Gene Elders, fiddle ...
31 July 2016
Marshall Tucker Band, "Desert Sky"
Just listen to the wind blow
Let it blow, let it blow
Sand over my trail
I got my saddle on the ground
And that ol' moon, he can still be found
Hidin' in the desert sky
Let it blow, let it blow
Sand over my trail
I got my saddle on the ground
And that ol' moon, he can still be found
Hidin' in the desert sky
Appear.
If you’re walking through Boston during a downpour, make
sure to keep your eyes on the pavement: you might just see a poem appear before
your eyes. For the last few months, Bostonians wandering the city streets in
the rain may have come across poems written on the sidewalk.
Opportunity.
Losing Ourselves is a student-directed documentary about how an expectation for
perfection and a status-driven definition of success undermines students’ love
of learning and creativity, gets in the way of our ability to use high school
as an opportunity to figure out what we love and who we are, and turns our
intrinsic motivation extrinsic.
Grinned.
‘Brunch?’ He shuddered again. ‘Brunch is the terrible
work of the — ‘ he did not quite say devil. ‘It’s neither one thing nor another
thing.’ ‘But elevenses?’ I replied. ‘Ah yes, elevenses,’ he grinned.
‘That’s what keeps you going until lunch.’ Mid morning, he usually partakes of
a slice of seed cake and Madeira. He ordered some for us now. The caraway
seed cake was pound cake, not too dry, with a crunchy crust. ‘A little dour,’
said Fergus, ‘but good.’ A sip of the amber Madeira, sweet and thick, wetted the
tongue and warmed the palate.
30 July 2016
Beauty.
Curtis, God of Harvest, Fringe Mouth, and Talking God, 1907
HOUSE MADE OF DAWN
Navajo Night Chant
In Tse'gihi
In the house made of the dawn,
In the house made of the evening twilight,
In the house made of the dark cloud,
In the house made of the he-rain,
In the house made of the dark mist,
In the house made of the she-rain,
In the house made of pollen,
In the house made of grasshoppers,
Where the dark mist curtains the doorway,
The path to which is on the rainbow,
Where the zigzag lightning stands high on top,
Where the he-rain stands high on top,
Oh, male divinity!
With your moccasins of dark cloud, come to us.
With your leggings of dark cloud, come to us.
With your shirt of dark cloud, come to us.
With your head-dress of dark cloud, come to us.
With your mind enveloped in dark cloud, come to us.
With the dark thunder above you, come to us soaring.
With the shapen cloud at your feet, come to us soaring.
With the far darkness made of the dark cloud over your head,
come to us soaring.
With the far darkness made of the he-rain over your head,
come to us soaring..
With the far darkness made of the dark mist over your head,
come to us soaring.
With the far darkness made of the she-rain over your head,
come to us soaring.
With the zigzag lightning flung out on high over your head,
come to us soaring.
With the rainbow hanging high over your head, come to us
soaring.
With the far darkness made of the he-rain on the ends of
your wings, come to us soaring.
With the far darkness made of the dark mist on the ends of
your wings, come to us soaring.
With the far darkness made of the she-rain on the ends of
your wings, come to us soaring.
With the zigzag lightning flung out on high on the ends of
your wings, come to us soaring.
With the rainbow hanging high on the ends of your wings,
come to us soaring.
With the near darkness made of the dark cloud, of the he-rain,
of the dark mist and of the she-rain, come to us.
With the darkness of the earth, come to us.
With these I wish the foam floating on the flowing water
over the roots of the great corn.
I have made your sacrifice.
I have prepared a smoke for you.
My feet restore for me.
My limbs restore for me.
My body restore for me.
Mt mind restore for me.
My voice restore for me.
Today, take out your spell for me.
Today, take away your spell for me.
Away from me you have taken it.
Far off from me, it is taken.
Far off you have done it.
Happily I recover.
Happily my interior becomes cool.
Happily my eyes regain their power.
Happily my head becomes cool.
Happily my limbs regain their power.
