two wise kids (lax)

two wise kids came by the other day: one from the west, and one from ethiopia: john (the west) & theodore – who’s partly greek, but born in ethiopia & looks like the princely son of haile salassie.

they stopped at the typing house and read the scrolls of poems I had there: theodore read most, saying he didn’t like poetry usually but did like these & saw what i’d meant when i’d said the day before that I was working on a new kind. both boys (they’re 27 & 24) said that even then they’d pictured something like this they now saw. i asked theodore if he got tired reading & he said no – the rhythm mostly, but also the simple and natural words (words referring to the natural scene) & the repetitions kept him going. said something like this takes place in african music: that the important thing for a drummer or dancer, for example (singer too), is to get to the very center of the rhythm, center of the beat, “the nerve,” said theodore, of the rhythm: to find that first: to start from it as a base, and from it all other things, even very elaborate things, develop.

which sounded like african music, like hindu music too, but also like bach.

Robert Lax, "Love Had A Compass", p. 205

or like prayer ...