alone
Maja S. K. Ratkje (voice, electronics, miscellany), live, Chicago, 2014
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lagniappe
random sights
yesterday, Chicago
not the same old stuff
Maja S. K. Ratkje, live (performance begins at 1:30), Norway (Kristiansand), 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
Happy (106th) Birthday, Elizabeth
From the few states I have seen I should now immediately select Florida as my favorite. I don’t know whether you have been here or not—it is so wild, and what there is of cultivation seems rather dilapidated and about to become wild again. On the way down we took a very slow train from Jacksonville here. All day long it went through swamps and turpentine camps and palm forests and in a beautiful pink evening it began stopping at several little stations. The stations were all off at a tangent from the main track and it necessitated first going by, then stopping, backing up, stopping, starting again—with many puffs of white smoke, blowing of the whistle, advice from the loiterers around the station—all to throw off one limp bag of mail.
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), letter to Marianne Moore, January 5, 1937
sounds of Norway
Maja S. K. Ratkje, live (music begins at 1:40), Norway (Punkt Festival, Kristiansand), 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
A Prison gets to be a friend —
Between its Ponderous face
And Ours — a Kinsmanship express —
And in its narrow Eyes —We come to look with gratitude
For the appointed Beam
It deal us — stated as Our food —
And hungered for — the same —We learn to know the Planks —
That answer to Our feet —
So miserable a sound — at first —
Nor ever now — so sweet —As plashing in the Pools —
When Memory was a Boy —
But a Demurer Circuit —
A Geometric Joy —The Posture of the Key
That interrupt the Day
To Our Endeavor — Not so real
The Check of Liberty —As this Phantasm Steel —
Whose features — Day and Night —
Are present to us — as Our Own —
And as escapeless — quite —The narrow Round — the Stint —
The slow exchange of Hope —
For something passiver — Content
Too steep for looking up —The Liberty we knew
Avoided — like a Dream —
Too wide for any night but Heaven —
If That — indeed — redeem ——Emily Dickinson (1830-1886; Franklin #456)
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