Premiere.

Sir Edward Elgar's Serenade for Strings in E Minor, Op. 20, premiered on this date in 1896.

The Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra performs ...

Happy Birthday, Hardy

Thomas Hardy was born on this date in 1840.

The SHADOW on the STONE

      I went by the Druid stone 
   That broods in the garden white and lone,   
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows   
   That at some moments fall thereon
   From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,   
   And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders   
   Threw there when she was gardening.

      I thought her behind my back,
   Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: ‘I am sure you are standing behind me,   
   Though how do you get into this old track?’   
   And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf   
   As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
   That there was nothing in my belief.

      Yet I wanted to look and see
   That nobody stood at the back of me;
But I thought once more: ‘Nay, I’ll not unvision   
   A shape which, somehow, there may be.’   
   So I went on softly from the glade,
   And left her behind me throwing her shade,   
As she were indeed an apparition—
   My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

Thomas Hardy

Happy Birthday, Elgar

Sir Edward Elgar was born on this date in 1857.

Jacqueline Du Pré, with Daniel Barenboim conducting the London Philharmonic, performs the Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85 ...

Thought.

MAYBE ALONE ON MY BIKE

I listen, and the mountain lakes

hear snowflakes come on those winter wings

only the owls are awake to see,

their radar gaze and furred ears

alert. In that stillness a meaning shakes;

And I have thought (maybe alone

on my bike, quaintly on a cold

evening pedaling home), Think!--

the splendor of our life, its current unknown

as those mountains, the scene no one sees.

O citizens of our great amnesty:

we might have died. We live. Marvels

coast by, great veers and swoops of air

so bright the lamps waver in tears,

and I hear in the chain a chuckle I like to hear.

William Stafford

Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

Typography.

Technique.

Technique is the proof of your seriousness.

Wallace Stevens

Wonder.

Wild.

Spin.

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Typography.

Enjoy.

Not what we have but what we enjoy that constitutes our abundance.

Epicurus

Freedom.

It’s a fearful heart that builds a wall and it is a fearless heart that can live without it. And coming into contact with someone with a fearless heart, disarms you. You lay down your arms in the presence of a fearless heart, a wall-less heart. And it is a very solitary decision to have a fearless heart. It’s the real freedom.

Tilda Swinton's The Invisible Frame

CONNECT

Moving.

In every book I’ve read or movie I’ve seen, when the protagonist is in limbo something external – a sign, a storm, a bulldozer steps in and keeps the story moving.  

CONNECT.

Ideas.

Drew Firchau, "She's In The Zone," 2012


It is possible that the rhythmical movement of a carriage or train, of a horse and to a much lesser degree of walking, may produce on sensitive minds a slightly hypnotic effect conducive to that state of mind most favourable to the birth of ideas.

- Rosamund E. Harding

Luka Bloom, "The Ride"

... be a spokesman.

Divide.

An award-winning feature film about the world's toughest mountain bike race, which traverses over 2700 miles along the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains. The film weaves the story of three characters' experiences with immense mountain beauty and small-town culture as they attempt to pedal from Banff, Canada to a small, dusty crossing on the Mexican border.



There's more at Ride The Divide.

Laughs.

Yesterday I was intimately reacquainted with the law of gravity. Bumps, bruises, scrapes, and laughs over many miles of reality checks.

Thanks, Pops, that was fun!

Remembrance.

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.

- Ernest Hemingway

Beauty.

... a ’brand new’ 1949 Claud Butler built from a cache of original, unused parts found by Jim Cunningham, ‘Founder, President and Chief Flunky Officer of CyclArt.‘ It’s a beauty, isn’t it?

See the rest (don't miss the bars!) at How To be A Retronaut.