We Are Nightingales

Because it’s simply inexcusable to call yourself a blogger and disappear for ten whole days, I offer my apologies and the collective excuse of procrastination of schoolwork, the crunch of family obligations, and the adoption of a new iPod mini which became my little darling while I spent nearly 3 days downloading songs from my eclectic CD collection, downloading some things from iTunes and finally importing it all with appropriate playlists etc. God those little buggers are a blast. Babies should get one at birth! I’m not normally one for stereophonic/earphone music, but having nearly every piece of music I adore at my fingertips is sublime. I’ve got the starter mini, but I’ve already got my eye on a bigger model engraved with some little bit of existential brilliance.

It occurred to me that if anyone found my iPod, they’d probably conclude that I’m schizophrenic. I’ve got stuff on there from Rage Against the Machine to Mazzy Starr to Portishead to Siouxsie and the Banshees to John Freakin’ Denver!!! I’m not going to lie to you, “Sunshine” (on my shoulders) still brings tears to my eyes, when I recall that movie about the mom who left tapes for her infant daughter to hear after she died of cancer …

So, blogging shall be sparse for a while as I maneuver through my last week of class, then run off to a completely out-of-character trip to Vegas, return just in time to turn around and head to California with an aching in my heart (I’ve definitely been listening to too much music from the 70s).

If someone had given me one of those hypothetical little quizzes last week, you know the ones where you’re asked to list the 5 people living or dead you’d like to meet, one of my top picks would have been Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose “A Defence of Poetry” (yes, spelled just like that), made me feel intellectually dwarfed and infinitely inspired. I am forever floored by the brilliance of these canonical writers who formulated these amazing treatises before their 30th birthdays. I don’t get it, before I turned 30 I was primarily interested in the firmness of my abs and where to get discount designer-wear! That’s not entirely true, but let’s just say that the level of my philosophical transcendence was stunted.

I will leave you with some lovely Shelley quotes: (He considered everyone with the inspiration to imagine and formulate art poets)

“A Poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.”

“The great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.”

“But poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being … it reproduces the common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being.”