Apropos of Nothing

Recently I encountered these lines from a poem by Elizabeth Bishop:

'Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite, "The boy stood on
the burning deck." Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.'

Lizzie B really nails something here, I think. So often in the tumult of various situations (not just "love" -- with which I have zero acquaintance) we fall back on staid preconceptions of what we're supposed to do or think or feel, and in so doing we sometimes neglect the reality at hand. Bishop's image of the boy standing on the burning deck trying to recite, "The boy stood on the burning deck" is just perfect.

Heidegger articulates a perhaps similar concept called das Man or the "they" -- which roughly (really roughly) describes the tendency of human beings to accede to default modes of existence without examining these modes or truly appropriating these modes for themselves. However, whereas the boy's trouble in the poem seems to have its origin in his over-intellectualizing the situation, the "they" is associated with unreflective absorption which has not yet heeded the call of anxiety.

Let's hear about your music idea.