(no subject)

I subscribe to The Walrus, a Canadian arts and culture mag. In the October issue they published this poem:

The Eyes Have It
by John Bemrose

Just off the trail
among the quills of the birches
the porcupine had settled, comfortably
into its final business.
It looked like a fur hat
abandoned in the snow melt
a little mound of treachery
its white-tipped needles raked back
to its bristly, club-
handled, still-lethal tail.

It was clear the porcupine was up to something.

I knew he was dead and yet
his stillness kept a strange avidity.
Like a bullet in a chamber
or a fortress challenging the air
secretly, under his defences,
he was intent on something —
he was settling into a deeper focus
like a jeweller lost in the cellars of a diamond
no longer caring about getting back.

Curious, I kicked him over
exposing his black, wrinkled underbelly
like the face of a black person a century old
the little alien paws
like all things alien secretly human
the long, silver, jointed fingers
ripped from their contact with the earth
and his sooty squirrel’s face, so astonishingly small
under its mohawk of quills.

Later, driving off, I thought again of the porcupine —
how I had kicked over the hut of his privacy
broken his last dish
stared into the room
where his relatives sat grieving.

At least I could have tipped him back again.
But I had left him with his belly exposed
to the wind, and the constellations
and the quick, unholy communion of eyes.

The Walrus
10/2007

I don't especially care to break out the analysis - I'm just going to be here, quietly enjoying.

***

I just bought Kanye's Graduation and MIA's Kala. I haven't listened to them enough times to form coherent opinions about the albums but I know this: they are both awesome, but they are divergently awesome. Some reviews to back me up on this: ( click here god dammit )

Kanye and Maya are very different artists but they're probably the two I'm most excited about right now. I just like, mostly uncritically, what they do. Listening to their music gives me pure sonic pleasure - they're attentive, mindful and very deliberate artists. There's a lot of artifice in their work, but just as much emotional honesty. These are albums with real personality and character, and god, impatience - they want to be heard, and now.

It's interesting to listen to these albums together, or consider these artists together as Rolling Stone did in its review because different as their careers (and career goals) are, their are some freaky similarities in terms of the space they occupy in the market.

Neither is famous primarily for their vocal skills. They're both lauded for their articulation of ideas and experimentation with a wide and varied sonic palette. They sample and borrow widely and are just good synthesizers, a talent that's especially useful in a globalized, post-Napster music market. They're also willing and capable to talk about things, personal and public, and risk sounding juvenile in the process. There's something both charming and challenging in that.

They've both been the Next Big Thing and are brats, who weren't nearly as respectful of their NBT status as critics would have liked. And yet they both want to be liked and to parlay that NBT status into deeper, long-lasting success. They have things they want and need to talk about - whether it be Louis Vee or the Tamil Tigers - and they're respectful enough of their audience to do it intelligently and creatively. Kanye has an especially light touch on political issues. His favourite topic is of course himself, but when he does go there it's thoughtful and natural-seeming. Maya is often overtly political but not didactically, admonishingly so.

Anyway. To bed and the finishing of The Ignorant Schoolmaster.

I think they're both interesting enough, and hungry enough to do be here in ten years but don't quote me on that.

Now if only I could get them together to do a disco/bhangra/hip-hop record.