Tag: Love
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Annie’s Song ~ Notes on observing the sacraments of a sacred life
John Denver was a gentle, loving soul of considerable talent and purpose. He sang with heartfelt clarity and graceful gravity, qualities his music often reflected. Annie’s Song is ostensibly a love song, John Denver singing a poetic list of metaphors for how grand the experience of loving a woman is, and being loved by her.…
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Grace on my mind, and in my heart ~ Dave Matthews
Dave Matthews, prodigiously talented and prolific, a true minstrel of our times writing soulful, often doleful songs of our everyday experiences. Transcendent, luminescent, playful. His live performances bring together extraordinary musicians with nary a glorious note misplayed or misplaced. And at the center mic, leaving no doubt as to the driving force of the band’s…
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Neil Young: He came dancing across the water
I can remember the first time I heard this album, Zuma. I was all of 20 years old, ski bumming in Whistler, BC, and gathered with a bunch of friends after the bars had closed. I can’t remember her name. She was skinny and not very attractive in any traditional sense, but there was something…
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Blade Runner ~ do androids weep electric tears?
Blade Runner is among my favourite films. In a veritable symphony of cinematic elements — cinematography, script, production design, soundtrack, direction, acting — it doesn’t miss a note. The film touches on all the major themes of the human condition: love, death, good and evil, redemption, justice, ethics, greed, passion. It’s philosophically spiritual and passionately…
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Courage
I started a post about courage, featuring this song, a couple or three weeks ago. It’s still sitting in the drafts folder. The Tragically Hip are a favourite Canadian band from the late ’80s and early ’90s, a time when I, and many other Canadians, considered them the best rock band on the planet. Fully…
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Cloudbusting a rainy day in Vancouver: Kate Bush is in my subconscious
Maybe it’s due to the thick layer of clouds busting down with rain overnight and today. Maybe it’s about getting caught up in a rearward look last night. Maybe it’s about the upbeat glee of a gift and a moment shared with a friend across the miles. I’m not sure what put Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting…
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Nothing Else Matters when Bif Naked is your muse
Bif Naked came into my life in an odd way, the leading edge of a wave of the odd, the uncanny, the revelatory. This song has a lot of meaning for me, coming as it did amidst upheaval, chaos and — ultimately — awakening. And she came right into the middle of something else. I’ve…
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The Tao of Love and Light: Riffing on physics and faith
The following is a comment storm that blew out of a seemingly innocent status message I posted on Facebook. It got a few of us thinking, and I think the thinking in it, on all sides, is interesting. Note that the quote, by Stephen Edwards, is not taken from the book, The Tao of Physics,…
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Peter Gabriel’s “So” — change is coming down like red rain
The text below (with some new edits) was posted as a link on my Facebook profile a week shy of three months ago. I’d just returned from a nearly 3 month-long road trip through the western US, preceded by 2 months in Australia. The story it tells begins to describe the unusual relationship I have…
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Sheryl Crow is strong enough to be my man…
Sheryl Crow, I don’t know, she’s got something going on, and has been one of my muses at critical moments. She writes and sings like a broken angel, with equal measures of strength and vulnerability, passion and fear, hope and futility. Some of her music is exquisitely beautiful — notably just about anything from the…