Monday, July 29, 2013
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Helen Merrill with Clifford Brown - What's New?
Uploaded on Feb 15, 2009
Helen Merrill with Clifford Brown - What's New? (1954)
Personnel: Helen Merrill (vocal), Clifford Brown (trumpet), Danny Bank (flute, baritone sax), Barry Galbraith (guitar), Jimmy Jones (piano), Oscar Pettiford (bass), Bobby Donaldson (drums), Quincy Jones (arrange, conduct)
from the album 'HELEN MERRILL'
Helen Merrill - You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To
http://www.megavideo.com/?v=6QY30IP0
Personnel: Helen Merrill (vocal), Clifford Brown (trumpet), Danny Bank (flute, baritone sax), Barry Galbraith (guitar), Jimmy Jones (piano), Oscar Pettiford (bass), Bobby Donaldson (drums), Quincy Jones (arrange, conduct)
from the album 'HELEN MERRILL'
Helen Merrill - You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To
http://www.megavideo.com/?v=6QY30IP0
Category
License
Standard YouTube License
Link: http://youtu.be/n2mnND2_ovQ
Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd 05 Samba de Uma Nota So
Published on Mar 13, 2012
from "Jazz Samba" (1962)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Recorded ay Pierce Hall, All Sound Unitarian Church, Washington DC, USA on February 13, 1062.
Musicians :
Stan Getz - sax tenore
Charlie Byrd - chitarra
Gene Byrd - chitarra, contrabbasso
Keter Betts - contrabbasso
Buddy Deppenschimidt - batteria
Bill Reichenbach - batteria
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Recorded ay Pierce Hall, All Sound Unitarian Church, Washington DC, USA on February 13, 1062.
Musicians :
Stan Getz - sax tenore
Charlie Byrd - chitarra
Gene Byrd - chitarra, contrabbasso
Keter Betts - contrabbasso
Buddy Deppenschimidt - batteria
Bill Reichenbach - batteria
Category
License
TEDxTokyo Jake Shimabukuro - 05/15/10 (English)
on May 15, 2010
Few people would consider the ukulele a serious musical instrument. Until, that is, they hear Jake Shimabukuro play one. Jakes uncommon compositions and playing techniques defy labels and categories, and he lays down jazz, blues, funk, classical, bluegrass, folk, flamenco and rock with equal virtuosity.
Occasional tours with Jimmy Buffett & The Coral Reefer Band have broadened his experience and brought his talent and charming stage presence to crowds of up to fifty thousand people.
Jake has also performed on NBCs The Late Show with Conan OBrien, The Today Show, and Last Call With Carson Daly, and been featured on NPRs Morning Edition and World Café, Public Radio Internationals The World, and others. In December 2009, he performed with Bette Midler for Queen Elizabeth during a special fundraising concert in Blackpool, England.
http://tedxtokyo.com/tedxtokyo-2010/p...
About TEDx, x = independently organized event
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
Category - Travel & Events
License - Standard YouTube License
Art of Solo Piano
Mulgrew Miller obituary
Influential US jazz pianist with an ebullient and graceful style
John Fordham
The Guardian, Friday 31 May 2013
Mulgrew Miller would turn swing pieces into suddenly stomping train-rhythm boogies. Photograph: Skip Bolen/WireImage
The dazzling technique of the jazz pianist Mulgrew Miller sometimes sounded as if it was about to burst the stays of the tightly harmonised, straight-swinging bebop style on which his work was founded. Yet Miller, who has died of a stroke aged 57, never steamrollered the musicians around him. A selfless collaborator, he was regularly sought out by big-name performers such as Duke Ellington's bandleader son Mercer, the drummer Art Blakey, the saxophonist Branford Marsalis and the vocalist Betty Carter. He was also a composer and leader of quiet distinction – whether alone, in his favourite trio lineups or exploring, as he did in the Wingspan ensemble he launched in 1987, the warm tone-colours of an unusual band combining vibraphone and reeds.
