Book of the Labyrinth: Benediction

(We’re looking at excerpts from my Book of the Labyrinth, a blank book into which I have written inspirational stuff, divided into the sections of RITUAL in Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy.)

Listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door;
Let’s go.
— e.e. cummings

BENEDICTION

Near the end of the third movement of Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia, a swirling phantasmagoria of Mahler, Western symphonic music, and mid-century absurdist thought, the narrator gives us some Samuel Beckett:

there must be something else, otherwise it would be quite hopeless; but it is quite hopeless, unquestioned, but it can’t go on… keep going, going on, call that going, call that on… but now it’s done, it’s over, we’ve had our chance, there was even for a second hope of resurrection or almost… we must collect our thoughts…

…which is not much of a Benediction, is it, as fitting as it might be for our Captivity?

No, the actual Benediction comes a bit earlier in the piece:

And when they ask, why all this? it is not easy to find an answer, for when we find ourselves, face to face, now, here, and they remind us that all this can’t stop the wars, can’t make the old younger, or lower the price of bread, can’t ease solitude or dull the tread outside the door, we can only nod, yes, it’s true, but no need to remind, to point, for all is with us always, except perhaps at certain moments here among these rows of balconies, in a crowd or out of it, perhaps waiting to enter, watching. And tomorrow we’ll read that Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto made tulips grow in my garden and altered the flow of ocean currents. We must believe it’s true.

We must believe it’s true: the power in MAKING THE THING THAT IS NOT is not of our making, but it is of our choosing, and as we leave the space in which we work, it is simple wisdom to offer gratitude for that power and for our ability to work within it.

Especially now, here, in Captivity, we may feel that what we can accomplish is powerless, worthless even, but we must resist that. Life may be short, but art is eternal. (That Wikipedia link is worth reading and thinking about.) It is our task to create, and to be grateful.

In beauty
may I walk
All day long
may I walk
Through the returning seasons
may I walk…
With beauty before me
may I walk
With beauty behind me
may I walk
With beauty above me
may I walk
With beauty all around me
may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively,
may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, living again,
may I walk
It is finished in beauty
It is finished in beauty
—from the Navajo

So turn off the lights in your studio, close the door to your study, wash your hands of the soil of your garden, and vow to return to the space where you work.

May God us keep
From single vision and Newton’s sleep.
— Blake

Remember to romp.
— Lyles