The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock – By T.S. Eliot
“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.”
“Some people are convinced that letters have well-defined colors that can be seen exactly in the mind’s eye. The experience is called synesthesia – a strange intermingling of sensory modalities that constitutes further evidence for neuronal recycling.” Dehaene, S. (2009) Reading in the Brain. Penguin Books, NY. (P. 215)
“Whatever you can do with your hands gives you a small world that you can actually cope with.” (Wilson, F. (1998) The Hand. Random House NY. (P. 219)
Words – the black on the page – transmitting colors, sensations, emotions. Voice, sound, substance evoking memories, ever present. Fear and indecision ever needing the distraction of hands, of creation.
The articulate hand
Seeing voices
Musical grammar
My melodies speak when…
Handiwork – “the ways of hands“
Express, gesticulate, create
Paint, pick, weave
Edit, write, see
Try to feel without imagining what it looks like
Touch just to remember the color of sensation
The sound of the smoothness
of each key under
each finger, sending velvet waves
into the universe
(I wonder if each key is like a stone being dropped into a pond – the pebble sinks out of sight and the ripples flow one into another, one after another. The pebble coming to a halt at the bottom, and the ripples ever reverberating off the edges and resonating together)
Substance – Void
Empty shelves, devoid of substance,
(Books being the ultimate substance)
In a library – the ultimate holder of voices – vice of voices
I see the hands taking books from shelves
With no minds
Hands flying minds…
Minds flying miles
Away, away from time
Sound forced from covers slapped together
Ideas rubbed against each other as two books meet
Three full rows empty. Devoid of substance
The clamour of voices from the neighboring shelves muted
Here in the silence, the void
Devoid of substance and voice.