We spin on an axis as bold as love round a sun that’s alight with fire
It’s true our time is marked by the man in the moon
Don’t walk ahead, don’t walk behind, just be my friend and walk by my side
It's real, this life is by in the blink of an eye.
I live and I long to be Latin as beauty rebels against time
I live and I long to be Latin
The cardinal wish for the scent of the red summer rose.
We have walked the dream palace of yesterday
Where myth is truth and the proof’s hearsay
Memories disguised by the ways that we wish they could be
The drives and input are well defined
Lies rolling off dying tongues chill the soul
Chained in gold we walk a lifelong line.
I live and I long to be Latin. I’m waiting to see my own eyes
I live and I long to be Latin
But what will I wear to the end of the world, my demise?
Upon the chipped dish the rich and pure fare of the love feast, kissing the sky
As we hold hands in a ring, the night to morning link
Contacts with the light
Be my friend, we can walk side by side
Don’t walk ahead you know I won’t walk behind
Though we stumble through our fears and tears
To the cadence and the tune of the spheres.
I live and I long to be Latin to live the fool and die the sage
I reach and intend to be Latin
To make vision real in the face of chance and circumstance
I live and I long to be Latin to take my stand against routine
I live and I long to be Latin
Where living at risk means I can see what others don’t see
It makes me think of all the beautiful music I've heard
And brings to mind a kind of paradise
It just may be some kind of wonderland magically
Still don't know how this fortune came to me
All the things I see
When I hear the sound of your voice
When I hear the sound of your voice
If feels to me like warmth from sitting in front of a fire
Light of my life you always show the way
Gleam in your eye a spark igniting the fire inside
Burning so bright the way I feel for you
It's like a dream come true
When I hear the sound of your voice
When I hear the sound of your voice
All of my being depends upon you
That's for sure
You're my refuge in a stormy sea
The sun above that shines on me
I thought that love such as this could be found
Only in movies
Just like searching for a pot of gold
Follow the rainbow and do what you're told
Just when you think it's all been said and it's been done before
Should I explain how you're affecting me
It's not control it's more an influence over my soul
Covering all like colors brilliantly
Canvas brush palette three
When I hear the sound of your voice
When I hear the sound of your voice
Yeah. I said the Pope. Don't know why, but I dreamed the other night that I was elected Pope (and I don't recall that I was even running). Well, actually I do know why I dreamed I was elected Pope.
I recently read "In God's Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I" by David Yallop and am in the midst of "Illustrissimi: The Letters of Pope John Paul I" by Albino Luciani.
Not that by any stretch of the imagination do these things qualify me for the office of Pope. Obviously tuna salad with extra onion and two boiler-makers do indeed qualify me to DREAM that I have attained the office of Pope.
The first action that I took in my new position, if I recall the dream correctly, was RUN. I'm not sure why I ran nor why I was being chased. But run I did. And all the while I was pondering the great changes that I will make as the new Pope. I almost made sense that I was being chased in light of the radical nature of those changes.
Not sure if I would have been a good Pope. . . or a BAD one. . .
". . .Beginning with the unforgettable "Green Green Grass of Home", Curly Putman has written or co-written an endless stream of smashes, including the million air-play, "My Elusive Dreams", "D-I-V-O-R-C-E", "Blood Red And Going Down", "It Don't Feel Like Sinnin' To Me, "It's A Cheatin' Situation" and "He Stopped Loving Her Today", just to name the #1's.
Curly wasn't born and raised with "great future staring him in the face," like the TV Waltons. Curly was the son of a sawmill man, reared on a mountain that bore that family name. About six or eight families lived on Putman Mountain, mostly descendants of a one-armed Methodist preacher named Jesse Putman, who first brought the holy writ to the mountain. . .
