We’ve been having some heavy shows as we descend through Hell with Dante, and so having a cold gave me the excuse to lighten up a bit and re-broadcast a show from the end of 2015, the kind of show that keeps you smiling throughout. With my guests Neil Henry and Andrew Ab, we play around with Professor Longhair, Soupy Sales, “Grizzly Bear”, “Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear”, a sentimental Christmas carol redeemed because we attended to it, Afroman, Fraggle Rock, whistling with a robin, a Yiddish radio commercial from the 1940s, a mock commercial by the Who, Danny Kaye, Shel Silverstein and Dr Hook, the Kinks, and Tommy Cooper. You are invited to attend and join us.
Dante’s Inferno, Canto 5, wherein we find the lustful, and discuss modern and the mediaeval notions of lust – is it a passion, or is it a specific kind of action? We meet the horrible judge of Hell, Minos, and many personages from legend and history famous for their lustful behaviour. And we encounter Paolo and Francesca, perhaps the most famous episode in all of Dante. Music by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, the Band, Bob Dylan, the Clovers, and Purcell. You are invited to attend.
Canto 3 of the Inferno, wherein Dante is challenged by the Gates of Hell, passes through the area of the non-descript souls, who have done nothing with their lives and spend eternity being stung to follow furiously behind meaningless banners, and then is ferried over the first river of Hell – but faints as soon as he gets across. Music by Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Amiri Baraka, Robert Johnson, Randy Newman. You are invited to attend.
Bridie Jackson and The Arbour giving us “Scarecrow” (see picture), and two Border Ballads, “Clerk Saunders and May Margaret” and “Edward, Edward”, enact the way dramatic voices give strength to the writing. Dylan’s “She’s Your Lover Now” shows that even more. And Whitman tags on with his contribution to the discussion, too. With incidental music by Janet Harbison, Jeannie Robertson, and Elgar. You are invited to attend.
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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 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.
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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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Ainoma, the space between two structures in a Japanese temple
Ainoma, the space between, where you are in two places at once, or neither, beyond logic, confused perhaps, but open and ready for some kind of enlightenment, “about as near Nirvana as would be convenient in practical life”, as RLS says. We invite you to attend to discussion, readings and music on this theme.
