Lorraine Nakai – A Motley Vision

Pillars of Fire

for Stephen Carter in partial fulfillment of a promise
but especially for greenfrog, who showed me a bit of backbone

When a subject and object look at one another, there is no subject and no object, there’s only relation, the scope of which extends beyond either creature’s ability to fully grasp it. You can’t grasp it, but you can step out to meet it. If you do, prepare to catch on fire “¦

When I was in my early twenties, two events ignited my life. The first involved a disagreement with a close friend whose feelings of friendship toward me had cooled. I was changing, growing up a little, I guess. I think my friend no longer felt needed, and feeling needed was important to her. My feelings of deep friendship hadn’t changed, yet somehow that didn’t matter, not to her. Why not? I wondered. Why shouldn’t my feelings matter to her? Continue reading “Pillars of Fire”

Science, Art, and Spirit at the Bluff Arts Festival, Part Two

Traditionally, two arts have most bent our ear: music, whose relationship with the ear is a long-running whirlwind courtship; and poetry, an art that in its earliest days hung all its hope upon the openness of the aural corridor running to the mind. Music has retained its, shall we say, aural tradition. Few people read the score for Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67″ or even the sheet music for Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” to engage those works’ full effects. Continue reading “Science, Art, and Spirit at the Bluff Arts Festival, Part Two”