Singer Aretha Franklin takes a bow at the Elton John AIDS Foundation Gala at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine on November 7, 2017, in New York City.
Aretha Franklin is in hospice care –
Update: Aretha Franklin Dead at 76
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He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff’s talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush–and that was all.
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
![The Death by Fire of Notre Dame in Paris (1163 - 2019) [UPDATED]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/aalileks.png "The Death by Fire of Notre Dame in Paris (1163 - 2019) [UPDATED]")
Gerard Van der Leun
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The thumbnail for your second video shows Matt Guitar Murphy. We just lost him a few weeks ago.
Never made a red centavo off’n my ass.
Nor used up more’n about 3 seconds worth of my eyeballz.
All that screamin’ and yellin’ and shit.
Make me git up an lay rubbah…..
My all time favorite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBbyglq37E
God bless her. May her soul rest in peace. Growing up in the sixties/seventies, I loved her sound. It reached into my being and I felt its warmth/strength. I will pray for her soul even though I know she was a very religious woman. Prayers cannot help one to reach the eternal Paradise.
Gerard,
Thank you for this beautiful remembrance of the Queen of Soul. She passed today. I never had any idea about her excellence with the piano. My wife guessed that she learned the piano by playing for her Pastor father at his church.
When the voice and the talent matched the fame: Aretha.
That era is over.
A great clip, and leave it to Gerard VanderLeun to find something that hasn’t been played everywhere else. A thought though, in looking at the picture from 2017, she looks like she lost a lot of weight. In hearing that pancreatic cancer was what took her, that is no surprise, since pancreatic CA causes wasting (not meaning to take away anything from the greatness we remember Aretha for). Giant talent. Growing up, her voice just got people up and dancing and singing. I’m afraid Casey Klahn is right. The era of pure talent is over, or sure seems to be.
I join the Old Fart Brigade with GS on this one. I never was able to force myself to like that wailing type of black music. After they massage it and ‘make it their own’, every song sounds the same.