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the palm leaf alphabet

Posted on July 21, 2007 @ 5:11 pm by massimo | Filed under: another green world, blog, fun, indonesia, travel, wordpress

poem.jpg

According to Hugo Ball, inventor of Dadaist phonetic poetry and co-founder of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, 1916, the ultimate meaning of a poem however resides in its meaninglessness, by allegedly choosing the word at random and because of their sound…
In Bali I was waiting for the night bus to Lombok, I had bought my ticket already and had nothing to do in the shady and large waiting room…there were just a few chairs and a table, and not even a human being to talk to. Upon the table was a sort of guest book. I kept on turning over the pages vaguely, until I came across a strange set of signs tagged as the old Indonesian ka-ga-nga alphabet, traditionally written on bamboo or palm leaves.
The unexpected discovery struck me greatly: I spent more than a couple of hours copying the mysterious signs in my notepad and arranging readings of purely phonetic tropical nonsense.
Nga ba ma nya ja sa ha ra,
la wa sa da na ca nya…
…Then the big red bus came…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: poem

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 and is filed under another green world, blog, fun, indonesia, travel, wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

10 people have left comments

your entry is nothing short of brilliance.

i believe that the spirits don’t necessarily understand our languages, but they do connect to us through sounds and rhythm. (that’s just a personal opinion), and because of that i think that poetry that comes to us, probably comes from them…

rhythm and sounds…

catnapping wrote on July 21, 2007 - 6:06 pm CEST

La tua storia e’ molto bella, come sempre, e va all’essenza. C’e chi ha scoperto anche la terapia con le parole, forse la tua sconosciuta frase era una che guariva, forse era una mantra, o forse era solo l’inventario della stanza…

Nicole wrote on July 22, 2007 - 10:58 am CEST

Ohhh, Massimo… you’ve touched me with that beautiful Hugo Ball’s quote; and, yet, your illo says it all!

pati @-;– wrote on July 22, 2007 - 4:09 pm CEST

a poem truly resides in its meaninglessness.. and its up to the reader to see himself in it or not. and as i always believe that a poem is a painting where words are color and the paper, the canvass.

btw, nice new template!

atomicvelvetsigh wrote on July 23, 2007 - 1:33 am CEST

you really took our travels together to a whole new level here! How exciting and wonderful you are! I was happy to read that this was used for LOVE. What a brilliant post! Thank YOu!!!

valgalart wrote on July 23, 2007 - 7:45 am CEST

Ovviamente come al solito non ho capito un bel niente di quello che hai scritto in inglese. Intanto mentre leggevo mi veniva da ridere (pensando di capire)… poi leggendo i commenti… ho pensato che non c’era niente da ridere … e così eccomi di nuovo qua.
Insomma come al solito, ignoranti, mi chiedo, si nasce… o si diventa?
E poi altro quesito: che poi quesito non è, è così importante capire? O meglio guardare e sognare? e soprattutto immaginare? Che con il capire non ha niente a che fare… va be! Buona giornata!
Augh!
smilingdog

vanna wrote on July 23, 2007 - 8:55 am CEST

Ciao Massimo
come và?
che significa “è il tempo dei chirurghi?”
buona estate … ooops ma nei tuoi viaggi sei stato anche in marocco? e in spagna del sud? puoi aiutarmi con delle informazioni?
ciao ciao
frà

frà wrote on July 24, 2007 - 8:49 am CEST

fantastic post…very thought provoking.

studio lolo wrote on July 25, 2007 - 5:18 am CEST

You always have some really inspiring posts. Your story put me in your shoes. I kept i maging what it would be like to be there in the station.

Kim wrote on July 25, 2007 - 8:55 pm CEST

Cool work! I like his expression. That first comment is cool too.

mac cmrae wrote on July 28, 2007 - 1:40 am CEST

feel free to leave a comment

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