Is still on the line…
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Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations
Tolling for the deaf an’ blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an’ cheated by pursuit
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
— Bob Dylan
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
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Gerard Van der Leun
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SUPERB!!!!
I don’t know what Art is, but I know what I like. This Jimmy Webb song is one of his (many) great songs. And Glenn Campbell is one of the many under-appreciated singers of the past many years — and an incredibly talented guitarist (see YouTube).
It’s sad, though, to have seen how Tinsel Town Culture ate him up (not unwillingly) and spit him out. People will insist on wanting to be A Rock & Roll Star, because if “in a week or two if you make the charts the girls will tear you apart” . . .
Well, the world runs on Money and Pussy, and not necessarily in that order.
One of the greatest guitarists of all times.
Listened to that song on Armed Forces Radio in War Zone C. It was haunting, still is
The beauty of this song lingers even though Glen Campbell has left us.
Besides his beautiful voice and great musical taste, Mr. Campbell could pick guitar (as Klaus says above). He was a member of the “Wrecking Crew”, a group of session players who actually played the recorded top 40 music in LA in the 1960s and 1970s. Glenn played guitar in the studio before he became a pop star.
My poor daughters are getting exposed to old guy music, including (but not limited to) Glenn Campbell, Jerry Reed, Mac Davis, Roy Clark, et al. No auto-tune (digitally adjusting the pitch of singers who can’t get into the same area code as the actual note). No pocketing (digitally adjusting the beat of the music).
What a wonderful start of my day! Glen Campbell, a true Patriotic American!
Heckuva singer, too!
Second stanza is one of the most deeply affecting in all of pop history. Gave me chills as a kid, and I didnt even know what half of it meant
Some commenter on this site once described GC as being in a group of one. I agree wholeheartedly.
We needed his music then; those were fukn hard times (Vietnam, Nixon, inflation, economy, social upheaval).
Here’s a Toby Keith song. Not in the same category, and loosely the same genre, but this song did strike me this morning. Don’t want to bruise the thread, but take it for what it is: a fresh song about America.
https://youtu.be/BoZftznHz7o
Thread unbruised and a new item born.
Jimmy Webb’s inspiration for the lyrics came while driving through Washita County in rural southwestern Oklahoma. At that time, many telephone companies were county-owned utilities, and their linemen were county employees.
Heading westward on a straight road into the setting sun, Webb drove past a seemingly endless line of telephone poles, each looking exactly the same as the last. Then, in the distance, he noticed the silhouette of a solitary lineman atop a pole. He described it as “the picture of loneliness”. Webb then “put himself atop that pole and put that phone in his hand” as he considered what the lineman was saying into the receiver.
It was a splendidly vivid, cinematic image that I lifted out of my deep memory while I was writing this song. I thought, I wonder if I can write something about that? A blue collar, everyman guy we all see everywhere – working on the railroad or working on the telephone wires or digging holes in the street. I just tried to take an ordinary guy and open him up and say, ‘Look there’s this great soul, and there’s this great aching, and this great loneliness inside this person and we’re all like that. We all have this capacity for these huge feelings’.
Campbell said “When I heard it I cried…It made me cry because I was homesick.”
“one of those rare songs that seems somehow to exist in a world of its own – not just timeless but ultimately outside of modern music”
@ghostsniper, that is a brilliant quote. It absolutely captures the beauty and power of the song — one of a handful of PERFECT tunes recorded in history.