Child Hypnotist

I got in big trouble in seventh grade in Scottdale. I had sent away for a "teach yourself hypnosis" kit that consisted of a manual, and a rotating spiral gizmo that could be used as an object of focus for the hypnosis subject. The book made it clear, however, that no visual stimulus was needed, and that you can talk people into a hypnotic trance.

Early one morning in home-room, I was telling friends about my newly-acquired hypnosis skills, how, like Count Dracula, I could put people into a trance.

"You can't do that!" a friend challenged me.

Another friend chimed in, "You're just making that up. If you can hypnotize people, why don't you hypnotize the whole class?"

People began chiming in: "Hypnotize us! We want to be hypnotized! Hypnotize EVERYONE!"

So, not to be humiliated, I went to the teacher's desk. (She was nowhere to be seen and was in fact late for work...)

I started the session as the manual had instructed me.

Within two minutes, three seventh-grade girls were in a deep trance. The rest of the class sat in stunned silence as I gave the girls simple commands such as raising their arms, standing up, etc.

Just as I was about to do something more advanced, such as planting a post-hypnotic suggestion, or turning them rigid as a plank, the home-room teacher burst in and made a quick appraisal of the situation.

"You had better be able to wake them up!" she screeched.

"Easy!" I said. I addressed them and said, "I will count to three, and when I reach three, you will wake up. One --- two --- three."

Two of the girls woke up, looked around startled, and were laughed at by the rest of the class.

The third girl did not wake up. I repeated the command. She still did not wake up.

Panic and terror set in.

"Call an ambulance!" someone yelled.

"No," I explained. "She will just fall into a normal sleep and then she will wake up."

I do not know how long she slumbered, and how they arranged her so that she would not fall out of her seat ... for I spent the morning in the principal's office.

From that day forward I was regarded as a public menace ... someone to watch. Someone who knew forbidden things.

Home and Back

 by Brett Rutherford

Some were meant,
you guess, to stay behind,
and some were meant to flee.

At childhood’s end, the choice
is to stay and marry, dig deep
into the soil in recompense
for journeys not taken.

They seem to smile, sun-burnt
on their farm porch-fronts,
but their women dream of murder
as they roll the same dough
week in and out, years rounding
from christenings to funerals.

The children, rebuked, obey
their father’s orders, slapped
into compliance. Yet guns are ready,
for the hand that takes them first:
vengeance belongs to the one who breaks.

What does one say to them, “back home”?
What does your city mean to them
except a place they passed through
and shuddered at, uneas’d
at foreign tongues, brown faces?

How can one tell them
you belong to more than one city,
that you have stood on the world’s
underside, that strange hands
have touched you, and you liked it?
Walt Whitman’s poems are not known
to them. No Open Road lures them.
They only vote one way. No one
who is not like them matters.

You only come back
for the sake of the outlaw child.
You have placed dangerous books
in the town library.
You leave your poems, traces
in leaf and cloud, updraft
of raven and untamed hawk.
To one who does not belong here
you say: come home to Everywhere
and Nowhere. There you are free.

Your name has been erased here.
If you write, your letters drop
into some hole, unanswered.
Mars is your home, and Paris,
Rome and the battlements of Troy,
gazebo amid the pines in China —
New York and Providence,
Boston and the Golden Gate,
Pittsburgh of bridge and ravine,
your homes and havens —
oh, everywhere but here.

Autumn on Pluto: A Tone Poem

We just finished recording my tone poem, "Autumn on Pluto," which conflates the icy and remote planet with Hades, the land of the dead from Greek myth. In this imaginary version of the ninth planet, the god Hades/Pluto and the entire underworld of the human dead live on.

The opening theme is the Plutonian anthem. Next comes the departure of Persephone on her annual trip back to earth, and the sad voice of Hades expressing his regret at her departure (bassoon solo). Next is a portrayal of a vast, dark forest of tangled trees, which are cornelian cherries (the food of the dead), but grown to a Titanic size. The leaves of the trees are black obsidian, with razor-sharp edges. Finally, the Plutonian anthem is restated, but in an icier and colder mode as the dreary realm of the dead prepares for winter.

The piece is in B Minor, with the central section depicting the forest in F-Sharp Minor. It then returns to B Minor for the conclusion.

It is scored for three synthesizer voices, plus four French horns, a bassoon, timpani, and 12 cellos.

This was recorded in a desanctified church in Pittsburgh with members of the Squirrel Hill Symphony conducted by Meng Qiu-Lei.

Play Autumn on Pluto

The Isle of Achilles

 

Reading Homer closely and deeply is a life-changing experience. It provides you with an alternate life so deeply conveyed and so passionately described that you feel as though you have lived it. The only engagement with art with equal emotion that I know of, is the experience of opera. Just remembering some key incidents in Homer can bring me to a point where I can hardly speak the words, so overcome with emotion am I.

Robert Bridges wrote this elegant and haunting poem about the island where a shrine to Achilles brought many visitors, who made sacrifices there in hopes of receiving a sign or a vision from the world's greatest hero. The 1899 poem also made a brave and explicit approbation of the love between Achilles and his fellow warrior Patroclus, rather a strong statement just four years after the Oscar Wilde trial.

