Susanna and Wallace

I have often heard from scholars' words that truly the universe is vibrations. That tree is a vibration. That flower is a vibration. That baboon jumping on a pogo stick is a vibration. That epic battle between a burly hammer-wielding dwarf and a fair-skinned graceful elf-folk is a vibration. That bad hair day is a vibration. That Tom Cruise is a vibration. That Mel Gibson is a vibration. That overweight poodle with the long pink tongue and the kinda weird looking eyes is a vibration. That crow with the broken wing is a vibration. That dude picking his nose, finding something lovely, then eating it is a vibration. That wild rave with the coke and LSD and ecstasy is a vibration. Everything is a tightened rubber band strung between two sticks that someone is flicking over and over again and different rates and strengths. Bong! Bong! Bong! (Perhaps that poor soul is God.) Or maybe everything is a puddle that someone keeps dropping rocks in, enjoying the chaos that it creates. Or maybe everything is the rhythmic movement of Jesus' toga as he dances to the groove of the Bee Gees (John Travolta style). Or maybe there is a mysterious "force" that flows through everything and can levitate X-Wings out of dirty Dagobah swamps. Matter is, in a sense, a great melody. Some say there is music in the word. I agree, and go on to say that there is music in damn well everything. Even that is a lie, everything IS music. It's hard to express in words, which I guess shows the inadequacy of the "dude" level of language I have been born in. Constantly in a wheel circling the truth, but never able to reach the non-moving axle. Again, like I stated in an earlier blog, nouns are nice, but in the end they are fallacies concocted by man craving order. When in reality, truth is verbs (which are vibrations) and nouns give the speaker a sense of power that he might not necessarily deserve (debatable yes?). Alan Watts liked to say you should see your life as a song or a dance: stop trying to race to the end, but enjoy it (life's not something you can win at). Walt Whitman was close to the truth when he wrote, "A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books." But I think this could also apply to any meaningless occupation one might find himself him. You can discover more from staring an ass in the eye than you can by reading an entire book, spending a day in the office, or arguing with a man about who's going to win the world series. Again, this relates back to the inadequacy of language. Books try as hard as they can to get to the truth, but they will never get as close as a wilted flower, or dragonfly, or I don't know, Buddy Holly dying in a plane crash. Man tries to achieve these things by writing stories, hence they repeat over and over and over and over and over again in books, movies, tv shows, poetry, lyrics, shadowing the truth, but never truly ever being it. Here is a scene from my favorite television show this year. I can re-watch this scene over and over like a song. Feeeeeeel the music in this scene. It's beautiful.



So this was a long build-up to the Story of Susanna. Pretty fun story. I don't have much to say about it besides: FEMALE EMPOWERMENT! Wallace Stevens is putting the entire story to a musical beat (I wouldn't be surprised if he wrote the poem to music). Music (and dance) are the closest a person can get to the truth, and I think (I always misread) this is what Wallace Stevens is getting at here. Trying to echo the beginning, the truth, that no one can really put into words as hard as they might try, but the closest one can is with music and in language, poetry.