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Dante showing us the way
Afroman, The American Dream
Lamplight 109 You’re invited to attend to songs from Lovin’ Spoonful, Kinks, Randy Newman, Dylan and Dylan covered by Maria Muldaur, Badfinger, wholesome and not-so-wholesome explorations of exchanging money, and a journey into Dante’s Hell for bankers, culminating in this week’s Whitman selection, and Afroman’s celebration of The American Dream.
Your friend, Randy Newman
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Angelo proposing his exchange to Isabella
Exchanges of letters, comic performances, permissions and sexual favours; Samuel Johnson, Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, a poem by Jesus, Walt Whitman’s erotic exchanges with the sea; Gilbert and Sullivan, Guys and Dolls, a French children’s song, the Incredible String Band and the Lovin’ Spoonful, 33 seconds of the Beatles, and finally Beethoven.
"Howler and scooper of storms! Capricious and dainty sea!"
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"I saw her today at the reception / a glass of wine in her hand."
We wander around the two ways of treating others: as an It or as a Thou, something to use or something to have a relationship with. On the way we hear from The Old Philosopher (“Is that what’s bothering you, brother?”), Jimmy Cliff, the Rolling Stones, Spitting Image, Genevieve Cleghorn as Asena, Margaret Atwood’s “Rape Fantasies”, Jefferson Airplane, Dylan’s “I and I”, Whitman’s “unspeakable passionate love”, and even Country Joe and the Fish at the very end.
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Horny satyr sitting in dim oak-covert
Artemis on the hunt
“Like a pack of Satyrs, sitting in dim oak-coverts, and hearing only afar off the voices and swift feet of Artemis’s maidens” – intrigued? Attend the latest episode and learn more, and watch Whitman parade himself “hankering, gross, mystical, nude”.
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No one wants a fellow with a social disease.
We look at Outcasts, all invited to Walt Whitman’s “meal pleasantly set”: “I will not have a single person slighted or left away.” There’s Officer Krupke for comic relief before a disturbing exerpt from Asena, a one-woman play about sex-trafficking, and another Coleman Barks story from Rumi, ending with Leonard Cohen being a disgraceful outcast whom we must not pass by. You’re invited to attend.
Asena, Round Church, Cambridge, 19 February, 7.30
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Lamplight 104: Marches, Jazz Operetta, Lullaby
Mehitabel, toujours gaie
You’re invited to attend the latest Evening under Lamplight. Walt Whitman plays “great marches for conquered and slain persons”. Archy the cockroach and Mehitabel the alley-cat weave out their stories. Dr Seuss puts us to bed with surreal images and rhymes.
"This book is to be read in bed."
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Gobo Fraggle finds the Only Way Home
You are invited to attend this fine episode about Home, picking up the Fraggle theme that “You don’t know where you’ve been until you’re homeward bound”, looking at the way home keeps its hold on us, the way we work out how to get back home again, and the way returning home can, after all, define where we’ve been. Featuring, among others, Robert Frost, Luke, Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Walt Whitman.
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Lamplight 102
I think you’ll like this episode of Evening under Lamplight, featuring a story by Rumi (“The Lost Camel”) and a discussion with Joseph Campbell (“From Camel to Lion to Child”), with the Kinks lost and found, and Fraggle Rock lost and found, and Elizabeth Bishop, Leonard Cohen, and Walt Whitman. You’re invited to attend.
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Lamplight 101
It gets darker, but the light is coming. We can wait in line hoping that it can’t happen here, “all I have, and all I know is this dream of you, which keeps me living on”, waiting for the clouds to rain down righteousness in the holy hour of candle-lighting, “And these one and all tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them.” All this and more in this Advent/Solstice episode.
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Lamplight 100: Century 
It’s our hundredth Evening under Lamplight and we celebrate with a few highlights from earlier shows: a Party Triptych, three songs about parties; a Kinks double-play about dancing; a Stevenson fable; one of Dylan’s best unknown songs, “Your Lover Now”; and a closing piece from Leonard Cohen, “Land of Plenty”. Plenty of things for you, and, as always, you’re invited to attend.
