Molly Hatchet, "Bounty Hunter"

WOO-HOO!

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Jimmy Buffett, "Take Another Road"

Take another road to a hiding place
Disappear without a trace
Take another road to another time



It's sandwich time.

Dizzy Gillespie, "Manteca"

Medicinal ...

Activated.

For British writer T.H. White, as I read while out watching bighorns, a mind activated by beasts was a rescued mind. White averted mental disasters by keeping a proximity to animals and sustaining a voracious appetite for knowledge.

Described by biographer Sylvia Townsend Warner as "chased by a mad black wind," this "hermetic and sometimes cranky man" wrote more than twenty-five books. He was an illustrator and calligrapher. He translated medieval bestiaries. He painted, fished, raced airplanes, built furniture, sailed boats, plowed fields, and flew hawks at prey. Late in life, he made deep-sea dives in a heavy old suit with a bulbous helmet, which made him look like a Zuni mudhead.

New skills "aerated his intelligence," Warner tells us. For his 1955 translation of a 12th-century bestiary, he taught himself Latin. Through a character in one of his novels he hinted at himself. "The best thing for being sad," the character says, "is to learn something."

Much of White's knowledge of the natural world resurfaced in his teaching -- he was for many years a schoolmaster -- although greater experts in his subjects accused him of smattering. "But smatterer or no," writes Warner, White "held his pupils' attention; their imagination, too, calling out an unusual degree of solicitude -- as though in the tall, gowned figure these adolescents recognized a hidden adolescent, someone unhappy, fitful, self-dramatizing, and not knowing much about finches."

He wore scarlet. He was "nobly shabby."  He drank, he said, "in order not to be sober." He kept owls and paid his students to trap mice to feed them. Fed, the owls perched on his shoulder as he sat under an apple tree, speaking to him in little squeals.

CONNECT

Thank You, Jess.

Command.

To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides.

This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality.

One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Top:  Rembrandt, Self-portrait, 1628

Middleman: Reynolds, Self-portrait, 1749

Bottom: Richmond, Self-portrait, 1840

Thank you, Kurt.

CPE Bach, Flute Sonata in A minor, H.562

François Lazarevitch performs the Allegro ...

Sacred.

Giotto, Birth of Christ (detail), 1306

Take pleasure in your dreams; relish your principles and drape your purest feelings on the heart of the sacred. 

Giotto

Liszt, Etude d'execution transcendante No. 3 in F major, "Paysage"

Ralf Taal performs ...

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.

Albert Einstein

Stranger.

Let him not boast who puts his armor on 

As he who puts it off, the battle done. 

Study yourselves; and most of all note well 

Wherein kind Nature meant you to excel. 

Not every blossom ripens into fruit; 

Minerva, the inventress of the flute, 

Flung it aside, when she her face surveyed 

Distorted in a fountain as she played; 

The unlucky Marsyas found it, and his fate 

Was one to make the bravest hesitate. 

Write on your doors the saying wise and old, 

"Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere, "Be bold; 

Be not too bold!" Yet better the excess 

Than the defect; better the more than less; 

Better like Hector in the field to die, 

Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly. 

And now, my classmates; ye remaining few 

That number not the half of those we knew, 

Ye, against whose familiar names not yet 

The fatal asterisk of death is set, 

Ye I salute! The horologe of Time 

Strikes the half-century with a solemn chime, 

And summons us together once again, 

The joy of meeting not unmixed with pain. 

Where are the others? Voices from the deep 

Caverns of darkness answer me: "They sleep!" 

I name no names; instinctively I feel 

Each at some well-remembered grave will kneel, 

And from the inscription wipe the weeds and moss, 

For every heart best knoweth its own loss. 

I see their scattered gravestones gleaming white 

Through the pale dusk of the impending night; 

O'er all alike the impartial sunset throws 

Its golden lilies mingled with the rose; 

We give to each a tender thought, and pass 

Out of the graveyards with their tangled grass, 

Unto these scenes frequented by our feet 

When we were young, and life was fresh and sweet. 

What shall I say to you? What can I say 

Better than silence is? When I survey 

This throng of faces turned to meet my own, 

Friendly and fair, and yet to me unknown, 

Transformed the very landscape seems to be; 

It is the same, yet not the same to me. 

So many memories crowd upon my brain, 

So many ghosts are in the wooded plain, 

I fain would steal away, with noiseless tread, 

As from a house where some one lieth dead. 

