On First Hearing the Old World Nightingale

[sus]

(Alternate title: Birds Invented Music.)

Much have I travelled North America
And many pleasant passerines have heard;
In many Western glades I've sat
Yet did I never comprehend so clear
Till I heard chats sing out so pure of tone:
Then felt I like Alan Lomax must have
When Robert Johnson played on his guitar;
Silent, upon a stump in Hazlehurst

 

[sus]

@mvuent has done the most legwork on these ideas, he can help fill us in on Krause, e.g. starting at 22:00 here

 

[sus]

 

[sus]

People (e.g. John Burroughs) talk about how Keats' Ode to a Nightingale sounds like a nightingale, but all the English poets are really really bad at this compared to e.g. the Arab and Bedouins (@thirdform):

Wa anta ya sayyid li wa sayyidi wa mawlali
Fakam fakam tayammani ghuzaylun ‘uqayqali

Faqala la la la la la wa qad ghada muharwali

Fawallawlat wa wallawlat wa li wa li ya waylili

Wa al-‘udu dun dun dun li wa al-ṭablu ṭabṭab ṭab li
Tab ṭabiṭab ṭab ṭabiṭab ṭab ṭabiṭab ṭab ṭab li
Wa al-saqfu saq saq saq li wa al-raqṣu qad ṭaba li

Shawa shawa wa shahishu ‘ala waraq safarjali

Wa al-kullu ka‘ka‘ ka‘ika‘ khalfi wa man ḥawilili

Ila liqa’i malikin mu‘aẓẓamin mubajjali

 

[thirdform]

it's the old world.

today you need music to kill men with.

 

[sus]

English poetry is so stodgy and self serious compared to the Arabic and Judaic traditions which are so playful and irreverent. al-Andalus had modernist literature in the 11th century, they're a millennium ahead of the West.

 

[thirdform]

if the struggle demands it, will you kill dasha nekrasova's boyfriend in front of her eyes? will you take that step? or do you need more musical motivations.

 

[thirdform]

will you accept her excommunicating you from the brooklyn culture mafia for eternity?

 

[sus]

if the struggle demands it, will you kill dasha nekrasova's boyfriend in front of her eyes? will you take that step? or do you need more musical motivations.

No, I practice Perseverance Ethics, which holds that only behavioral algorithms which persist through time can be considered moral.

 

[thirdform]

No, I practice Perseverance Ethics, which holds that only behavioral algorithms which persist through time can be considered moral.

Ah, I see, you follow in the footsteps of Plutarch. killing men is the ultimate moral act then.

 

[Corpsey]

It's lamentable that I've never heard a rapper mention in approving terms the melancholy song of the curlew

*Pocket flower droops sympathetically*