The Byrds, "I Wasn't Born to Follow"

The Waterboys, "Mad as the Mist and Snow"

Bolt and bar the shutter for the foul winds blow
Our minds are at their best this night and I seem to know
That everything outside us is mad as the mist and snow ...

Steve Wickham, fiddle ...

Learn.

I believe order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven’t changed much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must try to learn from history.

Sir Kenneth Clark, from Civilisation

Episode One: "The Skin of Our Teeth" ...

Sustain.

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. 

Mr. Keating, from Dead Poets Society

Just.

SURROUNDED by WILD TURKEYS

Little calls as they pass
Through dry forbs and grasses
Under blue oak and gray digger pine
In the warm afternoon of the forest-fire haze;

Twenty or more, long-legged birds
all alike.

So are we, in our soft calling,
passing on through.

Our young, which trail after,

Look just like us.

Gary Snyder

Strong.

Wyeth, N.C., View of Behind Barn John Andress Farm, 1921

The BARN

Hello, old barn, sitting there, looking so forlorn

You with your weathered siding, and red paint, away, so worn;

Some of you with stone foundations, now from age crumbling,

Eventually causing you to fall down, with a great, noisy rumbling.

If you could talk, what would you, to me, say?

I’m sure you did much more than be a place just to store some hay.

“Just,” the word, not meant to you slight;

Without enough hay, in the old days, a farm would lose its might.

Feed for the horses and cows, so their work they could do;

Horses in their harnesses to plow, the cows, so they could make milk and moo.

From the milk comes the cream and that sweet, sweet butter;

Little cows drink it, too, getting it straight, right off the udder.

Meat and milk, and fertilizer, too,

When from the barn, they clean the cows’ doo doo,

Hauling it to the fields and the garden, to them both fertilize,

Helping the farmer his dreams soon to realize.

I’m sure you’d tell stories of the farmer sitting up all night

To help birth a foal or calf, not coming out, so right.

Or would you tell of how you kept all the animals warm

While a three-day blizzard blew all over the farm?

Do you remember the laughter, and fun the kids had

Jumping from the hayloft into piles of hay, so glad?

Or riding down the hay loft bale lifter on the pulley rope

While a bail went up to the hayloft; at least, you did that hope.

What about the winters, how the wagon you did store,

And all the equipment and seed for planting; and oh, so much more:

Vegetables from the garden, buried in one of the empty stalls

So you all winter have vegetables, which you could on, for dinner, call.

What about the times you held a big barn dance,

Many couples during them, signing on for a lifetime of romance.

Kids hiding under the tarp in the old wagon’s bed,

Playing hide and seek, after supper they’d been fed.

Or every Sunday before the town’s church was built,

You let us worship God in you, some of us, confessing all our guilt.

And during a picnic when came the rain

You sheltered us in place, so at the picnic we could remain.

Then the time when the family home burned,

We all moved in with you, you never would us spurn.

But now farming has had so much change;

Very few have cattle that still graze on the range.

Powerful tractors, pulling multi-bottom plows,

Covering so much land, much more than a horse would allow.

Horses, if any longer around, now just for fun,

No longer used for farm implements that they used to run.

So now you sit empty, or crammed full with stuff.

Many let your maintenance go, and you start to look so tough.

A few cut you down, turning you into a shop.

Lowering you several feet, as your sides they do chop.

Better than letting the weather, you, completely wreck.

Little by little, it does at you, relentlessly, and without mercy peck.

Many farmers moving to town, moving or tearing down the house,

Leaving you alone, home for more than one wandering little mouse.

Do they leave you stand because they have of you memories so good,

Or because they’d like to use you again, if some way, they only could?

No matter, you soon start to deteriorate;

With no one to weather’s damage on you ameliorate.

First the white trim peels off around the windows and doors.

With the passing of time, your red paint becomes no more.

Then the wind removes your outside shutters.

Now the weather will you inside shudder.

Windows broken out by passing vandals;

Wish the law would catch, and them really handle.

Finally, the wind breaks one of your great doors free;

Now the blowing wind can go on a real wrecking spree.

Slamming back and forth, as with the wind it does fight.

Then a final big blow and the door takes to undirected flight.

Now nothing will stop the elements and their wrath;

For sure now, you are on your very last path.

Years pass, you start leaning to one side;

Beginning now, the start of your inevitable downward slide.

Snow piles up on your roof with many shingles missing,

Pushing down hard on your weakened, buckled wall siding.

You hold strong; don’t know what keeps you standing,

Tilting so much, you make the “Tower of Pisa” look upstanding.

