Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Come Over Here to Where When Lingers, or: Fifty-Seven Today




  
Hounds of Love has to be one of my three most listened to albums, and the song cycle of side two back in the days of album sides, youngsters, unquestionably the side of music I've listened to most. Dream of Sheep and Under Ice and Waking the Witch and Watching You Without Me and Jig of Life and Hello Earth and finishing with, and you must listen in order like I just did for full kaboom, holyfuck, I love this song:







The line between loving the music and loving the memories the music evokes (and there are ten formative years and three exceptional women - one of whom I'm still married to) of when Kate Bush was on the daily soundtrack has long blurred, but she is one of three permanent members in My Sillyass Desert Island Five Game for both reasons. Lordy, the rush when I first here her voice again after not hearing it for a week. Yes, I post this same post every year.

 

 


The above a request, as are the six below:







UPDATE 2014! Is on the daily playlist, is prominent in the shuffle, is mandatory listening via Earthgirl Edict (Earthgirl being one of the three exceptional women) on road trips to visit Planet in Ohio - and while neither 2005's Aerial  and 2011's Fifty World for Snow (2011?, holyfuck, time) are represented in this post they get heavy air-time here and in real world. Click the Kate Bush tag for dozens more songs.

I pretend Director's Cut never happened, though a year of posts could be written about it and my complicity's malleability. Fine metaphors abound.




   


So the second reason for the William Gass birthday post yesterday though his birthday is today: the automocoblogography story is true enough - I'm not going to United v Toronto tonight at RFK, I have zero desire to go to United v Toronto tonight - but I wanted Gass to have a stand-alone day and he shares a birthday with Kate Bush. I dig Gass's fiction: in my life, Kate Bush wins.







A reminder of the real world: no one knows.





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4 comments:

  1. I will limit it to this: Damn, she's old.

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    Replies
    1. And yet, she's still exactly the same amount older than you today as she was thirty-five years ago.

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  2. She's both older and younger than I'll ever be. In re. Director's Cut: you gotta spend as much time with it as she did.

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  3. not only is kate bush old (relatively speaking) - but, like peter gabriel, she has bulked up quite a bit in her maturity

    (not that there's anything wrong with that)

    over at the comments at the ny times, they were looking for a word for post-prime older adults that would be parallel to 'adolescent' for pre-prime younger adults

    someone remembered that we already have such a word - 'senescent' - others indicated they would prefer a different word

    i'm reminded again of something i posted here five weeks ago


    OLD AGE Rumi

    Why does a date-palm lose its leaves in autumn?
    Why does every beautiful face grow in old age
    Wrinkled like the back of a Libyan lizard?
    Why does a full head of hair get bald?
    Why is it that the lion's strength weakens to nothing?
    The wrestler who could hold anyone down
    Is led out with two people supporting him,
    Their shoulders under his arms?

    God answers,

    “They put on borrowed robes
    And pretended they were theirs.
    I take the beautiful clothes back,
    So that you will learn the robe
    Of appearance is only a loan.”

    Your lamp was lit from another lamp.
    All God wants is your gratitude for that.

    another poem by rumi - compare and contrast

    The Guest House

    This being human is a guest house.
    Every morning a new arrival.

    A joy, a depression, a meanness,
    some momentary awareness comes
    as an unexpected visitor.

    Welcome and entertain them all!
    Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
    who violently sweep your house
    empty of its furniture,
    still, treat each guest honorably.
    He may be clearing you out
    for some new delight.

    The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
    meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

    Be grateful for whatever comes.
    because each has been sent
    as a guide from beyond.

    -- Jelaluddin Rumi,
    translation by Coleman Barks


    ReplyDelete