Log24

The concluding paragraph of Erich Heller's 1953 essay, "The Hazard of Modern Poetry"–

"'The poetry does not matter.' These words from Mr. T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets acquire an all but revolutionary significance if we understand them not only in their particular context but also in the context of a period of poetry in which nothing mattered except poetry. Against this background the Four Quartets themselves appear, in all their complexity, as the poetry of simple civic virtue– the poetry of a poet trying to read the writing of the law that has become all but illegible. This, you may say, has nothing to do with poetry. On the contrary, it is one of the few truly hopeful signs that this civic virtue could once more be realized poetically. For in speaking to the hazard of modern poetry I did not wish to suggest that the end had come for singers and skylarks. There will always be skylarks; perhaps even a few nightingales. But poetry is not only the human equivalent of the song of singing birds. It is also Virgil, Dante, and Hölderlin. It is also, in its own terms, the definition of the state of man."
 

Communion

Ian Lee on the communion of saints and the association of ideas (in The Third Word War, 1978) 

"The association is the idea"

Herman Melville on the association of ideas:

"In me, many worthies recline, and converse."

Stephen Hunter yesterday on the protagonist of the new film Collateral:

"He dresses Italian, shoots German (suits by Versace, pistol by Heckler & Koch), talks like Norman Mailer's White Negro and improvises brilliantly."  

Anagram by Dante (Filipponi, that is) on the name of Gianni Versace:

Can Give a Siren

Sirens, true sirens verily be,
Sirens, waylayers in the sea.

— Herman Melville, quoted
early yesterday by stephenhoy

Siren and White Negro:

See Gates's essay on
Anatole Broyard and
the log24 Bastille Day
entry on Mr. Motley's
neighborhood.   

"… there are many associations of ideas which do not correspond to any actual connection of cause and effect in the world of phenomena…."

— John Fiske, "The Primeval Ghost-World," quoted in the Heckler & Coch weblog

And, finally, brilliance:

Spirit of East St. Louis

On Miles Davis and Philly Joe Jones:

Miles said to Jones, "I think this is it." Jones agreed having said of the group, "The first time we played together…we just looked around at each other and said, ‘hum here it is right here. We’ve got musical telepathy here. We have five people who always know what’s going to happen next.’" And those five people became legendary as the classic Miles Davis Quintet was baptized for its first time.

From The American Art Form:

While singing work songs, a leader would call out a phrase, and the rest of the people would answer. This is known as call and response. In Cindy Blackman's "Telepathy" , the lead saxophone who is playing the melody calls out a phrase, and another horn responds. In some jazz music, there is what is known as "trading 4's". This is when one instrument plays 4 measures, and then another plays 4 measures off what the first person played, and so on. This is a modern rendition of call and response.

 

Trading Fours

See also

Miles Davis, E. S. P.,

Bill Stewart, Telepathy,

Desmond and Mulligan, Two of a Mind,

Google search, "musical telepathy,"

and a novel dealing with East St. Louis (where Miles Davis grew up) and telepathy,

The Hollow Man, by Dan Simmons.

From the jacket of The Hollow Man:

Jeremy Bremen has a secret. All his life he has been cursed with the unwanted ability to read minds. He can hear the secret thoughts behind the placid expressions of strangers, colleagues, and friends. Their dreams, their fears, their most secret desires are as intimate to him as his own. For years his wife, Gail, has served as a shield between Jeremy and the intrusive thoughts of those around him. Her presence has protected him from the outside world and allowed him to continue his work as one of the world's leading mathematicians. But now Gail is dying, her mind slipping slowly away, and Jeremy comes face-to-face with the horror of his own omniscience. Vulnerable and alone, he is suddenly exposed to a chaotic flood of others' thoughts, threatening to fill him with the world's pain and longing, to sweep away his very sanity. His mathematical studies have taken him to the threshold of knowledge and enabled him to map uncharted regions of the mind, to recognize the mind itself as a mirror of the universe…and to see in that mirror the fleeting reflection of the creator himself. But his studies taught him nothing at all about the death of the mind, about the loss of love and trust, and about the terrible loneliness of mortality. Now Jeremy is on the run – from his mind, from his past, from himself – hoping to find peace in isolation. Instead he witnesses an act of brutality that sends him on a treacherous odyssey across America, from a fantasy theme park to the mean streets of an uncaring city, from the lair of a killer to the gaudy casinos of Las Vegas, and at last to a sterile hospital room in St. Louis in search of the voice that is calling him to the secret of existence itself.