Heeding Haiku With HA: A Quiet Life

Alfred Sisley. Flood at Port-Marley, 1876. Wikimedia.

◊

Hello everyone.  This is Jen filling in for HA while he takes care of some pressing educational matters.  Please forgive me as this post is slightly different from the norm – and I know today we’re missing HA’s thoughtful posts!

◊

For this week, “A Quiet Life” by Teho Teardo and Blixa Bargeld will be our inspiration.  It’s an experimental song with a soft ache to it – accompanied by a bizarre (but strangely fascinating) video.  The video has an older feel to it – but it was released in 2013.  It is full of religious (and pseudo-religious) imagery, people in strange costumes and poses, angels, books with fluttering pages …

… and chickens…

… lots of chickens…

◊

◊

For those of you who cannot see and hear the song, here is a very important line included in the video:

“The river has overflown its banks”

◊

And here is one verse from A Quiet Life:

Maybe this time,
Maybe this time I’ll outwit my past
I’ll throw away the numbers, the keys
And all the cards
Maybe I can carve out a living in the cold
At the outskirts of some city
I extinguish all my recent pasts
Become another man again
And have a quiet life
A quiet life for me
A quiet life
A quiet life for me
A quiet life for someone
An acquired life for me

Lyrics:  A Quiet Life
© 2013 Teho Teardo & Blixa Bargeld

◊

So, what does all of this mean to you? 

— What images in the video piqued your interest – tickled your muses?
— What does “the river has overflown its banks” mean to you?
— What does “quiet life” mean to you?

In keeping with the experimental nature of this video, if you can, try to respond by means of a single tanka or haiku. A snapshot. The video doesn’t explain everything – you don’t have to, either.  It’s okay to leave your readers with questions to sort out for themselves.

 ◊

What to do next?

1. Publish a post with your haiku or tanka if you have a blog. If you haven’t got a blog, you can share them in the comments down below. In case you have published a post, you can submit its link in the linking widget.

2. After you have made the post, take some of your time and visit the links of other participants. This is how we learn and improvise. Return again at the end of the week if you have made your post during the weekdays because there would be new links to visit, which would help us all to make connections and develop the feeling of community and togetherness in our adventure every week. Even if you can’t take out the time to visit all the links, then visit at least the link shared before or after you and offer your feedback and develop comradeship with that person.

Please add the following tags to your post: HeedingHaikuWithHA and MindLoveMisery’sMenagerie.

Good luck!