To
Slide In Light
by Christos
Tsiamis
And so, within the
day, I came sliding down from the impeccable peaks of Greek light
to the sunless canyons of southern Manhattan, on my way to the more
complex darkness of the Spiegeltent, right next to the river, under
the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. I had hardly landed, after a
month’s vacation, when a friend rushed to inform me about Diamanda
Galas’ concert. I hadn’t seen her in a while and this was a perfect
occasion.
In the wooden, polygonal
structure set up temporarily on the pier the show has already begun
with the light. As the light, outside, faints in quick succession,
inside it pokes the crowded hall with rays of varying intensity
through the color-tinted top windows all around. At the center,
where the piano sits on a low stage, the light is dueling with its
own reflections in the mirrors on the wall’s perimeter—until the
voice, powerful, makes its entrance, and its waves obliterate all
other physical existence in this space. In between the end of light
and the explosive entrance of the voice, I find a sliver of time
to observe, in the concentric circles of seats around me, this almost
reverent gathering.
The young woman with
the exotic countenance of a Pacific Islander, alone, with a peaceful
smile, dressed in military fatigue too large for her. Over a little,
a middle-aged man that seems to have come straight from work, nearby,
at the stock exchange: blue suit, matching tie, gold rimmed glasses,
hair in place. Another one, right in front, about sixty, more casually
dressed, is in a tight embrace with a twenty-something, certainly
not his daughter if we are to judge by the lascivious kisses. I
turn to look back. I nearly drop! These two guys with black glasses,
black attire, rings on the nose and in the ears, their head shaved
except for a narrow “Mohawk” smack in the center of their skull.
Sideways, in the front, a long-necked man in a denim jacket, with
long, bushy, gray hair, nails me with his painful stare. I ask the
young lady next to me about the bouquet at our feet. It’s for her,
she tells me. The reason being? “Well, she is a diva!”
Years ago, the American
author William Gass had written about the “permanent avant-garde”
in art; that which continuously stirs things up, provokes, pokes
fun at demons and gods. That which continuously escapes the temporary
and insignificant goings-on of everyday and it keeps coming back
to the formal elements of art in order to draw from them and, at
the same time, ...to knock out of them the living lights! Among
the few that belong to the permanent avant-garde of our times one
could include Diamanda Galas. And if herself “rides ahead...” leading
the revolution, these folks around me that came to hear her singing
do not impress me as a revolutionary vanguard. Look at them, full
of caverns of thought and emotion. No sharp points, no exaltation.
And yet, all these interiors have been cultivated so that the revolution
will take root there. The voice is advancing, the walls of the senses
collapse. The voice is the sense now. While you are there, your
whole world filters in through that voice.
I am near Galas, closer
than at any other time, almost right next to her. The view of her
face is three quarter profile. I reflect: what is it that lends
such power to her performance? Certainly, the unrivaled force. Even
more interesting to me, though, is the way the language of poetry
emerges from her body. The words of her song are not processed exhaling
of air; they are not pre-packaged sounds, like boxes with labels
that denote the content. The words of Galas’ singing are flesh out
of flesh. They do not denote, they do not suggest, they just take
form right in front of you. They exist together with every other
object at that moment. The secret longing of the poet. Or as it
was said about the language of narration in a Sraub-Huillet movie:
“...a sense of language as a solid, sensual phenomenon itself.”
I am also impressed
by her passion for the battles to which she has decided to throw
her weight. And she does not look over her shoulder to make sure
that she has the unspoken approval of the crowd, or the much-coveted
recognition of her peers, as is the custom with the adherents of
political correctness. Because of her Greek origins from Asia Minor
she has been sensitive to the Turkish refusal to recognize the genocide
of the Armenians. She has created a cycle of songs on the subject.
She performs them in Europe and in the United States so that no
one will forget. Such passion, such commitment we have not tasted
in Greece since the times of Theodorakis, during the years of his
artistic and political flourishing.
And so, with the lines
of Pasolini, of Nerval, and of Baudelaire, I feel that I am falling
through a diminishing light with that sweet sensation in the guts
as when you go down a slide. And then, at a particular moment in
the concert, I feel that I am sliding in reverse, with the same
sweetness and the same speed, only upwards now, towards the festivities
of light. This is precisely the strange magic of the voice of Diamanda
Galas.
Christos Tsiamis
Manhattan, December
2006
Christos Tsiamis
was born and raised in Patras, Greece. He lives in New York. He
has published the books of poetry Polytropo (Patras, 1979),
Garden with Roots in the Moon (Athens, 1996), The Auto-mobile
of Love (Athens, 2000), and a book of translations: These
Are My Rivers, poems of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, (Athens, 1995).
He collaborated with the photographer P. Sotiropoulos in the book
Patras, Photographic Profile of a Vanishing City (Athens
2006). His poems have appeared in translation in magazines such
as Circumference (New York) and The Dirty Goat
(Austin, Texas), and in anthologies, such as A Century of Greek
Poetry, Peter Bien, Peter Constantine, Edmund Keeley, Karen
Van Dyck editors (2004). His new book of poems will be published
in Athens, Greece, in 2007.