Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Happy Birthday, Jorges Luis Borges

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

Jorge Luis Borges, born on this day in 1899

Special.

Octopus Thrower has a refreshing perspective from an athlete.  From high school to the pros, this is rare ...

“There’s so much about this club that makes it so special,” Seider said. “You get reminded every time you walk into that precious building playing in front of great fans that are dying for that sport. I think that’s what I’m most excited about coming back, is playing in front of the fans.  They’ve been with us from good and bad, and hopefully we can continue to do some good.”

They don't make 'em like Mo Seider anymore.

Solitude.

For Nature’s particular gift to the walker, through the semi-mechanical act of walking—a gift no other form of exercise seems to transmit in the same high degree—is to set the mind jogging, to make it garrulous, exalted, a little mad maybe—certainly creative and super-sensitive, until at last it really seems to be outside of you and as it were talking to you, while you are talking back to it. Then everything gradually seems to join in, sun and the wind, the white road and the dusty hedges, the spirit of the season, whichever that may be, the friendly old Earth that is pushing forth life of every sort under your very feet or spellbound in deathlike winter trance, till you walk in the midst of a blessed company, immersed in a dream-talk far transcending any possible human conversation. Time enough, later, for that—across the dinner table, in smoking-room armchairs; here and now, the mind has shaken off its harness, is snorting and kicking up heels like a colt in a meadow. Not a fiftieth part of all your happy imaginings will you ever, later, recapture, note down, reduce to dull inadequate words; but meantime the mind has stretched itself and had its holiday. But this emancipation is only attained in solitude, the solitude which the unseen companions demand before they will come out and talk to you; for, be he who he may, if there is another fellow present, your mind has to trot between shafts.

Kenneth Grahame, "The Fellow that Goes Alone"

Schubert, Symphony No. 5, D. 485

Lorin Maazel conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in a performance of the Andante con moto ...

Happy, Birthday, William Ernest Henley

Dew-Smith, William Ernest Henley, 1893

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley, born on this day in 1849

Happy Birthday, Steve Cradock

Steve Cradock was born on this day in 1969.

Backing Weller on "Shadow of the Sun"...

Happy Birthday, Ray Bradbury

You’ll find out it’s little savors and little things that count more than big ones. A walk on a spring morning is better than an eighty-mile ride in a hopped-up car, you know why? Because it’s full of flavors, full of a lot of things growing. You’ve time to seek and find. I know, you’re after the broad effect now, I suppose that’s fit and proper. But you got to look at grapes as well as watermelons. You greatly admire skeletons and I like fingerprints; well, and good. Right now such things are bothersome to you, and I wonder if it isn’t because you never learned to use them. If you had your way you’d pass a law to abolish all the little jobs, the little things. But then you’d leave yourselves nothing to do between the big jobs and you’d have a devil of a time thinking up things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life.

Ray Bradbury, born on this day in 1926, from Dandelion Wine

Happy Birthday, Claude Debussy

Listen to no one's advice except that of the wind in the trees; it can recount the whole history of mankind.

Claude Debussy, born on this day in 1862 

Bianca Fiorito performs Syrinx, L. 129 ...

Happy Birthday, Joe Strummer

 When I started, they told me I only needed 3 chords and the truth. It turned out I could manage with two and some vague ideas.

Joe Strummer, born on this day in 1952

"Bhindi Bhagee" with The Mescaleros ...

Ray Charles, "Shake a Tail Feather"

Happy Birthday, Ogden Nash

Free from flashiness, free from trashiness

Is the essence of Ogdenashiness.

Rich, original, rash and rational,

Stands the monument Ogdenational.

Ogden Nash, born on this day in 1902

Happy Birthday, Antonio Salieri

Mähler, Portrait of Salieri, 1815

It must be fine and inspiring for a musician to have all his pupils gathered about him, to see how each strives to give of his best in honor of the master's jubilee, to hear in all their compositions the simple expressions of Nature, free from all that eccentricity which tends to govern most composers nowadays, and for which we are indebted -- almost wholly -- to one of our greatest German musicians [Beethoven]. That eccentricity confuses and confounds, without distinguishing between them, tragic and comic, sacred and profane, pleasant and unpleasant, heroic strains and mere noise; it engenders in people not love but madness; it rouses them to scornful laughter instead of lifting up their thoughts to God. To have banned these extravagances from the circle of his pupils, and to have kept them, instead, at the pure source of Nature must be the greatest satisfaction to a musician who, following in Gluck's steps, seeks his inspiration in Nature alone, despite the unnatural influences of the present day.