I cannot go;--I pause;--I hesitate; 

My feet reluctant linger at the gate; 

As one who struggles in a troubled dream 

To speak and cannot, to myself I seem. 

Vanish the dream! Vanish the idle fears! 

Vanish the rolling mists of fifty years! 

Whatever time or space may intervene, 

I will not be a stranger in this scene. 

Here every doubt, all indecision, ends; 

Hail, my companions, comrades, classmates, friends! 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from "Morituri Salutamus"

Beppe Gambetta, "East Virginia Blues"

Bold.

I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never will be measured.
I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.
It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,
Perhaps it is everywhere on water and on land.
Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth,
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.
If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,
For after we start we never lie by again.
This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those
          orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in
          them, shall we be fill'd and satisfied then?
And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue
          beyond.
You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.
Sit a while dear son,
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I
         kiss you with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.
Long enough have you dream'd contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.
Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair.

Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself

Cesária Évora, "Sodade"

Thank you, Veerle.

Steve Winwood, "Night Train"

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Peter Gabriel, "I Have the Touch"

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, "Change of Heart"

The Kinks, "Scattered"

Ssssssssstones, "Shattered"

Al Pacino, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix"

Holy.

Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.

Albert Einstein

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Door.

Ever-improving.

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

Sir Winston Churchill

Clear.

Art is not a pastime but a priesthood. Art is science made clear. 

Jean Cocteau

Schumann, Kreisleriana, Op. 16, and Études Symphoniques, Op. 13

András Schiff performs ...

Happy Birthday, Vasari

Vasari, Self-portrait, 1574

Giorgio Vasari was born on this date in 1511.

I wish to be of service to the artists of our own day, by showing them how a small beginning leads to the highest elevation, and how from so noble a situation it is possible to fall to utmost ruin, and consequently, how these arts resemble nature as shown in our human bodies.

No one ever became excellent in any exercise whatsoever without beginning from his childhood to endure heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and other discomforts; wherefore those men are entirely deceived who think to be able, at their ease and with all the comforts of the world, to attain an honorable rank. It is not by sleeping but by waking and studying continually that progress is made.

Giorgio Vasari

Andrew Graham-Dixon's masterful, Travels with Vasari ...

Part One



Part Two

Frank Sinatra, "The House I Live In"

1946 ...

Waiting.

I feel as if I’ve had much too much summer and too much sun. Everything in me is waiting for the trees to shed everything and reveal the distance behind them, with its empty fields and long roads into winter.

Rainer Maria Rilke

George Winston, "Tamarack Pines"

Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

Ella Fitzgerald & Frank Sinatra, "Moonlight in Vermont"

The Police, "Peanuts"

Imagination.

It's later on a Wednesday, the sun is going down

I'm standing naked by a swimming pool, there's no one around

My imagination wanders back, red dust is always there

We lay together in the jungle, and love was in the air

As I dive into the water, both time and motion freeze

I'm hanging there suspended like a feather in the breeze

Below is your reflection, like an image from the past

But I can't be sure if it's really you, because you're wearing a tribal mask

Roger Glover, from "The Mask"

CONNECT

Boz Scaggs, "Georgia"

Educates.

Dialogue, in fact, educates when the person relates with respect, esteem and sincere listening, and is expressed with authenticity without obscuring or softening one's own identity nourished by evangelical inspiration.

Pope Francis

Resolution.

Isham Reavis, Esq. Springfield,
My dear Sir: Novr. 5- 1855

I have just reached home, and found your letter of the 23rd. ult. I am from home too much of my time, for a young man to read law with me advantageously. If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with any body or not. I did not read with any one. Get the books, and read and study them till, you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New-Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places. Mr. Dummer is a very clever man and an excellent lawyer (much better than I, in law-learning); and I have no doubt he will cheerfully tell you what books to read, and also loan you the books.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing. Very truly Your friend

A. LINCOLN

Practical.

