[Proposal] Cosmos Café - Music Edition

Cultural appropriation. A Jewish-American composer, and a white, Scottish, singer, and a history of black vocalists are resonating in this performance. Annie turns this old standard into a cosmic lullaby. The antidote to great evil is great beauty.

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Johnny, I love this! She’s totally authentic, you can literally see that in her face, on her body, and the song becomes hers, as every song becomes ours when we touch it at the root
and give it away to the world, even if that world is just a small bedroom where we sing to (and from) the universe.

“The antidote to great pain is great beauty.” Are these words yours? I’d like to quote them for something I’m working on. Let me know. (Smile)

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Last night, in a dream, I was using the word “antidote”, and as the memory of that word floated by, while appreciating Annie’s artistry, I thought I ought to use it. The unremembered poet actually said," The antidote to suffering is beauty." And I resonate with that. However, after the recent violent uprisings and the effects still felt by Trump’s attempt to install a fascist regime, I bounced off of the original quote and did something different. Evil, according to philosopher, Richard Grossinger, helps motivates us to find a way back home. A great evil ( like slavery) is not something we transcend but we can transmute it through song as this performance brings attention to. Thanks for catching the vibe, Maia.

Root…I heard that word in a dream last night, also. No clear narrative just word ripples. I think our dreaming minds may be precognitive for speech acts for the next day.

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Such a lovely piece of music for these pandemic times, too. Winter in many different ways, and the turning of the seasons. Wonderful.

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And not just her, but the arrangement too. The way the strings pour in and carry her voice upwards, and the moments of pianissimo softness which leave open the space for her voice to fill it. A total composition.

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Yes, indeed. And Thank you, Geoffrey, for adding to my comment!

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“Weeping In The Promised Land”

A water in new well been poisoned with lie
Weeping in the Promised Land
Satan’s dark angels are falling from the sky
Weeping in the Promised Land
Children of God, he turns into stone
Sick and the weak, he dancing on their bones
Pharaoh shouting down the medicine man
Weeping in the Promised Land

Forked-tongued pharaoh, behold he comes to speak
Weeping in the Promised Land
Hissing and spewing, it’s power that he seeks
Weeping in the Promised Land
With dread in their eyes, all the nurses are crying
So much sorrow, so much dying
Pharaoh keep a-preaching but he never had a plan
Weeping in the Promised Land
Weeping in the Promised Land

You say, weeping, weeping
Weeping in the Promised Land
You say, weeping, weeping
Weeping in the Promised Land

Pharaoh’s army knocking on the door
Weeping in the Promised Land
Shoot you in your bed just like they done before
Weeping in the Promised Land
Out in the street, on your neck with a knee
All the people are crying your last words, “I can’t breathe”
And a white judge say, “There been no crime here today”
Weeping in the Promised Land
Weeping in the Promised Land

You say, weeping, weeping
Weeping in the Promised Land
You say, weeping, weeping
Weeping in the Promised Land

Well, we’re weeping, weeping
Weeping in the Promised Land
Yeah, weeping, weeping
Weeping in the Promised Land

John Fogerty Lyrics

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Quiet
Quiet down she said
Speaking to the back of his head
On the edge of her bed
I can see your blood flow
Your cells grow

Hold still a while
Don’t spill the wine
I can see it all from here
I can see
I can see
Weather systems of the world

And every time you turn the soil
Another cloud begins to boil

Some things you say
Are not for sale
I would hold that we’re
All free agents
Of a substance or scale

Hold still a while
Don’t spill the wine
I can see it all from here
I can see
I can see
Weather systems of the world

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The Tea Leaf
Prophecy (Lay
Down Your
Arms)

Song by Joni Mitchell

Lyrics :

Study war no more
Lay down your arms
Study war no more
Lay 'em down lay 'em down now
Study war no more
Lay down your arms
Study war no more

Newsreels rattle the Nazi dread
The able-bodied have shipped away
Molly McGee gets her tea-leaves read
You’ll be married in a month they say
“These leaves are crazy!
Look at this town there’s no men left!
Just frail old boys and babies
Talking to teacher in the treble clef”

She plants her garden in the spring
She does the winter shovelling
Tokyo Rose on the radio
She says she’s leavin’ but she don’t go

Out of the blue just passin’ thru
A young flight sergeant
On two weeks leave
Says “Molly McGee no one else will do!”
And seals the tea-leaf prophecy
Oh these nights are strong and soft
Private passions and secret storms
Nothin’ about him ticks her off
And he looks so cute in his uniform

She plants her garden in the spring
He does the winter shovelling
But summer’s just a sneeze
In a long long bad winter cold
She says “I’m leavin’ here” but she don’t go

“Sleep little darlin’!
This is your happy home
Hiroshima cannot be pardoned!
Don’t have kids when you get grown
Because this world is shattered
The wise are mourning
The fools are joking
Oh what does it matter?
The wash needs ironing
And the fire needs stoking”

She plants her garden in the spring
He does the winter shovelling
The three of 'em laughing ‘round the radio
She says "I’m leavin’ here" but she don’t go

She plants her garden in the spring
They do the winter shovelling
They sit up late and watch the
Johnny Carson show
She says “I’m leavin’ here but she don’t go”.