Bridges' English is exquisite, and the poem leaves me breathless. I wish I had written this, but Bridges seems to have squeezed from Greek sources just about the last words that can be said about this subject. His Greek quote is from Euripides' Andromache.

ROBERT BRIDGES (1844-1930)

THE ISLE OF ACHILLES
 
(FROM THE GREEK)
 
Τὁν φἱλτατὁν σοι παἱδ' ἑμοἱ τ', Ἁχιλλἑα
ὑψει δὑμους ναἱοντα νησιωτικοὑς
Δευκἡν κατ' ἁκτἡν ἑντὁς Εὑξεἱνου πὁρου. 
Eur. And. 1250.
 
Voyaging northwards by the western strand
Of the Euxine sea we came to where the land
Sinks low in salt morass and wooded plain:
Here mighty Ister pushes to the main,
Forking his turbid flood in channels three
To plough the sands wherewith he chokes the sea.{360}

Against his middle arm, not many a mile
In the offing of black water is the isle
Named of Achilles, or as Leukê known,
Which tender Thetis, counselling alone
With her wise sire beneath the ocean-wave
Unto her child's departed spirit gave,
Where he might still his love and fame enjoy,
Through the vain Danaan cause fordone at Troy.
Thither Achilles passed, and long fulfill'd
His earthly lot, as the high gods had will'd,
Far from the rivalries of men, from strife,
From arms, from woman's love and toil of life.
Now of his lone abode I will unfold
What there I saw, or was by others told.

There is in truth a temple on the isle;
Therein a wooden statue of rude style
And workmanship antique with helm of lead:
Else all is desert, uninhabited;
Only a few goats browse the wind-swept rocks,
And oft the stragglers of their starving flocks
Are caught and sacrificed by whomsoe'er,
Whoever of chance or purpose hither fare:
About the fence lie strewn their bleaching bones.

But in the temple jewels and precious stones,
Upheapt with golden rings and vials lie,
Thankofferings to Achilles, and thereby,
Written or scratch'd upon the walls in view,
Inscriptions, with the givers' names thereto,
Some in Romaic character, some Greek,
As each man in the tongue that he might speak
Wrote verse of praise, or prayer for good to come,
To Achilles most, but to Patroclus some;
For those who strongly would Achilles move
Approach him by the pathway of his love.

Thousands of birds frequent the sheltering shrine,
The dippers and the swimmers of the brine,
Sea-mew and gull and diving cormorant,
Fishers that on the high cliff make their haunt
Sheer inaccessible, and sun themselves
Huddled arow upon the narrow shelves:—
And surely no like wonder e'er hath been
As that such birds should keep the temple clean;
But thus they do: at earliest dawn of day
They flock to sea and in the waters play,
And when they well have wet their plumage light,
Back to the sanctuary they take flight
Splashing the walls and columns with fresh brine,
Till all the stone doth fairly drip and shine,
When off again they skim asea for more
And soon returning sprinkle steps and floor,
And sweep all cleanly with their wide-spread wings.


From other men I have learnt further things.
If any of free purpose, thus they tell,
Sail'd hither to consult the oracle,—
For oracle there was,—they sacrificed
Such victims as they brought, if such sufficed,
And some they slew, some to the god set free:
But they who driven from their course at sea
Chanced on the isle, took of the goats thereon
And pray'd Achilles to accept his own.
Then made they a gift, and when they had offer'd once,
If to their question there was no response,
They added to the gift and asked again;
Yea twice and more, until the god should deign
Answer to give, their offering they renew'd;
Whereby great riches to the shrine ensued.
And when both sacrifice and gifts were made
They worship'd at the shrine, and as they pray'd
Sailors aver that often hath been seen
A man like to a god, of warrior mien,
A beauteous form of figure swift and strong;
Down on his shoulders his light hair hung long
And his full armour was enchast with gold:
While some, who with their eyes might nought behold,
Say that with music strange the air was stir'd;
And some there are, who have both seen and heard:
And if a man wish to be favour'd more,
He need but spend one night upon the shore;
To him in sleep Achilles will appear
And lead him to his tent, and with good cheer
Show him all friendliness that men desire;
Patroclus pours the wine, and he his lyre
Takes from the pole and plays the strains thereon
Which Cheiron taught him first on Pelion.


These things I tell as they were told to me,
Nor do I question but it well may be:
For sure I am that, if man ever was,
Achilles was a hero, both because
Of his high birth and beauty, his country's call,
His valour of soul, his early death withal,
For Homer's praise, the crown of human art;
And that above all praise he had at heart
A gentler passion in her sovran sway,
And when his love died threw his life away.

 

From New Poems (1899). Published in final form in Poetical Works of Robert Bridges. (1936) London: Oxford University Press. Revised edition 1953, 1964, pp.359-362.

Illustration from Wikimedia Commons: Sosias (potter, signed). Painting attributed to the Sosias Painter (name piece for Beazley, overriding attribution) or the Kleophrades Painter (Robertson) or Euthymides (Ohly-Dumm) - Photograph by user Bibi Saint-Pol, 2008.