Futile Horn

06.19.2003 - 1:08 am (I don't mind chopping wood)

I finally finished reading Horace's first book of odes today. I had been nearly done for a while but I just didn't get around to the last few. It was mostly a good experience. One thing I liked was a sort of equality of themes. I came up with a dopey little rhyme about it:

Love is an ocean, the ocean is war
The ship is our nation trying to score

I heard Ani Difranco say on the radio that she felt the distinction between the personal and political to be artificial. I think that was the feeling I got here. Lovers, shipwrecks, drunkenness, civil war, the opulence of the east all more or less described in the same terms. He answers the request of the Augustan general, Agrippa, for an epic poem by saying that he is only suitable for writing light themes, banquets and lovers' struggles. But these things get described in strong terms. Maybe the trivial things are what are most important, or on some ethereal level of artistic truth that needn't in any way reflect the real world, the heavy affairs of men have no weight at all.

After the long Trojan war, Teucer returns home to Salamis and his father, only to be exiled when his father learns that Teucer lives while his half brother Ajax had died -- not even slain on the field, but disgraced into suicide over a dispute over a suit of armor. So with a garland of poplar leaves on his forehead and a goblet in his hand, he toasts the hour and tells his disheartened comrades, "Do not despair with Teucer as your leader and augur, for unerring Apollo has promised there will be a new Salamis. My brave companions, you have often suffered much worse with me in the past. Tonight push your cares away with wine. Tomorrow we make a second trial of the boundless sea."

Something like that.

I was listening to the World Cafe on the radio broadcast out of the University of Pennsylvania, and the host had a band called The Last Hombres come in as guests. You could tell that the guy had little to no interest in the band at all except that they had somehow acquired Levon Helm as a drummer. Any questions that weren't directed to him (mostly about his days in The Band) were about him. I guess it's good for them because they got some exposure, but man, that has got to suck.

Tonight the water was absolutely gorgeous. For a few minutes there wasn't even a ripple as the river reflected the light from the bridges to Queens. It was surreal.

What the hell. Here are the lines:

The water slid in like broad metal sheets
Where the milk of the mountain and masonry meet

I'm thinking of building a database of word usage in Horace. I think it might turn up some interesting connections, because it seems pretty clear that he is building images out of how words are used in other poems. Plus it might not be a bad exercise in database design. Sometimes I forget I do that.

I got into a fight with a 75 year old woman yesterday. I was sitting on a park bench reading a book when she came by and starting feeding pigeons next to my feet. When I told her I minded being shit on, she yelled and threw breadcrumbs at me and threatened to call the police (??). So we argued loudly for about ten minutes until she nearly gave herself a heart attack and started to cry. That was rewarding but I still had to leave or get shit on.

Born to play the funky céilí,
Futile Horn