You are passing, now, the stage of reconstruction;

Soon, so soon now, you’ll face your final and complete destruction.

Goodbye, old barn, you billboard of an America now away gone;

With sadness, I turn away from you, and begin to move on.

Hope your old wood and siding can somehow be used again,

Maybe, at least, as picture frames; I hope so, my old friend.

That way on the world, you can still look out,

Maybe at the same time, a barn picture, you will tout.

Your cupola now is tilting wildly to one side,

Moving in the wind, soon to the ground it will slide.

Your weather vane still spins, showing where the wind does blow;

If it could also talk, what else could we know?

Looking out on the farm as long as did the barn,

I’m sure, for us, it could spin a few good yarns.

These days barns and weather vanes have become nearly extinct;

To me, that is a situation that does a little bit more, than stink.

Equipment and critters, now in pole barns stuck;

Cheaper to build, and animal droppings to out muck.

They all look alike, buildings with no personality or expression.

The demise of these old barns gives me just a touch of depression.

A few still stand a lonely vigil upon the plains;

As I drive by them, I hope they can always remain.

Because when I look at a pole barn, at me, it doesn‘t look back.

Making my heart sad, because character, it does lack.

Kirby Brandhagen

Work.

I go down to the shore in the morning

and depending on the hour the waves

are rolling in or moving out,

and I say, oh, I am miserable,

what shall–

what should I do? And the sea says

in its lovely voice:

Excuse me, I have work to do.

Mary Oliver

Ain't.

The SOUND of SINNERS

As the floods of God
Wash away sin city
They say it was written
In the page of the Lord

But I was looking
For that great jazz note
That destroyed
The walls of Jericho

The winds of fear
Whip away the sickness
The messages on the tablet
Was valium

As the planets form
That golden cross Lord
I'll see you on
The holy cross roads

After all this time
To believe in Jesus
After all those drugs
I thought I was Him

After all my lying
And a-crying
And my suffering
I ain't good enough
I ain't clean enough
To be Him

The tribal wars
Burning up the homeland
The fuel of evil
Is raining from the sky

The sea of lava
Flowing down the mountain
The time will sleep
Us sinners by

Holy rollers roll
Give generously now
Pass the hubcap please
Thank you Lord

Joe Strummer

Happy Birthday, Einstein

Albert Einstein was born on this date in 1879.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Albert Einstein

Happy Birthday, Telemann

Schneider, Telemann, 1750

Georg Philipp Telemann was born on this date in 1681.

Frans Brüggen performs the Fantasia No. 3 in B minor ...

Explode.

Fall in love and stay in love. Explode. Don’t intellectualize. Get passionate about ideas. Cram your head full of images. Stay in the library. Stay off the internet and all that crap. Read all the great books. Read all the great poetry. See all the great films. Fill your life with metaphors. And then explode.

Ray Bradbury

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

That.

By the time I got to New York
I was living like a king
Then I used up all my money
I was looking for your ass

This way or no way
You know, I’ll be free
Just like that bluebird
Now ain’t that just like me

David Bowie, from "Lazarus"

Explaining.

Bell-notes.

Hansen, The Pond, 1976

Hansen, The Pond, Spring, 1979

Hansen, The Pond, Nightfall, 1980

The POND

Cold, wet leaves

Floating on moss-coloured water   

And the croaking of frogs—

Cracked bell-notes in the twilight.

Amy Lowell

Once.

Jon Wolfe, "Better Bartender"

WOO-HOO!

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Floods.

Because the heart dwells in unattended dark, we often forget its sensitivity to everything that is happening to us. Without our ever noticing, the heart absorbs the joy of things and also their pain and care. Within us, therefore, a burdening can accrue. For this reason it is wise now and again to tune in to your heart and listen for what it carries. Sometimes the simplest things affect unexpected transformation. The old people here used to say that a burden shared is a burden halved. Similarly, when you allow your heart to speak, the burdens it carries diminish, a new lightness enters your body, and relief floods the heart.

John O’Donohue

Never.

Thank you, Sam.

Bunnymen.

How can you not sell the first three Bunnymen albums? It's like, how can you not sell the Mona Lisa, Van Gogh's Sunflowers, and The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Ian McCulloch

Undissected.

Eckersberg, The Cloisters, San Lorenzo, 1824

It is precisely the colouring, the atmosphere, the unclassifiable individual details of a story, and above all the general purport that informs with life the undissected bones of the plot, that really count.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Peter Hook & The Light

From 2014 ...

Vice-versa.

Hansen, The Woodcutter, 1985

INTAKE INTERVIEW

What is today’s date?

