harp bow lyre lute
animating tension
As I seek to relax, I seek not to slacken, but to soften what is rigid into tension. Not tension as in muscular hypervigilance, or anything sneeringly preemptive, but the tension of a diaphragm drawn taut in pulling breath, or any branch cantilevered just so between a trunk and gravity. The tension of a paradox, two whirringly opposite truths bound by their orbit of the ineffable. All living things are animated by tension, and all things are living.
Cue the strings, because one can certainly think of the kind of tension a bow has, as in the famous piece of performance art.1 Yes, the weapon, animated by a tension designed to be released. The weapon stores tension in the extremely short term for the purpose of relaxing it rapidly. To sustain that tension involves a gritting strength. The instrument, on the other hand, stores a tension meant to be sustained (though I understand, when not in use, both bows are stored slack). Yes at first I certainly imagined myself as the bow in the famous piece of performance art, in a constant state of standoff, trust, heightened, tremulous tension – cue the strings – relaxing only when all threats had left me alone. Exhausted from holding, holding, holding a pose.
Today I walked to the coffeeshop in a practiced state of listening for god, reverently tuned, & I thought of myself as a string waiting to be plucked, a string in a state of divine tension, like one on a harp – lyre – lute. A string that stores tension which, when rapidly relaxed, rings. A string that, when slack, cannot sing. Just then, I crossed the street in the opposite direction as a woman wearing a sweatshirt with two fish cartooned on it in a blender, one crying, I CAN’T STAND THE TENSION!
Mountingly I will harp on it – without tension nothing stands or moves. And everything, everything, everything stands and moves. If I could I would tip these words over and spill out their bright loot – clouds of shining opposites, multivalent in their truth. Cue the string theory. Each would call the other one a liar, but without his foil each one’s mute, the meaning ever mootable, though beautiful to boot. See: flute.
But I’ve come unstrung. Words fall out of themselves. Each small knot, when unfurled, is made from a line long enough to encircle the world, so I’ll end where I began to change my tune. It seemed inefficient – naive – awkward – overzealous to go about in such a rigid state of poised focus, ready at any moment to pin, with a vicious kertwang, a query wriggling to the wall (with words, or whatever.) Going about with everything to prove proves one thing for certain. And so, I’m seeking to relax. Not to slacken into unbeing, but to take a different, instrumental attitude, like a guitar resting in a corner of a room, ready to play.