the way it might have been

the way it might have been, what might have been. what remains of the past that never was?

was listening to some jazz last night and thought: starts off loyal to the original, down to each note, every key. fidelity to the score, the way it is. a few random notes are then thrown in, appear all of a sudden. a change of pace, rhythm. picks up where it left off. a new current, change of direction. the introduction of dissonance into the scheme of things. playfulness that spins out, like a greek god parceling out destinies. the first stirrings of something different. the music opens up slightly, like a spring day, the sky becoming lighter. unlocked, unwound. becomes expansive, loose, but retains the dominant theme at its heart. curves out in ever greater sweeping movements, further and further from the centre. vectors of hope.freer, less burdened by fidelity to repetition and ritual. freedom breaking out of structure. the dizzying thrill of the unchartered, of foreign lands. into the blue, open space. how to keep what is fundamental, essential? flight of the imagination. this is how things might be or, more darkly, how things might have been, had there been other lives, other times. but this song away from the song is also a tribute, an act of love. even as it becomes tangential, moves "out there', it retains a loving memory of the shards of the original...they're interwoven into what is new-as if a streaming blue ribbon is sewn onto a different garment...something borrowed, something new. a different kind of truth, of mirroring, reflecting.

like a river, a river man. comes home. leaps across the gaps. never lost the sense of it. carried it with you all the time. like a person who speaks quickly but the eyes, the eyes still sad.

the circle is broken. forgive me, father. the years we had together fade. but i hold them close. the circle is broken. it always was. from the beginning.

'The water in the harbour had the usual harbour litter, orange peel, a fine web of seemingly dusty, semi-iridescent scum hung with small leaves and bits of twig. It made me think of classical lands and of people making journeys in ancient times to famous cities, to study rhetoric or philosophy or to put a question to the local oracle. The harbour water would always have been like this, ordinary, unremarkable, until it had been left behind on the journey out'
---V.S.N.