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.
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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”.
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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 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.
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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 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”.
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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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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.
