2024
This was one of those months where I let go of a strict plan and followed the ideas wherever they wanted to go. Even before the month began, I intended to devote the summer to color. I started with one of my new favorite things: a playlist
Color, a playlist
- Bein’ Green/ Kermit the Frog
- Roxanne/ The Police
- Mellow Yellow/ Donovan
- Ebony and Ivory/ Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder
- Pink Thing/ XTC
- Let’s Go Crazy/ Prince
- Brown Eyed Girl/ Van Morrison
- Touch of Grey/ Grateful Dead
- Mr. Blue Sky/ ELO
- Diamonds/ Rihanna
- Shake It Well/ Koo Koo
- Orange Colored Sky/ Nat “King” Cole
- Orange Crush/ R.E.M.
- Make New Friends/ Emily Claire Palmer
- Sister Golden Hair/ America
- Jackie Blue/ The Ozark Mountain Band
- Red/ Taylor Swift
- Yellow Submarine/ The Beatles
- Paint it Black/ The Rolling Stones
- Back to Black/ Amy Winehouse
- Behind Blue Eyes/ The Who
- Yellow/ Coldplay
- Back in Black/ ACDC
- Big Yellow Taxi/ Joni Mitchell
- Raspberry Beret/ Prince
- Don’t it Make My Brown Eyes Blue/ Crystal Gayle
- Green Light/ Lorde
- White Rabbit/ Jefferson Airplane
- White Wedding/ Billy Idol
- Blue Bossa/ Joe Henderson
- Mother’s Little Helper/ The Rolling Stones
- Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daught/ Herman’s Hermits
- The Purple People Eater/ Sheb Wooley
- Deep Purple/ Donny Osmond & Maria Osmond
- Purple/ Gus Gus
- Violet/ Seal
- Gray Day/ Madness
- Blackbird/ Beyoncé
- Suite Madame Blue/ Styx
- Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree/ Tony Orlando and Dawn
- Heart of Gold/ Neil Young
- Fields of Gold/ Sting
- Orange Crate Art/ Brian Wilson
- The Pink Panther Theme/ Henri Mancini
- Early Morning Blues and Greens/ The Monkees
- Evergreen/ Barbara Streisand
- Black & White/ Three Dog Night
- Grass/ XTC
- Grazing in the Grass/ The Friends of Distinction
- Crimson and Clover/ Tommy James & The Shondells
Listening to the playlist for the first time on a run, I thought about Kermit’s “Bein’ Green” and was inspired to start with green. Later in the month, after listening to a lecture by Alice Oswald, I added purple.
green
- the rhapsody of things as they are and Kermit’s unease than acceptance of being green (2 june)
- the marketing of green — branding (green pill bottles), fancy “greens” (arugula), toxic green wallpaper (arsenite) (2 june)
- a cool green woods, a green palette, do we all see the same green?, green words (3 june)
- a green tree chant (5 june)
- scraggly, sprawling, over-stepping green (7 june)
- Lorine Niedecker and growing on the edge of green (9 june)
- Lorine Niedecker and ecopoetry (10 june)
- a section from LN’s Wintergreen Ridge (15 june)
Reading a line in Wintergreen Ridge by LN about animal, vegetable, and mineral led me back to Alice Oswald. After listening to her lecture, “Interview with Water,” I began thinking more about purple while still thinking about green.
purple and green
- Alice Oswald’s lecture, Interview with Water and Odysseus’ heavy cloak of purple (19 june)
- the color of water when seen from just under the surface (19 june)
- water as deep green with a feeling of blue (20 june)
- Odyssey as green (22 june)
- below green water, above blue water then cloud then not quite purple water above still green below but darker (23 june)
- to be purpled and AO’s dark purple sea (25 june)
assessment: A wonderful month of wondering and wandering! Even though I thought I was straying far from color, it kept coming back. I’m taking lots of great ideas from this month, but nothing concrete. What luxury to be able to waste this time, to have the chance to study these ideas deeply and without (too many) limits!
Plague Notebooks, Vols 20-21 notes
I haven’t been adding notes from my Plague Notebooks too often, but I thought I’d do it here.
june 5: green = grass, moss / return to Robin Wall Kimmerer — Gathering Moss and “Ancient Green”
june 6: see a great discussion of grass from 25 april 2023
june 7: see 1 april 2022 — ED’s startled grass, Keat’s hand reaching up from the grave, Diane Seuss’s commencement address / grass and graves — W Whitman beneath our feet / grass between edmund and river road a threshold, transition between park and neighborhood / tall grasses / strip of grass alongside the trail
june 8: a shift to Lorine Niedecker and her condensing
june 9: I grew in green as the title of a poem?
daughter of farmers and gardeners / wanderers / the ones who went away and stayed away / green pontiac station wagon, green pontiac sedan with white leather top, izod green / edges of woods, edges of cities in suburbs, land-locked with dried-up creeks, only trickles of water, lake-less / LN history: 1903-1970 – 1922 attended Beloit College – 1924 back home to care for mother – 1928 married Frank Hartwig – 1930 separates from Hartwig – 1931 Objectivist issue of Poetry comes out that she reads – `1938 in Madison working for WPA on Wisconsin guidebook – 1949 diagnosed with nystagmus – 1966 writes Lake Superior – 1968-70 writes Paean to Place
june 10: LN and place — Blackhawk Island, Lake Koshkonong, Rock River, Fort Atkinson, WI / my water = a neighbor’s pool, subdivision pools, Kool Park Pool, Lake Superior, High School pools / my green = freshly cut grass, poison ivy, honeysuckle, ferns, pine trees, chemically treated lawns, canned green beans, fenced managed mowed weedless
june 12: see Alice Oswald and 22 March 2024 on sideways lecture / hygienic scouring eye vs. green eye
june 12: What is seen and heard, but something gets in, overlays all that to make a state of consciousness, everything influences everything
june 13: wilderness — something gets in / geologic time
june 18: purple = agitated, irrational, bottom of thought
june 19: AO — “If you want to imagine the color of Odysseus’ gown you will have to swim out in the unfenced place, the place not of definitions but affirmations.”
june 20: There’s something about AO’s idea of similes and being similar but not the same that reminds me of my embracing of being approximate.
june 21: the surface of the water, just above or below — its color, the feel of it, what we see think become just under and above it
from Nobody/ Alice Oswald
About an hour ago she surfaced and shook her arms
and peered around and dived again and surfaced
and saw someone and dived again and surfaced
and smelt all those longings of grass-flower smells
and bird-flower sounds and hte vaporous poems
that hung in the chills above rivers
june 22: wind blown, weathered, water-logged characters, partially unfinished and unresolved narratives (Nobody, AO)
25 june: “purpled mind/why go on circling” (AO) / looking at looking / “I like meaning, but I like meaning to be interrupted before it gets too smug” (Tin house Interview, AO)