To be born female in this world since its very beginning is to have experienced a certain kind of powerlessness, sourced, very simply, in a relative lack of muscle mass and the particular burdens of childbirth. These brute facts of biology have dictated women being less effective hunters of prey, and thus subject to domination by their more physically imposing male counterparts and sometimes companions. (Talk about an old story…) But underneath that competitive imbalance lies an often latent, sometimes wayward, increasingly confident and directed ferocity. An inner strength gathering itself over eons now, cracking the foundations of male hegemony…
Search Results for: brilliant songs
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The assaults, the responses, the anguish, the questions, the cruelty, the concern, the reprisals, the relentless tsunami of invective and resultant anxiety. The anger and exhaustion, which is largely the intent. The despair which creeps in quietly underneath, simmering… And still, with Maya Angelou, we must rise. But not today. Not this moment. We must protect ourselves, too, by tending regularly to our zones of joy. Today, beauty, for beauty’s sake. (And our own.) Though with a loop back into history near the end. *** *** Leoš Janáček (pronounced “Lowsh Yun-ahh-check”) was a Czech classical composer who made abundant use…
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All right, so we will let pass without further comment the strange coincidence of the holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.—and all the noble ideals he stood and died for—falling this year on the same day as the inauguration of the incoming president. We shall instead focus on another profoundly decent man who also called us to our better angels over a long career of music-making. I, perhaps like you, have sung David Mallett’s music out loud on various occasions over many years now without even knowing who he was. His “Garden Song” (“Inch by inch, row by row….”) has…
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It’s not every day that a journalist—particularly one as sober and unflamboyant as longtime economics professor and “New York Times” columnist Paul Krugman—has a song written in his honor. But then Loudon Wainwright, whose “deep ache of laughter” I’ve written about before in this space, is no everyday songwriter. Wainwright’s musings on the human condition most often walk the razor’s edge between heartache and mirth, with “The Krugman Blues” angling decidedly toward the “mirth” end of that equation. Not that Paul Krugman is big on mirth himself. Which is part of the reason, no doubt, that Wainwright has so much…
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“It’s hard to see the surface…from the bottom” sings Oklahoma-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Parker Millsap in his fiery “Dammit” anthem that fuses near-despair with a defiant, emphatic hope. As so often happens, I stumbled across the impressive, infectious body of work Millsap has been producing for the better part of a dozen years now while I was looking for something else to complement a few thoughts I was hoping to draw forth to help get myself—and maybe you?—through these next days, weeks, oh hell, let’s say it: years. Four of them. So many feelings sloshing around about that prospect, words pouring…