The Bliss of Unawareness

"The room becomes a monumental absence. Absence of music, absence of moaning, absence of suffering, absence of a personal history, absence of a reason to be present. In this limbo I hover uninterrupted by my bird comrade. And I imagine the bliss of unawareness, the not knowing what we miss. Perhaps existing without the awareness of an absence is the most sublime experience of presence. If so, why do we need music for? Even when music does not involve any other senses, it is certain to arouse an aural experience and therefore a presence. If music then conjures a presence, would it not negate the possibility of this beautiful unawareness of absence? And if that were the case, the primordial purpose for my existence, the fundamental function of my violin nature, would deprive me, and those around me, access to the bliss of unawareness. But I should not be dammed for what I am." --The Lesser Violin

Vargas Llosa on the Death of Culture

“It is not ­surprising that the most representative literature of our times is ‘light,’ easy literature, which, without any sense of shame, sets out to be — as its ­primary and almost exclusive objective — entertaining. Chefs and fashion designers now enjoy the prominence that before was given to scientists. The vacuum left by the disappearance of criticism has been filled, imperceptibly, by advertising. Today . . . people usually play sports at the expense of, and instead of, intellectual pursuits. Today, the mass consumption of marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, crack, heroin, etc., is a response to a social environment that pushes men and women towards quick and easy pleasure.”

--Notes on the Death of Culture by Mario Vargas Llosa

Author | Reader Counterbalance

In the act of reading, we are to undergo a kind of transformation, such as W. Booth has described in connection with fiction in general: "The author creates, in short, an image of himself and another image of his reader; he makes his reader, as he makes his second self, and the most successful reading is one in which the created selves, author and reader, can find complete agreement."

Writing under the moon.

"The moon shines a shameless light, drunk, spilling everything. I take the blubbering of the moon on my skin as I take life unexpected." --The Lesser Violin

"I am water..."

In keeping with his oceanic identity, Teaston maintains the presence of THE BOOK OF I on the walls of Barcelona.

The Book of I

Borges on literature and the mind.

"I believe in psychological literature, and I think that all literature is fundamentally psychological." --Borges

Naturally! Why bother writing if we are not to delve into the inner realms of the mind?

Path Making is Really Path Breaking

"Caminante, son tus huellas el camino, y nada más;

caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.

Al andar se hace camino, y al volver la vista atrás

se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar.

Caminante, no hay camino, sino estelas en la mar."

Wanderer, your footsteps are  the road, and nothing else;

wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking.

Walking makes the road, and on glancing behind

one sees the path that he will never trod again.

Wanderer, there is no road, just foam in the sea.

--Antonio Machado

On Authenticity...

“Human beings are normally complex rather than seamless abstractions. Individual people have added one identity to another in ways that strain the very concept of identity. We need to learn how to negotiate the otherness of the world. Real authenticity means being more than one.” --Doris Sommer

The Lost Identity of Our Sounds

"Because all the sounds, once their time is past, enter a vast amalgam of vibrations that merges and travels to the stars. Other sounds get absorbed by material bodies in close proximity, like people, animals, plants, concrete, and dirt. These bodies vibrate in turn and produce their own sounds that will travel to the stars as well. Every audible entity rises to the stratosphere and loses itself in the process." --The Lesser Violin

The Violin of the Unheard.

"The universe has a need to speak. So many voices need to be heard and so many have no instrument to bring them forth. Why the silences when not everything has been said? Why the repetition when unique voices are awaiting? Hands play me and I sing the written songs. I admit my shortcomings. But if the moment comes when music will write itself, out of need or desperation, out of a yearning for beauty, or simply out of nothingness, I am ready to open my body and let the music traverse me." --The Lesser Violin

Why the Rabbit?

Why the rabbit? Because it speaks of a world without us. Because it hovers over time. Because it doesn’t hold the ground. Because it could die in the time it takes to say “rabbit.”

The Art of Disruption

"That's why I have said that art is energy. That energy is achieved by disrupting the normative art form, which creates fissures in the form along which the energy travels and along which the audience achieves, accomplishes, perceives it, receives and transforms it... In art, in writing: passion, intelligence, vision, imagination, intuition provide the heat that causes the disruption. New form is revealed." ---From IS by Martin Nakell

On Creativity...

Perhaps the nature of creativity is not vertical but horizontal. Perhaps there are no hierarchies, prescribed orders, or canonical convictions. The tree makes music as beautiful as the snake with its sinusoidal rhythm that sounds as mesmerizing as the storm ripping apart the earth with the cadence of its waves and the pizzicato of rain drops landing on the back of slaves who moan a song as ancient as all the hurt in the world. We are all playing in the field of the gods, creating when the gods are not looking. --The Lesser Violin

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What is art?

"That is art, a series of unnoticed miracles." --The lesser violin

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Award Winner!

I am happy to announce that THE BOOK OF I was selected as a finalist in the 2015 International Latino Book Awards.

De noche.

Y la noche se abre,

se deja sentir,

y los pasos de los gatos

me marcan,

noctámbulo,

ajeno al día creo

que soy.

Why writing "worse" is writing better.

Julio Cortázar boasted in his later years that he was writing "worse all the time." He meant that in order to express what he longed to express in his stories and novels he was increasingly obliged to search out forms of expression further and further from classic forms, to defy the flow of language and try to impose upon it rhythms, patterns, vocabularies, and distortions in such a way that his prose might more convincingly represent the characters or occurrences he invented. And we are all the better for it.

The wisdom of my characters.

I wish I had the wisdom of my characters. I wish I could source words out of thin air, I wish I could chew on grass and distil wisdom, I wish I could compose a fragrance and die by it, I wish I could speak like a bird, I wish my body could vibrate and sing eternal songs, I wish I could get naked and offer my robe to the hateful, I wish I could walk the nights and talk to the cats, I wish I could paint the face of everyman.

But no, that is not happening.

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The violin, an existentialist...

In this moment my silence is absolute. I let my senses explore the darkest questions. How can evil and marvel coexist as one? How can a wish to destroy turn into a wish to love within seconds? How are the sound of human bodies different from the sound of instruments? Can we use the same notes to write the music of abuse and the music of love? In the same pentagram? Can the notes intermingle with each other as if they originated from the same source, as if they elicited the same sensations? How many musics are there? Really, how many musics touch us deep, deeply?

About Beauty...

On a mountain path the Fat Poet posts a dictum. His mules chew on the surrounding pasture and agree with him wholeheartedly.

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