Happily I hear again.
Happily for me is taken off.
Happily I walk.
Impervious to pain, I walk.
Feeling light within, I walk.
With lively feelings, I walk.
Happily abundant dark clouds I desire.
Happily abundant dark mists I desire.
Happily abundant passing showers I desire.
Happily an abundance of vegetation I desire.
Happily an abundance of pollen I desire.
Happily abundant dew I desire.
Happily may fair white corn, to the ends of the earth, come
with you.
Happily may fair yellow corn, to the ends of the earth, come
with you.
Happily may fair blue corn, to the ends of the earth, come with
you.
Happily may fair plants of all kinds, to the ends of the
earth, come with you.
Happily may fair goods of all kinds, to the ends of the
earth, come with you.
Happily may fair jewels of all kinds, to the ends of the
earth, come with you.
With these before you, happily may they come with you.
With these behind you, happily may they come with you.
With these below you, happily may they come with you.
With these abovee you, happily may they come with you.
With these all around you, happily may they come with you.
Thus happily you accomplish your tasks.
Happily the old men will regard you.
Happily the old women will regard you.
Happily the young men will regard you.
Happily the young women will regard you.
Happily the boys will regard you.
Happily the girls will regard you.
Happily the children will regard you.
Happily the chiefs will regard you.
Happily, as they scatter in different directions, they will
regard you.
Happily, as they approach their homes, they will regard you.
Happily may their roads back home be on the trail of pollen.
Happily may they all get back.
In beauty I walk.
With beauty before me, I walk.
With beauty behind me, I walk.
With beauty below me, I walk.
With beauty above me, I walk.
With beauty all around me, I walk.
It is finished in beauty,
It is finished in beauty,
It is finished in beauty,
It is finished in beauty.
Thank You, Jessica.
Thank You, Jessica.
Fly.
Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.
So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.
This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.
Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!
They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.
Stop the words now.
Open the window in the centre of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.
Yearning.
What if the place that we are in the midst of is different
from the physical space that we currently inhabit? What if the things we yearn
for are located elsewhere, in another place or in a remembered past, and all we
now carry within us is an image of this place. We may remember only elements or
impressions of it: there may be certain objects, smells, a smile or expression,
particular acts or occasions, a word, all of which come out in a manner that we
cannot control or understand. Yet any of these elements or impressions makes us
feel ‘‘at home’’ in a way that we cannot find in the physical space where we
are now stuck. This is the problem of exile, of being displaced and yet capable
of remembering the particularity of place: it is the state of being dislocated
yet able to discern what it is that locates us. We have a great yearning, but
we cannot fulfill it with anything but memory.
Peter King
Kept.
Ruess, Two Burros, undated
Always I shall be one who loves the wilderness:
Swaggers and softly creeps between the mountain peaks;
I shall listen long to the sea’s brave music;
I shall sing my song above the shriek of desert winds.
Swaggers and softly creeps between the mountain peaks;
I shall listen long to the sea’s brave music;
I shall sing my song above the shriek of desert winds.
When I go I leave no trace.
The beauty of the country is becoming a part of me.
Now the aspen trunks are tall and white in the moonlight.
A wind croons in the pines, the mountain sleeps.
The beauty of the country is becoming a part of me.
Now the aspen trunks are tall and white in the moonlight.
A wind croons in the pines, the mountain sleeps.
Say that I starved, that I was lost and weary;
That I was burned and blinded by the desert sun;
Footsore, thirsty, sick with strange diseases;
Lonely and wet and cold, but that I kept my dream!
That I was burned and blinded by the desert sun;
Footsore, thirsty, sick with strange diseases;
Lonely and wet and cold, but that I kept my dream!
Up.
There is a fundamental reason why we look at the sky with
wonder and longing — for the same reason that we stand, hour after hour, gazing
at the distant swell of the open ocean. There is something like an ancient
wisdom, encoded and tucked away in our DNA, that knows its point of origin as
surely as a salmon knows its creek. Intellectually, we may not want to return
there, but the genes know, and long for their origins — their home in the salty
depths. But if the seas are our immediate source, the penultimate source is
certainly the heavens.
