Modern Kicks

like that

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

hard times, come again no more

Billy Bragg singing "Hard Times of Old England" with the Imagined Village.

It's growing on me.  When I first listened last night, I found it a bit too slow, but it doesn't feel so much that way now.  The intriguing ensemble  includes, along with Bragg and other notables, folk icon Martin Carthy and his daughter, fiddler Eliza Carthy, not to mention Paul Weller.  The idea of approaching traditional music from a contemporary blend of styles and instruments drawn from the musics of modern Britain's many cultural groups certainly delivers a rich, if sometimes sonorous, sound.  One request: if Bragg isn't going to play, at least let him hold a guitar--he has no idea what to with his hands.

The Imagined Village project certainly blends well with Bragg's current interest in what constitutes an English identity today, a topic about which he's written and even devoted most of an album.  I didn't find that record very successful as music, unfortunately, though I look forward to reading the book.  I do wonder what Bragg and Weller say to one another these days.  Obviously it's been a long time, and no doubt they've had plenty of opportunities in the relatively small world of British pop to meet and talk, but I recall from Bragg's official biography a movement on his part from admiration for Weller to a certain amount of disappointment and disillusionment in the aftermath of the Red Wedge effort.  Whether that was deserved, or Bragg was simply misguided, or if I'm even remembering correctly may all be doubted, but it interests me nonethless.  Anyway, a clip from old times to end this post.

further reading

As an update to the post below, I've made some comments over at Fugitive Ink regarding the Batoni review, and the author there has responded.  I'll be commenting further over there later in the day, so it's safe to say that it's where the conversation is.  Head on over and take a look, especially if you haven't yet read the review.  Even if it's not your sort of thing, I'm sure the description of the emotional trials of a young student at Cambridge will take you back to you own, best left forgotten, college days.

congrats

Congratulations to the Boston Children's Museum and their landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc. on winning a 2008 General Design Award of Honor from the American Society of Landscape Architects.  A featured juror comment reads calls the design "playful and daring without being silly and avoids the clichés of working with children’s landscapes. A fantastic example of placemaking."  More from the award:

In a world where almost everything within a city is designed for adults, the Boston Children’s Museum Plaza is designed for children. Perceptions of difference, distance, size, and scale are playfully manipulated in different ways within the new plaza. Inspired by the forty-foot-tall Hood Milk Bottle, all elements of the design, from the seating and paving to the unique environments like the marble boulders or the native plant garden, are slightly oversized, undersized, overstated and boldly patterned.

With respect to its urban setting, the plaza establishes a clear outdoor area for the museum that is distinct from but fundamentally connected to the pre-existing Harborwalk and attracts attention within the seemingly boundless waterfront setting. In recognition of its significance, the Hood Milk Bottle was rebuilt in a new location in order to announce the presence of the museum from a distance and enhance its visibility from all directions. In conjunction with architectural improvements, the design of the plaza also serves to clarify the museum’s entry sequence.

The award text is dated in one respect: it says that the museum is on track for LEED certification.  It's my understanding that BCM already earned that certification, becoming the first museum in Boston to have it, so good on them.

weddings, parties, anything, and bongo jams a speciality

What I'm reading: Hogarth: A Life and a World.  'Sgood.  Also big, and I'm only in the early chapters, so not much to say.  I will note that it gives a better picture of eighteenth century London than Peter Ackroyd's book, which I found rather tiresome and didn't finish.  Better maps, too.

What you should be reading: this marvellous review of Pompeo Batoni at the National Gallery.  Follow the links in it, too, they're eye-opening.  I'd always had a liking for Batoni and his milieu, so I had no idea that others would be so dismissive.  I'll grant that British art critics might be forgiven a little impatience when faced with familiar fare, much as I might feel when hearing that the MFA has another Impressionist show planned.  Still, that's no excuse for an exhibition review that apparently bores of its subject after a few paragraphs and simply wanders off.  In any event, the review at Fugitive Ink does the work of recapturing Batoni from unsympathetic critics, in part by embracing (if I may say so--the terminology is not the author's) a sort of hermeneutic consciousness.  If that doesn't make you want to read, perhaps the good humor in the early paragraphs and the lovely grace note at the end will.

