Wonderful story Chris.
Thank you.
I have looped Ingrid playing the three bars,
and it will be set today, up on a smaller monitor,
where it will quietly insist that extreme passion for
simple seeming chords might span centuries and continents.
And live on as throbbing guilt for absurd and trashy times.
Not nostalgia, but reminders that "sublime" is a state
which can exist today as a model for which to strive.
That fortunes might have been spent, that workers were nagged,
that immoral drifts of questionable swag dispensed in this manner -
all placed in their context by that remaining structure.
Intense, obsessive, vainglorious but in essence: true.
There is a fine novel I have, a four hour flight away,
around those individuals and their fortunes,
I shall find it for you. It rung a bell on your first letter,
which is how I came to ask that question,
'might there be a slide of that haus ?'
I have asked young Viennese about it -
even Googled with one to view it by satellite,
so he could recognise it as the place near
his highschool/academy/nannas . . .
he could have I feel, described the local MacDonald
Burghery better, and with more interest.
Time spent, which seemed necessary -
on door handles, on those lights, on the shutters;
for dark evenings perfectly illumined
for the sound of exquisite mechanical pianos resonating,
buffeting the audiences - stirring their refined emotions,
to more significant realisations. Perhaps.
Here, at my big round table, I sit;
letting the flicker through the vertical glass doors;
of vehicular torrent tear into the city for daily breads . . .
along the road from Parramatta.
Ingrid, plays those gentle sounds while underlying them,
the dreadful triple confession reverberates.
Tomorrow Margaret Seymour visits to rescue
my failed vain dreams of streaming,
and logging and blogging and doing -
all synchronously.
I have discovered, at 73 there are limitations
which need be attacked despite,
and then recognised despite the prideful self.
A team of techies would have helped,
but what we have is closer to reality,
and in simpler manner
the simple truth of a simple and elderly chap.
In a little more time, I shall send you pix,
and evidence of your fine contribution,
with Margaret's help it shall be "up there"
wherever that is. And you might get to it first.
At the great round table . . .
with uncommon regard for your efforts.
A.
Below,
a Reconstruction - photographed by Margaret Roberts of:
" Art in the Age of Mechanical Engineering -
a Story of Ice and Foolishness."
First performed alone, from Motueka, Tasman to Aramoana, Otago, Aotearoa. October 2015.
17 hours, then to the Blue Oyster Ancillary, Dunedin, for eighty dollars in shrapnel.
Recounted with actions at Articulate Project Space, Sydney, September 2016."
is working with those three bars, the refrain -
which cropped up, here last Thursday incidentally.
As did Ingrid too of course.
I am trying to pull together a fitting occurrence for this Sunday.
Possibly solo/verbal/ranting/rolling/reminiscing/recollecting
p'raps I shall try a conducted Google visit to Vienna,
projected?
We shall see . . . when we see.
Good thoughts - y'all.
This project is supported by funding from Leichhardt Council