Night Dreams

Night Dreams

Outside in the dark,

Between midnight and dawn,

Though not really dark,

The Moon’s night light is on.

Outside in the cool,

Relief from heat of the day,

Though the night isn’t cool,

The heat doesn’t go away.

Outside in the quiet,

The neighborhood sleeps,

But it’s not really quiet,

Into consciousness it creeps.

There’s a hum, there’s a drone,

From just down the hill,

A one-note samba,

If you will.

The whisper of rubber,

On the concrete road,

Multiplied by thousands,

Sound begins to unfold.

Pistons are pumping,

Engines, every size,

Enclosed in steel boxes,

The sound will comprise

A noise that makes it

Difficult to hear,

The sound of the crickets,

Though they are near.

It’s not the volume,

It’s the unnatural moan,

Disturbing, distressing,

Felt to the bone.

For thousands of years,

Nature’s sounds were clear,

It became DNA,

What to love, what to fear.

Now what’s lost,

Begins to be known,

The seeds of the past

In some places re-sown.

Not too late, is the hope,

Too few, is the fear,

Before it is lost,

All that is dear.

So dance in the moonlight,

Sing by the stream,

Walk in the meadow,

Live this, the dream.

VCard

Aug. 26, 2010

I read a review today, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2011, in the L.A. Times Arts and Books section on a new biography of John Cage. Though the reviewer didn’t think the author did justice to the complexity of John Cage’s thinking, it was an interesting reminder of what Cage is know for. For instance, his piece 4’33”, four minutes and 33 seconds of silence. And in the review it was also mentioned that Cage could be found on YouTube. So I looked him up. And there he was, “John Cage about silence”, taped in New York 2/4/91, from an upstairs apartment, with the windows open so the sounds of traffic below can be heard.

“When I hear what we call music it seems to me that someone is talking, and talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic here on 6th Avenue, for instance, I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound. What it does is it gets louder and quieter and it gets higher and lower and it gets longer and shorter. It does all those things which I’m completely satisfied with that. I don’t need sound to talk to me.” - John Cage

Though in my poem above I said that the sound of the freeway was a one-note samba, but really it was as Cage described it, more like the sound came in waves of higher and lower, and so on. It made me glad to hear what he said, as though someone was speaking about something that I knew but didn’t know, but he knew. And now I know.