I've been wondering ever since, and hope to comment over at the site, about Batoni.  One of the criticisms made of him is of a certain self-effacing quality in his work, a combination of deference to his sitters and apparent natural inclination, that can lead to a sort of blandness.  I don't think this is imagined, and in his lesser paintings can be a fault.  But we don't judge painters by their least efforts, even if we do acknowledge them, and so I'm continuing to wonder in what ways Batoni's achievement distinguishes him from his contemporaries--how would one compare him to other eighteenth century painters and how would he rate?  What, with some degree of specificity, is his place?  The more I think this over, the more I reflect that it's a shame that eighteenth century art often doesn't get the same respect as that of periods before and after it.

Anyway, now that there's nobody here but us chickens, I have a proposal.  It should be no secret to regular readers of this site, if any remain, that content has . . . lagged a bit.  In part that's because I've been busy, in part because I haven't been up to much, and in part because of a lack of ideas.  But if you're still reading, I must assume you want me to keep writing, if only to amuse yourself by laughing at my ignorance and poor command of the language.  So then: give me something to write about.  Give me an assignment, tell me to write about something (reasonably accessible, please), and I'll do my best to do it.  And now that I'm making this suggestion, don't let the comments continue to sit there with a big fat goose egg, it'll be embarrassing for the blog.  And you don't want to let the blog down, do you?  Me neither.  So for the love of god, tell me what to do.  Will blog for food free.

i have waited years for this moment

I'm not kidding.  And, as of October, my wait will be over.  Of course, it will be absolutely mobbed at first, making a trip there an ordeal one would rather avoid, and they're almost certainly not going to get a license to sell beer and wine (although I've always wondered why they didn't simply open an adjacent liquor store when combining groceries and alcohol wasn't allowed.)  And I'm surprised that it turned out to be Warwick rather than Providence, or at least closer to Providence.  I guess Warwick hustled a little more to make the deal, though I know some of the people over in Summit had been trying to entice TJ's to North Main Street, which would have been a great location.  I guess it'll be left to Miriam, the bars, and auto places, unfortunately.  Still: totally stoked.

housekeeping

Observant readers may have already noticed some changes in the sidebar at right.  I've started on the long-deferred business of cleaning up my links, getting rid of those to sites no longer updated and adding some new ones in their stead.  This isn't very enjoyable for me, as a number of the sites to which I find myself removing links were important to me and run by people I consider friends.  I can only say that if they find themselves reactivating their sites, or starting new ones, I will be more than happy to restore links.  On a more positive note, I've added a few links that I'd long meant to get to.  For instance, it only took me nearly seven months from the time I first posted about it to add The Art Tribune, now listed with the other art media sites, as it should be.  Among the blogs, Sharon L. Butler's Two Coats of Paint has been a site I've long meant to add, and now finally have.  Art Observed, meanwhile, "covers contemporary art globally from a New York City perspective," if I may borrow from the site description.  Lots of good stuff at all three, so check them out if you're not already reading.  I know there are other good sites out there, too; perhaps this beginning will result in continued updating of links.  We shall see.

my thoughts exactly

Busy and blocked.  But not displeased at the arrival of spring or without hope that my opportunities to post will improve.

Blue, Red and Grey - The Who

looking good, billy ray

From a review in the Times Literary Supplement of The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England by the appropriately named John Styles:

Some modern historians tend to regard pictorial evidence of a well-dressed working class as a sentimental distortion. In exhibition catalogues you will often see the genre scenes of George Morland and Francis Wheatley dismissed as “idealized”, with their sturdy peasants in spotted kerchiefs and brass-buttoned waistcoats and the women with sprigged petticoats and overskirts and silk scarves. Or take Stubbs’s Haymakers, with their blue and canary breeches and their white cotton stockings, not to mention the women with their spotless aprons and black silk-covered hats, all described by John Barrell in his book The Dark Side of the Landscape (1983) as “dressed well above their station” and “quite impossible to believe in as labourers”; are these not creations as artificial as the Wedgwood biscuit ware on which they were reproduced? . . .

