Peggy Lee - Fever

John Travolta - SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER More than a woman

Cyndi Lauper True Colors World Liberty Concert 1995

"The great and golden rule of art, as well as life, is this: That the more distinct, sharp, and wirey the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism, and bungling."

--William Blake, A Descriptive Catalogue, 1809

Very compelling argument for action against climate change:

http://www.break.com/index/tough-to-argue.html

Fleetwood Mac - Never Going Back Again - Live 1977

Never Going Back Again, (Fleetwood Mac)

She broke down and let me in
Made me see where I've been

Been down one time
Been down two times
I'm never going back again

You don't know what it means to win
Come down and see me again

Been down one time
Been down two times
I'm never going back again

Even if one were able to render the whole of the content of faith into conceptual form, it would not follow that one had grasped faith, grasped how one came to it, or how it came to one.

--Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (1843)

Black barn

Death was never the problem
It was life, that was the problem for me
Getting life, that is what I wanted
Except I couldn’t get it, no matter how hard I tried
I tried and tried and my heart burst with trying
My throat closed with regret, o throat
You never knew the way to anywhere
So I left you where I found you
By the road
Black butterfly that rains so
On the barn
There are so many of you, my blackness
And the things you tell me
Are not so much trite
As they are old
And I don’t want anybody around me
When I die
I want to go
As peacefully as I came
Onto this earth, not the horror I have become
Black life that has left me
No mother, no sister
No father, no lover, no child
No dog
I knew no dog to come when called
I only knew the notes of the universe
They came when called
And when they came to me
Like long lost brothers
And when I speak to you now
My long lost brothers have called me home

French Bulldog Puppies

Elvis Presley - Burning Love (Live '73)

Mariah Carey - against all odds

Phil Collins

Phill Collins - Easy Lover Live

Icehouse - Electric Blue

Listen To The Music / The Doobie Brothers

Ever Read a Book Called Awe?
_____________________

Have you ever read a book called Awe?
I have. I wrote it. That’s my book.
I wrote that book. I wrote that one.
Some people read it, they said
We will make your book.
I said Really? I love you.
They said, We love you too.
I said Good then
I will love you forever
They said Great! and looked scared
Some people I love
Don’t love me
Others love me
That’s good
When you sit in landscape of snow
And you’re a bird, that’s Awe.
When you look over a big green field
And the dead soldiers lay all around you, that’s Love.
That’s Love and Awe.
Say it
That’s Love and Awe.
There is nothing better.
Or if there is
Then I don’t care

Muppet Movie - The Rainbow Connection

Hello Operator

Dolly Parton - 9 to 5

islands in the stream

TORI AMOS--Crucify

A classic.

"My first band was another girl and me," Cyndi recalls. "She played the meat and potatoes on her guitar, and I played all the droning weird stuff. That's how I worked in all my bands: Whatever nobody else was playing, I played against it. I did the textural things that were always missing. And whenever I felt some other rhythm pulling at me, I played it. That pushing and pulling builds an interior rhythm, and that's the place where I sing."

I found this on Cyndi Lauper's webpage, the bio section: http://www.cyndilauper.com/uniquecirx/bio.php

Cyndi Lauper "True Colors"

You with the sad eyes
Don't be discouraged
Oh I realize
It's hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

Show me a smile then,
Don't be unhappy, can't remember
When I last saw you laughing
If this world makes you crazy
And you've taken all you can bear
You call me up
Because you know I'll be there

And I'll see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

April

Aside from being the cruelest month, April is National Autism Awareness Month AND National Poetry Month.
Diamond is the birthstone of April.
The daisy is April's flower.
It is also the month most connected with the sign of Aries.
It is not April anymore, you know. It is May.

Lisa Lisa Cult Jam Lost In Emotion

Fantasia - When I See You

Girls Just Want To Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper (HQ Audio)

Cyndi Lauper - True Colors

John Lennon -

Phil Collins In the air tonight Live NYC 88

In The Air Tonight Music Video

Talk to me - Stevie Nicks (HQ Audio)

van halen - jump

Gwen Stefani - 4 In The Morning

"The Shop" (A Photograph Essay with Christopher Roberti)

Stevie Nicks - Sara - Live

Crowded House - Private Universe

Fleetwood Mac Everywhere

Silver Jews - How Can I Love You (If You Won't Lie Down)

Silver Jews - Slow Education

bonnie prince billy

Tom Petty - Running Down A Dream

"marvellous artifice"

A face in the crowd - Tom petty

The American deadpan

Juice Newton -

Juice Newton Angel Of The Morning.

