Here's a Steve Reich poem of mine, written perhaps
in some other lifetime.
Hal
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Six Marimbas
I was sick as a dog, and some NYC radio station
was playing Steve Reich's Six Marimbas on an all-day basis, over
and over and over again. The music's patterns lapped
over me, the repeated, gradually altered
phrases moving toward and away from each other in the yellowy
gray of a confined-to-the-apartment afternoon.
Almost not sick enough to be in bed,
I sprawled on my back on the couch, occasionally making
an effort to catch up on my students' compositions,
but giving up before long and pitching
myself backwards into the music
and into dreamland.
Phasing requires a loose sort of listening,
the aural equivalent of sitting in the sand on a beach,
watching the small waves lapping up on the shore,
seeing the rhythms there as they caught up with each
other, moved in unison motion for a time, and then
fell out of phase again, into some eccentric motion you
couldn't put a name to if you wanted to.
It's like being stopped at a red light
on a rainy afternoon, in the left turn lane, you and the car
ahead of you both signaling left
turns, but your flashers just ever so slightly out of
synch. For a moment, they seem to beat together
as the hearts of two lovers do, and then one
or the other pulls ahead or drops behind
and there's a period of curious
but increasingly complicated rhythms
which topple for some moments into chaos--
when the two cars seem totally uncon-
nected before leaning back toward synchrony again.
And then the light turns green, the cars round the corner
and the flashers stop. And the rhythm goes on to
seek out a new set of dancers.
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