In their ebullient lyricism and graceful good humour, Miller's performances sounded like character sketches of this gentle giant himself. In a Cheltenham jazz festival performance in the late 1990s, he performed with the double-bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, in a demanding duo celebration of the music of Duke Ellington that they would later record and tour widely. Miller was astounding, reflecting Ellington the pianist's rhythmic drive and also mimicking his multi-layered orchestral writing by the sheer fertility of ideas and speed of execution. He would turn straight swing pieces into suddenly stomping train-rhythm boogies, mischievously hide familiar melodies and then triumphantly unveil them, and transform the improvisation on one song into the theme of a new one so elegantly that it would seem they must have been written to be together.
In its melodic fluency and percussive chordwork, that performance recalled Oscar Peterson, Miller's first piano inspiration. But it also looked forward with glimpses of the harmonically freer methods of McCoy Tyner. Miller's knowledge and technical skill made him a much more complete contemporary jazz musician than the casual typecasting of him as an inveterate hard-bopper ever allowed.
Born in Greenwood, Mississippi, he revealed an early aptitude for the piano. He began lessons aged eight, played the church organ and joined soul and R&B groups in his teens. The sound of Peterson in full cry was a "life-changing event". Miller studied music at Memphis State University and absorbed the gospel-funk piano style of Ramsey Lewis and the soulful sound of the local pianist Phineas Newborn Jr. After graduation, he joined Mercer Ellington's big band, a popular legacy ensemble devoted to Duke Ellington's work. In the 1980s he worked with Carter (a demanding apprenticeship, requiring lightning-fast reactions to the whims of a brilliant vocal improviser); with the unconventional hard-bop trumpeter Woody Shaw; and with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, in an era when that new-talent hothouse often included the saxophonists Donald Harrison and Jean Toussaint, and the trumpeter Terence Blanchard.
Keys to the City (1985) was his debut album as a leader. He performed and recorded extensively in the late 1980s and throughout the 90s with the innovative drummer and composer Tony Williams, the guitarist John Scofield and the saxophonists Joe Lovano and Kenny Garrett (performing with sweeping relish on the former's 1995 album Quartets: Live at the Village Vanguard, and in 2006 on the latter's Beyond the Wall).
An inspirational teacher, Miller was the director of jazz studies at William Paterson University of New Jersey from 2006 and artist in residence at Lafayette College in 2008-09, also making a succession of acclaimed live albums for the Maxjazz label in that period. He added his own kind of melodious earthiness to the bassist Dave Holland's album Pass It On (2008) and was performing until recently (despite a mild stroke in 2010) in the former Miles Davis bassist Ron Carter's Golden Striker group, appearing on the trio's 2012 European live recording San Sebastian.
Jazz pianists as different as Robert Glasper, Geoff Keezer and Kate Williams have acknowledged Miller's influence. Sharing, enabling and collaborating came as naturally to him as effortless piano virtuosity. His may have been a soft light compared to that of the jazz superstars, but its glow will be missed wherever the music is played.
He is survived by his wife, Tanya; his children Darnell and Leilani; a grandson; three brothers and three sisters.
• Mulgrew Miller, jazz pianist and composer, born 13 August 1955; died 29 May 2013
Link: http://www.groovenotes.org/
Is This The Real Trayvon Martin?
We hear about 'Spin' doctors with politics but it is a sad thing when you realize how the legal system and the press make use of underhanded tricks to mold public opinion....
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Woman are from Venus, Men...
Between 18 and 22, a woman is like Africa . Half discovered, half wild, fertile and naturally Beautiful! Between 23 and 30, a woman is like Europe. Well developed and open to trade, especially for someone of real value. Between 31 and 35, a woman is like Spain, very hot, relaxed and convinced of her own beauty. Between 36 and 40, a woman is like Greece, gently aging but still a warm and desirable place to visit. Between 41 and 50, a woman is like Great Britain, with a glorious and all conquering past. Between 51 and 60, a woman is like Israel, has been through war, doesn't make the same mistakes twice, takes care of business. Between 61 and 70, a woman is like Canada, self-preserving, but open to meeting new people. After 70, she becomes Tibet .
Wildly beautiful, with a mysterious past and the wisdom of the ages.
An adventurous spirit and a thirst for spiritual knowledge.
