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"You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me"
Lots of music this week: love songs, many from Motown, but also Frankie Lymon and the Mothers of Invention (great lovers, they) and Donovan and Otis and Dylan. And then one of those passages that got Walt Whitman banned. We today recognise the sexual ambiguity, but you are invited also to attend to the love-making between the Ego and the Soul.
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The Grapes of Wrath
We attend to Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, Wendell Berry on what goes wrong when the poor are dispossessed, and Walt Whitman’s description of what is and what is not our True Self, with music by Woody Guthrie and others.
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Lamplight 91: Jurgen, I and this mystery
Jurgen in search of Justice
We look at James Branch Cabell’s hero Jurgen, seeking Justice to reconcile human dreams with the bare facts of reality, and continue with Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, and the mystery of the “procreant urge” that keeps the world alive.
Jurgen compromsing with reality
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"Damn Braces. Praise Relaxes" (Blake)
This evening, under lamplight, we look at Community, and then at Devils in literature, including Milton’s Satan, Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit, RLS’s fable “The Devil and the Innkeeper”, Blake’s Proverbs of Hell, Dante’s Lucifer, the frozen mechanical monster at the centre of the Earth. But we turn more expansive as we continue with Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”. You are invited to attend.
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Daedalus and Icarus taking to the air
Evening under Lamplight returns to Cambridge 105 with Series 3 of the show. “There is a time … for the evening under lamplight / (The evening with the photograph album)”, and we invite you to attend as we sit together looking through some photograph albums: Greek Myths, with pictures of Daedalus, who took to the air with new skills; Everything that Rises Must Converge, looking at Mindrollingpodcast and at the tales of Mulla Nasrudin, along with a companion story from the Yiddish folk treasury; and Song of Myself, as we begin looking together at Walt Whitman’s great poem from Leaves of Grass.
Walt Whitman
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Lamplight 88 Light out of darkness Series 2 of Evening under Lamplight comes to a close by offering you a little light in the darkness here at the year’s end – even if it’s just a little lamplight on a gloomy evening. See if it helps. You can attend to some absurdity, and some kindness and cheerfulness, the Winter episode of the Seasons’ cycle, and the hopeful expectation of eternal love waiting for us beyond the horizon.
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Lamplight 88 Light out of darkness [The Download link here is faulty. Download the podcast from the entry just above.] Series 2 of Evening under Lamplight comes to a close by offering you a little light in the darkness here at the year’s end – even if it’s just a little lamplight on a gloomy evening. See if it helps. You can attend to some absurdity, and some kindness and cheerfulness, the Winter episode of the Seasons’ cycle, and the hopeful expectation of eternal love waiting for us beyond the horizon.
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“Dust and ashes — we hold them up in our open palm and let the wind take them away.”
It’s time for letting go, or even letting yourself go, as you accept our invitation to attend to a show with some lively songs from many regular contributors, poems from Whitman, Elizabeth Bishop, RLS, and thoughts on all of this and more from RLA, your friendly host for this occasion. See you there.
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"My boy was by my side, so slim /And graceful in his rustic dress!"
We invite you attend to children, in their innocence, their playfulness, their horror too. We have as our guests this time Donovan, the Incredible String Band, Anne Sylvestre, Mokey Fraggle, Randy Newman, Kinky Friedman, and Dylan and the Kinks, with readings from Wordsworth and RLS, plus the myth of Niobe.
"Beaver, I believe her, is gone."
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Daphne and Apollo
What relationship develops in that space between the artist and the work of art, between the singer and the song, between the reader and the book? Tone brings it all to life, so we want to open and be attuned to what’s being asked of us in this space. It can happen to us anytime. We invite you to attend, and be attuned, to our show, featuring, among much else, an examination of the Daphne and Apollo story – a mythic retelling of the way the art itself loves the artist. We have on the show the Kinks, and Dylan, and the Fraggles, Leonard Cohen, the Miracles, and also a touch of raga and an ancient Greek hymn, with readings from RLS and Ovid.
