Just in the background as you do more important things in the real world and not in this twittering one.
Just in the background as you do more important things in the real world and not in this twittering one.
Address for Donations, Complaints, Brickbats, and — oh yes — Donations
In Memory Of W.B. Yeats
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
Your Say
My Thinking Hat
My Back Pages
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The People Yes
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Camouflage
Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Chimes of Freedom
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
The Vault
My Back Pages
Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
De Breanski
VAN GOGH
Hillegas
To the Stonecutters
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
from “1054 AD”
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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How very strange.
This album was on the soundtrack at the pub at Cal State Disneyland when I was a (34 year old) senior. Those were not especially good times. It was fall semester ’86, and I should have graduated in Spring, but I got married, and had to get a job. I was too old to be there, taking on brutal class loads, trying to plow through fast, and realizing I had made one of the all time “Wut th’ fuk wer yoo thinkin’?” moves of my life by marrying my less-than-ideal first wife. I had classes at odd times, sometimes getting out early in the evening. I’d grab a sandwich at the cafeteria, then stop at the campus pub, and get a pitcher to end the day. I’d sit there, smoke cigarettes, and drink it alone. The third track on this album, “Love/Longing” would always seem to be playing. That sad, haunting melody just seemed like the theme song for that time in my life. It has been one of those odd recurring earworms for years. But I never knew who played it, or what it was called. Now as I type this, I recall asking the bartender if he knew, but he did not. It was just on a background tape they had. As soon as I clicked this on I recognized the style on piano. I scrolled down the timeline: “Love/Longing (on an album called, “Autumn”) Could that be?…
Holy cow, but it is. Thanks, Gerard, for clearing up one of life’s small mysteries for me.
JWM
If you like this stye of piano may I suggest more from George Winston:
SUMMER – with a terrific version of Living in the Country, a cover of the old Randy Newman tune – Living Without You, Hummingbird and my favorite – Loreta and Desiree’s Bouquet part 1 and 2. Lovely music.
The album titled FOREST is another good one.
And one of my very favorite albums is LINUS AND LUCY – The Music of Vince Guaraldi. Really great stuff. When I was a lad growing up in the NYC-metro area, the Big Apple offered a wide variety of music radio stations (Radio City). One of my regular stations to tune in was WNEW-NY. I forget the DJ that used to open his show with Guaraldi’s Cast Your Fate to the Wind. That tune still puts me in a dream-like state with so many memories rushing in.
Enjoy.
Beautiful music, but horrible associations. So fortunate to have survived the consequences of poor decisions. Have been resurrected since and am grateful every single day.
Beautiful scenery, too!
I had the chance to see him play in 1986, and again about 10 years ago. He is quiet and seems very humble on stage, and simply plays beautifully. Not sure if he still tours, but he’s definitely worth the price of the ticket; the last time I saw him the place wasn’t as full as it should be.
I barely missed being in the same high school that George attended. Integration and all of that BS.
He’s an incredible talent and most of the time you wouldn’t know if he was in the room. Thanks again GVL.
Windham Hills record label had many great musicians on vinyl, and then acrylic. They’ve issued sampler albums of various artists every year since at least 1978.
My favorite albums include William Ackerman – “In Search of the Turtles Navel”; George Winston – “December”; Mark Isham – “Vapor Drawings”; Alex deGrassi – “Slow Circle”; and Liz Story “Solid Colors”.
Great music. It was a good way to gather my thoughts! Thanks for sharing.