. . .  John Styles, formerly a costume scholar at the Victoria and Albert Museum, has squirrelled together a remarkable, and often poignant, heap of evidence of what the poor actually wore. There is, for example, the inventory of the clothes lost in the terrible fire at the Suffolk market town of Brandon in 1789. The fire consumed the homes of rich and poor alike, so that we can contrast the total wardrobes (apart from the clothes they had on their backs at the time) of the surgeon and the postmaster with those of the blacksmith and the cordwainer and their families. By value, the losses range from £88 to less than £3, which reflects huge differences in the quality and number of the garments lost, but not in the type. Even the poorest usually had a change of shirt, shift, stockings and gown (the outerwear by then usually made of cotton, the underwear still mostly linen). Nor did the styles vary greatly between classes. Even great ladies had taken to wearing aprons, even servant girls wore silk kerchiefs.

Labouring men would spend several weeks’ wages to buy a watch, often silver-cased rather than brass. [E. P.] Thompson famously claimed that these purchases were enforced by the grim disciplines of industrial mass production. The natural rhythm of work in the field had been supplanted by the tyranny of the clock. Styles argues that the prestige and decorative value of the watch and its potential with the pawnbroker were at least as important as its timekeeping value. Court reports of theft cases (another fertile source, since the reports often identify the thief or victim by what he or she was wearing) suggest that watches were seldom stolen at workplaces, except from coachmen and Post Office guards who did need to keep accurate time, and were often left at home hanging on the bedpost, only to be taken out and shown off at the pub – and then nicked. Watches in eighteenth-century England were items of conspicuous consumption as much as the Rolexes and Patek Philippes that now sparkle on President Sarkozy’s wrist. Two of the handsome illustrations that crowd Styles’s sumptuous volume show Lord Nelson and a very common sailor each sporting watch chain and seals dangling from his fob pocket.

I remember reading Barrell's book on landscape about 12 years ago and recognizing it as a serious work with a lot of truth in it that nonetheless made me rebel against all of its conclusions (his book on the political theory of painting I found much more congenial, as it unknowingly connected with issues in other fields that I was interested in, though I doubt Barrell would have approved.)  Thompson isn't really any concern of mine, though I've read The Making of the English Working Class and admired it.  Nonetheless, I am delighted to read of Styles' book, as nothing could please me more than a good, empirical, rebuttal of what's become to some degree a one-sided argument.  That it takes the form of argument built from patiently assembled and colorful details accompanied by plenty of images, as it evidently is, makes it sound even better.

Not having read it, I don't have much more to say (other than it's on the wishlist), but the watch example does stir my mind a bit.  As the review goes on to say, some of the arguments find parallels in our time, and this seems to me to be one of them.  I can't help but think that there's an element of truth in both sides as presented.  After all, consider how we treat certain updated new versions of similar technology: the complaint that, with laptop computers and cell phones, no one (or rather, no one of certain professions) even is truly free from the office, must be among the most commonplace of observations, whether offered bitterly or with a smile.  Yet when it comes to these instruments of our supposed enslavement, how many are looking at advertisements and visiting stores to find the most up-to-date models with the coolest features and latest designs?  E.P. Thompson may be lucky he didn't live to see the iPhone.

the difference between a rembrandt and a warhol

Larry Salander explains it all to you.  James Panero's right--a story worthy of Balzac.  I hope to have more to say later, but I'm off to more workaday concerns.

. . . Adding, now that I have a chance, that while the article is fair-minded and friendly to Salander, it doesn't soft-pedal the fact that the blow-up of his gallery forces observers to wonder if the dealer is a knave or a fool.  Either way, I'm very doubtful his attempt at growing the market for Old Master art works could have worked on the scale he seems to have attempted (assume "I'm no economist" demurrals somewhere in here.)  While tastes can change, too much of the value of a, say, Donatello is already priced in to the current cost of such an object.  While this removes a lot of the uncertainty of the value of the object, it limits the potential for growth--and older art has uncertainties of its own regarding provenance and authenticity affecting its prices that are less of an issue in the contemporary market.  Lastly, it feels like Salander's convictions regarding the value of older art didn't take into account the realities of the market for contemporary work to which he compared it.  The purposes and effects one can put a large Jeff Koons Hanging Heart to are quite different from those that a Parmigianino suits, regardless of the superior aesthetic merit of the latter.  I don't think it's possible to educate taste  in a certain direction when it lies opposite to that which buyers are looking to pursue, or at least not to effectively do so.  The same is still true, albeit on a lesser scale, when comparing contemporary painting and older works.  Furthermore, the number of buyers able to operate on the scale Salander was imagining is necessarily very small in any segment of the market.  He evidently looked at the $100 million price tag for Hirst's skull as a benchmark to meet, without (apparently) taking into account the extent to which that figure may have been a stunt.  Not a great model on which to build a business.

