There's more to life than war, taxes and politics - and a lot of it's more fun, too! That's why every WEEKEND, here at THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, we post our opinions on some of the cultural things we're into, things we think you might also find entertaining, enriching, and stimulating. Good for "Rest & Relaxation" - "R&R".
Please check it out every week - and tell your friends. We just might turn you on to something cool. After all, the arts - ALL ARTS, not just fine arts - are a big part of what our liberty is for, and what we're fighting to defend!
My parents were in town visiting me this week, so I haven't been able to get much "me time" but as they have now made their way back to Nebraska I was able to sit down and watch some of the big game: Nebraska v. Texas. The Cornhuskers are what life is all about in my home state and despite living in Nevada for the past 5 years, Saturday afternoons are still a stressful time for me. The Huskers played valiantly, but came up short in the end. Still, Coach Bill Callahan is doing a great job and brining in some great recruits and they're on their way back to national prominence. There's nothing like a Fall Saturday afternoon.
Reliapundit: POETRY
I'll be RE-memorizing my two favorite poems this weekend. I've put the full poems in the comments section. Here are the first lines:Matthew Arnold's THE BURIED LIFE
Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.RM Rilke's FOR THE SAKE OF A SINGLE POEM...Ah, poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines.
Pastorius - MUSIC
I'm listening to the album Voodoo by D'Angelo. D'Angelo is known as an R&B artist (Neo-Soul is what they tend to call him), but in my opinion, Voodoo is to R&B what Miles Davis' Bitches Brew was to Jazz. It is a complete re-imagining of the genre.
The album opens with a tune that will go down in the history books. Playa Playa preps us in the opening bars with a polyrhythmic groove which is both tight and loose at the same time. And, if you thought that groove elusive wait til you get slammed by D'Angelo's chorus of vocals. With his vocal inflections and nuanced phrasing, he tricks the groove every which way, until your body is literally twitching in a ceremony of ecstacy, like the Voodoo of the album's title. Other standout tracks include Devil's Pie, Chicken Grease, The Root, Spanish Joint, and Africa.
D'Angelo, on the strength of this one album has taken his place among the pantheon of great black music innovators; James Brown, Sly Stone, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, etc. That's an audacious thing for me to say, probably, but listen, and tell me I'm wrong. This album is a wonder.
3 comments:
Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine, 10
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.
Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal'd
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
I knew they lived and moved 20
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves--and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!
But we, my love!--doth a like spell benumb
Our hearts, our voices?--must we too be dumb?
Ah! well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd;
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain'd!
Fate, which foresaw 30
How frivolous a baby man would be--
By what distractions he would be possess'd,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
And well-nigh change his own identity--
That it might keep from his capricious play
His genuine self, and force him to obey
Even in his own despite his being's law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast
The unregarded river of our life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way; 40
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.
But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course; 50
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us--to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.
And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves-- 60
Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpress'd.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well--but 'tis not true!
And then we will no more be rack'd
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power; 70
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul's subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey
A melancholy into all our day.
Only--but this is rare--
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours, 80
Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd--
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life's flow,
And hears its winding murmur; and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. 90
And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.
...Ah, poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines.
For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)—they are experiences.
For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning.
You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still explained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn't pick up (it was a joy meant for somebody else—); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along high overhead and went flying with all the stars,— and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that.
You must have memories of many lights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labour, and of light, pale sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again.
But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the scattered noises.
And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return.
For the memories themselves are not important.
Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves—only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.
good picture
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