Glockenspiel

The glockenspiel is a percussion instrument mounted in a frame. It consists of a series of steel or alloy bars of graduated length and pitch arranged in two rows chromatically. Sharps and flats stowed away in the chrome attic.

I like the word ‘glockenspiel,’ which is German, and means “bell play.” I like it when a word can do this. I like it when a word can rise like a loaf in the oven of the head and produce a fragrance of morning warmth. Words are a stirring of the odor of sound. Sound as form of afflatus, or phoneme. Sound as sound. Sound sound. Sound on a sound in a sound by a sound.

Distortions of sound form bulbs. Burst on the page in fire and color. Chrysanthemums of fire blooming on a summer night.

It’s very similar to gardening. If you plant a squash you get a sycamore.

My language is your language. I don’t own the language. Any language. No one owns a language. I find this very exciting. It’s how I navigate. I walk beside a fire. I pursue a chimera of echoes. My diversions are simple and topographic. The surrounding earth is sublime. I hear echoes beneath the language that extrude ganglions of ghostly caravan. I delight my eyeballs with the odor of definition. The odor of definition varies from word to word. Some words smell like clouds. Some words smell like lightning flashing in a cloud. Sulfurous. And hot.

Little Richard polishes his piano with an insoluble C sharp. The words that I am using to describe this curve into calculus and modulate the vividness of water. And this is how you begin with a glockenspiel and end up with a piano. Language is slippery. You’re trafficking in shadows. My thoughts on this shift from day to day. I’m certain that language is a garden for the hybridization of words and the development of metaphors. But then I think no, that’s too complicated, too static. Language is more volatile than that. It’s more like a gas, or hallucination.

Sometimes the words scatter like crustaceans and sometimes the words demand the elasticity of rubber. My ears are laboratories for the study of waves.

I like the way words travel through an argument, convulsing like torrents on a map of fjords and aqueducts.

Consider a constancy and you will discover a spin.

The paper towels go so quickly. Where do they go? The words go in search of paper towels. The words are not my words. The words are words searching for paper towels.

Because there is a quiddity of things. An old poet getting on a plane. Could be me. Could be you. The question to ask is: do words separate us from the essentials of reality, or do they join us to a reality that wouldn’t exist without them? And what is the language of clouds? What is the language of stars? What is the language of light and mud and the naked air? Air is the language of air. Mud speaks mud. Stars speak stars. It is the play of bells. Bluster. Potato. Glockenspiel.