earth's immeasurable surprise

As seen on Benefit St., Providence, RI, Sunday, March 16.

this is disgraceful and abominable

I don't believe I saw this story when it originally surfaced last year, but evidently it's still timely.  And while I've no desire to get into a debate about it, no, I don't think that famously elastic concept "art" is flexible enough to hold the actions described.  Their perpetrator has moved into another, far more debased, field of activity, and no appeal to the artworld's conceptual games or ratifying power can change that fact.  I'm not the activist type, but there is a petition here.

surfacing

Despite this site giving the appearance, the past few weeks, of my having fallen into a jar of Massic wine myself, I've merely been too busy and preoccupied by the disaster unfolding around us to think up thoughts about the art I've not been viewing.  I have some hope that the situation will change, so keep an eye out.  In the meantime, I've been reading.  January and early February found me happily gliding through all of A Dance to the Music of Time, about which I really should have had more to say at the time but found it too difficult to write of such a large work in the way it deserved.

So a few odd notes now, on the novels and some other things:

good call, horace

To a Jar of Massic Wine

Corvinus has called for a mellower wine, therefore,
O virtuous jar, born the same year as I,
In the consulship of Manlius, appear,
Descend, bring forth whatever there may be,

Laughter, or quarrelsomeness, sleepiness, or the complaints
Of dejected lovers, whatever it happens to be
The grapes were gathered for to make this Massic,
Mature to be just right for some special occasion.

Soaked in serious studies though he be,
Corvinus is not averse to the pleasure of wine.
Old Cato the stern and righteous, it's said, was accustomed
To use this pleasant means to warm himself up.

Your gentle discipline encourages
The dull to be less dull than usual,
And Bacchus, joyful Deliverer, reveals
What the sober wise man really meant to say.

You bring back hope to the despairing heart
And you give courage to the poor man, so
He's neither scared of tyrants in their crowns
Nor soldiers brandishing their scary weapons.

Bacchus attends thee, and Venus, if she's willing,
And torchlight, and the Graces dancing together,
Until the moment the returning sun
Puts all the stars to flight, and the party's over.

--Horace

sunday night links

A few more links to provide some reading for Sunday evening or to ease your Monday morning:

- The Atlantic looks at Birth of the Cool, currently on view at the Addison Gallery of American Art.  No, of course I haven't been to see it yet.  On a related note, Regina Hackett has an informative post about a documentary on midcentury modern art in LA, what it gets right and what it leaves out.

- A press release worth heeding: Big RED & Shiny Declares It Unethical To Quote Yourself In Press Release That You Wrote.  Well done.

- Richard Lacayo has a post and an article on the current state of play regarding the myriad cultural property disputes museums face today.  The article quotes Philippe de Montebello deploying heavy irony to question the extent to which source nations will take the principle of repatriating artworks: "And at what point is Turkey going to return the Alexander Sarcophagus to Lebanon?"  The question is not as far fetched as it may seem.  The fact of successful claims on what has become largely uncontested ground will not--and has not--resulted in the issue going away, it only means further claims, from other parties and at times with less legitimate cause, will emerge (and have done so.)  Combine this with the growth in online collection databases, where an increasing number of museums place an ever-growing amount of collection information online, making easily accessible little-known holdings and the scope for potential claims grows even wider.  It's harder now not to think that a major instance of repatriation--say the return of the Elgin marbles, discussed in the article--that went significantly beyond existing norms wouldn't blow the lid off the fundamental question of international collections of antiquities as such.  How many objects could museums claim to rightfully own if the British Museum did not stand by its right to works held in Britain for centuries, whatever their importance of the circumstances of their arrival?

- An excellent new blog, soon for the sidebar links: Fugitive Ink.  Just the sort of thing I like to read, and highly recommended.  The anonymous author, it seems, anticipated my desire to see a discussion of why it was important to keep the painting of General Wolfe in the UK, but I think I like this post, on crime and walking at night, even better, not least for its beautifully evocative depictions of London after dark.  They're almost, if I may use a much-abused word, phenomenological.