THE GEOGRAPHY OF A MAN
Between 1 and 80, a man is like Iran ,
ruled by a pair of nuts. THE END. |
Howlin' Wolf - 1964 - Smokestack Lightning
The Wolf Howls on 'Smokestack Lightning'
By John Kessler
By John Kessler
The Blues Time Machine
The Blues Time Machine
In the span of Howlin’ Wolf’s life and career he saw virtually the entire progression of blues from a rural, acoustic music through the birth of modern rock music. As a young man, he learned guitar from Delta master Charley Patton, and as an elder statesman performed with Eric Clapton and The Rolling Stones. In between he sang some of the most compelling and memorable songs in all of American music, including “Back Door Man”, “Killing Floor” and “Spoonful”.
“Smokestack Lightning” is one of the crowning achievements of Howlin’ Wolf’s massive output of blues. It’s actually not a typical blues song--based around only one chord, it has no verse or chorus, but an almost stream-of-consciousness series of images punctuated by Wolf’s eerie howling falsetto. He had been performing a song for many years called “Crying at Daybreak” that contained many of the same lyrics, but recorded the definitive version in 1956. This amazing film clip of Howlin’ Wolf performing “Smokestack Lightning” live may give you goosebumps:
Source: http://www.kplu.org/post/wolf-howls-smokestack-lightning
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-wS0-5UMhiM#action=share
Saturday, July 27, 2013
'I FINK U FREEKY' by DIE ANTWOORD (Official)
Uploaded on Jan 31, 2012
Directed by Roger Ballen & NINJA
Director of Photography Melle Van Essen
Edited by Jannie Hondekom @ Left
Post Production by Blade
We luf u Fraser
www.RogerBallen.com
www.DieAntwoord.com
ZEF FILMS 2012
Director of Photography Melle Van Essen
Edited by Jannie Hondekom @ Left
Post Production by Blade
We luf u Fraser
www.RogerBallen.com
www.DieAntwoord.com
ZEF FILMS 2012
Category
License
Standard YouTube License
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You're a commercial success, and that includes pop culture too. Your video for "I Fink U Freeky" helped put the South African group Die Antwoord on the map internationally. The clip has been viewed more than 33 million times on YouTube.
Ballen: I knew the artists for many years. Seven years ago the vocalists contacted me and told me they identified with my work. Both of them, Ninja and Yolandi, sent some of their music videos. At first I didn't know what to do with them because I wasn't a video maker. Two years later, they came from Cape Town to Johannesburg, where I live, and I took my first pictures of them. In 2010, we integrated my drawings into one of their videos. It went viral, and that's also when their career took off.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What was it like to direct "I Fink U Freeky?"
Ballen: Our relationship is built on seeing eye to eye. They like the aesthetic I represent: strong, intense photographs that penetrate people's psyche. All this is also relevant to their music. But it was real teamwork, and things just clicked into place: their music combined with my backgrounds and subjects that I have worked with for years.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: When did you get into photography?
Ballen: When I was 18 I finally got my first serious camera, a Nikon FTN. From 1968 to 1972, I studied psychology at Berkeley, and I did a lot of photography during those years. It was a pivotal time in the national culture, and Berkeley epitomized the counterculture. At the time, my work was quite socially and politically oriented, focused on anti-Vietnam protests and civil rights.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: After you graduated, you moved to South Africa, which was still under apartheid. How does a Berkeley graduate arrive at such an idea?
Ballen: I got to South Africa in a rather roundabout way. After 5 years of traveling the world and putting together my first book, "Boyhood," I went to the Colorado School of Mines, and graduated with a Ph.D. in Mineral Economics in 1981. I didn't find it easy to be in America at that time. I felt overwhelmed with the competitive and corporate nature of society. What I liked about South Africa when I first visited in the 1970s was that you lived as though you were in the First World but also had a lot of Third World around you.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: But surely apartheid didn't just pass you by?
Ballen: Not at all. I felt the best way for me to make political change was through photography -- my kind of photography. My book "Platteland" had a huge impact on South Africans' perceptions of themselves. It showed white people who lived at the margins of society. It broke the myth of white supremacy. When it was published, I was subjected to a lot of accusations. I was considered a whistleblower like Edward Snowden at the time.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does that make "Platteland" a primarily political book?
Ballen: Not in my eyes. For me, the purpose of the book was to deal with aspects of the human condition as I perceived it. And that comes across to this day. The images in "Platteland" have meaning even to a generation in the United States and Europe that knows little about apartheid.
From:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-photographer-roger-ballen-a-913152.html
Link: http://youtu.be/8Uee_mcxvrw
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Writing and Philosophy Webring
Next Webring » Existentialism
Existentialism Webring Philosophy - Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Soren Kierkegaard, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir, Karl Barth, Karl Jasper, Martin Buber, Paul Tillich, Karl Rahner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Franz Kafka, Boris Pasternak, Fyodor Dostoevsky, C.S. Lewis, Woody Allen. Another BATR Webring.
Category: Philosophy
http://hub.booksnwriting.org/hub/existentialism
Wordsworth: Ode
To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
William Wordsworth in Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, 1803
The Rainbow
William Wordsworth. 1770–1850
532. The Rainbow
MY heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old, 5
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
Link:
http://www.bartleby.com/101/532.html
Quote: History Guide
I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me. I have no authority to be believed, nor do I want it, feeling myself too ill-instructed to instruct others. (Montaigne)
.......................................
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore; --
Turn whereso'er I may,
By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality [1802-04 (1807)]
.......................................
Link: http://www.historyguide.org/index.html
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
William Wordsworth. 1770–1850
Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
William Wordsworth. 1770–1850
535. The World
THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon; 5
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 10
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
William Wordsworth. 1770–1850
536. Ode
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes, 10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair; 15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound 20
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; 25
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea 30
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 35
Shepherd-boy!
Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival, 40
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning, 45
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:— 50
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet 55
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended; 75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind, 80
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came. 85
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes! 90
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral; 95
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long 100
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 105
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity; 110
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest! 115
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave, 120
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie; 125
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 130
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live, 135
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest— 140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise; 145
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized, 150
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may, 155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 160
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy! 165
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither, 170
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound! 175
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright 180
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind; 185
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death, 190
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight 195
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet; 200
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 205
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Source: http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html
The World -William Wordsworth. 1770–1850
535. The World
THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon; 5
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 10
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
by Holle Abee
Created on: January 10, 2009 Last Updated: August 26, 2012
"The World is Too Much with Us, " by William Wordsworth, is a sonnet that examines the speaker's feelings about England's Industrial Revolution and how it changed the nation from a bucolic, more innocent existence into one filled with greed, squalor, and crowded cities. The verses are full of passion, expressing the poet's outrage at how industry and commerce have negatively affected the world in which he lives, as well as the individuality of the common man.
Wordsworth, along with his friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is considered to be the father of English romanticism. Like the subsequent romantic poets, Wordsworth was concerned with the common man and by how the individual was affected by society. He had a deep love for Nature and believed that man could achieve true happiness only through a close relationship with the natural world. With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, Wordsworth believed that man's bond with Nature was irrevocably broken.
In order to fully understand the poem, one must have some knowledge of how the Industrial Revolution impacted life in England, the first nation to experience industrialization. Before the factories and manufacturing, Britain was a land of cottage industries and communal farms. People crafted goods in their homes, like candles, lace, carts, wheels, and pots and pans, or either they tended plots of land and sold produce and livestock as their means of subsistence. Most of the population lived on the land, in harmony with Nature.
With the birth of mass production, England changed from an agricultural society to one based on industry. The small family cottage industries were put out of business. Factories could sell the goods at a cheaper price, and could offer brand new items and inventions. Farmers were removed from the land as government took over most of the farms, turning them into private hunting preserves for wealthy land owners. All these unemployed workers were forced to either go on "the dole" or move to the big manufacturing cities to seek work in the very factories that put an end to their livelihood.
While many wealthy business owners embraced the Industrial Revolution and viewed it as a great leap towards civilization, Wordsworth and his fellow poets believed just the opposite. They felt that this so-called civilization was detrimental to the very core of life: Nature.
