Not Music

 

My neighborhood is filled with crows and walking my dogs this morning I felt the pull of superstition–crows offer portents in hundreds of mythologies. Then I did my compensatory rational mind stabilizer trick–crows mean nothing. And I walked with my dog-pals and thought of crows as messengers who carry no news. My first moments outside and I faced a choice as to how I might live in the world. “Sorry crows,” I said, “you’ve been demoted.” 

 

They flew away.

 

I should say I like crows. Honesty compels me. I once wrote a poem about their songs:

 

“They Say”

 

In Korea they say 

The crow has twelve 

Notes, none of them

Music—not surely. 

& here, early,  

A pine thrush 

Sang when it felt

Hunger—invited

Nowhere its

Music came down

Heavily on desire.

In substance 

I side with the crow 

Whose sound  

Is borne heavily—

Because the notes

Are not music,

Because the crow’s

Satori

Is a mistake,

Singing that way

To pure, endless joy.

 

 

**

 

Of course nothing one says in a poem should be taken for truth–for instance “music is music” and crows do make notes and John Cage would dispute my take on crow song. But in human terms there’s an apparent artlessness to the way crows sing and I like it. I can attest to this. Its a small fact like candy and coconuts. If a crow has enlightenment it will be in spite of his song. 

 

**

 

Some years ago I was walking along a street in a medium sized Scandinavian city and I found a baby stroller outside a department store. There was a crow sitting in it. He was supremely displayed, his wings up, fierce head darting from side to side. Seeing me he flew away. And then the parents came out, strapped their baby into its seat without any idea that the dark one had been there. I am, among other things, an amateur philosopher. I thought of Theodor Adorno: “Truth is inseperable from the illusory belief that from the figures of the unreal one day, in spite of all, real deliverance will come.”

 

What if the crow means no real deliverance will come? Truth is simply a matter of flight and appetite? And some tuneless songs.