Tantra Poem

Listening to 10 Acre Bloc (new works for large improvising ensemble) performing Cornelius Cardew’s 7th Paragraph of The Great Unlearning

Discordant success intangible to know and find wrong WRONG how to hear heaven in new places sends to a river of never having known before the choir loft was sent airborne institutions remarking opposing footfalls for you cannot feel the parrot who spoke newly before being misunderstood. Avenues trip to roads that cannot close for they see too little heights and ladders suggest up or a collapse – a fall for this is the angelus of discordant. I can see the black peacock sway easily through the dark night and know the hum lies more before the dawn.

To speak of little is to leave too long. Time is not known to others who want only to be in confusion for time and space will do more than collapse, it will release before you can sit or know. What grows within us and there is the nous Gregorian chant for we are not to be only to know that we are being and in this knowing we be but until we know this we do not know that we be – for this you see is too much of an easy matter and I can hear as though every species of birds have lifted for there is no more or little left to see and my mind can rest for listening is freedom from language. No longer in language’s voice I heard him. Accept me. The notes fall and drift all to – no there is no to – the notes fall yet discord lifts and the ladder that suggests a fall is sustained in a discord of falling. There may be maybe, there may be more – here – here we are and we find. Well. He is the well bell. The bell that says, no I do not toll – I am the well bell – I am the well bell – for any pause – ME – it finds ME – it is read. Reed for a reed drives and she takes open a rest and they turn to one another, some near and some away, for where do we look when we are not talking to another, or when we are not engaging, lover, and I see such easy beauty that a woman can sit and be so – is a remarkable feat – and to her dignity we see Mary’s feet hang to when would you want to see – and this is where we perch – easy street we call and roll a shoulder – I see a yawn and I note a note to notes these notes and the will, the harmony, falls and travels in its own hope and the space, this space, that has held decades of trade suspends to notes unheard – brother – I can make out only the occasional word – for where does one record that which surfs and marches steadily through crowds to him – to him in the Vedas – Rama – the hum of  aum. The arrow that goes as a sound in which we cross traffic to traffic starting again and final trilling of om in grief calling a qawwali singer to the air-stretch of cars, the final hold of a hum.

And all at once the rush of waves that cannot roll and be their own. The not of waving. The dissonance creates its own energy that does – does of dissonance – is in its own energy – vibrations of opposing magnets – planks from which they only know their own source but not of another – we have no anchor but I will take blue – can I hear colour – tonal colour yes – and it is the clarity as syllables sound themselves around space – their own – I take ‘swept away’ and I see a fly and another dart and do they consider airwaves – how do they travel these spaces and another head in hand and another has finger in ear and I hear the prominent voice – it is to focus – to a whistling outside we keep our own notes away and then the loud arrives and how vast the openness of tunnels that never see sparrows, or can we know what the dark sees? Open, open, to call and maybe to accept – for little is leaving and much is giving and the release of energy. See this energy. I know this energy. I have and it fills. There is the leaving. There is the leaving voice that leaves. There is the voice that arrives and there is that – the one – who records. How can energy ever be known again or recorded – to be – in the being – the key is undone, the tune is deferred – not resisted but less is lived. The sound waves, the waves cannot fall or charge together with unison for they do not know another and if another cannot be known can there be – what we hear individually and I am listening – listening to the shifting motions of these soundscapes fall in collapsible chambers of their own matchboxes, empty of matches and sit only in a tone, a tone frozen for it reaches within itself and remembers the vibration of the tree from which it fell. A great movement that grew steadily – slowly and complexly simple as a great mass stripped easily, lightly, to spaces from which otherness comes and here we can be in the smallest bubble tightening with you after an ocean of vast drops left sprayed from another. The sound of no wave, of breaking, of dissolving, of all pieces fractured that once had the separation of all partings.

Scratching occurs to my left – I hear the breaking down of all considered actions and a dog bows its head for the sounds fall unfathomable and will not form – they will not form for they resist and it is this – that which resists that unsettles, while a wave settles too easily and the cracks and shifts of orchestrated moments nerve me for I am desiring to capture all this together and hold it in one record – one space but it remains falling itself. Destruction is too easy and yet impossible for the construction still remains and rests my hearing into no more information. This is the attention to how attention remains and other’s seek – to know that they are already knowing what will come next on the insistence consistent inconsistencies of too much easy noting time and I watch for I want to see if the dark can awn shake a marshall movement and scratch to the eye the pacing of another to what will be engaged and what might be otherwise deduced in flows that shifts yet mercurial is not for the archer comes for who is this crash. The crash of up and on and never to settle the re cannot be the settle, the rehearsed unsettle and fall open a call – the call – the trash that is crash and

talk comes and interrupts over but cannot be had to look – one must – I must – I give the look – please don’t talk – I try the broken interruption for what it is I hope to listen… and so I ask them to be quiet for it is rude and does anger me – on the interruption for this is tantric – the tantra and now I see it ah

this is the fold for where there is no space but the space of nothing folding and we cannot – ah – bliss this is blissful – this sound – for it has no position but a constant imposition and one continues in the slip stream – this is the imposition of no form within the slip stream of endlessness or cause to no end – we hear – we give another a note, a shot, a message that may or may not hold – we find and seek another out to be in this. We might come to hold – and not hold – this is where we know and seek out space so easily and I see and hear – no, no, I hear and my movement is distracted but some hold easy angles – angles call too long a call that is long – too – seek – easily over seeing fall – long moss of hope to fall – but never land – float, but with weight these positions are moving and they move and one picks his nose and holds that which might be between his forefinger and thumb and we know – we are it in a veined space of easy falling opportunity to seek out notes. Another note that may fall or bring one too easily to a longing – or undoing position of unfalling – the unposition of easy unfalling repetition to which no repetition happens for too much or too little can be accounted for to where all that holds and the toot from the street – the chant – the chant of infrequencies, the chant of uneven space, the hum of a fall that arrives easily in front of me and draws all that the believable energy, not swings, no chains, there are no words for sound really – no signifiers – oh what is it? and she turns with her notes and they hold and another moves and they join – no there is the passing, the note is found and given in a new space to where we seek corners that cannot be squared for their folds are opened and opened and sing – the signing of opened – . The call and then another from one whose knees sway and we HAPPEN ha pin the HA PEN – and little is otherwise – humming lightly under breath it follows and conversation mummers across ceramic and some doors close but the humming resumes and to her throat she swallows or holds slowly what cannot mis-take, and not live for a moment of treacherous.