Big cities like London and Liverpool were crowded and squalid. Factory workers lived and worked in deplorable conditions, often with as many as twenty people sharing a small flat. Because of a "window tax," many of these dwellings lacked windows, so fresh air and sunshine were shut out. Accounts from the period relate how as many as 100 people often shared a toilet. The large cities, unprepared for the population influx, had streets lined with human and animal feces, scraps from butcher shops, and offal of every sort. The Thames was so polluted that the stench often forced Parliament to postpone meetings. Mill emplyees worked long hours in dangerous conditions, and small children were often used as beasts of burden in the coal pits, seeing the sun only on Sundays. The policy of "laissez faire" kept these heinous practices alive.
Wordsworth, like many of the English Romantic poets, was appalled by all of this. A lover of nature and the natural world, Wordsworth felt that man had sold his soul for a few coins and for new mass-produced goods, evident in lines 1-4:
"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!"
A "sordid boon" is a shameful or foul gift. Wordsworth is saying that we have traded our collective hearts for industry.
Lines 5-9 describe how civilization has "defeated" and abandoned Nature, forever changing mankind:
"This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not..."
The last part of line 9 contains an explosive apostrophe:
"...Great God! I'd rather be..."
Wordsworth goes on to say that he had rather be a pagan than to live life the way his countrymen are. He alludes to Proteus and Triton, two figures from Greek mythology, and says that instead of living during these terrible times, he had rather be able to:
"Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
Wordsworth, through these allusions, reveals that he longs for a simpler time, when man was more in touch with the natural world and was in awe of the great powers of Nature. He feels that mankind has turned its back on Nature, all because of the Industrial Revolution. The lines reveal that the speaker is more than willing to throw away every conventional belief and all the trappings of "civilization" if he could return to the primitive awe and amazement of Nature's wonders.
Throughout much of this poem, Wordsworth's words are filled with anger, sadness, and a feeling of loss. He is obviously disillusioned with what has befallen his country and society as a whole, and especially by the impact forced upon the individual. His tone changes, however, in the last four lines. Here, his words are filled with awe, revealing the contrast between his feelings for the natural world and the material world.
"The World is Too Much with Us" is a powerful insight into the poet's mind. He readily embraces and respects Nature, while he abhors and denounces man's turning his back on the natural world in exchange for money and material goods. To Wordsworth, man is no longer part of the natural world. He has paid the ultimate price for "civilization."
Learn more about this author, Holle Abee.
http://www.helium.com/users/326075
Link: http://www.helium.com/items/1291286-analysis-of-the-world-is-too-much-with-us
Mary Oliver
Mary Oliver
Beacon Press, 2009 - Poetry - 74 pages
Never afraid to shed the pretense of academic poetry, never shy of letting the power of an image lie in unadorned language, Mary Oliver offers us poems of arresting beauty that reflect on the power of love and the great gifts of the natural world.
Inspired by the familiar lines from William Wordsworth, "To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," she uncovers the evidence presented to us daily by nature, in rivers and stones, willows and field corn, the mockingbird's "embellishments," or the last hours of darkness.
Evidence is a collection of forty-seven new poems on all of Mary Oliver’s classic themes. She writes perceptively about grief and mortality, love and nature, and the spiritual sustenance she draws from their gifts.
Ever grateful for the bounty that is offered to us daily by the natural world, Oliver is attentive to the mysteries it imparts. The arresting beauty she finds in rivers and stones, willows and field corn, the mockingbird’s “embellishments” or the last hours of darkness permeates her poems.
Her newest volume is imbued through and through with that power of nature to, in Oliver’s words, “excite the viewers toward sublime thought.”
Never afraid to shed the pretense of academic poetry, never shy of letting the power of an image lie in unadorned language, Oliver is a skilled guide to the rarest and most exquisite insights of the natural world.
“After a few hours in her quiet, exuberant presence,” writes Los Angeles Times columnist Susan Salter Reynolds, “one feels as though the raw sunlight in the room, the brightness of the water, the white wood and flashing wings outside the window are bleaching unimportant details from the day.”
From one of America’s most loved and respected poets, this new volume plumbs the evidence of our most profound mysteries.
Link: http://books.google.ca/books/about/Evidence.html?id=bXRoJZQDgoIC
Ramble On - Led Zeppelin
Ramble On by Led Zeppelin
Lyrics:
Leaves are falling all around,
Its time I was on my way.
Thanks to you, Im much obliged
For such a pleasant stay.
But now its time for me to go,
The autumn moon lights my way.