Throughout the war she cooked at Downing Street, Chequers and occasionally in the tiny kitchen under the Cabinet War Rooms. Churchill was an enthusiast for chain eating, which was his interpretation of the medical advice he had been given before the war. He liked soup last thing at night and insisted, even at Yalta, on operating on ‘tummy time’. He was not a glutton but, as Gray puts it, ‘he was used to good food and plenty of it.’ Landemare was able to eke out their rations with produce from Chartwell, the Churchills’ country house in Kent. The prime minister had an extra allowance for diplomatic entertaining, the exact size and purpose of which was a subject of intense discussion between Churchill’s secretaries, the Ministry of Food and the Government Hospitality Fund. The meals Landemare provided were a ‘careful balancing act between need, want and public image’, carefully pitched at ‘hearty trencherman’ but avoiding any suggestion of greed or faddishness. Hitler, after all, was a vegetarian. Ingredients were not only fewer, but also more seasonally dependent. The gastronomic day of the 1930s and 1940s was relatively light compared with the 1890s. It began with breakfast in bed for Clementine and Winston at 8 a.m., which they took separately in their own rooms: orange juice, eggs, toast and butter. Lunch was held at 1.15 p.m. in London and at 2 p.m. at Chequers. On less formal occasions it might be fishcakes, for example, and pears in red wine. While the Churchills stuck mostly to the rules, they were not so strict about rationing as Buckingham Palace and the king quickly established a habit of coming to dinner every Tuesday. In March 1941 he and the Churchills sat down to ‘fish patty, tournedos with mushrooms on top and braised celery and chipped potatoes, peaches and cheese to follow’.

The Churchills were famously terrible employers. Many a cook and kitchen maid had left in tears and one had reputedly gone mad. Mrs Mar, however, did more than stay the course. She became a trusted ally and a friend to Mary, the Churchills’ daughter. She took a practical view of Winston’s peculiarities. If, as sometimes occurred, he ‘absent-mindedly wandered around stark naked’, she told him off and he would apologise. His roast beef ‘always had to be underdone’, but since he was often late for meals this could be difficult to achieve. Landemare’s method was to ‘watch till I knew he was in, then he’d have to have his bath and then I knew to put the meat in’. He was also apt to change his mind about where to eat, whether in the house or in the lavishly appointed bunker under the garden. This would mean wrapping all the dishes in a shawl, ‘sometimes at a rather late stage’ in their preparation, and jumping into the duty car to be driven round the back. Nothing was spilled or spoiled. On VE Day, Churchill addressed the crowds from the balcony of the Ministry of Health. Landemare took a while to get up the stairs but when she did he broke away from the group, shook her hand and said he couldn’t have done it without her.

CONNECT

Dog.

Happy Birthday, Lee

Geddy Lee was born on this date in 1953.

"Working Man" from 1974 ...

"Working Man" from 2011 ...

Happy Birthday, Tocqueville

Chassériau, Tocqueville at Versailles, 1850

Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville was born on this date in 1805.

I have always thought that servitude of the regular, quiet, and gentle kind which I have just described might be combined more easily than is commonly believed with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even establish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people.

Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.

By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience. I do not deny, however, that a constitution of this kind appears to me to be infinitely preferable to one which, after having concentrated all the powers of government, should vest them in the hands of an irresponsible person or body of persons. Of all the forms that democratic despotism could assume, the latter would assuredly be the worst.

Alexis de Toqueville, from "What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear" in Democracy in America 

Denis Colin Trio, "Veillée"

Denis Colin, bass clarinet, Didier Petit, cello, and Pablo Cueco, zarb ...

Courage.

The Police, "Bring on the Night"

Depeche Mode, "Heaven"

Merciful.

It would be merciful for people not to come calling and disturb the loneliness of the mountains to which I have returned from the sorrows of the world.

Muso Soseki

Ziggy Marley, "Forward to Love"

Jim Harrison, "Patagonia"

... to wander in the moonlight
when earth achieves its proper shape, to rest looking
out through a tangle of branches at a daylight
world that can’t see back in at this animal shape.

Paul Weller, "Village"

Flashes.

Sargent, Olive Trees, 1878

Grown about by fragrant bushes,
Sunken in a winding valley,
Where the clear winds blow
And the shadows come and go,
And the cattle stand and low
And the sheep bells and the linnets
Sing and tinkle musically.
Between the past and the future,
Those two black infinities
Between which our brief life
Flashes a moment and goes out.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Philosophy.

Winston Waters: A Philosophy of Flyfishing ...

Russell Chatham at 23:20 ...

Happy Birthday, Kirke

Simon Kirke was born on this date in 1949.

"Deal with the Preacher," with Bad Co. ...

Reflections.

Dabos, Thomas Paine, 1791

Everything we see or hear offensive to our feelings and derogatory to the human character should lead to other reflections than those of reproach. Even the beings who commit them have some claim to our consideration. How then is it that such vast classes of mankind as are distinguished by the appellation of the vulgar, or the ignorant mob, are so numerous in all old countries? The instant we ask ourselves this question, reflection feels an answer. They rise, as an unavoidable consequence, out of the ill construction of all old governments in Europe, England included with the rest. It is by distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased, till the whole is out of nature. A vast mass of mankind are degradedly thrown into the background of the human picture, to bring forward, with greater glare, the puppet-show of state and aristocracy. In the commencement of a revolution, those men are rather the followers of the camp than of the standard of liberty, and have yet to be instructed how to reverence it.

