music-arc-rainbow-poetry_v2

This is kind of how music looks in my mind.

And I hear myself say this all the time:

“The key to creative freedom is structure.”

I don’t mean structure imposed from outside – but internal structure. Like bones. Like an arc.

I ‘get’ how structure works with music – but for words alone I haven’t found a parallel.

I see it clearly with music: music rides on a pulse of time through shifts of emotional color. The emotional color –  harmony – gives meaning words or the unspeakable sub-words that are musical phrase –  and this reveals and expresses human experience.

It’s simple.  Music rides the wave of time… and takes you on that ride.

If you jump on that wave, you can play with it. Making time into music refracts it into an arc – not a single arc, like a rainbow – but infinitely reshapeable – an arc made of infinite arcs.

Music rides the wave of time ... and takes you on that ride. Click To Tweet

You can play with that arc – embellish it, reshape it, spin other arcs off of it – yet each seed or musical idea has its own undefinable shape in the ether. It fully exists without any shape or definition.

Now that I’m actually trying to describe it – I can see it and feel it, but don’t feel I’m explaining it fully.  I only know that exploring the shape of music is an endless delight – as if you could reach out and grab arcs out of the air.

You can, actually.

Every song I’ve ever heard – or never heard yet – every melodic fragment – exists as an arc for infinite play.

So what about writing?  I wish I had, for writing, that understanding of structure and play that I have for music.

But it just occurred to me …

Occurring like a cur – a dog – with infinitely playful spirit

A dog whose nose is an emissary

A nose that created dog to ferry it through the world …

That prose is not poetry

Is prose to explain – and poetry to play?

Because there’s no EXPLAINING in music.  You PLAY it. It PLAYS you. It IS play.

The playing OUT

The playing IN

Playing WITH

Is poetry music without the sound? Poets – tell me!

Is poetry music without the sound? Poets – tell me! Click To Tweet

And if so – what is its arc?

How do you play it?

 

 

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