I took the most of the remaining phases down over the weekend so that the crab apple tree can again be a crab apple tree now that its leaves are unfurling and its buds are about to bloom. I worry too that the fluttering paper is a deterrent to some creatures, better birds than words at this point.

For the record, the words Massive and Attacca were the only ones that withstood a whole month of April in Toronto. A curiously musical reference although of quite a different kind than the words and works that inspired this year's crop of language out on a limb...

Thanks to all who stopped by to wonder and ponder.

April's Poet-tree

A few new directions, these from Eric Satie.


Pleasurably, without shyness
Quite blue
Quiver like a leaf
Seriously but without tears
Tell yourself about it
Under the pomegranates
Weep like a willow
With amazement
With tears in your fingers
You see

Suddenly Delicate

Like the weather

 And maybe wishful thinking....

Regal

It's hard to gauge the reaction - or the effect - of these fluttering words and their oblique musicality.
I don't have a direct view of the tree from my flat and I am not about to set up a camera to see what, if anything people do, but everyone once in a while I observe someone stop and consider, maybe reach up and look at the words, smile, look amused, bemused, a couple of young ladies took snaps of them with their phone cameras...

That's all I really want on one level, let a random word or phrase get out there, let it take on a whole new meaning, if only around the corner to the next block where the next distraction awaits.

The bemusing explanatory verse I posted came down after the last weeks rain and I haven't decided what to do to replace it...One woman did stop to read and exclaim to her companion, "Oh, it's poetry."

Ha, I know...

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never is, but always to be blessed:

The soul, uneasy and confined from home,

Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Mr Pope, Alexander

And in fact this was "bedraggled but not unhopeful", but that's the way it was torn and borne by the wind, and that's what I like, the way these random expressions become arranged and rearranged.

It's funny, they fall like leaves, all at once
and don't scatter as far or wide as you'd think
but lie huddled in curls like fallen fruit.

Though I really like using the backs of proofs and first drafts
I might have to resort to a stronger paper if I am to keep this up and fluttering.

Today's new phrases
are from Eric Satie

Continue without losing consciousness
Get soaked
Have a drink
Look closely, that is all
On the tip of your mind
With inane and appropriate naivity

and me

Soggy yet aloft
Bedraggled but not unhopeful
Bone chillingly

Wind, rain and SNOW effect their changes  - it is after all just paper set out of doors in April in Toronto. Not usually a "lamby" month. Here was the view a couple of hours ago.

Several phrases came down  with the wind, too.

They have been restored and augmented
with more directions from Kati Agósc, this time from her work Requiem Fragment for Symphony Orhchestra

Crystalline and rhapsodic
Blooming (with warmth)
Resonant, propulsive
Much faster (mercurial and sparkling)
 - spacious
Searing...
Suddenly delicate
Hushed, rich resonant
Mystical (serene, icy)
A continuous trajectory through....
Iconic (in broad strokes)
Pulling back slightly (lyrically)
Flowering
In full bloom (regal)
Shards of broken glass

And a few directions from Eric Satie - translated into English from Eric Satie - A Mammal's Notebook  Ornella Volta ed. Atlas Press 1996.

A bit rococo but slow
Alone, for a moment
Almost invisible
Be invited
Bury the sound
Caeremoniosus
Calm without slowness
Dance inwardly
Do not torment yourself
Enigmatic
Fold gently
Full of subtlety, if you believe me
Grandly forgetting the present
In one breath
Laugh without anyone knowing
Like a nightingale with a toothache
On yellowing velvet
Very far away
Visible for a moment

I will compose some sort of grandiose "artist's statement". Eventually.
I thought I might make something of a puzzle rhyme and post it on a tree or the fence because though I wish it were self evident, it is not and apart from graffiti, Toronto is not what you call over decorated by citizen art or poetry, however tenuous, so some explanation is needed.
My first draft:

mmmmheh no good
Second try

and the one that actually got posted, for now....

 I reserve the right to change these at will, if the weather doesn't do it first...

Les Filles de Satie

The Texts - first round

Performance Directions from

Nostalgia for Airs Unheard By Kati Agócs
for solo piano 2007
Exquisitley delicate
(Recitative-like)
penetrating
Cantando (simply and fluidly phrased)
Pulling back slightly -- then blossoming
hesitating slightly
Obsessive
Attacca (fugue interrupts prelude)
Muscular
Massive
Continuously Regenerating
Innocent and fresh (brilliant articulation)
With volume
Whimsical, even playful
Dissipating, yet always "pointed"

A Day of Infinite Time by Rose Bolton
for symphony orchestra 2009
Nebulous
expressivo
Timid yet mysterious
Playful
Still happy but becoming agitated
Intense, with emotion
Becoming distant
Ethereal, fragile
Slow and steady
A little faster
Yet a little faster

 

Les Filles de Satie

Last April I decided to festoon a tree in the yard with hopeful spring words some taken from poems I love (mud-lucious!) and from some of the languages I've heard spoken in my neighbourhood. It had been such a long, cold winter and it dragged into spring. The photo of the robin in the snow covered tree was taken April 15th. I thought of the strips of paper as prayers like those hung at tombs and temples, shrines and stupas.  I replaced some words as the wind and wet took them away and removed them all at the end of the month.  I didn't think anyone really noticed but when the weather improved and I began to work in the yard, people would stop and comment on the tree and mentioned how they found it touching and thought provoking.

I was working with a collection of musical scores this winter and was taken with the way that some composers choose to give performance indications. In particular there were two Canadian composers, Rose Bolton and Kati Agócs who used really evocative language and it reminded me of Eric Satie. And I called them Les Filles de Satie....

The first set of words going up this year are taken from compositions by Les Filles, they are painted on the backs of test prints for musical scores and are augmented by a few origami birds. As the weather has it's way with them they will be replaced in an ever shifting composition of whispering words and paper wishes.