• Poetry

    Shaking the Dust From Your Shoes, Your Life: Dorianne Laux’s “Antilamentation”

    September 28, 2024 - By 

    A rarity here, I know, but I’m none too sure I can say much more about this poem that isn’t stark raving obvious and powerful already in its scorching, emphatic admonition to just get the hell out of the way of the life you have lived and come to rest in it. (But that doesn’t mean I won’t try…) But…wow! Actually, Dorianne Laux (pronounced “Low”) starts with a “Pow!” in her first two-word declarative sentence that runs us pretty much head-first into the poem’s meaning, message and takeaway: “Regret nothing.” She doesn’t plunk an exclamation point on the end of…

  • Philosophy - Politics/Culture

    Chaos and Form: The Battle for America’s Soul Has Ancient, Archetypal Roots

    September 21, 2024 - By 

    “I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.” —From Friedrich Nietzsche‘s “Thus Spake Zarathustra” (1883) The older I get and the more I am able to look back on history writ large, and the more I see that the age-old tussle between form and chaos, chaos and form, will be with us till the very end of time. (Although the question of whether there will ever be an end to time is itself a tussle among physicists…

  • Music

    Brilliant Cover Songs #2: Kings Return’s “Sir Duke”

    September 14, 2024 - By 

    I’d been watching and listening for a good mesmerizing minute to the second selection in this “Brilliant Cover Songs” series when I tapped the pause button and went back to the beginning to confirm what had suddenly dawned on me just the moment before: Were these guys really creating this seeming symphony of sound without employing any instrument other than their gloriously blended human voices? Sure enough—the four members of the Dallas-based “Kings Return” only sound like they have the backing of multiple instruments and/or a robust choir as they create a lush musical soundscape powered only by voices that traverse…

  • History - Politics/Culture

    Behold—an Intellectual Feast in Prime Time! The Mike Wallace Interviews (1957-1960)

    September 8, 2024 - By 

    Full disclosure: I about cried when I came across the video interviews discussed in this post, a few precious tidbits of which I will share with you below. My near-tears were not from joy, though there was some of that, too. Mostly, the little emotional roiling going on inside me in the moments after discovering the Mike Wallace interviews of more than 60 years ago was from sheer amazement. Amazement that within my own lifetime, there was a time when serious discussion on matters of deep philosophical, legal, political, religious and cultural importance was presented on prime time television. Not…