rla on February 11th, 2015

Lamplight 105: Outcasts

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

Robert Burns, A Man's a Man for A' That

Whitman asks, “Who need be afraid of the merge?” There are lots of ways we can take this, and we try out several of those ways this evening, under lamplight, with Robert Burns, celebrating the Scottish spirit of the “independent mind” (independent here not necessarily in the political sense), Whitman extending himself outside his hat and boots to merge with everyone he encounters, and Leonard Cohen, in honour of his big birthday this week.

Leonard taking a graceful and gracious bow as we wish him happy birthday.

Lamplight 91: Jurgen, I and this mystery

Jurgen in search of Justice

Jurgen in search of Justice

We look at James Branch Cabell’s hero Jurgen, seeking Justice to reconcile human dreams with the bare facts of reality, and continue with Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, and the mystery of the “procreant urge” that keeps the world alive.

Jurgen compromsing with reality

Jurgen compromsing with reality