Juice Newton - Queen Of The Heart

stevie nicks

Fleetwood Mac Live Midnight Special 1976

Stevie Nicks - Stand Back - 1983 Appearence

"Coyote," Joni Mitchell

No regrets Coyote
We just come from such different sets of circumstance
I'm up all night in the studios
And you're up early on your ranch
You'll be brushing out a brood mare's tail
While the sun is ascending
And I'll just be getting home with my reel to reel...
There's no comprehending
Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes
And the lips you can get
And still feel so alone
And still feel related
Like stations in some relay
You're not a hit and run driver, no, no
Racing away
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

We saw a farmhouse burning down
In the middle of nowhere
In the middle of the night
And we rolled right past that tragedy
Till we turned into some road house lights
Where a local band was playing
Locals were up kicking and shaking on the floor
And the next thing I know
That Coyote's at my door
He pins me in a corner and he won't take "No!"
He drags me out on the dance floor
And we're dancing close and slow
Now he's got a woman at home
He's got another woman down the hall
He seems to want me anyway
Why'd you have to get so drunk
And lead me on that way
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines of the freeway

I looked a Coyote right in the face
On the road to Baljennie near my old home town
He went running thru the whisker wheat
Chasing some prize down
And a hawk was playing with him
Coyote was jumping straight up and making passes
He had those same eyes - just like yours
Under your dark glasses
Privately probing the public rooms
And peeking thru keyholes in numbered doors
Where the players lick their wounds
And take their temporary lovers
And their pills and powders to get them thru this passion play

No regrets, Coyote
I just get off up aways
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

Coyote's in the coffee shop
He's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs
He picks up my scent on his fingers
While he's watching the waitresses' legs
He's too fat from the Bay of Fundy
From Appaloosas and Eagles and tides
And the air conditioned cubicles
And the carbon ribbon rides
Are spelling it out so clear
Either he's going to have to stand and fight
Or take off out of here
I tried to run away myself
To run away and wrestle with my ego
And with this flame
You put here in this Eskimo
In this hitcher
In this prisoner
Of the fine white lines
Of the white lines on the free, free way

Poets on Painters exhibition

An article on the exhibition at the Ulrich Museum of Art: http://www.artknowledgenews.com/Ulrich_Museum_of_Art_Poets_On_Painters.html

Also, the exhibition website:
http://paintersandpoets.blogspot.com/

Bruce Springsteen-Human Touch

"In the end what you don't surrender, the world just strips away."

Becky Rosen's new website

My uber talented friend Becky Rosen has launched a new site and it is just gorgeous. Check it out: http://www.dorkorbit.com/

Eddie Money-Think I'm In Love

One of the best videos ever made.

Feist: Inside and Out

janet jackson, all nite

Valentine for Perfect Strangers

Thank you Jason for showing me this!!!!

Broken Social Scene

Belle and Sebastian, "The State I Am In"

One of the most important inspiration songs to my new book, AWE. I feel like all of the poems are somewhere within this song and I just couldn't have written them without it. Has something better ever been written? I would like to see that, if there has been.

"I was surprised, I was happy for a day in 1975
I was puzzled by a dream, stayed with me all day in 1995
My brother had confessed that he was gay
It took the heat off me for a while
He stood up with a sailor friend
Made it known upon my sister's wedding day

I got married in a rush to save a kid from being deported
Now she's in love
I was so touched, I was moved to kick the crutches
From my crippled friend
She was not impressed cause I cured her on the sabbath
I went to confess
When she saw the funny side, we introduced my child bride
To whisky and gin

The priest in the booth had a photographic memory
For all he had heard
He took all of my sins and he wrote a pocket novel called
The state I am in
So I gave myself to God
There was a pregnant pause before he said ok
Now I spend my day turning tables round in Marks & Spencers
They don't seem to mind

I gave myself to sin
I gave myself to providence
And I've been there and back again
The state that I am in

Oh love of mine, would you condescend to help me
Cause I'm stupid and blind
Desperation is the devil's work, it is the folly of a boy's empty mind
Now I'm feeling dangerous, riding on city buses for a hobby is sad
Why don't you lead me to a living end
I promised that I'd entertain my crippled friend
My crippled friend"

"Some have a style
That they work hard to refine
So they walk a crooked line"

––The Bangles, "If She Knew What She Wants"

in the aeroplane over the sea

Neutral Milk Hotel

Feist: One Evening

Feist - 1 2 3 4

Teaching

Mushaboom

BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Feb 2006 : The Matty Groves Perform

The Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)

"I hear you be the block, but I'm the light that keeps the streets on."
––Beyonce, "Upgrade U"

I just feel so bad

I just feel so bad
I don’t know
How to overcome it
Skinner says that it is my
Way that makes me function
In this world
I like to think
About things that are nice
And pretty
I like to plant purple flowers in my mind
That dazzle the starscape
There is no one for me to talk to
Except you dear reader
When there is no one else
To love, there is only you
To pour my love into
The snow
Echoes out the landscape
I have no home
No bread
I am destitute
But inside me
Is a little voice
That must speak
It gets louder when you listen

Check it out

Check it out: Noah Eli Gordon's new interview in Rain Taxi

Gypsy - Fleetwood Mac (HQ Audio)

Fleetwood Mac - Seven Wonders

Dolly Parton -- Puff The Magic Dragon

Amelia

Sonnet to Eric Baus (Dorothea Lasky)

Sonnet to Eric Baus
_______________

There is the beauty that I felt
And the beauty that I felt because I met you
And without that there is much
That would not have flown
Through the sky like balloons
There is one thing
A balloon
Kierkegaard said
There were many who knew the story
But only one who it made sleepless
That one is the saved one!
The saved one
I saved you
But you saved me, too

Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself (Wallace Stevens)

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache...
The sun was coming from the outside.

That scrawny cry–-It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.

Charles S. Peirce, "On a New List of Categories"

http://www.peirce.org/writings/p32.html

Parallel Bars Reading Series

Laura Solomon and I are starting a new reading series in Philadelphia. Please see http://www.parallelbarsreadingseries.blogspot.com/ for more information.

The Self is The Universal

Cat Stevens - Peace Train (live)

It's not an idea

Love is not an idea.

The Magnetic Fields - 100,000 Fireflies

Jean Michel Jarre - Magnetic Fields 2

Magnetic Fields - Born On A Train

Pootie Tang for Congress

Cyndi Lauper - I Drove all Night

I drove all night (Cyndi Lauper)

Cyndi Lauper I Drove All Night Japanese TV 1990

DROVE ALL NIGHT

No Doubt - Bathwater

Prince "Let's Go Crazy"

Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
2 get through this thing called life

Electric word life
It means forever and that's a mighty long time
But I'm here 2 tell u
There's something else
The afterworld

A world of neverending happiness
U can always see the sun, day or night

So when u call up that shrink in Beverly Hills
U know the one - Dr Everything'll Be Alright
Instead of asking him how much of your time is left
Ask him how much of your mind, baby

'Cuz in this life
Things are much harder than in the afterworld
In this life
You're on your own

And if de-elevator tries 2 bring u down
Go crazy - punch a higher floor

If u don't like the world you're living in
Take a look around u
At least u got friends

U see I called my old lady
4 a friendly word
She picked up the phone
Dropped it on the floor
(Ah, Ah) is all I heard

Are we gonna let de-elevator
Bring us down
Oh, no Let's Go!

Let's go crazy
Let's get nuts
Let's look 4 the purple banana
'Til they put us in the truck, let's go!

We're all excited
But we don't know why
Maybe it's cuz
We're all gonna die

And when we do (When we do)
What's it all 4 (What's it all 4)
U better live now
Before the grim reaper come knocking on your door

Tell me, are we gonna let de-elevator bring us down
Oh, no let's go!

Let's go crazy
Let's get nuts
Look 4 the purple banana
'Til they put us in the truck, let's go!

C'mon baby
Let's get nuts
Yeah
Crazy

Let's go crazy

Are we gonna let de-elevator bring us down
Oh, no let's go!
Go crazy

I said let's go crazy (Go crazy)
Let's go, let's go
Go
Let's go

Dr. Everything'll be alright
Will make everything go wrong
Pills and thrills and daffodils will kill
Hang tough children

He's coming
He's coming
Coming

Take me away!

Two Poems from Eric Baus

To The Sound
_________

It's always turning 12:34. The pain in "The pain in my sheets won't go away" won't go away. It's always turning. I can feel the tuning in The, the actual overheard A. It's always the same time, the same tone, the same room I'm turning away from. I'm turning away from my sheets again, tuning to A. If I turn away from my sheets, I have no evidence. I have no evidence.



Reverse Mercury
___________

It is best to enter the station at 200 feet above sea level. Disregard the music of the tundra. If turbines dot the omitted plains, omit the. Omit the city's tinted view. Nothing inside a good song looks like snow.

--Eric Baus

Neo-Romantic

I am a neo-romantic.