Tuesday, January 29, 2013

ECHOES OF SUN

David King's latest post presents a very fine work which is also a celebration of vinyl records that.. yes, haven't really ever disappeared from the market. But the time when you could listen to music ONLY through vinyl records and tapes and the radio and the television ..only!!, that time has disappeared. It started disappearing in the late eighties. By the middle nineties it was definitively gone.
I consider "that time" almost as another life: public telephones on the street had a "meaning" for example, I remembered a lot phone numbers, most forgotten and useless now, I had naturally learnt them off by heart, I didn't feel lost and desolate without that perpetual tapping on a perpetual screen perpetually ready in my pocket containing almost "a whole life" in it and producing a perpetual shivering and contracting of my eyebrows...and, by the way the words, "browser" or even worse "server" didn't exist.  "Server" being almost ridiculous...the verb "serve" that implies passiveness has become mysterious and active, permeating and governing lives!
The simple truth is that we were governed by less... depended on less, not on the pressing, buzzing, swarming, and maybe only apparently easygoing wholeness of this day and age...



ECHOES OF SUN

You raised the turntable lid,
took the record out of the inside cover,
kept it by its sides, with both hands,
with only the least of it between palms and forefingers’ tips,
gazed at its shine with a frown and a smile
and blew slightly on the surface, first one side
then the other, turning it with a nimble
imperceptible swirl in your wrist, like a dance step
you wanted to hint at.
You laid it on the turntable, slowly, and more slowly
lowered the turntable arm that set it off, stylus landing
on the black, glittering pool of thin furrows
with a wader’s foot’s touch.
We relished the instants of buzzing and crackling
like the first flames of a camp fire
then the rock guitar solo burst in and took off,
God’s grass in its roar.
Yes, it’s through this too that we could assess
longing and stamina in our countenances,
exchanging a few nods while listening was enough,
waving an exulting fist, feet tapping the floor,
the future a raw, puzzling star
while we pretended to be strong
with our gaze on tiptoe.

Constant rites, a longer time.
In echoes of sun.
Moulding the map where we now stand.
 
 
 










1 comment:

Dave King said...

Superb write, both prose and poetry. The two together would make a fine intro to the era for anyone who had not lived through it. The poem is exact in both reference and expression.

Grateful thanks for the plug!