Never Begin to Sing (10)

By: Damon Krukowski
December 1, 2017

One in a series subtitled 10 Prose Poems about Sound by HILOBROW friend Damon Krukowski. Republished with the author’s permission from the 2004 collection The Memory Theater Burned (Turtle Point).

Poetry

Even if religion and song are the distillation of a people’s collective imagination, there are some things for which the individual alone must be responsible. And for these things there is no explanation. Why should Ganesh, whose elephant head I am willing to assign to the genius of a people, be greeted by an arrhythmic crash of cymbals whenever he enters the stage of the Ramayana play? This detail is too trivial for the imagination of an entire people. I must assign it instead to that lone percussionist, genius or imbecile, whose momentary success initiated a tradition. Surprise cannot emanate from a people, whose individual imaginations are calibrated to one another through myth and faith. The imagination may rule our waking and dreaming lives, but impulse — perhaps it is only impulse — remains the domain of personal irrationality. A religion or song based on irrationality would be incomprehensible, it would in no way mirror our imaginations, which are as orderly as they are fantastic. Fantasy is itself predictable and rigid, like those set entertainments through which we all suffered as children. Irrationality, by contrast, mirrors our individual souls. In it we recognize ourselves, but never our friends, relations, or neighbors — it therefore makes poor material for religions and songs — and is the only possible material for poetry.

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Never Begin to Sing (10)

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