First, thanks to Karlien, and Randolph & Cris - and any others who I've
inadvertently failed to credit in this important thread, which slips into
the fabric at a very good point.
I remember Bunting talking about the "music of the body" when I was a
music student in Newcastle - the rhythms the body makes when walking,
riding, lying still, the vibrations & tones therein. That you might filter
it into music, or poetry, indeed you should try to (Bunting came from a
generation which issued prescriptions, and his seem no worse than anyone
elses). It struck a chord (o, damn, you know what I mean) with me - the
musics I like / respond to remain those which I can physically relate to.
The actual contact of sung or bowed music...
... or the stamp of feet through a landscape. On my homemade Beaufort
scale for engagement w/ landscape, if "click" is potentially a low point,
then "tread" is several points higher, more engaged, and represents the
point in the pastoral model where rural/urban as distinctions decrease in
significance. Of course, it's not just feet - it's breathing, listening -
all the other points which tell you where you are. As a maker of things,
it's that kind of responding which is more than seldom part of what I want
to do. It's not about "authenticity" - I relate it to the Zukofsky thing:
"moved/by the intimacy of one response" (? quoted away from source). I
could live with pastoral growing from a kind of heightened, engaged
version of landscape.
Also quoted in absentia, responding to Peter's nudge re Gilbert White:
White's statement to the effect that that piece of ground yields most
which is most studied. "Study" is not the same as "tread", and can be a
process at several removes. For all his charm, and his "hands-on-ness",
White was a Gent, external to many of the processes which fascinated him.
But I guess I admire it, at heart, all the same. You don't *have* to be
part of what you write, but there are those who are, and do, and it shines
through.
Long message hopefully makes some sense to some.
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Richard Caddel
Durham University Library, Stockton Rd., Durham DH1 3LY, UK
E-mail: R.I.Caddel @ durham.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)191 374 3044 Fax: +44 (0)191 374 7481
WWW: http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dul0ric
"Words! Pens are too light. Take a chisel to write."
- Basil Bunting
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