You are invited to attend The Athena Connection, looking at what it means to be a Mentor, passing on to others the spirit of Athena, goddess of weaving and tactics (and tact). What do we do with Athena’s inspiration? – dance with it, or deny it, like Arachne, that spiderwoman. We take a few breaks along the way for music by the Greek dance band Athena, some Dylan, some Rolling Stones, also Malcolm Guite and a Scottish weavers’ song, and another dose of Walt Whitman, leading to the “unnameable ardors of my breast” with Mozart’s Queen of the Night.
You are invited to attend this week’s show, exploring tongue twisters, lies, truths, and other games of language. There’s a story here too, both literally and mythically true. And a great variety of music: Danny Kaye, Fraggle Rock, Gilbert & Sullivan, Leonard Cohen, Bruckner motet, Bob Dylan, CBS Jubilees, Simon & Garfunkel, Miles Davis from India.
Though disrupted by a sniffly, coldy voice, RLA substitutes for his intended show this triad of three relatively long pieces this week: Carnival of the Animals, with comic verses by Ogden Nash, spoken by Noel Coward; the Firesign Theater’s “Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him”; and an alternate version of “Desolation Row”. You’re invited to attend.
Tags: Cambridge 105, Carnival of the Animals, Desolation Row, Dylan, Firesign Theater, Noel Coward, Ogden Nash, Saint-Saens
Walt Whitman comes to us “disorderly fleshly and sensual … eating drinking and breeding”, with many other interesting and outrageous assertions this week: “copulation is no more rank to me than death is”, or “the scent of these armpits is aroma finer than prayer”, and the sumptuous new word “omnifutuant” – tune in to find out what this word means. And it’s all supported with music from the Waterboys, Russian Orthodox liturgy, John Lennon, Lou Reed, the Four Clefs, the Kinks, and Leonard Cohen. You’re invited to attend.
First telephone connections, with Lou Reed, The Band, Dr Hook, then spending time with Leonard Cohen’s “Alexandra Leaving” and finally Walt Whitman and our connections expanding “much farther, and then farther and farther”. You are invited to attend.
Adam connected to God
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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.
Tags: Country Joe and the Fish, Dylan, I and I, Jefferson Airplane, Jimmy Cliff, Margaret Atwood, Rape Fantasies, Rolling Stones, Spitting Image, The Old Philosopher, Walt Whitman, You can get it if you really want, You can't always get what you want
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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”.
Tags: Artemis, Hallelujah, Hunter gets captured by the game, I'm not like everybody else, Kinks, Leonard Cohen, Let's Spend the Night together, Marvelettes, Naked Man, Needle in a haystack, Randy Newman, Reuben and Rachel, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rolling Stones, satyr, Song of Myself, Velvelettes, Walt Whitman
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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
Tags: Asena, Beatles, Bruch, Cambridge 105, Coleman Barks, Gee Officer Krupke, I want to tell you, Kol Nidre, Leonard Cohen, outcasts, Please don't pass me by, Rumi, sex trafficking, Song of Myself, West Side Story, Whitman
