Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all…
So begins a justly celebrated poem by Emily Dickinson.
In this post “hope” is viewed through photographic, musical and poetic “lenses”.
For most humans, hope is fundamentally necessary to living a “good” life, as is love.
As most humans discover, however, both qualities are fundamentally “unmanageable”.
On a small scale, the “best” fishers manage hope well; they hope to catch fish, but regard even an “unsuccessful” attempt as time very well spent.
Whatever the “result”, each attempt is still delicious, most especially so if undertaken in a splendid, natural setting.
I think the fishers I photographed on the afternoon of 24 March 2021 were the best kind.
Certainly, their spot was suitably splendid – on the rocks which separate Little Beach from the rest of the great arc of Two Peoples Bay.
American pianist Craig Taborn’s current release is Shadow Plays – a remarkable set of entirely spontaneous creations from a March 2020 solo concert in Vienna.
Rather than simply free-flowing as I travel from Point A to Point B, I am really trying to construct and to organize the material as it emerges, in real time. And what is created in this way feels different to music using pre-composed elements….I name the pieces after they are finished and in consideration of their programmatic position – in a way the titling is the final stage of composition…
After the concert, Taborn called its final offering (I think. Certainly, it concludes the album) “Now in Hope”.
Very different is Polish pianist Marcin Wasilewski’s composition “Glimmer of Hope”.
The vehicle is “pre-composed”, but the very tender performance is conversational, improvisatory. (Wasilewski’s long-standing, all-Polish trio’s other members are double bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz and drummer Michal Miskiewicz)
On their superb 2020 release Arctic Riff, American saxophonist Joe Lovano’s presence turns one of the world’s best jazz trios into a sublime quartet.
If you do not already know Emily Dickinson’s poem, click here to read all of it.
This post concludes with an entire poem by Czeslaw Milosz [1911-2004]
The great Polish poet’s “Hope” is at least as fine, I think, as Emily Dickinson’s poem on the same topic.
Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
that sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all things you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.
You cannot enter. But you’re sure it’s there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.
Some people say that we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
There are the ones who have no hope.
They think the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hand of thieves.