The Heart Repeats
HOLBEIN: Study for the Family Portrait of Thomas More, c.1527. Pen and brush in black on chalk sketch, Kunstmuseum Basel. Via Wikipedia.
“...and my heart—you can't plan on the heart, but the better part of it, my poetry, is open.”
- Frank O’Hara
Hello lovely people! It seems like it was just last week we were here together and right after reading a poem about past lives and nonsense about boxed wine I realized that it was just the week before we were reading about ways to get unstuck as we emerge from a pandemic and this is not an emerging pattern that this week we’re here together again reading about what B told me last night at dinner, how our hearts have their own electrical systems, a nervous system independent of the brain yet in relationship via the autonomic nervous system, and I wonder at what other universes may live within me that I’m unaware of but feel at moments of clarity like how Joe Brainard describes the act of appreciating art:
Looking through a book of drawings by Holbein
I realize several moments of truth.
A nose (a line) so nose-like. So line-like.
And then I think to myself "so what?"
It's not going to solve any of my problems.
And then I realize that at the very moment of appreciation
I had no problems.
Then I decide that this is a pretty profound thought.
And that I ought to write it down.
This is what I have just done.
But it doesn't sound so profound anymore.
That's art for you.
…
These things too inspired me recently:
9 Paradoxical Truths That Will Change How You Think About Life - like Buddhist koans or lyric poems.
‘The drum needed a blood sacrifice’: the rise of dark Nordic folk - I first heard Scandinavian folk metal music on the local radio station out of Girdwood, Alaska as I was cruising home along the Turnagain Arm one long summer day. I especially dig Wardruna for their sound and beautiful music videos.
When the Frequency for Tuning Instruments Became a Grand Conspiracy Theory - There’s more to this story but this is a great introduction. I’d like to start a society around this but I’ve got other things going on right now.
Ten Examples of the Mandela Effect - Does Darth Vader actually say, “Luke, I am your father?”
What can we really know if our hearts and brains work independently together?