The mammoth became kind of the first bald eagle, the first species people really identified with America because it was so big and powerful. It was everything that a new country wanted to see itself as. And it hit people hard when more and more evidence started emerging that mammoths were, in fact, extinct. They had to change the mammoth story and rewrite their feelings about it. The new story went that instead of America being so magnificent that it was filled with mammoths, it was actually an empty place just waiting for white settlers to take it over. God had wiped the mammoth out to clear the way for us. It’s another example of the narratives we build around creatures.
read this article. it is not concise. but it is imperative.
Art is to console those who are broken by life.
“Remember” by Christina Rossetti. Read the poem and find more expensive poetry manuscripts at Book Patrol (this one went for £33,650).
sang a nice setting of this years ago and again this spring. the last two lines are the only ones that did anything for me, but maybe you’ll enjoy the rest.
weather update
it never rained. clouds were prodded into a sullen blanket only to be bowled off by a fell wind. this morning in my voice lesson i was gifted unexpected words of praise by my teacher, which i will save for later. right now i assume they were offered only because i looked as close to “hellish” as i will allow myself to be in public (haggard, stonefaced, tense) hoping to placate me in some way. good effort. also futile. later came the final diction/rep recital, the date for which my mother bullied out of me long enough ago for me to have completely forgotten her intention to attend. and attend she did, my father and grandmother in tow. i got eight measures to process this absolutely unwelcome surprise before it was time to pretend to be a gooey-eyed schoolboy leaving flowers for a girl already damned to fall in love with someone older and wiser (with the devil as his sidekick). made it through the piece fine. better than fine, “under the circumstances,” and even without them, according to my peers’ (95% unreliable) feedback.
fuck the circumstances. i would just as soon have my parents bitter about not being allowed to attend as i would have them witness me just get through something with a voice my nose has put through hell all week, supplemented by a careening and unreliable sleep schedule and a mind in a hundred places (but precious few of any use). the same goes for everyone else in the room. i want nothing to do with just about anyone at the moment. the only reason i wrote any of this down is that this is all i have time for. it is a ridiculous, puerile, pointless tantrum. but i am holding myself together too tightly to let any looser. two german pieces tomorrow morning, then a week to sit and think about what i’ve just done before juries come around. seems like i get to choose between grim/angry/”or else” energy or no energy at all; and since the former cannot be sustained for long, the answer is a pencilled-in C: all of the above.
think heavy thoughts for the shower my town may get tomorrow.
i doubt any drops will fall before the clouds trudge off. the microclimate clings to caprice for its constant. but any of you who are braver than i may hope nevertheless.
center will not hold
Kometenbuch (1587).
> Via.
At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.
please be true. please.
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