84

was your mother's number
and now you've made it
yours,
but not by
choice or design -
too early
and far
too soon.


(for Mam)

r s thomas: a marriage

We met
       under a shower
of bird-notes.
       Fifty years passed,
love's moment
       in a world in
servitude to time.
       She was young;
I kissed with my eyes
       closed and opened
them on her wrinkles.
       'Come,' said death,
choosing her as his
       partner for
the last dance. And she,
       who in life
had done everything
       with a bird's grace,
opened her bill now
       for the shedding
of one sigh no
       heavier than a feather.

spotification

Just wanted to say what a great thing Spotify is - ok, so the free version means you get a 15-second or so advert now & again (roughly once during an album's worth of music) but it's definitely worth it.

Been listening to the new U2 album on Spotify this weekend (No Line On The Horizon) - it's certainly a grower. Looking forward to turning-up the lyrics somewhere to find out what it's all about. They were playing on the Jonathan Ross show last night and I went to bed listening to Zooropa on headphones - it's a far better album than I ever realised; perfect late-night listening.

Alongside U2 I've been listening to Bob Dylan's aged Shot Of Love album from yonks ago - now that's really worth a listen too. Surprisingly so.

So thumbs-up to Spotify from this corner of the room.

formed by the form

Commenting on the form that is the Gospel (of Mark, in this case), Eugene Peterson makes these observations:

"Gospel story" is a verbal way of accounting for reality that, like the incarnation that is its subject, is simultaneously divine and human. It reveals, that is, it shows us something we could never come up with on our own by observation, experiment or guess; and at the same time it engages, brings us into the action as recipients and participants, but without dumping the responsibility on us for making it turn out right.

This has enormous implications for the way we live, for the form itself protects us against two of the major ways in which we go off the rails: becoming frivolous spectators who clamour for new and exotic entertainment out of heaven; or becoming anxious moralists who put our shoulders to the wheel and take on the burdens of the world. The very form of the text shapes responses in us that make it hard to become a mere spectator or a mere moralist. This is not a text that we master, it is one that we are mastered by.

Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places, p.182

the great songs (viii) - a man is in love

For years, all I knew of The Waterboys was the monumental Whole Of The Moon and that they employed a big music sound.

Things move on. People change. They grow. So here is A Man Is In Love from their album, Room To Roam.

A delightful song, showcasing how great Irish folk music can be but, more than anything, I'm posting this one as a very, very fine example of that overlooked yet necessary genre: the love song.

Here is writing that displays great craft and music of joy and vibrancy. I don't think any more needs to be said.

the great songs (vii) - walking on thin ice

I've held back a little from this one but it had to come at some point. Yoko Ono's Walking On Thin Ice is an achievement that it has never been possible to dispassionately assess or appreciate separately from the circumstances in which it appeared.

This is the song John & Yoko were working on the night that Lennon was murdered. The value he placed on the song is seen in the comments about it that formed part of Yoko's statement that filled the back-cover of the single sleeve.

When John and Yoko said in the summer of 1980 that their new work was dance-oriented, some of us (me especially) lamented the impact of the disco genre on their work. What we didn't know was that the dance club scene of New York in those days was anything but disco. This is dance music of a different order.

There is so much that can and ought to be said, somewhere, about the musical art of Yoko Ono. This is undoubtedly not that place...but I'll happily add a little grist to that particular mill.

The title is resonant of a deep stream of imagery in Yoko's musical work. The images of glass and ice recur regularly and stand as metaphors of pain and of a suffocating quiesence, a use made all the more startling by the anger that often surfaces with its own jagged edges. The pairing of 'knife' and 'life' is also the expected one; only the bleeding is absent here.

Yoko's winter milieu may be due to being raised in Japan (one assumes it cold there) but, whatever the origin, it's the dominant season in her work - Winter Song; Is Winter Here To Stay? and Looking Over From My Hotel Window on the album Approximately Infinite Universe all trade in its currency.

And so it's no surprise that this girl is walking on thin ice. There is danger - imminent danger. There is freedom - but it is fragile and threatened. There is death - and it is inevitable and irreversible.

It's a long track and benefits from a return (in the middle & closing sections) to some of the non-verbal vocal expression that marked Yoko's earlier work (one reviewer of the album that followed that summer, Season of Glass, asked where the primal screaming was when we needed it most - a rather lame grasp of the nature of her grief, and of her art).

The guitar work on this song by John (the last he would ever record) has been celebrated and it is certainly in keeping with the song's vehement fragility. The song would never have fitted on either Double Fantasy, nor what would become the posthumous release Milk & Honey. It was always intended to be a single in its own right, with Yoko both A and B-side*. Rightly so.

They say the lake is as big as the ocean.
I wonder if she knew about it?

Its dimensions and depths were only just to be discovered.

I may cry some day
but the tears will dry, whichever way;
and when our hearts return to ashes
it'll be just a story
it'll be just a story.

*The actual B-side is an older song of Yoko's - It Happened opens here with dialogue recorded between John and Yoko on a stroll through Central Park. The song is both sweet and sad and carries, along with its A-side, an almost prophetic quality ("It happened at a time of my life when I least expected...and I know there's no return, no way").

nb: Happily, but unintentionally, this has been posted on Yoko's 76th birthday.

begotten

no part
of my life
has been lived without
you; separation is not
isolation nor dislocation.
always present in
time, always, in the
breathed air of
chromosomic attachment
and loving, maternal embrace.

facing now a future
of severance,
i plunge
in chaos.

no return

i wonder
if the way was opened
for you to go back
to when you were a young girl,
with all that lay ahead,
would you take the offer with
both hands open
or simply, politely,
refuse?
for now you lie on
the edge of no return, without
a way back, life closed and
ending. somehow
i don't think you'd
choose to
return to those days, to
live through it all again;
you're just too tired, too
weary, too sad, too
finished with life.
And yet
the grasp has been so strong,
even on these remnants you've
had, the minimalistic
take on a plenary
reality; but no longer.
The grip is looser,
waxy, while life
wanes.
The offer of return
was never made
but a greater one remains;
your hand seems too weak to hold anything
now, but grace imposes
no weight you cannot
hold.


(for Mam)

the great songs (vi) - goin' back

This track shares its title with the opener to Neil Young's Comes A Time, even down to the aspostrophe in Goin', but this is the earlier of the two and written by the celebrated duo of Goffin & King and sung, with incomparable greatness, by Dusty Springfield.

The song wasn't written for Dusty but it could easily have been, its themes were those that dominated her life. Maybe it's why she gave a performance suffused with an elemental empathy. Fittingly, she requested it to be played at her funeral.

I think I'm goin' back
To the things
I learned so well
In my youth

I think I'm returning to
Those days
When I was young enough
To know the truth

Now there are no games
To only pass the time
No more colouring books
No Christmas bells to chime

But thinking young
And growing older
Is no sin
And I can play
The game of life to win

I can recall the time
When I wasn't ashamed
To reach out to a friend
And now I think I've got
A lot more than
A skipping rope to lend

Now there's more to do
Than watch my sailboat glide
And everyday can be
My magic carpet ride
And I can play hide and seek with my fears
And live my days instead of counting my years

Let everyone debate the true reality
I'd rather see the world the way it used to be
A little bit of freedom's
All we lack
So catch me if you can
I'm goin' back