Thomas Paine, from Rights of Man

Grace Jones, "Walking in the Rain"

Jimmy Buffett, "Slack Tide"

Done.

Done and done.

Greek.

Thank you, Kurt.

Jimmy Buffett, "Come Monday"

Reeling.

I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro’ endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove’s door –
When Butterflies – renounce their “drams” –
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!

Emily Dickinson

James Taylor, "Copperline"

Joni Mitchell, "Hejira"

Great Big Sea, "The Banks of Newfoundland"

Purity.

Shishkin, Pine Forest, 1872

The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless,
The circle of white ash widens around it.
I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time
I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller.
Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw;
The moon has come before them, the light
Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees.
It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish,
Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons;
The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall.
There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now.
There were sheep here after the farm, and fire
Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch,
The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil
Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat
And plate the surface like scales.
Twenty years ago the spreading gully
Toppled the big oak over onto the house.
Now there is nothing left but the foundations
Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge,
Six lonely, ominous fenceposts;
The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge
Over the deep waterless creek bed;
The hills are covered with wild oats
Dry and white by midsummer.
I walk in the random survivals of the orchard.
In a patch of moonlight a mole
Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein;
Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean;
Leo crouches under the zenith.
There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees.
The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible.
As the wind dies down their fragrance
Clusters around them like thick smoke.
All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight
They are silent and immaculate.

Kenneth Rexroth

Telemann, Trio in A minor, TWV 42:a4,

Tara Helen O'Connor, flute; Ida Kavafian, violin; Dane Johansen, cello; Paul O'Dette, theorbo; John GIbbons, harpsichord, perform the Largo ...

Hungry.

Jackson Browne, "Rock Me On the Water"

David Lindley, steel ...

Blackfoot.

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Gordon Lightfoot, "Summertime Dream"

Feeling.

La VIE DANSANTE

They can can come take it all away
Break your heart in the light of day
Drown your love in a distant bay
So lonely

See the ship heading for the rocks 
See the time melting off the clocks
There's a light shattering all the locks
And saves me
It saves me 

That's why I wander and follow La Vie Dansante
On the night wind that takes me just where I want
That's all I want La Vie Dansante
Why don't you wander and follow La Vie Dansante
On the night wind that takes you just where you want
That's all you'll want 
La Vie Dansante 

Miss the beat if you close your eyes
Every night wears a new disguise
And I live when a new surprise surrenders 
Feel it all with a willing heart
Every stop is a place to start
If you know how to play the part with feeling
I play with feeling

That's why I wander and follow La Vie Dansante
On the night wind that takes me just where I want
That's all I want La Vie Dansante
Why don't you wander and follow La Vie Dansante
On the night wind that takes you just where you want
That's all you'll want 
La Vie Dansante 

Jimmy Buffett

Learn.

The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.

T.H. White, from The Once and Future King

Don't miss the BBC's 1959 profile of White.

Happy Birthday, Knox

Stuart, Henry Knox, 1806

Henry Knox was born on this date in 1750.

On the very first impression of Faction and licentiousness the fine theoretic government of Massachusetts has given away and its laws arrested and trampled under foot. Men at a distance, who have admired our systems of government, unfounded in nature, are apt to accuse the rulers, and say that taxes have been assessed coo high and collected coo rigidly. This is a deception equal to any that has been hitherto entertained. It is indeed a face, that high taxes are the ostensible cause of the commotions, but that they are the real cause is as far remote from truth as light from darkness. The people who are the insurgents have never paid any, or but very little taxes—But they see the weakness of government; They feel at once their own poverty, compared with the opulent, and their own force, and they are determined to make use of the latter, in order to remedy the former. Their creed is "That the property of the United States has been protected from the confiscations of Britain by the joint exertions of all, and therefore ought to be the common property of all. And he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice, and ought to be swept off the face of the earth." In a word they are determined to annihilate all debts public and private and have agrarian Laws which are easily effected by the means of unfunded paper money which shall be a tender in all cases whatever. 