- Simpleposie has a whole bunch of film-related art questions up right now, including from a week or so ago, "Which character in what movie is surrounded by the best art?"  I don't really have an answer, as I watch very few films, but am reminded of two examples.  First, at the conclusion of the tempestuous party scene in All About Eve that supplies about 75% of the film's best lines and moments, as Bette Davis's Margo Channing is led off to bed, drunk and still feebly raging, the camera closes in on a reproduction of the portrait of Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse by Reynolds.  Then there's Laura, which doesn't feature any real art in particular that I'm aware of, but has loads of faux-Impressionist and other 19th century art in various scenes, as well as a painting of the title character as a focus point in the first part of the film.  Good movie, too.

- It's from the previous issue, but I just saw that Bookforum has an discussion regarding Edmund Wilson, two volumes of whose criticism has been published by the Library of America, between Morris Dickstein and Lewis Dabney, Wilson's biographer.  They discuss problems with Axel's Castle, and may be entirely right in their assessment.  Still, it's always seemed to me--especially the chapter on Joyce, which displays a remarkably complete grasp of immensely challenging writing virtually contemporary with the work's publication--as impressive a feat of reading as I've ever seen.  And now's as good a time as any to mention that Wilson's daughter, Helen Miranda Wilson, is a painter, and a good one, to my eyes.

Hm.  You know, a few of these could have been developed into actual stand-alone posts of their own instead of grouped into another lame links post.  Maybe some other time.

endings and updates

I was thinking to myself this morning, "You know, I've been so busy, I've fallen out of touch.  I need some art news.  Let's go over to Figure Painting and see what's going on."  So I did, only to find that the blog's last post went up a week ago: Callen Bair, the author, is leaving for law school.  While I'm sad to see the site go--I liked it and found it a useful place to find out what was going on in art world doings--I do wish her the best of luck in her future endeavors.  I especially like the focus she took in her last entry--art's not all about New York and the like.

In other blog news, I should probably mention that I intend to soon do some work on the sidebar links.  I really hate to remove links, but I have several to sites that are no longer active.  I keep them there because I enjoyed them, and in many cases think of the writers as friends; but too many dead links make the list less useful.  Now that I've said this, I'll probably never get around to doing it, but I just wanted to go on record first.

Also: some time ago I took umbrage at a suggestion someone made that this site would be closing soon.  I'm happy to report that my status has been upgraded.  And how pleased am I that this site is linked to on the web page of the Courtauld Institute of Art's library?  Very, very pleased.

recent reading

Since I can't seem to write anything and just generally stink, why not some links?

- Gary Schwartz revels in the publication of Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth  Century in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Vol. 1: Artists Born Between 1570 and 1600, calling it "an experience to treasure":

Believe it or not, Artists born  between 1570 and 1600 is captivating enough to read from cover to cover rather than just being consulted for reference. With all respect for the wave of excellent recent collection catalogues of Dutch paintings to emerge from American, German and British museums, I have never before been inspired to read them this way.

Add another $300-$400 art book to the wish list.

- Blog that's new to me, and covers an especially interesting topic: Adventures in the Print Trade.  When I complained that there weren't enough art history blogs, this is the sort of thing I was hoping to find.  Wouldn't be bad if he posted more often, though I'm not one who should talk.

- Britain's National Army Museum is seeking to save a painting of General Wolfe, hero of the Plains of Abraham (to the British, at least; my Québécois ancestors might disagree.)  The museum was outbid at auction for it and unless it is able to raise a total of £300,000 (with £250,000 already pledged or on hand), the painting will leave the country.  I don't think anyone would claim it is a truly exceptional work of art, but it's of undeniable historic important and belongs in an institution like the National Army Museum.  If heaven and earth can be moved to keep a piece of sentimental neoclassical near-kitsch like Canova's Three Graces in the UK and out of the Getty Museum, surely a much smaller amount can be spared to keep a reminder of one of the major figures of British military history from disappearing into a private collection?  I'd certainly like to see the full case made for keeping General Wolfe in Britain, at any rate.  Those interested can find donation information here.

- Also from Britain, too many kids in museums these days.  Cranky, cranky.  Last week it was too many people in general.  Seriously, there are some real issues here, and the second article is fairly amusing, but you don't have to move too far away from the largest museums to find the issue becoming not too many people or children visiting but too few.

