Category: Music
-
Letting go ~ Won’t you stay? Jackson Browne soothes the road.
The last time I really, really had a hard time letting go, I took a road trip through the American West. Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Arizona … Every time I’d see a white Toyota Highlander on the highway (you can’t imagine how many there are, especially in rural California) I’d think of her.…
-
Alive in the World ~ Jackson Browne coaxes me out of my shell
Alive in the World I want to live in the world, not inside my head I want to live in the world, I want to stand and be counted With the hopeful and the willing With the open and the strong With the voices in the darkness Fashioning daylight out of song And the millions…
-
Silent Rage ~ Bullet with Butterfly Wings
The comment stream on Youtube for Frida Snell’s cover of the Smashing Pumpkins’ Bullet With Butterfly Wings is a bit of a battleground. Snell’s flat, seemingly emotionless delivery and the arrangement’s strained lethargy is a rather complete juxtaposition to the Pumpkins’ metallic growl of anger. People often get verbally violent when cherished songs are re-interpreted…
-
-
Uncomfortably numb ~ David Gilmour and I can’t put our finger on it
I’m going to tell you a story about someone who became a part of my life in a way few other people ever experience. Well, I wonder about that. I wonder how many other people go about their day-to-day lives only vaguely aware that there’s something unusual going on in their life, but just can’t…
-
The Way ~ when Nature plays its lovely hand
I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. ~ George Washington Carver When Lao Tse speaks of The Dao, he is referring literally to “The Way”. There’s no simple way to tell you what “The Way” is. Lao…
-
Time Tables and Being out of Time
Time has been on my mind. Yes, because I’ve been reading (and just completed) The Time Traveller’s Wife, but also because time has long been on my mind. This song, Time Table, is an old, old example of time in my consciousness and subconscious. It’s a favourite of mine since I first bought the album,…
-
Letting go, moving on, going forward ~ Camel and Ice
Camel’s lilting, melancholic and epic instrumental, Ice is among my favourite pieces of music. Discovered on a late-night college radio station in 1979 in Rochester, New York, it stands out on the album I Can See Your House From Here (despite the DJ’s touting of Remote Romance as, “Best on the album”) I suppose its…
-
Listening for true silence ~ Speaking to common ground
Staci’s poem, Be Silent ~ Be True ~ Just Be put this song into my head, where it stuck, begging a journey to YouTube while fiddling with internet tasks. In a long list of renditions there, this recording stood out. It’s quieter than the original studio recording, purer, with just the two voices and Paul…
-
Precious Heart ~ finding the path out of darkness
I commented on a post that I’d post this song. I’ve been holding onto it, because there are a number of other connotations for it — one of those is a woman, one woman in particular, a soul-mate. But I’m not ready to tell that story, or is it the story that’s not ready to…