NIGHTENGALE: "IMMORTAL BIRD"
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~
"Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain . . . "
from "Ode to a Nightingale"
by John Keats
To cease -- or maybe just to disappear, as did singer-songwriter
Connie Converse, on August 10th, 1974, a week after her 50th birthday. That day, Converse packed her car with a few belongings and drove out of Ann Arbor for the last time. Whether she took her own life then or later; whether she started life anew somewhere else -- perhaps in Kansas City or New York City -- remains unknown.
She was never seen again; neither her body nor her car has ever been found.
Was she half in love with easeful death? More than half? What degree of hope was commingled with her sadness? She sent a few farewell letters to her closest friends and family telling them not to look for her:
"TO ANYONE WHO EVER ASKS: (If I'm Long Unheard From) . . .
Human society fascinates me & awes me & fills me with grief & joy;
I just can't find my place to plug into it. So let me go, please . . . ."
I am thinking also of
Keats, who died so young, at age 25, but had already been "
many a time . . . half in love with easeful death." The first time I read "Ode to a Nightengale" in 11th grade, I knew that I had always been and always would be half in love with easeful death -- but only half, or maybe just a quarter. Who isn't? Well, lots of folks, apparently, but that has never been my reality.
As a trusted counselor once advised me:
You're a writer, you're supposed to be sad.
Title song: How Sad, How Lovely
How sad, how lovely
How short, how sweet
To see that sunset
At the end of the street
And the day gathered in
To a single light
And the shadows rising
From the brim of the night
Too few, too few
Are the days that will hold
Your face, your face
In a blaze of gold
How sad, how lovely
How short, how sweet
To see that sunset
At the end of the street
And the lights going on
In the shops and the bars
And the lovers looking
For the first little star
Like life
Like your smile
Like the fall of a leaf
How sad, how lovely
How brief
Music & lyrics by Connie Converse
"
What Converse seemed to know in her songs was that there was somewhere better, or a little more satisfying. . . . I find myself uncomfortable with how people — not just in the case of Connie Converse, but broadly — tend to flatten the idea of what sadness is, or looks like, without considering its varied face."
from the article "The Art of Disappearance"
by poet/essayist Hanif Abdurraqib
in The New York Times Magazine, August 11, 2022
My friend
Jan* wrote: "I was so moved by Abdurraqib's article, that I wrote a letter to the
NYT Magazine (published Sunday, August 28, 2022). If you suffer from depression, thoughts of suicide, or even sometimes wish you could simply disappear, you might find affirmation and hope in this beautiful article. You might also want to
visit the music of Connie Converse."
Related Readings
Where could Converse live but days?
Days
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
by Philip Larkin
British poet (1922 - 1985)
Were the unkind voices berating her?
"You wake up and you feel -- what? Heaviness, an ache inside, a weight, yes. A soft crumpling of flesh. A feeling like all the surfaces have been rubbed raw. A voice in your head -- no, not voices, not like hearing voices, nothing that crazy, just your own inner voice, the one that says "Turn left at the corner" or "Don't forget to stop at the post office," only now it's saying "I hate myself . . . you try to find pleasure in little things . . . but you can tell you're trying too hard. You have breakfast with your husband, your sweet unknowing husband, who can't see anything but the promise of a bright new day. And you say your apologies -- you're sorry, you're always sorry, it's a feeling as familiar as the taste of water on your tongue" (252 - 253).
from The Dogs of Babel
by Carolyn Parkhurst
American novelist (b 1971)
(see Highlights from 2006 & 2007 & 2019)
If only we could move through time as well as space:
"Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for tonight!
Elizabeth Akers Allen
American poet and journalist (1832 - 1911)
*Additional thanks to
Jan for her encouraging words: "All of these passages are so moving and apt. I love the way you pull literature together and make such meaningful connections. I always tell my students about my friend Kitti who said, very wisely, 'Literature helps me live my life.' " [
More by Jan]
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, November 30th ~ First Sunday of Advent
Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blogs
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com