- The New York Review of Books on Julian Schnabel and Lucian Freud.  The Schnabel article gives a twist on the current conventional wisdom--his painting's overblown and bad, but isn't amazing that the movies are great?--by arguing that the paintings are great, too.  Truly a new day.

That's it for now.  Except this, which you may take as you please: from the day we first bought our house, we began to receive a steady stream of mail offering to refinance our loan added to the usual barrage of credit card offers, student loan refinancing, etc.  I mean practically every day, from our own lender (who should have known better, seeing as we had just taken out the mortgage with them), other major banks and mortgage lenders, and a host of fly-by-night operators.  Then, one day a couple of months ago, They.  All.  Stopped.  Not even many credit card offers anymore, and certainly nothing about mortgages.  I can't say I miss the junk mail, but I'm not sure I'm eager to experience everything else its absence might foretell.  It might make Jerry Saltz happy, but I'll pass, thanks.

finding the level

I just couldn't bring myself to post about last week's news that Michele Maccarone was urging various figures in the Los Angeles art/academic world to boycott a program for young LA artists sponsored by Skadden Arps, MASS MoCA's lawyers in the Büchel affair, but I think Martin has found the appropriate comment.

under the influence

Via the comments at Artblog.net comes news of the inaugural issue of Art Influence, a new publication from the Peter Fuller Memorial Foundation.  It's devoted to--but why not let the Foundation speak for itself?

Art Influence is a quarterly online journal with a unique take on art writing and criticism, incorporating video and audio footage from the Peter Fuller archives, up coming artists and interviews with current leaders in the art world. The title derives from Fuller’s ability to influence people by his fearlessness, from scholars to giants of the art world, in this way the magazine will aspire to the original ideals Fuller upheld when conceiving Modern Painters. The contributors are eminent members of the art world who had a connection with Fuller’s work as colleagues, the artists he analysed, or high profile commentators from the broader arts sector, commissioned to write on issues they feel passionately about.

Now is the time for a revival of true art criticism, a forum is needed for leaders of artistic thought in all fields to develop their ideas and present them for and with the public. This is why art matters, this is Art Influence.

Lord knows Modern Painters has lurched from bad to worse in recent years--not a bad thing to have another publication associated with the Fuller name.  It's also welcome news that the site will gradually publish online Fuller's own writings (starting with his essay "The Journey" in the current issue, a sort of biography of his life as a critic), including, if I've read correctly, his diaries, which evidently hold a wealth of his private reflections on the art world of his time.  Could be very good indeed.  The site seems to have a few issues at the moment--some broken links and blank pages--but nothing that can't be worked out.  So check it out.

a conceit comprehensible to fewer each year

Lines & Circularities

on hearing Casals’ recording of Bach’s Sixth Suite

Deep in a time that cannot come again
Bach thought it through, this lonely and immense
Reflexion wherein our sorrows learn to dance.
And deep in a time that cannot come again
Casals recorded it. Playing it back,
And bending now over the instrument,
I watch the circling stillness of the disc,
The tracking inward of the tonearm, enact
A mystery wherein the music shares:
How time, that comes and goes and vanishes,
Never to come again, can come again.

How many silly miracles there are
That will not save us, neither will they save
The world, and yet they are miraculous:
The tonearm following the spiral path
While moving inward on a shallow arc,
Making the music that companions it
Through winding ways to silence at the close;
The delicate needle that navigates these canyons
By contact with the edges, not the floor;
Black plastic that has memorized and kept
In its small striations whatever it was told
By the master’s mind and hand and bow and box,
Making such definite shudderings in the air
That Bach’s intent rises from the tomb . . .
The Earth, that spins around upon herself
In the simple composition of Light and Dark,
And varying her distance on the Sun
Makes up the Seasons and the Years, and Time
Itself, whereof the angels make record;
The Sun, swinging his several satellites
Around himself and slowly round the vast
Galactic rim and out to the unknown
Past Vega at the apex of his path;
And all this in the inward of the mind,
Where the great cantor sings his songs to God . . .

The music dances to its inner edge
And stops. The tonearm lifts and cocks its head
An instant, as if listening for something
That is no longer there but might be; then
Returns to rest, as with a definite click
The whole strange business turns itself off.

--Howard Nemerov