From the Head

Nov 28 2011

Bean bag chair.

Mattress on the floor.

Bare bulb

dangling on its cord.

I must be dressed

as well,

black turtleneck

generic jeans.

Unmentionables

underneath,

so I won’t.

This minimalism

is not a pose.

A sulking phase

of adolescence.

A dead-end man

perversely seeking attention.

And just as you’d expect

my music is a cappella,

from the head.

Distilled down to next

to nothing.

But not heartless

or gutless.

Because in the still space

in between,

in reverberance, and overtones,

in diminuendo notes

suspended on air

that seem to linger

forever,

I can spend

all I own,

expend myself.

Somewhere in there

eyes closed,

where it’s more decadent

and rococo

than you could ever imagine.

I’ve spoken lately about my preference in music:  spare, minimalist, acoustic. Slow. Not over-produced. Lots of space.

This is similar to poetry, where less is usually more, and where all the power is in the momentary pause, the empty space. You notice this most at a line break, where the sense or sound of a word lingers, and sticks.

And this also reflects my values and lifestyles:  a tendency to live in my head, a preference for uncluttered surroundings. I know this cheap shot at materialism makes me sound either an adolescent idealist, or a hypocrite, or both; but it’s true:  the desire for and attachment to things often feels like a burden, not the source of comfort and security we’ve been led to expect. 

Anyway, my eye was caught by an ad in the Arts section of the paper, something to do with “minimalism”. I’m not necessarily a fan of all forms of minimalism in the visual arts (abstract minimalists like Rothko leave me unimpressed and unmoved), but the notion of minimalism in general has an abiding appeal for me. And seems to me an inevitable corollary for someone who is good at living in his head.

This is where the poem began. Of course, such a theme demands to be complemented by a spare writing style – a minimum of words and complexity. This is something I pretty much always aspire to; and often fail at. So I’m not sure if I succeeded here. I do realize that the piece gets more descriptive and wordy towards the end. This is intentional:  I allow the character to become more expansive and animated, opening up as he begins to retreat into himself.

You’d be correct if you took the black turtleneck to be not only a reference to the generic hipster, the self-styled bohemian (not at all me, but it’s a familiar trope), but also a small homage to the very recently deceased Steve Jobs (of Apple fame), who always appeared in his familiar black turtleneck and jeans. Has anyone, in recent memory, been a more successful advocate of simplicity and elegance in design? So what better example of minimalist beauty than his work.