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My Pandemic Healing Song…

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Otis and his gift here tonight, his last song, it got to me so bad, so good.
I was working on a poem for Spring and St. P.'s Day and “all my beloved dead”, as someone once called them, a poem that kept turning into an elegy… which ain’t a bad thing, but…
Otis made my eyes well, my chest ache, my throat want to sing.
Thank you, Michael

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This Piece was Performed at the B2TG Cafe’ -Back2The Grind … My Second Home
from the Place I Sleep, Hope U Enjoy!

Kinetic Conversations 2020: The Film Act I

https://vimeo.com/523968415/11c676dc11

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How beautiful! Mesmerizing…

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This Young Lady has Got Some Fierce Expression I Like…

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[intended listening: full album, movements 1-9]

Great for thinking (or non-thinking) about the nature of your nature or Nature.

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Loved this from the first “fountaining”…
A magical poignant quality I have no name for.
Could listen all day and night…

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This is the kind of music I was trying to so hard to describe/find and name for the other day.
Dreamy spiritual jazz?!?

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Joanna Newsom’s Emily

A story of two sisters, one an astrophysicist (sister Emily) and one a musical artist (narratorJoanna Newsom), told in lyric and dream sequence and from a deep soul. This relates to the wholeness of nature in some connective tissue of my thought matrices.

Complete Lyrics

The meadowlark and the chim-choo-ree and the sparrow
Set to the sky in a flying spree,
for the sport over the pharaoh
A little while later the Pharisees dragged comb through the meadow
Do you remember what they called up to you and me, in our window?

There is a rusty light on the pines tonight
Sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow
Down into the bones of the birches
And the spires of the churches
Jutting out from the shadows
The yoke, and the axe, and the old smokestacks and the bale and the barrow
And everything sloped like it was dragged from a rope
In the mouth of the south below

We’ve seen those mountains kneeling, felten and grey
We thought our very hearts would up and melt away
From that snow in the night time
Just going
And going
And the stirring of wind chimes
In the morning
In the morning
Helps me find my way back in
From the place where I have been

And, Emily, I saw you last night by the river
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water
Frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever,
In a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky’d been breathing on a mirror

Anyhow, I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all I knew of the rote universe were those pleiades loosed in December
I promised you I’d set them to verse so I’d always remember

That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor’s just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

And the meteorite’s just what causes the light
And the meteor’s how it’s perceived
And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee

You came and lay a cold compress upon the mess I’m in
Threw the window wide and cried, Amen! Amen! Amen!
The whole world stopped to hear you hollering
You looked down and saw now what was happening

The lines are fadin’ in my kingdom
Though I have never known the way to border 'em in
So the muddy mouths of baboons and sows and the grouse and the horse and the hen
Grope at the gate of the looming lake that was once a tidy pen
And the mail is late and the great estates are not lit from within
The talk in town’s becoming downright sickening

In due time we will see the far butte lit by a flare
I’ve seen your bravery, and I will follow you there
And row through the night time
So healthy
Gone healthy all of a sudden
In search of the midwife
Who could help me
Who could help me
Help me find my way back in
There are worries where I’ve been

Say, say, say in the lee of the bay, don’t be bothered
Leave your troubles here where the tugboats shear the water from the water
Flanked by furrows, curling back, like a match held up to a newspaper
Emily, they’ll follow your lead by the letter
And I make this claim, and I’m not ashamed to say I knew you better
What they’ve seen is just a beam of your sun that banishes winter

Let us go! though we know it’s a hopeless endeavor
The ties that bind, they are barbed and spined and hold us close forever
Though there is nothing would help me come to grips with a sky that is gaping and yawning
There is a song I woke with on my lips as you sailed your great ship towards the morning

Come on home, the poppies are all grown knee-deep by now
Blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow
Peonies nod in the breeze and while they wetly bow, with
Hydrocephalitic listlessness ants mop up-a their brow

And everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour
The butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours
And my clay-colored motherlessness rangily reclines
Come on home, now! all my bones are dolorous with vines

Pa pointed out to me, for the hundredth time tonight
The way the ladle leads to a dirt-red bullet of light
Squint skyward and listen
Loving him, we move within his borders
Just asterisms in the stars’ set order

We could stand for a century
Starin’
With our heads cocked
In the broad daylight at this thing
Joy
Landlocked
In bodies that don’t keep
Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being
Till we don’t be
Told, take this
Eat this

Told, the meteorite is the source of the light
And the meteor’s just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

And the meteorite’s just what causes the light
And the meteor’s how it’s perceived
And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee

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Does human love transcend death? Yes, it does. I hear a strong Gnostic voice in this great love song.

Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling.
From glen to glen and down the mountain side.
The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling.
It’s you, it’s you must go, and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow.
And I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow.
Oh Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so.
But when you come and all the flowers dying,
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
You’ll come and find the place where I am lying,
And kneel and say an Ave there for me.
And I shall hear tho’ soft you tread above me,
And tho’ my grave will warm and sweeter be.
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me.

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