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
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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."
Tags: Archy and Mehitabel, Don Marquis, Dr Seuss, John Phillip Sousa, Sleep Book, Song of Myself, Stars and Stripes Forever, Walt Whitman
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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.
Tags: Bob Dylan, Fraggle Rock, Holdfast, Joseph Campbell, Kinks, Leonard Cohen, Luke Skywalker, Robert Frost, Shangri-la, Walt Whitman, Woody Guthrie
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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.
Tags: Bill Moyers, Coleman Barks, Elizabeth Bishop, Fraggle Rock, Joseph Campbell, Kinks, Leonard Cohen, Rumi, Walt Whitman
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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.
Tags: 365, Advent, Bob Dylan, Father Christmas, Hanukkah, It Can't Happen Here, James Robertson, Kinks, Mothers of Invention, Rorate Caeli Desuper, Song of Myself, This Dream of You, Vigilate, Walt Whitman, Yiddish
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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.
Tags: Bob Dylan, Claudine Clark, Come Dancing, Don't Forget to Dance, Kinks, Land of Plenty, Leonard Cohen, Let Me In, Party Lights, Randy Newman, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rolling Stones, Sensations, Sympathy for the Devil, The Devil and the Innkeeper, There's a party at my house, Your Lover Now
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Lamplight 99
You are invited to attend to this episode about Work and Workers, including blacksmiths, chain gangs, drivers, bored office workers, oh, yes, and Fraggles and Doozers. Music from Joe Tex, Josh White, Sam Cooke, Dolly Parton, the Kinks, and Flatt and Scruggs, and two more sections of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”.
Tags: breakdown, Dolly Parton, Flatt and Scruggs, Fraggle Rock, Joe Text, Josh White, Kinks, Sam Cooke, Song of Myself, Taverner, Walt Whitman
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You are invited to our exploration of Wabi-Sabi, a Japanese approach to life and art especially suited to this time of the year. We have music from Japan, America (Otis Redding, Robert Johnson, and more), Britain (inc. a tribute to Jack Bruce), poetry from Ryokan, William Carlos Williams, Rumi, and Stevenson, RLA’s Autumn meditation from Journey through the Seasons, and finally a famous passage from Whitman’s “Song of Myself”: a lonely woman’s fantasy about romping naked in the water with twenty-eight men, of whom “the homeliest of them is beautiful to her”.
Tags: Coleman Barks, Cream, Eugene Friesen, Japanese art, Journey through the Seasons, Judo Notomi, Otis Redding, Robert Johnson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rumi, Ryokan, shakuhachi, Song of Myself, wabi-sabi, Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams
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The Sick Rose
Abstract ideas, concrete details, head in the heavens, feet on the earth. You’re invited to explore this theme and attend Evening under Lamplight, with some comedy, some Broadway, Lennon, Dylan, Taizé, poetry both Scottish and American, and to finish, further scenes from Walt Whitman.
As heard, of course, on Cambridge 105.
Tags: Blake, Dylan, Ellen Bass, James Robertson, John Lennon, Monty Python, My Fair Lady, Song of Myself, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Taizé, The Sick Rose, Walt Whitman, Woody Allen
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Lamplight 96 Resonating People
"The blab of the pave" - echoes of New York streets from the 1850s
You are invited to attend to all sorts of people, from class clowns to lover-boys to moochers; Don Quixote wandering lonely onto the Camino Real, dreaming of Desolation Row; Jean Shepherd reading Robert Service; and Whitman’s catalogue of echoing scenes and sounds of the streets.
Tags: Cab Calloway, Cadillacs, Camino Real, Charlie Brown, Coasters, Desolation Row, Dylan, Mildred Jones, Minnie the Moocher, Mr Thrill, Song of Myself, Speedo, Tennessee Williams, Walt Whitman