Franz Schubert on Antonio Salieri, who was born on this day in 1750

Capella Cracoviensis performs the maestro's Sinfonia Veneziana ...

Happy Birthday, Meriwether Lewis

Charles Wilson Peale, Meriwether Lewis, 1807

Meriwether Lewis was born on this date in 1774.

This day I completed my thirty-first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the happiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now sorely feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existance, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestowed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.

Meriwether Lewis, 18 August 1805, Out There

Released.

Miles Davis released Kind of Blue on this day in 1959.

"So What"...

Lucy Yeghiazaryan, "Love For Sale"

Happy Birthday, Sib Hashian

Sib Hashian was born on this day in 1949.

With some familiar faces bangin' out "Dreams," from 1980 ...

Pleased.

 The HUNTING of the SNARK

The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies--

     Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!

Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise,

     The moment one looked in his face!

He had bought a large map representing the sea,

     Without the least vestige of land:

And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be

     A map they could all understand.

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,

     Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"

So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply

     "They are merely conventional signs!

"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!

     But we've got our brave Captain to thank:

(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best--

     A perfect and absolute blank!"

This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out

     That the Captain they trusted so well

Had only one notion for crossing the ocean,

     And that was to tingle his bell.

He was thoughtful and grave--but the orders he gave

     Were enough to bewilder a crew.

When he cried "Steer to starboard, but keep her head larboard!"

     What on earth was the helmsman to do?

Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:

     A thing, as the Bellman remarked,

That frequently happens in tropical climes,

     When a vessel is, so to speak, "snarked."

But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,

     And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,

Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,

     That the ship would not travel due West!

But the danger was past--they had landed at last,

     With their boxes, portmanteaus, and bags:

Yet at first sight the crew were not pleased with the view,

     Which consisted to chasms and crags.

Lewis Carroll

Too.

When someone doesn't show up, the people who wait sometimes tell stories about what might have happened and come to half believe the desertion, the abduction, the accident. Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't--and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown. Perhaps fantasy is what you fill up maps with rather than saying that they too contain the unknown.

Rebecca Solnit, from A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Great-Heartedly.

Kepler, Nova Orbis Terrarum Delineatio (detail), 1627

MAP

Flat as the table

it’s placed on.

Nothing moves beneath it

and it seeks no outlet.

Above—my human breath

creates no stirring air

and leaves its total surface

undisturbed.

Its plains, valleys are always green,

uplands, mountains are yellow and brown,

while seas, oceans remain a kindly blue

beside the tattered shores.

Everything here is small, near, accessible.

I can press volcanoes with my fingertip,

stroke the poles without thick mittens,

I can with a single glance

encompass every desert

with the river lying just beside it.

A few trees stand for ancient forests,

you couldn’t lose your way among them.

In the east and west,

above and below the equator—

quiet like pins dropping,

and in every black pinprick

people keep on living.

Mass graves and sudden ruins

are out of the picture.

Nations’ borders are barely visible

as if they wavered—to be or not.

I like maps, because they lie.

Because they give no access to the vicious truth.

Because great-heartedly, good-naturedly

they spread before me a world

not of this world.

Wisława Szymborska

Lucy Yeghiazaryan, "There's A Small Hotel"

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

... to prioritize victory over rather than coexistence with the communist threat.

THE TUBES GROUP, "Don't Want to Wait Anymore"

But first, order an extra side of ranch so the rest of the night'll be groovy, alright? ...

Definition.

Inspiration.

Kurt's text this morning sent me wandering ...

Was this the inspiration for the dance moves in The Silence of the Lambs?

Released.

The Cars released their greatest album, Panorama, on this day in 1980 (fitting for the first week of school).

"Touch and Go" ...

KYUSS, "Green Machine"

I see pretty flowers at my feet

Cool breeze, clean air, hospitality

Pretty please, pretty please, pretty please

Get the hell away from me ...