The numbers of these people may amount in [M]assachusetts to about one fifth part of several populous counties, and to them may be collected, people of similar sentiments, from the States of Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire so as to constitute a body of 12 or 15,000 desperate and unprincipled men—They are chiefly of the Young and active part of the community, more easily collected than perhaps Kept together afterwards—But they will probably commit overt acts of treason which will compel them to embody for their own safety—once embodied they will be constrained to submit to discipline for the same reason. Having proceeded to this length for which they are now ripe, we shall have a formidable rebellion against reason, the principles of all government, and against the very name of liberty. This dreadful situation has alarmed every man of principle and property in New England—They start as from a dream, and ask what has been the Cause of our delusion? What is to afford us security against the violence of lawless men? Our government must be braced, changed, or altered to secure our lives and property. We imagined that the mildness of our government and the virtue of the people were so correspondent, that we were not as other nations requiring brutal force to support the laws—But we find that we are men, actual men, possessing all the turbulent passions belonging to that animal and that we must have a government proper and adequate for him—The people of Massachusetts for instance, are far advanced in this doctrine, and the men of reflection, and principle, are determined to endeavor to establish a government which shall have the power to protect them in their lawful pursuits, and which will be efficient in all cases of internal commotions or foreign invasions—They mean that liberty shall form the basis, a liberty resulting from the equal and firm administration of the laws. They wish for a general government of unity as they see that the local legislatures, must naturally and necessarily tend to retard general government. 

We have arrived at that point of time in which we are forced to see our national humiliation, and that a progression in this line, cannot be productive of happiness either private or public—something is wanting and something must be done or we shall be involved in all the horror of faction and civil war without a prospect of its termination—Every tried friend to the liberties of his country is bound to reflect, and step forward to prevent the dreadful consequences which will result from a government of events—Unless this is done we shall be liable to be ruled by an Arbitrary and Capricious armed tyranny, whose word and will must be Law. 

Henry Knox, from his letter to George Washington, October 23, 1786

"Knox Moving Company" ...

Whitey Morgan & The 78s, "Around Here/Seven Bridges Road/Fire on the Mountain"

WOO-HOO!

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Flint, Michigan's own ...

Robert Plant, "The Enchanter/What Is and What Should Never Be"

Hold.

I HOLD the LION'S PAW

I hold the Lion's Paw
Whenever I dance.

I know the ecstasy of the falcon's wings
When they make love against the sky,

And the sun and moon
Sometimes argue over
Who will tuck me in at night.

If you think I am having more fun
Than anyone on this planet
You are absolutely correct.

But Hafiz
Is willing to share all his secrets about how to befriend God.

Indeed, dear ones,
Hafiz is so very willing
To share all his secrets
About how to know the
Beautiful
One.

I hold the Lion's Paw whenever I dance.

Hafiz

Jimmy Buffett, "A Pirate Looks at Forty"

It's sandwich time.

Happy Birthday, MacDonald

John D. MacDonald was born on this date in 1916.

I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt’s, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble and taut hero’s grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and gouted excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to go do it again, with a bigger beast.

John D. MacDonald, from A Deadly Shade of Gold

Queen, "Lap of the Gods"

Natural.

The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.

Italo Calvino

Bach, Fugue in A minor, BWV 947

Aline Zylberajch making the clanger sound beautiful ...

Obligation.

We all — adults and children, writers and readers — have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.

Just look around this room.  Everything you can see, including the walls, was, at some point, imagined. Someone decided it might be easier to sit on a chair than on the ground and imagined the chair. Someone had to imagine a way that I could talk to you in London right now without us all getting rained on. This room and the things in it, and all the other things in this building, in this city, exist because, over and over and over, people imagined things. They daydreamed, they pondered, they made things that didn’t quite work, they described things that didn’t yet exist to people who laughed at them.

And then, in time, they succeeded. Political movements, personal movements, all begin with people imagining another way of existing.

Neil Gaiman

Great.

Thank you, Kurt.

Happy Birthday, Mackay

Andy Mackay was born on this date in 1946.

"Tara," with Roxy Music ...

Turn.

Tin Machine, "Under the God"

Done.

Done and done.

Imagination.

It's later on a Wednesday, the sun is going down

I'm standing naked by a swimming pool, there's no one around

My imagination wanders back, red dust is always there

We lay together in the jungle, and love was in the air

As I dive into the water, both time and motion freeze

I'm hanging there suspended like a feather in the breeze

Below is your reflection, like an image from the past

But I can't be sure if it's really you, because you're wearing a tribal mask

CONNECT

Thinking.