ATDTDA (3) Minneskort: 84

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

    bekah wrote:
     I have to think about the whole issue of memory of a 
     memory -  circles within circles,  courtyards within courtyards.

      Monte Davis:
      A cognitive scientist would say that *all* memories, over time, 
      inevitably become memories of memories: that there's no 
      original record "on file"... that small changes creep in every 
      time you re-create the cognitive/emotional state... and that 
      after some years what you're re-creating is mostly previous 
      re-creations.

      Proust would say: 

       But suddenly it was as though she had appeared in the room, 
       and this apparition caused him such harrowing pain that he 
       had to put his hand on his heart. What had happened was that  
       the violin had risen to a series of high notes on which it lingered 
       as though waiting for something, holding on to them in a 
       prolonged expectancy, in the exaltation of already seeing the 
       object of its expectation approaching, and with a desperate 
       effort to try to endure until it arrived, to welcome it before expiring, 
       to keep the way open for it another moment with a last bit of 
       strength so that it would come through, as one holds up a trapdoor 
       that would otherwise fall back. And before Swann had time to 
       understand, and say to himself: "It's the little phrase from the 
       sonata by Vinteuil; don't listen!" all his memories of the time when 
       Odette was in love with him, which he had managed until now to 
       keep out of sight in the deepest part of himself, deceived by this 
       sudden beam of light from the time of love which they believed 
       had returned, had awoken and flown swiftly back up to sing madly 
       to him, with no pity for his present misfortune, the forgotten refrains 
       of his happiness.

You will find this passage on page 358 of the Lydia Davis translation. 
It continues for eight pages more. This meditation on music's menomic 
grip on memory is (within my memory, years uselessly pouring over the 
pages of Gramophone, Fanfare, Hi-Fi News, Penguine Guides, back 
issues of High Fidelity, and on and on,) the finest writing on the 
emotional power of melody, how a tune--- "our song"---can produce 
the most intense emotional turmoil.


I've got an inkling that Runes---as a sort of Minneskort---might be 
producing some background radiation in these passages, but that's 
mainly intuition and the memory that one of my teachers has a thing 
for Runes. But the only thing I really know about Finland is the music of 
Jean Sibelius. Christmas of 1969 was one of the few chances for 
staying with my mom after she blossomed into a full-blown freak and 
dad carted the rest of the family over to Fresno to get us all away from her. 
She was living in this tumble-down in one of the more or less dilapidated 
sectors of Eagle Rock. My elder sister was moving in with Bea, and, 
at the age of 14, it was my only chance to hang out with my Hippy/Artist 
mom for a week. A number of odd and interesting things happened. 
Miki and I were dropped off by dad to a scene of squalor. The 
electricity worked, but the heating was gas, and apparently the gas 
bill wasn't paid. The floors were wooden and unfinished. There were 
the usual hippy accoutrements---throw rugs, futons, throw pillows, 
day-glow posters (of Picasso and Escher, no less), the sharp nasal tang 
of an uncleaned litterbox, tie-dyes of various stripes, usw. The electricity 
was working, at least for part of that week and there was a stereo. For 
some weird reason, she had a copy of the Ormandy/Phildelphia 
recording of the Tallis Fantasia. So I played it. This will come up 
later---page 896, to be specific---but this has all been prologue. 

My Christmas present that year was an LP, on an imported Deutsche 
Grammophon pressing (pretty exotic in those days, Bea got it at the 
Tower on Sunset Strip) of Herbert Von Karajan conducting Sibelius, 
including the composer's last (and probably greatest) work, Tapiola:

     An Inktroduction by the Inkpot Sibelius Nutcase
     On the occasion of Earth Day, April 22, 1999.

     A bassoonist friend of mine had the fortune to play Tapiola once. It 
     was a run-through conducted for fun, not meant for the orchestra to 
     perform. When I asked him how it was like, he opened his eyes wide 
     and said it was awesome and terrifying; that the sensation of sitting 
     in the orchestra as it weaves its way through the tone painting of the 
     forests made one feel very small. During rests, no one dared to move 
     or make a sound.