Wranitzky, Symphony in D-Major, Op.52

John Keene conducts the Freemantle Chamber Orchestra ...

Because.

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Gods.

Heyn & Matzen, Clear, Lakota, 1900

These were not Methodist Indians but warriors with a lineage that owed nothing to the white man. We did not live upon the same earth that they did and we flatter ourselves when we think we understand them. To pity these men is to pity the gods.

Jim Harrison, from The Road Home

My Great-Grandpa Firchau was sixteen years old when this photograph was made.

Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D-Minor, BWV 565

The Black Dyke Band has a go ...

Ever.

Kramer, Summer Swells, n/d

No one wants to row who has ever sailed.

Arthur Ransome, from Swallows and Amazons

Happy Birthday, Sir Walter

Lawrence, Sir Walter Scott, 1826

In the wide pile, by others heeded not,

Hers was one sacred solitary spot,

Whose gloomy aisles and bending shelves contain

For moral hunger food, and cures for moral pain.

The library at Osbaldistone Hall was a gloomy room, whose antique oaken shelves bent beneath the weight of the ponderous folios so dear to the seventeenth century, from which, under favour be it spoken, we have distilled matter for our quartos and octavos, and which, once more subjected to the alembic, may, should our sons be yet more frivolous than ourselves, be still farther reduced into duodecimos and pamphlets. The collection was chiefly of the classics, as well foreign as ancient history, and, above all, divinity. It was in wretched order. The priests, who in succession had acted as chaplains at the Hall, were, for many years, the only persons who entered its precincts, until Rashleigh's thirst for reading had led him to disturb the venerable spiders, who had muffled the fronts of the presses with their tapestry. His destination for the church rendered his conduct less absurd in his father's eyes, than if any of his other descendants had betrayed so strange a propensity, and Sir Hildebrand acquiesced in the library receiving some repairs, so as to fit it for a sitting-room. Still an air of dilapidation, as obvious as it was uncomfortable, pervaded the large apartment, and announced the neglect from which the knowledge which its walls contained had not been able to exempt it. The tattered tapestry, the worm-eaten shelves, the huge and clumsy, yet tottering, tables, desks, and chairs, the rusty grate, seldom gladdened by either sea-coal or faggots, intimated the contempt of the lords of Osbaldistone Hall for learning, and for the volumes which record its treasures.

“You think this place somewhat disconsolate, I suppose?” said Diana, as I glanced my eye round the forlorn apartment; “but to me it seems like a little paradise, for I call it my own, and fear no intrusion."

Sir Walter Scott, born on this day in 1771, from Rob Roy

Hang.

'Tis the last Thursday cocktail hour of Summer Break.  The weekend begins now ...

"Hang care!" exclaimed he. "This is a delicious evening; the wine has a finer relish here than in the house, and the song is more exciting and melodious under the tranquil sky than in the close room, where the sound is stifled. Come, let us have a bacchanalian chant—let us, with old Sir Toby, make the welkin dance and rouse the night-owl with a catch! I am right merry. Pass the bottle, and tune your voices—a catch, a catch! The lights will be here anon."     

Charles Ollier, from "The Haunted Manor-House of Paddington" 

For best results, listen to this: The Kinks, "Around the Dial" ...

The euphony transformed me and inundated my soul in a roguish countenance, the likes of which I had know well in younger days. Such impishness soon drove out the complaints of the day. 

Umberto Limongiello

Unfortunately.

Unfortunately, these are no longer made.

It was a quiet early afternoon in the library, and we librarians were enjoying a rather raucous chat at the circulation desk.

Bingen, Caritas Abundat

Alexandra Polarczyk in St. Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle ...

Murmuring.

Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another.

Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.

Umberto Eco, from the postscript to The Name of the Rose

Intuition.

From 1974, James Day speaks with Ray Bradbury about imagination, his dislike of school, and, most importantly, not thinking ...

I've had a sign over my typewriter for 25 years now which reads, "Don't Think."  You must never think at the typewriter.  You must feel and then your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.  You collect up a lot of data, you do a lot of thinking away from your typewriter, but at the typewriter you should be living.  It should be a living experience, just as when I'm here with you.  