. . . After his discharge (from the service), Curly started picking with a band in Hunstville, AL, and there during one of his gigs, he met his future wife, Bernice. Soon, they started going together and were married in 1956. Thus began a long odyssey of discouragement and frustration remarkably echoed in Curly's "My Elusive Dreams: (You Followed Me To Texas/You Followed Me To Utah/We Didn't Find It There So We Moved On). The places were changed, but the pain was the same. "We moved to Chicago, but I didn't like it there too well, so I moved back to Alabama, working in the sawmill with my dad and going to trade school in Decatur, tried to learn piano tuning…anything to stick to music in some way. "We were barely getting by, so we moved to Huntsville and I went to work for the Thom Mcan Shoe Co. Eventually, Curly had a couple of songs recorded by Marion Worth and Charlie Walker, so he jumped at the chance to sell shoes in Nashville. After a short time in Nashville, however, he was transferred to Memphis. "I was so discouraged about having to leave Nashville," Curly recalls, "that I quit Thom Mcan in Memphis and went back to Huntsville and took a job in a record shop owned by a local radio personality. At night I played steel in a local band.
In the fall of 1963 Curly's luck took an abrupt change for the better. While visiting Nashville, during the annual DJ convention, he ran into Tree Publishing company executive Buddy Killen, whom he had known slightly in earlier days. Buddy casually mentioned that Tree might have a song plugging job open after the first of the year. "I came to talk to Buddy and Jack Stapp (the owner of Tree) and started working for them in January of 1964
"I guess I learned as much about writing by plugging songs for Tree as anything else I've ever done," says Curly. Yet month after month was passing and nothing was happening save a few small, inconsequential records. Was the elusive dream about to become undone altogether?
Then, one day about a year later, a bit of sheer magic struck. "One Sunday afternoon, I came up to Tree's office. No one was around. I just started fooling around and suddenly it fell in place. The surprise ending about dreaming made the song. I guess I worked on it for about two hours. I felt like I really had something, because it touched me very deeply. But, I didn't know how commercial it was because it was such a down-home song." The down-home song was "Green Green Grass of Home.
"I played the song for bunches of people over five or six months before it was ever cut, first Johnny Darrell," said curly. Then things began to happen. Porter Wagoner covered the Darrell record and had a top five country hit. Then, Jerry Lee Lewis had a chart record on the song. Tom Jones heard Jerry Lee's cut and was so impressed that he recorded it. His record became a top five pop smash in the united stated and number one almost everywhere else. The Tom Jones record sold between ten and twelve million copies throughout the world. Since then, over four hundred other artists have recorded the song in most of the world's major languages.
Since "Green Green Grass of Home," Curly's songs have been recorded by multitudes, including Charlie Rich, Tammy Wynette, dean martin, Wayne Newton, George Jones, Charley Pride, Conway Twitty, Dolly Parton, Bobbie Gentry, Glen Campbell, Nancy Sinatra, Roger Miller, T.G. Sheppard, The Kendalls, Andy Williams, Jim Nabors, Issac Hayes and Millie Jackson, Johnny Duncan, Bobby Vinton, John Conlee, Roy Clark, Elvis Presley, George Jones and almost every other country artist of consequence. And still, he continues to write, patiently and well, unable to fill the melancholy hole in his heart that refuses to ever let him rest satisfied and content to rejoice in a job well done. . ."
(from Illustrissimi by Albino Luciani [Pope John Paul I])
[from a letter to G. K. Chesterton. . . ]
". . . Progress that involves men who don't recognize a singe Father in God becomes a constant danger: without a parallel moral progress, which is continuous and internal, it develops what is lowest and cruellest in man, making him a machine possessed by machines, a number manipulated by numbers; he becomes what Papini called 'a raving savage, who, to satisfy his predatory, destructive, and licentious instincts, no longer uses a club, but has the immense forces of nature and mechanical invention to draw upon.'
Yes, I know there are plenty of people who think the opposite of this, They consider religion a consoling dream, invented by oppressed people who imagine another world, a non-existent world in which they can later find what is stolen from them today by their oppressors. These oppressors have arranged the whole thing for their own benefit, to keep the oppressed underfoot and to quieten the instinct towards a class struggle, an instinct that, were it not for religion, would urge them to fight.
It is no good reminding these people that the Christian religion itself favours the revival of proletarian awareness, that is exalts the poor and foresees a just future. . ."
(from The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyon)
". . . Now I saw in my Dream, that just as they had ended this talk, they drew near to a very Miry Slow that was in the midst of the Plain, and they being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bogg. The name of the Slow was Dispond. Here therefore they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; And Christian, because of the burden that was on his back, began to sink in the Mire.
Pli. Then said Pliable, Ah, Neighbour Christian, where are you now?
Chr. Truly, said Christian, I do not know.
