and/or void

st. exupery is something else. i was reading flight to arras in the hospital while my dad had heart surgery, which kind of screwed the pooch as far as appreciating it went, plus i was too freaking young, i think, but night flight's just blowing my mind. s-e flows from image to image in a manner that is like skin over muscle, or real skin over imaginary muscle. it's a little bit like dissonance, or richness, or richesse (which might not actually be a french word, but it's taken on a slightly separate meaning from "richness" in my head and so i'll use it, realities of the language be damned) in music, copeland or turandot being the examples i have in hand, where these harmonies just freaking become not lines but great piling swells (think "pines of rome" but less ganked from butterfly and with less freaking birds)--moments in which music gets the piles, that's what i'm talking about. and s-e does it with his writing, creates that feeling that your brain is swelling like a double-time melon and eventually will burst in sunset colors...creates that feeling that your heart's about to explode with the sensation of it.

that's a pretty awkward description. first of all, it may not be applicable to people who can actually experience emotion about their real lives (if such people exist). but more importantly, it just doesn't do its job (of, you know, describing). it's not a feeling of explosion, it's a feeling, maybe, of inward hum--an effect of resonance. yeah. all these things (notes, words) on top of each other create a...an arch, yeah, each object (stone) in tension with the other. something. the point is it's awesome.

and, hey, to bring it back to meam, the point is i don't know how to do it. and i should work on that. ashbery knows how to do it (i get the feeling that it's a different sensation for different people, hence the feeling created in me by the poets and authors and musicians and painters that i love gets created in other people by different poets, authors, musicians, and painters)--puccini always does it (to my mild shame)...then there are these things that do other things to me which aren't quite the same but are equally awesome. however i think i should stick with working on the first effect. now i've gone and confused myself, and should probably just quit while i'm only mildly behind (in self's comprehension of what self is writing, not in the comprehensibility of what self is writing, which i'm sure is pretty much nul).