Who is the President?

How great a danger do you pose, on a scale of one to ten?

What does “people who live in glass houses” mean?

Every symphony is a suicide postponed, true or false?

Should each individual snowflake be held accountable for the avalanche?

Name five rivers.

What do you see yourself doing in ten minutes?

How about some lovely soft Thorazine music?

If you could have half an hour with your father, what would you say to him?

What should you do if I fall asleep?

Are you still following in his mastodon footsteps?

What is the moral of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”?

What about his Everest shadow?

Would you compare your education to a disease so rare no one else has ever had it, or the deliberate extermination of indigenous populations?

Which is more puzzling, the existence of suffering or its frequent absence?

Should an odd number be sacrificed to the gods of the sky, and an even to those of the underworld, or vice-versa?

Would you visit a country where nobody talks?

What would you have done differently?

Why are you here?

Franz Wright

Happy Birthday, Le Nôtre

Delagrive, Le Nôtre's Gardens at Versailles, c.1661, 1746

André Le Nôtre was born on this date in 1613.

In "The Long Shadow of Le Nôtre," renowned American landscape architect Laurie Olin discussed the work and influence of one of the greatest in his field: André Le Nôtre, designer of the gardens at Versaille, Vaux-le-Vicomte, and the Tuileries ...

Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Never.

Like déjà vu, poetry
intimates that the past
is never quite over 
and done with.

Matthew Bevis

Simple.

I propose that if you want a simple step to a higher form of life, as distant from the animal as you can get, then you may have to de-narrate, that is, shut down the television set, minimize time spent reading newspapers, ignore social media.

Train your reasoning abilities to control your decisions; to spot the difference between the sensational and the empirical. This insulation from the toxicity of the world will have an additional benefit: it will improve your well-being.

You can define a free and highly-actualized person precisely as someone whose fate is not centrally or directly dependent on peer assessment.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Big Country, "In a Big Country"

Bill Evans Trio, "Emily"

Envied.

I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and lived them well.

Theodore Roosevelt

Speak.

SPEAK, YOU ALSO

Speak, you also,
speak as the last,
have your say.

Speak –
But keep yes and no unsplit,
And give your say this meaning:
give it the shade.

Give it shade enough,
give it as much
as you know has been dealt out between
midday and midday and midnight,

Look around:
look how it all leaps alive –
where death is! Alive!
He speaks truly who speaks the shade.

Paul Celan

Thank you, Rachel.

Reward.

To wait an Hour – is long –
If Love be just beyond –
To wait Eternity – is short –
If Love reward the end –

Emily Dickinson

Chopin, Waltz in A flat major, Op. 64 No. 3

Evgeni Bozhanov performs ...

Danger.

The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.

Jim Harrison

Mozart, Sonata for Piano Four-Hands in D major, K.381/123a

Martha Argerich and Nicolas Economou perform ...

Mark.

It is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness in each kind which the nature of the particular subject admits. For it is similar to expect a mathematician to speak persuasively or for an orator to furnish clear proofs!

Each person judges well what they know and is thus a good critic of those things. For each thing in specific, someone must be educated to be a critic; to be a critic in general, one must be educated about everything.

Aristotle

Thank you, Bella.

Ever.

Abel, Adagio, WKO 209

Luciana Elizondo, viola da gamba ...

Doing.

O'Keeffe, Starlight Night, Lake George, 1922

I like the dark part of the night, after midnight and before four-thirty, when it's hollow, when ceilings are harder and farther away. Then I can breathe, and can think while others are sleeping, in a way can stop time, can have it so – this has always been my dream – so that while everyone else is frozen, I can work busily about them, doing whatever it is that needs to be done, like the elves who make the shoes while children sleep.

Dave Eggers

Warren Zevon, "Jungle Work"

Good.

Living under a rock ... looks and sounds good.

Sara Watkins, "Jefferson"

Sean Watkins accompanying ...

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Bonfá, "Manhã de Carnaval"

Luciana Elizondo sings and plays viola da gamba, Quito Gato accompanies on guitar ...

Accurately.

I want to be able to depict in music a glass of beer so accurately that every listener can tell whether it is a Pilsner or a Kulmbacher.

Richard Strauss

Poco, "Call It Love"

Good.

Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for one’s soul.

G.K. Chesterton

All.

Someone else's vision will never be as good as your own vision of your self. Live and die with it because in the end it’s all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else. I should have listened more to myself.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Happy Birthday, Meisner

Randy Meisner was born on this date in 1946.

"Tryin'", with Eagles ...



Thank ya, Randy!

Many.

Thank you, Kurt.