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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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"Into the beautiful"
You’re invited to attend to the pivotal season of summer’s passing away “into the beautiful”, with Emily Dickinson, Journey through the Seasons, the Kinks, The Grapes of Wrath, Miriam Makeba, Dylan, and our usual visit to Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, followed by a meditation by Elizabeth Lesser. A mellow show, in its way, for what can be a mellow season.
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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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"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.
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Hermes Logios
