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e. e. cummings - the acrobat passage (from "him") lyrics

d+mn everything but the circus! (to himself) and here am i, patiently squeezing fourdimensional ideas into a twodimensional stage, when all of me that’s anyone or anything is in the top of a circustent…. (a pause)
me: i didn’t imagine you were leading a double life—and right under my nose, too
him (unhearing, proceeds contemptuously): the average “painter” “sculptor” “poet” “composer” “playwright” is a person who cannot leap through a hoop from the back of a galloping horse, make people laugh with a clown’s mouth, orchestrate twenty lions
me: indeed
him (to her): but imagine a human being who balances three chairs, one on top of another, on a wire, eighty feet in air with no net underneath, and then climbs into the top chair, sits down, and begins to swing….
me (shudders): i’m glad i never saw that—makes me dizzy just to think of it
him (quietly): i never saw that either
me: because n0body can do it
him: because i am that. but in another way, it’s all i ever see
me: what is?
him (pacing up and down): this: i feel only one thing, i have only one conviction; it sits on three chairs in heaven. sometimes i look at it, with terror: it is such a perfect acrobat! the three chairs are three facts—it will quickly kick them out from under itself and will stand on air; and in that moment (because everyone will be disappointed) everyone will applaud. meanwhile, some thousands of miles over everyone’s head, over a billion empty faces, it rocks carefully and smilingly on three things, on three facts, on: i am an artist, i am a man, i am a failure—it rocks and it swings and it smiles and it does not collapse tumble or die because it pays no attention to anything except itself. (passionately) i feel, i am aware—every minute, every instant, i watch this trick, i am this trick, i sway—selfish and smiling and careful—above all the people. (to himself) and always i am repeating a simple and dark and little formula…always myself mutters and remutters a trivial colourless microscopic idiom—i breathe, and i swing; and i whisper: “an artist, a man, a failure, must proceed.”
me (timidly, after a short pause): this thing or person who is you, who does not pay any attention to anyone else, it will stand on air?
him: on air. above the faces, lives, screams—suddenly. easily: alone
me: how about the chairs?
him: the chairs will all fall by themselves down from the wire and be caught by anybody, by n0body; by somebody whom i don’t see and who doesn’t see me: perhaps by everybody
me: maybe yourself—you, away up ever so high—will hear me applaud?
him (looking straight at her, smiles seriously): i shall see your eyes. i shall hear your heart move
me: because i shall not be disappointed, like the others

- e e cummings lyrics

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