Don’t mess about. Fullscreen. Speakers up. This is special and marvelous.
Something Wonderful: The Weight (Around the world 50 years after)
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
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.
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
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
Comments on this entry are closed.
Giddy UP!
I’ve seen this mash-up-musicians across the world, but two things stand out:
It is wonderful by itself
Doubly so because it’s good to be reminded that so much music from here has made its way across the planet, flung out across the airwaves and bootleg tapes, waiting to be caught.
Thanks
Never cared much for this toon but like the way this version was put together.
Okay, I was moved. Almost enough to briefly believe that brotherhood-of-man fable for a few minutes.
Righteous!
I want to believe in this “brotherhood of man” version…but I fear music is not enough.
My favorite Robbie Robertson album is “Storyville”.
RIP Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel
Storyville is a great under appreciated album. I watched waiting for Levon Helm. Is he still with us?
You beat me Trang
I have learned that when you say Something Wonderful, I should pay attention. This is so extraordinary. Best thing that happened to me today. Thanks.
Excellent.
speaking of levon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOyoWrbdeX0
Oh,Good Lord. You delight us in so many ways.
Like Ghost,never cared for this song overmuch,but this version is listenworthy.
Ringo Starr,rocker par excellence.
As remembered in my forever young portraiture, these and others singing with that innocence and hope that brought us a moment of joy:
Levon Helm
Rick Danko
Richard Manuel
That specific song, maybe more cryptic than intended, was part of a time just out of reach now.
Yes, Gerard, very nice indeed!
And to y’all who mentioned “Storyville”,thanks for letting me know that, at least on that matter, I have not been crazy all those years.
On a more somber note, Robert Hunter is now scribblin’ lyrics for The Choir Immortal. The last coupla years have been tough on Dead alumni.
Cheers to all! I may have to dust off the bottle of Macallan and have a wee snort in remembrance of Rabbie Burns’ aforementioned great great grandson.
Krap Krap Borg .i have nuthin in common with this World music schlock. Get off my lawn….
Gave me chills to watch and listen. I think the watching may have been the greater cause.
Something wonderful indeed.
And to earlier commenters, I say that the brotherhood of man isn’t such a fable- if you pay close attention to your sons or brothers. Sometimes they play well together and sometimes they want to kill each other. We hope it stops short of murder, but it doesn’t always.
It is thrilling to hear your kids playing music together when they don’t know you are listening. I have to think that something is similar is one of the reasons God hasn’t turned the lights out on the whole project yet.