[The sound begins at 1:59. We apologise for this unnecessary blank space. Perhaps we can use it as a time of silence, to prepare for what’s coming. Perhaps it will be corrected as soon as possible.]
We are in the Second Circle of Dante’s Inferno, the circle of Limbo, where we find the rational, honourable soul that feels no pain, but also no delight because it never stretched itself to share the joys of surprise, blind leaps in the dark, and holy chutzpah. Music from Chubby Checker, Jimmy Cliff, and a touch of Rumi. You are invited to attend.
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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
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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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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”.
