If you want to experience music as an outstanding form of listening, hear how these four virtually unknown musicians fill the space by their conversation – collective improvisation at its best – on this 1968 recording by Norman Howard, Joe Philips, Walter Cliff and Corney Milsap: Burn Baby Burn.
Ernst Meister: "Viele..." (from Sage vom Ganzen den Satz, 1972)
VieleTranslated by Tatjana M. Warren with Robert L. Crosson:
haben keine
Sprache.
Wär ich nicht selbst
satt von Elend,
ich bewegte
die Zunge nicht.
Many
have no
speech.
Had I not
my fill of misery,
I would not
move my tongue.*
Good verse is sometimes good because it provokes certain questions that are almost objections. An unquenchable thirst for the words of a silent partner.
One's "fill of misery" – would it not rather render utterly speechless? Or is the "fill" a saturation of such a sort that it comes after all the miseries, a deluge of misery that leaves nothing but the speech – words totally transformed in their function and depth – or depthlessness?
.........
How to speak for the sake of the other who has no speech, without pretending to speak for the other (or: in place of the other – you cannot – even if you cannot avoid it, either)? A question – perhaps without an answer – that remains crucial for democracy.
__
* Quoted from Michael Mantler's website:
And what, said I, well he said, when a train was going by at a terrific pace and we waved a hat the engine driver could make a bell quite carelessly go ting ting ting, the way anybody playing at a thing could do, it was not if you know what I mean professional he said.*
Battles are named because there have been hills which have made a hill in a battle.**
Dykman et al. (1989) argued that, although depressive people make more accurate judgments about having no control in situations where in fact they have no control, they also believe they have no control when in fact they do; and so their perceptions are not more accurate overall.