     But Tapiola is not meant to horrify; rather, it is our sensation of 
     something seemingly unknown, that seems to reminds us that there 
     is something we do not understand - or perhaps it is something we 
     have forgotten. Tapiola is an expression of the will and life that 
     surrounds us - all around us - and yet we fail to see because far too 
     long has humankind lived among bloodless iron, unfeeling machines 
     and unliving concrete; that we have forgotten how it is like to live within 
     life, surrounded by the forests of nature's embrace. It is this sensation 
     of irrepressible life surrounding us that perhaps seems so strangely 
     (ironically?) unnerving. But yet, when a human being succeeds in 
     capturing in so much essence the awesomeness of nature, one cannot 
     but feel that we somehow... know; but cannot explain. That is the beauty 
     of our relationship with the Earth, one which Jean Sibelius understood 
     throughout his life, when he was chasing butterflies as a kid, telling his 
     companion what notes the birds were singing, running home to to write 
     down the "sound" of wood drying in the sun, or visiting the ancient 
     heritage of our forests, nature's greatest shrine.

     http://inkpot.com/classical/sibtapiola.html

In addition to being all these things, Tapiola is the deliberate evocation---a 
calling out, as it were---of an elder god, of a potent Pre-Christian diety, and 
a cruel and unrelenting one, at that. Somehow the passage on pages 
149---155 comes to mind: the unleashing of a very old, very powerful and 
blindly raging force, one that obliterates as it passes. Tapiola is the 
personification of a blizzard in an Arctic environment. I would note that the 
further away, the less accessible to the Holy Roman Empire, the location 
of any of that Empire's acquisitions, the greater that locale's residual 
workings
with the elder gods. And the farther a colony is from Empire's region of 
control, 
the greater that people's resistance to control from forces outside their realm,
the greater the resistance of those Tribes to power-over. There's a pertinent 
passage in "The Recognitions:

As it has been, and apparently ever shall be, gods, superceded, 
become the devils in the system which supplants their reign, and 
stay on to make trouble for their successors, available, as they are, 
to a few for whom magic has not despaired, and have been 
superceded by religion.
William Gaddis: The Recognitions, 102

     Ta'pi-o. The god of the forest.

     http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/kveng/kvgloss.htm

That recording of Tapiola was my very first LP. Eventually, I would record 
Symphony Orchestras, Early Musique Ensembles, Balkan Choirs, even
make a little (remarkably little) money with these musical/electronic 
obsessions. And you can say that the recording of Tapiola I was listening 
to on the CD player this morning was a "memory of a memory", there to 
evoke the experience of hearing that record as a child and deforming that
memory through the distorting refraction of the CD's the digital encoding.

For the truly obsessive, or those simply desiring to wander through a hall 
of mirrors, here's the Moncrieff translation of the passage from Proust with 
a link to an on-line version of Swann's Way.

       But suddenly it was as though she had entered, and this 
       apparition tore him with such anguish that his hand rose 
       impulsively to his heart. What had happened was that the 
       violin had risen to a series of high notes, on which it rested 
       as though expecting something, an expectancy which it 
       prolonged without ceasing to hold on to the notes, in the 
       exaltation with which it already saw the expected object 
       approaching, and with a desperate effort to continue until 
       its arrival, to welcome it before itself expired, to keep the 
       way open for a moment longer, with all its remaining strength, 
       that the stranger might enter in, as one holds a door open 
       that would otherwise automatically close. And before Swann 
       had had time to understand what was happening, to think: 
       “It is the little phrase from Vinteuil’s sonata. I mustn’t listen!”, 
       all his memories of the days when Odette had been in love 
       with him, which he had succeeded, up till that evening, in 
       keeping invisible in the depths of his being, deceived by 
       this sudden reflection of a season of love, whose sun, they 
       supposed, had dawned again, had awakened from their 
       slumber, had taken wing and risen to sing maddeningly in 
       his ears, without pity for his present desolation, the forgotten 
       strains of happiness.

        http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/p/proust/marcel/p96s/chapter3.html