Pli. At that Pliable began to be offended; and angerly, said to his Fellow, Is
this the happiness you have told me all this while of? if we have such
ill speed at our first setting out, What may we expect, 'twixt this and
our Journeys end? May I get out again with my life, you shall possess
the brave Country alone for me. And with that he gave a desperate
struggle or two, and got out of the Mire, on that side of the Slow which
was next to his own House: So away he went, and Christian saw him no more.
Wherefore Christian was left to tumble in the Slough of Despond
alone; but still he endeavored to struggle to that side of the slough
that was farthest from his own house, and next to the wicket-gate; the
which he did, but could not get out because of the burden that was upon
his back: but I beheld in my dream, that a man came to him, whose name
was Help, and asked him what he did there. . . "
Slough of Despond
by John P. Graboski
Performed by Oho June 1, 2013
at at The 2nd Annual 5th Street Music Festival Block Party Thingy
This
is the kind of bull-pucky that our 'friends' in the media provide
daily; a recent article about 'The American Dream', chock full of what
they produce best - NOTHING!!!
This little gem begins
by reminding us that we too can achieve success. Then they promptly
tell us the definition of success, "The big home in the suburbs, the
luxury cars in the garage, the kids off to a good college and the
retirement in a sunny locale." Funny how Merriam-Webster views success
in more spiritual, less-tawdry and materialistic terms as "favorable or
desired outcome; also : the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence".
From the stock, bullshit 'American Dream' teaser and
half-assed success definitions, this fine piece of writing moves on to
another constantly and frequently misrepresented concept, the economy,
and says that the weak job market is thwarting the best efforts of good
honest folk (like you and me) to 'get ahead', by which I PRESUME they
mean attain the aforementioned (theirs, not Merriam-Webster's)
'success'. Now I'm not unrealistic or particularly cold-hearted about
the job situation and the difficulties some people are currently
experiencing with employment and lack thereof. But somehow I think that
our journalistic scribes are providing us with third-grade-level
oversimplifications of the situation.
The particular
tome that provoked my ire went on to, in short, states that although
many present-day citizens truly believe that Americans all have an
equal ability to achieve success if they merely (and that's a BIG
merely) work hard. It does not venture (at least I did not detect it)
into any possibility that there exist many additional factors in
education, employment, the economy and geography that exert substantial
influence in the seeking, achievement and maintenance of something
called success.
The best, and most intellectually
substantial, part of the article was a quote from the academic world
that, in summary, stated possibly Americans need to rethink the
definition of the American Dream, putting less focus on having a huge
house and lots of cars and more focus on building successful
communities. Whiles supporting our families is certainly important, “we
need to scale back what the American Dream means to us.”
And
may I add, we must be more critical of what we read in the news and not
be so childishly willing to accept everything in print as true and
factual.
(from http://spookhandy.com/wp/biography/)
". . . Spook Handy was No Musical Genius As a Kid ~ He played no instrument, owned no records, and didn’t even have a radio until he was in high school. In fact, he didn’t make the first cut when he tried out for Glee Club in 5th grade.
But he Had a Dream ~ His love for music dates back to his first time watching the Beatles perform on TV. That day a seed was planted – a vision, a possibility of still being a fun loving person when he grew up. And little was anyone to know that one day that seed would sprout.
And The Dream Grew ~ It happened on a stiflingly humid New Jersey morning the summer after graduating Rutgers University (Phi Beta Kappa) with a major in Math and Business. Spook had been offered several lucrative jobs in the actuarial field. He had been groomed for this career by his parents and teachers because he was good at math as a child. He had three job interviews lined up for the day. But…
Spook Always Carried with him a Lust for Living “Outside the Box” ~ His “what if” and “why not” questions raised many eyebrows. His unorthodox religious perspectives got him kicked out of Catholic school after 1st grade. And somewhere in the back of his mind he never gave up on the dream he had when he first saw the Beatles. So, on that fateful morning as he stood in the mirror hopelessly trying to tie his tie, a sudden and unforgiving truth overwhelmed him. The world of convention was not his fate. Sure, math came easy. But his lessons were to be learned through his heart, not his mind. That day he gave his suit and tie to the local thrift shop, bought a used Yahama guitar for $50 and set out to follow his heart’s dream. . ."