Speaking to you, you're popping all sorts of questions at me.  I don't have time to think about them.  I can react to them.  I try to say things that are meaningful and react to them.  If I stopped and thought too long, we'd both of us fall asleep and that can happen at the typewriter, too.  

The worst thing you do when you think is lie.  You can make up reasons that are not true for the things that you did.  What you're trying to do as a creative person is surprise yourself, find out who you really are.  Try not to lie.  Try to tell the truth all the time.  The only way to do this is by being very active and very emotional and get out of yourself, making lists of things that you hate and things that you love.  You write about these then intensely and when it's over, then you can think about it, then you can look at it.  Well, it works or it doesn't work, something's missing here.  Then, if something is missing, you go back and re-emotionalize that so it's all of a piece.    

But thinking is to be a corrective in our life, it's not supposed to be the center of our life.  Living is supposed to be the center of our life, Being is supposed to be the center with correctives around which hold us like the skin holds our our blood and our flesh in.   Our skin is not our way of life.  The way of our our living is the blood coming through our veins, the ability to sense and to feel and to know.  The intellect doesn't really help you very much there.  You should get on with the business of living.  

You rely heavily upon intuition, completely.  Everything of mine is intuitive.  All the poetry I've written, I couldn't possibly tell you how I did it.  I don't know anything about the rhythms or the schemes or the inner rhymes or any of this sort of thing.  It comes from 40 years of reading poetry and having heroes that i loved.  I love Shakespeare.  I don't intellectualize about him.  I love Gerard Manley Hopkins.  I don't intellectualize about him.   I love Dylan Thomas.  I don't know what the hell he's writing about half the time, but he sounds good, he rings well.  

I'll give you an example of this sort of thing.  I walked into my living room, oh, 20 years ago, when one of my daughters was about four years old.  A Dylan Thomas record was on the set and I thought that my wife had put the record on.  Come to find out, my four-year-old had put on his record.  I came into the room, she pointed to the record and said he knows what he's doing.  That's great!  See, that's not intellectualized, it's an emotional reaction.  If there is no feeling there cannot be great art. 

Boulanger, Psalm 129

Florian Helgath conducts the Bochum Symphony with Chorwerk Ruhr ...

129 

1 Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say:

2 Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth: yet they have not prevailed against me.

3 The plowers plowed upon my back: they made long their furrows.

4 The Lord is righteous: he hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked.

5 Let them all be confounded and turned back that hate Zion.

6 Let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up:

7 Wherewith the mower filleth not his hand; nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom.

8 Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you: we bless you in the name of the Lord.

Stretch.

The poet only desires exhalation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head who splits.

G.K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy

Stillness.

Too many words cause exhaustion
In the mind or from the mouth
Better to abide in stillness

Lao Tzu

Always.

Expectations is the place you must always go to before you get to where you're going.

Norton Juster, from The Phantom Tollbooth

Merula, Canzon La Lusignola

Giovanni Antonini sets the pace with Il Giardino Armonico ...

Behold.

We can’t crucify beauty without steadily walking into hell. Every time we walk the dog we are surrounded by hints of the Kingdom of Heaven. That’s a big thought to swim into. One of the ways we can practice being saintly is to notice that sort of grace.  The more we abide in it, the more folks around us start to notice. This is one of the attributes that used to define saints; you glimpse more of the Kingdom of Heaven around them. They are literally an eye-opener. A saint has had the saliva and dirt of the great druid Yeshua wipe the blindness from their eye. They behold.

Martin Shaw, from Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make Us

Study.

James Prosek wades the introspective waters of Izaak Walton in his documentary, The Complete Angler ...

When I'm on the small Connecticut brooks of my youth, I want to be innocent again. I think of sleepouts and thick pine forests, clear running water, garden worms, diminutive flies, and first kisses with a freckle-faced girl.  These are my best memories, along with days angling for wild trout.  The brook, with all its colors and sounds, is an education, a place where I can learn about myself and other creatures, as well. 

Without even realizing it, it is in my early years of fishing I began to follow Isaac Walton's first philosophy: study to be quiet. 

Lucy Yeghiazaryan, "Honeysuckle Rose"

Spirit.

Reflect that nothing merits admiration except the spirit, the impressiveness of which prevents it from being impressed by anything.

Seneca, from Letters from a Stoic

Those were heady days.