that you don't want to forget.  Places can hold your thought for you, your imagination strays, its important to have places that bring it back.  

Horses Horses Horses

My Four Reasons

This is a performance from the documentary 'Louie Bluie' by Terry Zwigoff.  Louie is the one in red playing the mando.  He is equal parts obnoxious and eccentric, and just about likeable a lot of the time.  

In the doc Louie makes the most sense when he is playing music.  The structure of the songs are just enough to keep him under control, though just barely.  His personality is so big that it spills out over the edges of his mandolin parts, but he is always reeled back in by the song.  I think he only believes in music, he seems to think that people are funny, he laughs at them a lot, but I don't think he necessarily likes them very much.  Anyway, the music in this doc is great.

Also...

 they left the street lights on all day today.  It is a great thing to have happen once in a while.

On the back of the old IGA

Somewhere around 30

Sometimes I am filled with a sense
of absolutely breathtaking happiness,
which shakes my very soul,
and in those moments of harmony
the world around me
begins to look as it really is -
balanced and purposeful;
and my inner, mental structure of the milieu,
the universe - and vice versa.
At those moments I believe myself to be all-powerful:
that my love is capable of any physical feat of heroism,
that all obstacles can be overcome,
that grief and yearning will be ended,
and suffering be transformed
into the fulfilment of dreams and hopes.
This is one of those moments.
I believe that Larissa will succeed
in bringing Andriushka here,
and that we shall drink orange juice
and eat ice-creams in Via Cola di Rienzo,
in the cafe Leroy.
I don't just believe it,
I know that's how it will be.

                          --A.A. Tarkovsky

Somewhere around my 30th birthday I came across this passage.  I find it difficult to completely reconcile myself to what he is saying in sections of it, but I feel like I understand it, and that I've been there.  In moments of hyper-awareness, when you see everything at once (or as much as you can drink in), I think that is when you are close to this feeling.  Even memories of these moments are enough to retrieve some of their essence.

Maybe, maybe not.