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.

pusillanimi

rla on November 6th, 2014

Lamplight 98: Wabi-Sabi

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”.