Viola puts on the act of a young man serving the Duke
We continue playing with the paradox from the Kinks song “Artificial Light”: “To be yourself you have to put on an act.” We spend time looking at the different acts people put on in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night – some of them successfully showing the true self, some of them not, getting side-tracked with three songs about woeful lovers (Lee Andrew and the Hearts, Ruben and the Jets, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles). Also featuring discussions of Richard III and a short excursion into Jane Austen’s Emma. You are invited to attend. (First broadcast on Cambridge 105 Radio, the commercially-funded community broadcaster for the city and South Cambridgeshire.) [To receive regular feeds of each show, sign up here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MomentsUnderLamplight]
Richard III is “determined to prove a villain” and puts on an act to win the throne – and then forgets he’s acting
Who are we? How do we (1) live in our real self and (2) express this self through our actions – through the acts we put on as we work and play through our lives? Big questions, but we attempt to attend to them, with the help of Ray Davies (pictured, putting on his act) and the Kinks, Randy Newman, the Beatles (featuring Sir Ringo Starr), and Bob Dylan. You are invited to attend. (First broadcast on Cambridge 105 Radio, the commercially-funded community broadcaster for the city and South Cambridgeshire.) [To receive regular feeds of each show, sign up here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MomentsUnderLamplight]
We attend to the Winter Solstice, that pivotal season that is both the darkest time and the time when new light begins growing, in the world outside and, we hope, in the world inside us. T. S. Eliot leads us off, then two Kinks songs about dancing in the darkness (with the astounding line: “To be yourself you have to put on an act”), and a Winter Meditation from my CD Journey through the Seasons. Then comes Leonard Cohen’s voice responding in the darkness, “Hineni”, Here I am. Then the light growing, with a Spiritual, an O Antiphon, a Taizé chant, and Mendelssohn’s Notturno. You are invited to attend.
Lots of different lines: standing in line, waiting in line, walking the line, crossing the line, dragging the line, toeing the line, throwing someone a line, plus railway lines, boundary lines, wrinkle lines, and so on. You are invited to attend! You don’t have to stand in line to attend, and admission’s free. (And that’s no line!)
Leonard taking a graceful and gracious bow, cheerful despite having pinned on the absurd captain’s bars.
More ballads: the Scottish ballad of “Edward, Edward”, then Leonard Cohen’s “The Captain”, Kinky Friedman’s “Ballad of Charles Whitman” (warning: possibly offensive), and Dylan’s “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts” followed by “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest”. Lots of fine discussion about all of these. You are invited to attend.
We look at a selection of ballads: an eerie Scottish ballad about coming back from the dead, ballads celebrating the American myths of the Tough Loner, such as Davy Crockett (pictured) and A Boy Named Sue, and then two powerful Dylan ballads. You are invited to attend.
On a Hallowe’en theme: a little Monster Mash, two eerie Kinks songs, and two Scottish Ballads, about fairies abducting mortal men – good stories both, and very fine musical accompaniment too. You are invited to attend.
Can we ever perceive, let alone tell, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Let’s explore this theme, with the help of Robert Louis Stevenson (pictured here, painted by Sargent), and music from Frankie Laine and Jimmy Boyd, Fraggle Rock, Walt Kelly, the Beatles, Dylan, and Marc Copland, and a clip from, of all people, The Three Stooges. You are invited to attend.
“Unjust laws exist,” says Henry David Thoreau. And what are we going to do about it? We attend to Thoreau’s famous essay “Civil Disobedience”, and the story of Thoreau’s imprisonment that lies behind the essay, and its connection with Martin Luther King and other advocates of “peaceful revolution”, interspersed with music from Taj Mahal, The Band, Aretha Franklin, and Bernice Johnson Reagon. You are invited to attend.
In this pivotal time, shifting from summer to autumn, let’s come together under lamplight to explore this special time of the year. There’s a triptych of three Kinks songs for us, and an upbeat Dylan celebration, plus, back after a long interval, the Harvest meditation from RLA’s CD Journey through the Seasons, with poetry by Emily Dickinson, John Keats, and Wendell Berry. And more besides. You are invited to attend.
