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Post by Al Truest on Mar 1, 2008 3:51:28 GMT
Don't stop! ;D I need to expand my musical taste. Watching the video right now- I love some of what Michel Gondry has done with Bjork's music videos. Have you seen the one for Bachelorette? It's one of my favorites, ever. Yes I have. I'm not sure if he directs "Isobel" - but that is one of my very favorites. But I know he also does one for Cibo Matto that is really creative. Two characters are filmed in real-time in reverse order of events. Sean Lennon (son of Yoko Ono and John Lennon) plays bass for them.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Mar 1, 2008 3:51:40 GMT
I'll be waiting. Music is very important to me, too- I take it very seriously. (as is probably obvious. ) Thank you for all the suggestions.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Mar 1, 2008 3:53:00 GMT
Yes, he directs Isobel. I love that one, too.
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Post by Al Truest on Mar 1, 2008 3:55:58 GMT
Yes, he directs Isobel. I love that one, too. Yeah, I watching it now.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Mar 1, 2008 3:58:53 GMT
You probably know that Human Behavior, Isobel, and Bachelorette form a song cycle- it's an interesting story. bjork.com/facts/about/Bjork is probably my second favorite, in case you hadn't guessed.
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Post by Al Truest on Mar 1, 2008 4:03:23 GMT
You probably know that Human Behavior, Isobel, and Bachelorette form a song cycle- it's an interesting story. bjork.com/facts/about/Bjork is probably my second favorite, in case you hadn't guessed. Yes. And I think Bjork had a bit of a crush on Kate when she was younger. She is one of my favorites too. Except Vespertine got a bit tedious. Her older material is my favorite, Even when she was a 'Sugarcube'
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Mar 1, 2008 4:05:40 GMT
Really? Vespertine is my favorite. It actually reminds me a bit of Aerial. Tastes differ, though. I've always wondered what a collaboration between them would sound like. Wouldn't that be great! Got to go now... Talk to you later...
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Post by Al Truest on Mar 1, 2008 4:12:42 GMT
Really? Vespertine is my favorite. It actually reminds me a bit of Aerial. Tastes differ, though. I've always wondered what a collaboration between them would sound like. Wouldn't that be great! Yes it would. See you later.
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Post by Al Truest on Mar 3, 2008 17:23:31 GMT
In an effort to bring this thread back on point, please consider the side track of 'other artists' and influences as poets in their own rites and inspirations. I will start a new thread to pick up from where we stopped here.
That said let's start back with some favorite verse:
The Poet
A poet walks in the moonlight, on a frost-covered path filled with fallen apples, her steps leave cider scent among the leaves
She walks in a world where computer chips have pushed their way inside the human heart, yet carries her poems like a handful of maple seeds, blossomed and ripe, to be held briefly then tossed twirling into the wide-open air, traveling like light of stars to faraway lands, into the souls of those nearby
She remembers her father's words. he said: no purse full of coins will be given to corrupt the sweetness of poetry, which like sap is to be sucked and savored in lean winter. And so she tastes the sounds of poems on her tongue as she walks away from billboards and neon lights. no purse of coins, and she sees that the evening is filled with a thousand possibilities, the crisp air a scent whose hugeness she breathes on her way to a room full of people waiting for her to melt away the evening's gloom.
Paula Weld-Cary
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Mar 3, 2008 17:27:40 GMT
The poem is lovely, Al. I've never heard of the poet before, but I really like this. And don't worry about the thread going off on a tangent- I started it and I was co-tangent follower, so it's very much okay.
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Post by tannis on Mar 3, 2008 18:38:07 GMT
Yes Al, a beautiful poem! ... The opening reminds of this from Moby Dick: ...the motion of a Sperm Whale's flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor...And the title makes me think of this... The Play by Anne Sexton, 1975I am the only actor. It is difficult for one woman to act out a whole play. The play is my life, my solo act. My running after the hands and never catching up. (The hands are out of sight - that is, offstage.) All I am doing onstage is running, running to keep up, but never making it. Suddenly I stop running. (This moves the plot along a bit.) I give speeches, hundreds, all prayers, all soliloquies. I say absurd things like: eggs must not quarrel with stones or, keep your broken arm inside your sleeve or, I am standing upright but my shadow is crooked. And such and such. Many boos. Many boos. Despite that I go on to the last lines: To be without God is to be a snake who wants to swallow an elephant. The curtain falls. The audience rushes out. It was a bad performance. That’s because I’m the only actor and there are few humans whose lives will make an interesting play. Don’t you agree?
