Writing about music

They are making a movie of Les Mis - that is, a film of the show of the book, not a film of the book. Russell Crowe is in it. I don't care what anyone says, this is a positive development for the revolution. If we English-speaking peoples can only write good political songs if they're being sung by fictitious French people who are immediately shot for their trouble, oh well, we have to get them from somewhere.

I speak facetiously, mind: there are lots of good political songs even in English; and besides them so many, in all languages and some more, which are not 'political' in the narrow sense but which get at the basic facts of human life, the final issue in political struggles. I sometimes feel, as someone who feels compelled to try and fumble towards the outlines of this stuff in writing, that what I do is as pigeon-shit to their monument.  Did somebody not say that writing about music is like dancing about architecture? Ah well, worth a shot.

Writing about music

Where we puzzled for hours

Over theories and figures, seeking our answer,

They scrawled an equation in the margin

That answered answers and questioned questions.

Where we pinned the world down

Like a butterfly, with carefully chosen words,

They plucked it alive from the air

And let it go again.