Joyful Forms

The invisible axis around which all revolves, the space, still, open, in which all forms find their origin, the white space of possibilities, the second space of second chances, beyond "height", the dark brilliance inside the 'No'. The Hindus would say, "not this, not that". 

The Garden of Flames. What shape does the day take today, which hat to wear!

A Qur'anic saying which, to me, gets to the heart of it:

And God's is the East and the West: and wherever you turn, there is the Face of God.
--2.115.

Times Square. From across the centuries, through all that flux, still something survives, as elementary as the gesture of a hand, a wry smile, a few stray or dissonant notes in a composition. A child, your child, looks at the haphazard movement of a butterfly, unpredictable as ever, and is as bewildered as the first child on earth ever was. I have only five words; I need only one. But to think only of one's child in these times is a monstrosity. No-one knows.  

~
A small and flexible tin with perforated sides, the soursal creates a buzzing sound when the strings of the gnbri are plucked. That "sizzle" is a reminder of the Gnawa's West African ancestry, and makes the gnbri a "ritual instrument," Schuyler says.

--NYRB.

This reminded you of the mesmerizing music of Makran in which you think you can pick up reminders of African roots, as if something old had been woven, concealed with great care, in the new forms, as if to say: no matter how far we travel we will never really leave home: fidelity to the true note in our lives.

~

Ko-Ko

"That's the Negro's life," he said. "Hear that chord!" Ellington played it again. "That's us. Dissonance is our way of life in America. We are something apart, yet an integral part."

[Kadosh ]

Ko--Ko, written in 1939, evokes the drum-and-dance ceremonies that slaves once performed on Sunday afternoons in New Orleans.

--from Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise.

~

Some wonderful music here