ATD stars above, abyssal plain below

[Hepzibah Pyncheon]

and another thing 
(howdy)

I'm pretty sure I'm not looking for what "really"
happens, ambiguity is absolutely fine with me. What I
seek is shape. Perhaps this is a literary analog of a
problematic performance of a Wagner opera --- lush
with crowded intricacies ringing endless changes on
recurring motifs, cast of thousands with braids and
buckets on their heads and all in good fun, but tough
going if you haven't a prior sense of the overall
structure  (and especially stressful what with all of
them shouting at you in German) running on and on like
a four-hour-long Gottverdammt unresolved chord that
*finally* lets you off the hook if you've remained
awake with its last dying phrase........
and in the end you sit bewildered that all around you
are up on their feet with tears in their eyes? Gimme
the pre-digested orchestral highlights...

Wait wait, wasn't there a Wagner devotee in GR? and an
argument about the relative merits of italian vs
german opera? All that about thumping canes and
drooling and whatnot? That's it: some of us old folk
want a tune to whistle. The "Magic FIre Music" is
insanely beautiful but you have to wait hours for it
and at least four of us would all have to *practice*
and whistle together to bring it off in the street.
That's the value of this list: you all whistle a
recurring set of simple melodies full of flats and
sharps but fall in and out of phase as y'all (per
Zappa) decorate time.


--- Monte Davis <monte.davis at verizon.net> wrote:

> This is *radical*, root-and-branch ambiguity, and
> we're not going to find a
> stable resting place from which to resolve it, any
> more than we're going to
> find an absolute, pre-Einsteinian clock and meter
> stick to tell us when and
> where we *really* are.


Ever yours,
Hepzie

"It still lacked half-an-hour of sunrise when Miss Hepzibah ... arose from her solitary pillow and began what it would be mockery to term the adornment of her person."
Hawthorne


	
	
		
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