Sometimes it occurs to me that side effects steal the show of the main event. That happened yesterday in Ostende in the James Ensor museum. I bought a book in the museum shop. Probably someone had it before in his hand, because there was a flyer inside, showing the cultural program of the museum for July 2019. A strange name caught my eye: Myrrdin De Cauter. He was described as an excentrical genius on the guitar. I watched him on YouTube and must agree, he is outrageous on the strings. My favorite piece is „Vigdis“ on CD Rosa De Papel.
Today I strolled through different bookstores in Brussels. At the last Manameeting some of us were discussing the death of the cities. Richard Sennett, who does not stop urging to build more human cities, would have loved the place, I visited today. The bookstore „cook & book“ has a very multi communicative concept: outside playgrounds, cinema, café, inside several bookdepartments with restaurant corners. Anyways, I discovered a book of a belgium philosopher and environment engineer: Edwin Zaccai – „Deux degrés“. On the first page I read a quote from a song of the Australian band: Midnight Oil. They adored The Go Betweens. Zaccai chose some lines of the song „Beds are burning“ on DUST AND DIESEL.
How can we dance when our earth is turning, how do we sleep while our beds are burning …
Last week, during a family gathering, I saw a white book laying on a table: Ben Lerner – The Hatred of Poetry. I borrowed it and enjoyed reading it very much.
Ben Lerner made me laugh quite often. He is a funny, intelligent writer. How he explains, why Platon hated poetry and many others … he tells hilarious, absurd stories about how poetry was invented and explains, why there can’t be poetry on a dentist chair … and why some poets write for themselves and others for all of the readers.
I liked especially the final sentence of that fine book:
All I ask the haters – and I, too, am one – is that they strive to perfect their contempt, even consider bringing it to bear on poems, where it will be deepened, not dispelled, and where, by creating a place for possibility and present absences (like unheard melodies), it might come to resemble love.