{"id":60928,"date":"2018-09-17T01:37:51","date_gmt":"2018-09-17T01:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=60928"},"modified":"2018-09-17T01:40:14","modified_gmt":"2018-09-17T01:40:14","slug":"sunday-surprise-the-wind-bloweth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=60928","title":{"rendered":"Sunday surprise, the wind bloweth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron<\/strong> &#8212; when inspiration is in the air &#8212; Sister Rosetta and Kathleen Raine ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<p>Two very different artworks, each beginning with an attempt to express where inspiration comes from.<\/p>\n<p>My friend and sometime mentor <strong>Kathleen Raine<\/strong>&#8216;s great poem, <em>Invocation<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Invocation<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<p>There is a poem on the way,<br \/>\nThere is a poem all round me,<br \/>\nThe poem is in the near future,<br \/>\nThe poem is in the upper air<br \/>\nAbove the foggy atmosphere<br \/>\nIt hovers, a spirit<br \/>\nThat I would make incarnate.<br \/>\nLet my body sweat<br \/>\nLet snakes torment my breast<br \/>\nMy eyes be blind, ears deaf, hands distraught<br \/>\nMouth parched, uterus cut out,<br \/>\nBelly slashed, back lashed,<br \/>\nTongue slivered into thongs of leather<br \/>\nRain stones inserted in my breasts,<br \/>\nHead severed,<\/p>\n<p>If only the lips may speak,<br \/>\nIf only the god will come.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Compare the early gospeller Sister <strong>Rosetta Tharpe<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Music in the air<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JeaBNAXfHfQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Sister Rosetta sings, <strong>Up above my head \/ music in the air<\/strong>, and Kathleen Raine elaborates, &#8220;There is a poem all round me, \/ The poem is in the near future, \/ The poem is in the upper air&#8221;..  I could go on to describe how Kathleen&#8217;s prayer then builds, <strong>in rhythm, rhyme, and agony<\/strong>, her description of what she would offer in sacrifice if the divine wind should answer her prayer with a poem &#8212; the poem we are in fact reading &#8212; and there&#8217;s surely no need for me to express further the joy that Sister Rosetta&#8217;s song itself <strong>invokes and embodies<\/strong> &#8212;<\/p>\n<p>But I would like to note that commonality between them &#8212; of the inspiration waiting, for Kathleen &#8220;in the upper air&#8221;, for Rosetta, &#8220;above my head&#8221; &#8212; and to say that &#8220;upper&#8221; and &#8220;above&#8221; here indicate a metaphorical rather than a physical dimension..<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>And &#8220;The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In this verse, the word for wind and spirit, <strong>pneuma<\/strong>, is also the word for breath &#8212; <strong>wind outside<\/strong> as part of the weather, <strong>inner wind<\/strong> as breath, and inspiration (literally, <strong>in-breathing<\/strong>) as what the inner wind carries with it &#8212; while the verb form, <strong>blow<\/strong>, is also related.<\/p>\n<p>Thus we may read the verse as meaning &#8220;wind blows where it wants, and nobody can tell where it comes from, or where it will go next&#8221; &#8212; or &#8220;breath breathes of its own accord, and no-one knows where it comes from or when it will cease&#8221; &#8212; or &#8220;inspiration cannot be forced, it touches down and takes off at its own pleasure, not at our command&#8221;..<\/p>\n<p>Like grace, <strong>it floats in possibility space<\/strong>, alighting at will, ever spontaneous, unmerited, never to be predicted.. Fortunate Sister Rosetta, fortunate Kathleen to have been visited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; when inspiration is in the air &#8212; Sister Rosetta and Kathleen Raine ] . Two very different artworks, each beginning with an attempt to express where inspiration comes from. My friend and sometime mentor Kathleen Raine&#8216;s great poem, Invocation: Invocation: There is a poem on the way, There is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1525,526,1717,480,1519,741,868,833,1721,946,1,1720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breath","category-charles-cameron","category-inspiration","category-music","category-parallel","category-poetry","category-sacred","category-sacrifice","category-spirit","category-sunday-surprise","category-uncategorized","category-wind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60928"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60933,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60928\/revisions\/60933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}