Posts
(1st published @ www.ashevillejungcenter.org/blog/ )
Recent discussion about the movie AVATAR conducted in an online forum led me to the following thoughts. What other films, pieces of literature, poetry, paintings or sculpture, or music that others have encountered that touched a plucked a chord in you while also making a "collective" chord vibrate? For example, the progression in "Adagio for Strings" by Samuel Barber evokes that effect. http://www.amazon.com/Leonard-Bernstein-Conducts-Barber-Schuman/dp/B0000CD5GJ/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1273284763&sr=1-5 Another is "Herman Melville" by W H Auden. The first four lines stand alone for me in producing the effect.
Towards the end he sailed into an extraordinary mildness,
And anchored in his home and reached his wife
And rode within the harbour of her hand,
And went across each morning to an office
As though his occupation were another island.
Goodness existed: that was the new knowledge
His terror had to blow itself quite out
To let him see it; but it was the gale had blown him
Past the Cape Horn of sensible success
Which cries: 'This rock is Eden. Shipwreck here.'
But deafened him with thunder and confused with lightning:
-- The maniac hero hunting like a jewel
The rare ambiguous monster that had maimed his sex,
Hatred for hatred ending in a scream,
The unexplained survivor breaking off the nightmare --
All that was intricate and false; the truth was simple.
Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table,
And we are introduced to Goodness every day,
Even in drawing-rooms among a crowd of faults;
He has a name like Billy and is almost perfect
But wears a stammer like a decoration:
And every time they meet the same thing has to happen;
It is the Evil that is helpless like a lover
And has to pick a quarrel and succeeds,
And both are openly destroyed before our eyes.
For now he was awake and knew
No one is ever spared except in dreams;
But there was something else the nightmare had distorted --
Even the punishment was human and a form of love:
The howling storm had been his father's presence
And all the time he had been carried on his father's breast.
Who now had set him gently down and left him.
He stood upon the narrow balcony and listened:
And all the stars above him sang as in his childhood
'All, all is vanity,' but it was not the same;
For now the words descended like the calm of mountains --
-- Nathaniel had been shy because his love was selfish --
But now he cried in exultation and surrender
'The Godhead is broken like bread. We are the pieces.'
And sat down at his desk and wrote a story.
Towards the end he sailed into an extraordinary mildness,
And anchored in his home and reached his wife
And rode within the harbour of her hand,
And went across each morning to an office
As though his occupation were another island.
Goodness existed: that was the new knowledge
His terror had to blow itself quite out
To let him see it; but it was the gale had blown him
Past the Cape Horn of sensible success
Which cries: 'This rock is Eden. Shipwreck here.'
But deafened him with thunder and confused with lightning:
-- The maniac hero hunting like a jewel
The rare ambiguous monster that had maimed his sex,
Hatred for hatred ending in a scream,
The unexplained survivor breaking off the nightmare --
All that was intricate and false; the truth was simple.
Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table,
And we are introduced to Goodness every day,
Even in drawing-rooms among a crowd of faults;
He has a name like Billy and is almost perfect
But wears a stammer like a decoration:
And every time they meet the same thing has to happen;
It is the Evil that is helpless like a lover
And has to pick a quarrel and succeeds,
And both are openly destroyed before our eyes.
For now he was awake and knew
No one is ever spared except in dreams;
But there was something else the nightmare had distorted --
Even the punishment was human and a form of love:
The howling storm had been his father's presence
And all the time he had been carried on his father's breast.
Who now had set him gently down and left him.
He stood upon the narrow balcony and listened:
And all the stars above him sang as in his childhood
'All, all is vanity,' but it was not the same;
For now the words descended like the calm of mountains --
-- Nathaniel had been shy because his love was selfish --
But now he cried in exultation and surrender
'The Godhead is broken like bread. We are the pieces.'
And sat down at his desk and wrote a story.
_______________________
Are there works that succeed at evoking a strong effect at the personal level while also opening you to the collective realm? If so, share them (possibly with a hyperlink that allows others to enjoy the uplifting or expansive effect you've had.