The spectacular truth is—and this is something that your
DNA has known all along — the very atoms of your body — the iron, calcium,
phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and on and on — were initially forged in
long-dead stars. This is why, when you stand outside under a moonless, country
sky, you feel some ineffable tugging at your innards. We are star stuff. Keep
looking up.
Jerry Waxman
Mahler, Symphony No. 10
The Adagio performed by the Cleveland Orchestra, under the direction of Pierre Boulez ...
Joe Strummer, "Global a Go-Go"
World service bulletin
From the nightshift DJ
To all wavebands on earth
Reconnoiter on the kilohertz
To all wavebands on earth
Reconnoiter on the kilohertz
This tune is going out to Marconi
To all corners of the globe
There ain't no hut in the Serengeti
Where my wavelengths do not probe
To all corners of the globe
There ain't no hut in the Serengeti
Where my wavelengths do not probe
If a rocket went to Saturn
We sure hope a DJ is on board
For some anti-gravity mixing
With two dub plates of U-Roy
Throwdown
Stray Cat strut in Bulawayo
Buddy Rich in Burundi
Quadrophenia in Armenia
Armenia City In The Sky
Big Youth booming in Djakarta
Nina Simone over Sierra Leone
Wild sound of Joujouka in Nevada
Everywhere, everywhere Bob's bringing it all back home
Buddy Rich in Burundi
Quadrophenia in Armenia
Armenia City In The Sky
Big Youth booming in Djakarta
Nina Simone over Sierra Leone
Wild sound of Joujouka in Nevada
Everywhere, everywhere Bob's bringing it all back home
Yeah, I let the boogie-woogie rumble
In the back of Bangalore
I get complaints from Bondi Beach
What, no longboard surf hardcore
Oh, send the rock steady out to Freddy
Who juggles plates in Tsing Tao City
In the back of Bangalore
I get complaints from Bondi Beach
What, no longboard surf hardcore
Oh, send the rock steady out to Freddy
Who juggles plates in Tsing Tao City
'Cause tonight Bo Diddley's in Finland Station
Sun Ra's in Omaha
The Skatalites in New York City
The Stooges rule over Habana
The Bhundu Boys rock Acapulco
Good hip hop in Islamabad
Ali Farke Toure's in Oaxaca
Sun Ra's in Omaha
The Skatalites in New York City
The Stooges rule over Habana
The Bhundu Boys rock Acapulco
Good hip hop in Islamabad
Ali Farke Toure's in Oaxaca
And Baaba Maal's all over Stalingrad
Yeah, while some are waking, some are sleeping
From Kamchatka to the Gabon
Above the trade wind, wingtips beating
We calling out for Ronnie and da-do Ron, Ron, Ron
From Kamchatka to the Gabon
Above the trade wind, wingtips beating
We calling out for Ronnie and da-do Ron, Ron, Ron
We call the Cumbria to tumble
From the peak of the Himalayas
We send the funk into the jungle
To the last outpost of the bass player
From the peak of the Himalayas
We send the funk into the jungle
To the last outpost of the bass player
Ambition.
When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among
my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was,
to be a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were
only transient. When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become
clowns; the first negro minstrel show that came to our section left us all
suffering to try that kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived
and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out,
each in its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.
Mark Twain, from Life on the Mississippi
Happy birthday, Penguin.
Happy birthday, Vasari.
Vasari, Self-portrait, 1567
Giorgio Vasari was born on this day in 1511.
Giorgio Vasari was born on this day in 1511.
Art owes its origin to Nature herself... this beautiful
creation, the world, supplied the first model, while the original teacher was
that divine intelligence which has not only made us superior to the other
animals, but like God Himself, if I may venture to say it.
Giorgio Vasari
Andrew Graham-Dixon's BBC production, Travels with Vasari ...
