surrogate key

Nothing Twice

Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you’re the planet’s biggest dunce,
you can’t repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses.

One day, perhaps some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you’re here with me,
I can’t help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It’s in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we’re different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.

by Wislawa Szymborska (b. 1923, d.2012)
translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak

Nothing Twice was also made into a song, performed by Lucja Prus:

“Senor Soul & Rewelacyjny Luciano Edit”:

2012: 02/06
TAGS: poems
syzmborska
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Just finished a great workshop at the Center for Digital Storytelling. I was expecting to make a digital story but didn’t realize that it would have to be a first person story, so was scrambling a bit. Here’s the audio from mine — could use some Audacification.

Glasses-Audio

I did the video thing too, but I kind of like just the plain audio. Might change the video around a bit though and see what happens.

The workshop was an interesting experience. They don’t want you to leave for lunch in the afternoon for fear that you’ll “break the story circle.” I was skeptical about this at first, but I came around. Although the story I did is pretty light, some people were working on stories that were really difficult — about death, violence, troubled family histories — and the atmosphere cultivated in the room seemed to help people tell those stories.

2011: 11/07
TAGS: stories
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Beautiful machines

Controversy over some of the choreography in Beyoncé’s Countdown video introduced me to an amazing choreographer that I wasn’t familiar with: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. One of De Keersmaeker’s pieces that Beyoncé’s video, umm, visually quotes, let’s say, is Rosas danst rosas:

(Most of the direct overlap with Countdown is in Part 3 below, but don’t miss Part 1 and Part 2.)

Part 3

Rosas danst rosas is ridiculously entertaining for Serious Dance — it’s no wonder that a pop musician appropriated it.

2011: 10/10
TAGS: dance
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Unstable social norms

Picture of people standing on righthand side of escalator

Stand to the right, Photo by capl@washjeff.edu CC BY-NC-SA

This morning I was trying to divert myself from an inner rage-splosion over people standing on the left side of the escalator. It’s really not that big of a deal, I reminded myself. What, so it takes all of five seconds longer to get to the top? And when I first moved from a small town to a big city I sometimes stood on the left too, so I really have no business being judge-y.

Nevertheless, a tiny enraged person inside my head was inventing new curse words.