For now I smell the rain,
And with it pain,
And its headed my way.
Ah, sometimes I grow so tired,
But I know Ive got one thing I got to do,
Ramble on,
And nows the time, the time is now
To sing my song.
Im goin round the world,
I got to find my girl, on my way.
Ive been this way ten years to the day, ramble on,
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.
Got no time to for spreadin roots,
The time has come to be gone.
And tho our health we drank a thousand times,
Its time to ramble on.
Ramble on,
And nows the time, the time is now
To sing my song.
Im goin round the world,
I got to find my girl, on my way.
Ive been this way ten years to the day, ramble on,
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.
I aint tellin no lie.
Mines a tale that cant be told,
My freedom I hold dear;
How years ago in days of old
When magic filled the air,
Twas in the darkest depths of mordor
I met a girl so fair,
But gollum, and the evil one crept up
And slipped away with her.
Her, her....yea.
Aint nothing I can do, no.
Ramble on,
And nows the time, the time is now
To sing my song.
Im goin round the world,
I got to find my girl, on my way.
Ive been this way ten years to the day, ramble on,
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.
Gonna ramble on, sing my song
Gotta keep-a-searchin for my baby...
Gonna work my way, round the world
I cant stop this feelin in my heart
Gotta keep searchin for my baby
I cant find my bluebird!
Id listen to my bluebird sing but I cant find my blue bird
A-keep-a ramblin baby...
Lyrics:
Leaves are falling all around,
Its time I was on my way.
Thanks to you, Im much obliged
For such a pleasant stay.
But now its time for me to go,
The autumn moon lights my way.
For now I smell the rain,
And with it pain,
And its headed my way.
Ah, sometimes I grow so tired,
But I know Ive got one thing I got to do,
Ramble on,
And nows the time, the time is now
To sing my song.
Im goin round the world,
I got to find my girl, on my way.
Ive been this way ten years to the day, ramble on,
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.
Got no time to for spreadin roots,
The time has come to be gone.
And tho our health we drank a thousand times,
Its time to ramble on.
Ramble on,
And nows the time, the time is now
To sing my song.
Im goin round the world,
I got to find my girl, on my way.
Ive been this way ten years to the day, ramble on,
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.
I aint tellin no lie.
Mines a tale that cant be told,
My freedom I hold dear;
How years ago in days of old
When magic filled the air,
Twas in the darkest depths of mordor
I met a girl so fair,
But gollum, and the evil one crept up
And slipped away with her.
Her, her....yea.
Aint nothing I can do, no.
Ramble on,
And nows the time, the time is now
To sing my song.
Im goin round the world,
I got to find my girl, on my way.
Ive been this way ten years to the day, ramble on,
Gotta find the queen of all my dreams.
Gonna ramble on, sing my song
Gotta keep-a-searchin for my baby...
Gonna work my way, round the world
I cant stop this feelin in my heart
Gotta keep searchin for my baby
I cant find my bluebird!
Id listen to my bluebird sing but I cant find my blue bird
A-keep-a ramblin baby...
Category
License
s
Babe... Led Zeppelin
Babe I'm Gonna Leave You by Led Zeppelin
Lyrics:
Babe, baby, baby, I'm Gonna Leave You.
I said baby, you know I'm gonna leave you.
I'll leave you when the summertime,
Leave you when the summer comes a-rollin'
Leave you when the summer comes along.
Baby, baby, I don't wanna leave you,
I ain't jokin' woman, I got to ramble.
Oh, yeah, baby, baby, I believin',
We really got to ramble.
I can hear it callin' me the way it used to do,
I can hear it callin' me back home!
Babe...I'm gonna leave you
Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you
Oh I can hear it callin 'me
I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?
I know I never never never gonna leave your babe
But I got to go away from this place,
I've got to quit you, yeah
Baby, ooh don't you hear it callin' me?
Woman, woman, I know, I know
It feels good to have you back again
And I know that one day baby, it's really gonna grow, yes it is.
We gonna go walkin' through the park every day.
Come what may, every day
It was really, really good.
You made me happy every single day.
But now... I've got to go away!
Baby, baby, baby, baby
That's when it's callin' me
I said that's when it's callin' me back home...
Category - Music
License - Standard YouTube License
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