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Post by tannis on Mar 5, 2008 4:17:49 GMT
Thank you Al for the Happy Rhodes reference... She is really good! ... Happy Rhodes - And Dream Of Sheep- www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoNGpa9tJkgHappy Rhodes performing "Mercy Street"- www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytyc72RiXE0British musician Peter Gabriel wrote a song, "Mercy Street", dedicated to Sexton in 1986.45 MERCY STREET by Anne Sexton, 1976In my dream, drilling into the marrow of my entire bone, my real dream, I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill searching for a street sign -- namely MERCY STREET. Not there. I try the Back Bay. Not there. Not there. And yet I know the number. 45 Mercy Street. I know the stained-glass window of the foyer, the three flights of the house with its parquet floors. I know the furniture and mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, the servants. I know the cupboard of Spode, the boat of ice, solid silver, where the butter sits in neat squares like strange giant's teeth on the big mahogany table. I know it well. Not there. Where did you go? 45 Mercy Street, with great-grandmother kneeling in her whale-bone corset and praying gently but fiercely to the wash basin, at five A.M. at noon dozing in her wiggy rocker, grandfather taking a nap in the pantry, grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid, and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower on her forehead to cover the curl of when she was good and when she was... And where she was begat and in a generation the third she will beget, me, with the stranger's seed blooming into the flower called Horrid. I walk in a yellow dress and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes, enough pills, my wallet, my keys, and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five? I walk. I walk. I hold matches at street signs for it is dark, as dark as the leathery dead and I have lost my green Ford, my house in the suburbs, two little kids sucked up like pollen by the bee in me and a husband who has wiped off his eyes in order not to see my inside out and I am walking and looking and this is no dream just my oily life where the people are alibis and the street is unfindable for an entire lifetime. Pull the shades down -- I don't care! Bolt the door, mercy, erase the number, rip down the street sign, what can it matter, what can it matter to this cheapskate who wants to own the past that went out on a dead ship and left me only with paper? Not there. I open my pocketbook, as women do, and fish swim back and forth between the dollars and the lipstick. I pick them out, one by one and throw them at the street signs, and shoot my pocketbook into the Charles River. Next I pull the dream off and slam into the cement wall of the clumsy calendar I live in, my life, and its hauled up notebooks.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Mar 5, 2008 17:52:35 GMT
Who Is Silvia
by William Shakespeare
Who is Silvia? What is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heavens such grace did lend her, That she might admired be.
Is she kind as she is fair? For beauty lives with kindness. Love doth to her eyes repair, To help him of his blindness; And, being helped, inhabits there.
Then to Silvia let us sing, That Silvia is excelling; She excels each mortal thing, Upon the dull earth dwelling: To her let us garlands bring.I found this and thought of the Cathy Demos song often called by the same name... Anyone think there's a connection?
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Post by tannis on Mar 8, 2008 1:57:41 GMT
HER KIND by Anne Sexton, 1960
I have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night; dreaming evil, I have done my hitch over the plain houses, light by light: lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind.
I have found the warm caves in the woods, filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks, innumerable goods; fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves: whining, rearranging the disaligned. A woman like that is misunderstood. I have been her kind.
I have ridden in your cart, driver, waved my nude arms at villages going by, learning the last bright routes, survivor where your flames still bite my thigh and my ribs crack where your wheels wind. A woman like that is not ashamed to die. I have been her kind.
GHOSTS by Anne Sexton, 1962
Some ghosts are women, neither abstract nor pale, their breasts as limp as killed fish. Not witches, but ghosts who come, moving their useless arms like forsaken servants.
Not all ghosts are women, I have seen others; fat, white-bellied men, wearing their genitals like old rags. Not devils, but ghosts. This one thumps barefoot, lurching above my bed.
But that isn't all. Some ghosts are children. Not angels, but ghosts; curling like pink tea cups on any pillow, or kicking, showing their innocent bottoms, wailing for Lucifer.
THE BLACK ART by Anne Sexton, 1962
A woman who writes feels too much, those trances and portents! As if cycles and children and islands weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips and vegetables were never enough. She thinks she can warn the stars. A writer is essentially a spy. Dear love, I am that girl.
A man who writes knows too much, such spells and fetiches! As if erections and congresses and products weren't enough; as if machines and galleons and wars were never enough. With used furniture he makes a tree. A writer is essentially a crook. Dear love, you are that man.
Never loving ourselves, hating even our shoes and our hats, we love each other, precious, precious. Our hands are light blue and gentle. Our eyes are full of terrible confessions. But when we marry, the children leave in disgust. There is too much food and no one left over to eat up all the weird abundance.
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Post by rosabelbelieve on Mar 8, 2008 2:02:27 GMT
I especially like this last one, Tannis. Thank you for posting these.
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