Two things have been swirling in my mind the last couple of days.
First, the Joan Baez song Diamonds and Rust. I hadn't thought of it in years, and then, all of a sudden, it came back to me on Saturday night. I now marvel at "Now you're telling me / You're not nostalgic / Well give me another word for it / You were so good with words / And at keeping things vague." She was talking to me all along, and it took Saturday for me to realise it. I've always used my facility with words to keep things vague, to avoid responsibility, to be one thing and its opposite at the same time.
Second, the Kenneth Koch line, "You aren't just the age you are. You're all the ages you ever have been." Every time I try to run away from my past, to try to be a different person, it catches up with me. The fell clutch of circumstance ensures it. I'll never escape my past, my father, my chemistry, my melancholy, my selfishness, my sadness, my ability to inflict damage.
I'll never escape my nature -- just read posts on this blog from ages ago, and gawp at how I am exactly the same. If anything, I've lost the intellectual spark I once had.The sad truth is that the moral arc of my universe will never bend towards anything good. Every zig towards improvement is inevitably followed by a zag towards despair, and it's all my fault.
Thank you for listening.
First, the Joan Baez song Diamonds and Rust. I hadn't thought of it in years, and then, all of a sudden, it came back to me on Saturday night. I now marvel at "Now you're telling me / You're not nostalgic / Well give me another word for it / You were so good with words / And at keeping things vague." She was talking to me all along, and it took Saturday for me to realise it. I've always used my facility with words to keep things vague, to avoid responsibility, to be one thing and its opposite at the same time.
Second, the Kenneth Koch line, "You aren't just the age you are. You're all the ages you ever have been." Every time I try to run away from my past, to try to be a different person, it catches up with me. The fell clutch of circumstance ensures it. I'll never escape my past, my father, my chemistry, my melancholy, my selfishness, my sadness, my ability to inflict damage.
I'll never escape my nature -- just read posts on this blog from ages ago, and gawp at how I am exactly the same. If anything, I've lost the intellectual spark I once had.The sad truth is that the moral arc of my universe will never bend towards anything good. Every zig towards improvement is inevitably followed by a zag towards despair, and it's all my fault.
Thank you for listening.
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