We attend to the timely tracks on Dylan’s Oh Mercy album, with a few Declaration of Independence moments to begin with. Part 2 to follow next time.
As heard on Cambridge 105 Radio.
And for strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.
Picking up on Whitman’s offer of help, we start with songs about helping and being helped, and then some absurd attempts at help, and then, moving further into Whitman, we draw upon Ralph Waldo Emerson’s call for us to “enjoy an original relation to the universe”, based on our own experience, not on what other’s have experienced. Blake comes into it, too, so does Joseph Campbell on myths. You are invited to attend.
We attend to more songs and literary treatments of trains: Robyn Hitchcock, Flanders and Swann, Solomon Burke, Louis Armstrong, Josh White, O’Jays, Duke Ellington, and Emily Dickinson, Charles Dickens, William MacGonagall, and others. You are invited to attend.
[As heard on Cambridge 105 Radio]
From the Archives, we attend to many, varied songs and poems about trains. More here than meets the eye. You are invited to attend.
[First heard on Cambridge 105 Radio]
We attend to different aspects of Moving, with one song after another, featuring: Kinks, Stones, Jr Walker, Josh White, Juke Boy Bonner, Temptations, Goons, Fats Waller, Melanie, Dylan, Simon & Garfunkle, Fraggle Rock. Something for everyone (maybe). You are invited to attend.
(As heard first on Cambridge 105 Radio.)
Closing out Cambridge 105 Radio’s week of focus on Loneliness, we attend to various aspects of loneliness, alienation, solitude. You are invited to attend.
From the Archives, to set us up for the Cambridge Companions week focusing on the problem of loneliness, coming up at the end of this month.
“But I would not feel so all alone / Everybody must get stoned”, sings Dylan, and we take up that thought and attend to the ways it can adjust our outlook, bringing us all together in the inevitable adversity that is part of our humanity, consoling ourselves and reaching out to console others, with music by Dylan, Frederick Knight, The Four Tops, Solomon Burke, Ernest Bloch, the Kinks, and some comforting words from Stephen Levine, ending with a miraculous Holocaust story. You are invited to attend.
(As heard first on Cambridge 105 Radio.)
From the Archives, updated, the myth of two lovers and the poetic bully who thinks he can destroy their love, but transforms it instead. We spend time with Handel and some modern versions of the story, and the mythic significance, before moving on to a bit of Walt Whitman to finish.
(As heard on Cambridge 105 Radio.)
As heard on Cambridge 105 Radio, Evening under Lamplight‘s Valentine’s Day show attends to the goddess Venus, as dramatised by Dante in Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. And a variety of musical interludes. You are invited to attend.
A revised edition from the Archives, with Walt Whitman celebrating the diversity of people all around us – including, you’ll notice, “the fury of roused mobs”, a phrase that will resonate in special ways today. And our music brings in other divers people from the world around us. You are invited to attend.
[First heard on Cambridge 105 Radio.]
