It is energizing to be torn away from unsatisfying attempts- this increases hopes for a real success.
On the other hand- it is equally important to remember that this new construct (when de-constructed) will be found to mostly consist of already familiar aspects. But the whole will be different. It will contain everything that the earlier construct carried to a different outcome.
We will have found that earlier we had lost our way in time, when suddenly the overall direction we had been heading towards became clearly evident. Moments can now connect with each other again. Perhaps we have only discovered a new mode of making transitions. For clearly, movement never stops. But, like a driver, we are periodically, and constantly looking into the rear view mirror.
True, although we have been listening, no one actually said anything quite clear. Silence had taken over so much that the slightest routine sounds had become greatly magnified (planes, birds, cars and the rain and wind). Each car going by took on significance, a loud voice, some laughter, because such interruptions proved that duration, as such, still exists. Soon, however, our interest turns away from such small proofs. They do not, after all , constitute events in the real world of meanings. Although we are unhealthily addicted to it, time is
measured in meanings, not in moments. It is neither qualitative nor quantitative- it is transformative. Like Orpheus, we must learn not to watch it too closely, because, dizzying into the whirlpool, we may drown in the multiple voices of the future.
"Soon,soon" it seems to say to us constantly, "very soon," to any question we might put to it. Soon, you will sit down at the piano, soon your great quartet will be played and soon it will be heard, understood and blended into other recent textures of sound and soul.
It seems I've learned to collect such hopes like shells on a beach. They are evidences, but only meager ones like those passing sounds. With their bleached and muted colors, such objects hold the attention in such a way that you pocket them and later place them in our special drawers and shelves, thinking they can later be more completely deciphered.
I examine some for awhile and then sit down to play.
Once again, I've combined the possible and the impossible in harmonies that, very elusively, hold these two opposites together for a brief period of time. Over and over, I listen to the recording, trying to ascertain the spot where past, present and future seemed to combine. Of course, I wanted to stay there for as long as possible. I wondered how long I could suspend the afternoon in this way. The more I could shape the transitions, the more quickly I seemed to be able to move inside the hour. Having its own characteristics, I could characterize a series of moments by its exterior markings, instead of reverting to the metronome, or some other kind of mechanical conductor, like a tapping foot, or the sounds of the old woman upstairs walking round and round and round and creaking the floor.
(4/8/95)

Too much neatness makes me wonder.
Given a choice most of us go for a soft landing.
*

Reading Cioran's reaction to an English critic's cynical discussion of Marcus Aurelius makes me laugh with tears in my eyes.
(4/10/95)