Andrew Graham-Dixon's BBC production, Travels with Vasari ...
Part One
Part Two
Medicines.
In 2013, an influential study published in Science found
that reading literary fiction (rather than popular fiction or literary
nonfiction) improved participants’ results on tests that measured social
perception and empathy, which are crucial to “theory of mind”: the ability to
guess with accuracy what another human being might be thinking or feeling, a
skill humans only start to develop around the age of four.
But not everybody agrees with this characterization of
fiction reading as having the ability to make us behave better in real life. In
her 2007 book, Empathy and the Novel, Suzanne Keen takes issue with this
“empathy-altruism hypothesis,” and is skeptical about whether empathetic
connections made while reading fiction really translate into altruistic,
prosocial behavior in the world. She also points out how hard it is to really
prove such a hypothesis. “Books can’t make change by themselves—and not everyone
feels certain that they ought to,” Keen writes. “As any bookworm knows, readers
can also seem antisocial and indolent. Novel reading is not a team sport.”
Instead, she urges, we should enjoy what fiction does give us, which is a
release from the moral obligation to feel something for invented characters—as
you would for a real, live human being in pain or suffering—which paradoxically
means readers sometimes “respond with greater empathy to an unreal situation
and characters because of the protective fictionality.” And she wholeheartedly
supports the personal health benefits of an immersive experience like reading,
which “allows a refreshing escape from ordinary, everyday pressures.”
So even if you don’t agree that reading fiction makes us
treat others better, it is a way of treating ourselves better. Reading has been
shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state, similar to
meditation, and it brings the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner
calm. Regular readers sleep better, have lower stress levels, higher
self-esteem, and lower rates of depression than non-readers. “Fiction and
poetry are doses, medicines,” the author Jeanette Winterson has written. “What
they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination.”
Wanderings.
Homer, The Guide, 1895
Karen Blixen
We fish rest quietly, on all sides supported, within an
element which all the time accurately and unfailingly evens itself out. An
element which may be said to have taken over our personal experience, regardless of individual shape and whether we be flat fish or round
fish, our weight and body and calculated according to the quantity of our
surroundings which we displace. We run no risks. For our changing of place in
existence never creates, or leaves after it, what man calls a way, upon which
phenomenon -- in reality no phenomenon but an illusion -- he will waste
inexplicable passionate deliberation. Man, in the end, is alarmed by the idea
of time, and unbalanced by incessant wanderings between past and future.
Karen Blixen
John Denver, "Windsong"
The wind is the whisper of our mother the earth.
The wind is
the hand of our father the sky.
The wind watches over our struggles and pleasures.
The wind is the goddess who first learned to fly.
The wind watches over our struggles and pleasures.
The wind is the goddess who first learned to fly.
The wind is the bearer of bad and good tidings,
The weaver
of darkness, the bringer of dawn.
The wind gives the rain, then builds us a rainbow,
The wind gives the rain, then builds us a rainbow,
The wind is the singer who
sang the first song.
The wind is a twister of anger and warning,
The wind brings
the fragrance of freshly mown hay.
The wind is a racer, a wild stallion running
And the sweet taste of love on a
slow summer's day.
The wind knows the songs of cities and canyons,
The thunder
of mountains, the roar of the sea.
The wind is the taker and giver of mornings,
The wind is the taker and giver of mornings,
The wind is the symbol of all that
is free.
So welcome the wind and the wisdom she offers,
Follow her
summons when she calls again.
In your heart and your spirit, let the breezes surround you.
Lift up your voice then and sing with the wind.
In your heart and your spirit, let the breezes surround you.
Lift up your voice then and sing with the wind.
Resource.
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
Beethoven/Liszt, 6th Symphony, Op. 68, "Pastoral"
Cyprien Katsaris performs the transcription for piano ...
29 July 2016
Aspire.
When a man loves a woman he has to become worthy of her.
The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to
truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The
history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its
women.
Fulton J. Sheen
Fulton J. Sheen
Leave.
Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly,
throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the
process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education
that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can
do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the
choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how
impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to
accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors.
It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and
individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating
yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember,
always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into
the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.
Doris Lessing
Beloved.
In tribute to the beloved staple food, baking master Peter
Reinhart reflects on the cordial couplings (wheat and yeast, starch and heat)
that give us our daily bread.
Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, "Emperor"
Glenn Gould performs with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Karel Ančerl ...
Lyle Lovett, "Step Inside This House"
Step inside my house, girl
I'll sing for you a song
I'll tell you 'bout where I've been
It shouldn't take too long
I'll show you all the things I own
My treasures you might say
Couldn't be more'n ten dollars worth
But they brighten up my day
"Praise the" Lloyd Maines, pedal steel ...
I'll sing for you a song
I'll tell you 'bout where I've been
It shouldn't take too long
I'll show you all the things I own
My treasures you might say
Couldn't be more'n ten dollars worth
But they brighten up my day
"Praise the" Lloyd Maines, pedal steel ...
28 July 2016
Turn'd.
Shishkin, Way in Rye, 1866
GARDEN OF LOVE
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
William Blake
Wild.
The wild. I have drunk it, deep and raw, and heard it's
primal, unforgettable roar. We know it in our dreams, when our mind is off the
leash, running wild. "Outwardly, the equivalent of the unconscious is the
wilderness: both of these terms meet, one step even further on, as one," wrote Gary Snyder. "It is in vain to dream of a wildness distinct from
ourselves. There is none such," wrote Thoreau. "It is the bog in our brains and
bowls, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires the dream."
And as dreams are essential to the psyche, wildness is to life.
We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators but for thunder and mud. More. We are animal not only in body but in spirit. Our minds are the minds of wild animals. Artists, who remember their wildness better than most, are animal artists, lifting their heads to sniff a quick wild scent in the air, and they know it unmistakably, they know the tug of wildness to be followed through your life is buckled by that strange and absolute obedience. ("You must have chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star," wrote Nietzsche.) Children know it as magic and timeless play. Shamans of all sorts and inveterate misbehavers know it; those who cannot trammel themselves into a sensible job and life in the suburbs know it.
What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakeable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quitessence, pure spirit, resolving into no contituents. Don't waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary.
And as dreams are essential to the psyche, wildness is to life.
We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators but for thunder and mud. More. We are animal not only in body but in spirit. Our minds are the minds of wild animals. Artists, who remember their wildness better than most, are animal artists, lifting their heads to sniff a quick wild scent in the air, and they know it unmistakably, they know the tug of wildness to be followed through your life is buckled by that strange and absolute obedience. ("You must have chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star," wrote Nietzsche.) Children know it as magic and timeless play. Shamans of all sorts and inveterate misbehavers know it; those who cannot trammel themselves into a sensible job and life in the suburbs know it.
What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakeable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quitessence, pure spirit, resolving into no contituents. Don't waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary.
Jay Griffiths
Protect.
Roger Scruton says we should protect the English countryside
by making beauty our priority when we build new houses while in towns we should
reverse the damage done in previous decades.
"Surely the time has come to tear down the
post-war estates, and to recover the old street lines that they extinguished."
Listen to this. CONNECT
Listen to this. CONNECT
19 July 2016
Moon.
13 July 2016
Happy birthday, Clare.
Hilton, John Clare, 1820
John Clare was born on this day in 1793.
I AM!
I
am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.
John Clare
12 July 2016
11 July 2016
Happy birthday, Big Ben.
Big Ben, the great bell inside the famous London clock
tower, chimed for the first time on this day in 1859.
10 July 2016
Happy birthday, Proust.
Marcel Proust was born on this day in 1871.
Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy
certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you
often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often
think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing
that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her
revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the
present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the
incomprehensible power that has broken you restores you a little, I say a
little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell
yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never
love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember
more and more.
Marcel Proust
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