Walking Papers

Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror
or my own selfish death
outstared me.
And if I tried
to give you something else,
something outside of myself,
you would not know
that the worst of anyone
can be, finally,
an accident of hope.
I tapped my own head;
it was a glass, an inverted bowl.
It is a small thing
to rage in your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself;
it was you, or your house
or your kitchen.
And if you turn away
because there is no lesson here
I will hold my awkward bowl,
with all its cracked stars shining
like a complicated lie,
and fasten a new skin around it
as if I were dressing an orange
or a strange sun.
Not that it was beautiful,
but that I found some order there.
There ought to be something special
for someone
in this kind of hope.
This is something I would never find
in a lovelier place, my dear,
although your fear is anyone’s fear,
like an invisible veil between us all…
and sometimes in private,
my kitchen, your kitchen,
my face, your face.

—Anne Sexton, For John Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further (via redvelvetteacake)

(Source: kdecember, via redvelvetteacake)

nprfreshair:

Emmylou Harris tells Terry Gross about learning to sing by harmonizing

When you sing harmony you’re not thinking about yourself. You’re just paying attention to the other voice and that other melody and it also requires — I’m using this word “restraint” again — but I think that’s a really important part of country music and I think as a singer you must ultimately respect the melody first and then you can go on from there, but it just seemed like I concentrated on the words, the lyrics, the melody and you get outside of yourself somehow and you just enter a different place.

Video of Emmylou Harris and Barry Tashian dueting on the Townes Van Zandt song “If I Needed You.”