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Sunday, March 9th, 2014
 3 Y, ¿por qué miras la paja que está en el ojo de tu hermano,
y no echas de ver la viga que está en tu propio ojo?
4 O, ¿cómo dirás a tu hermano: Déjame sacar la paja de tu ojo,
y he aquà la viga en tu propio ojo?
5 ¡Hipócrita! Saca primero la viga de tu propio ojo,
y entonces verás bien para sacar la paja del ojo de tu hermano.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye,
but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye;
and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye;
and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
posted afternoon of March 9th, 2014: 1 response
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Saturday, March 8th, 2014
Mantener enteras las cosas
Soy la ausencia
del campo
en el campo.
Así es
siempre.
A dondequiera que estoy
soy lo que falta.
Al avanzar
divido el aire
y siempre
entra el aire otra vez
para llenar los vacíos
que ha dejado mi cuerpo.
Tenemos todos motivos
para movernos.
Me muevo
para que se mantengan enteras las cosas.
posted afternoon of March 8th, 2014: 1 response
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from Funeral oration, at the death of JoaquÃn Pasos
by Carlos Martinez Rivas
tr. Jeremy Osner
The drum beat echoing across
the little parade ground,
as if we were at the funeral of some Hero:
that's how I'd like to begin. And just
as must be done, in these Rituals of Death, I'd like
to forget his death; to look to his life --
to the lives of all the heroes now extinguished,
heroes who just like him lit up the night down here --
for many is the young poet who has died in our time.
Across the centuries they call out and we hear
their voices blazing, their distant canticle --
from the depths of the night they call out and reply.
There's not so much that we can know of them: that they were young,
that their feet strode upon this earth. That they knew how to play some instrument.
That they felt the ocean breeze across their forehead,
and looked up to the hills. They loved some girl,
and scribbled all this down til late at night, and crossed lines out,
and one day died. And now their voices blaze in the night.
posted morning of March 8th, 2014: Respond
➳ More posts about Poets of Nicaragua
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Thursday, March 6th, 2014
posted evening of March 6th, 2014: Respond
➳ More posts about Pretty Pictures
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Sunday, March second, 2014
posted evening of March second, 2014: Respond
➳ More posts about Readings
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Having a nice weekend with a lot of musical content -- here's my contribution, played on my newly autographed fiddle!
posted afternoon of March second, 2014: Respond
➳ More posts about Fiddling
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Check it out,
posted morning of March second, 2014: 1 response
➳ More posts about the Family Album
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Best picture of Robyn Hitchcock I was able to get this weekend (and looks like tomorrow's show is going to be snowed out) is this, during the encores last night:
posted morning of March second, 2014: 1 response
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Saturday, March first, 2014
posted morning of March first, 2014: Respond
➳ More posts about Reading aloud
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So there you are with about sixty other Fegmaniax sitting on
folding chairs in
Mark C.'s studio in Freehold (Central Jersey -- just around the corner
from where Springsteen went to high school), everybody's introducing
themselves and chatting and feeling psyched for the evening's show. And
Robyn Hitchcock comes in! He notes as he walks up to the stage how this
venue is a bit like an airplane cabin -- five seats on each side, please
keep the center aisle clear; take time to locate the exit nearest you, and
if you need to use the restroom, please use the appropriate one for your
class. If you think somebody else paid more for their ticket than you did
for yours, defer to them. "So everybody was here last time, right? ..." He takes off his coat and picks up his
guitar; wearing a hot pink shirt with embroidery and a green scarf that
gets tangled in the strap as he takes it off. "I don't wear glasses when
I'm performing, I just wanted to see you for a moment -- now I'll return to
my womblike state of myopia," and hangs his specs off the side of a lamp
next to the mic stand, and starts to play. "You'll never have the damned
thing out," he sings, and you sink into the beat of Surgery
(Gotta Let Ths Hen Out!, 1985†).
"This is a song about the emotional baggage you carry with you from
one relationship to another. I didn't figure that out for about 20 years
after I wrote it. Could you give me some delay on the vocals here, Mark,
this is sort of a rock & roll sea chanty." The Ghost
Ship (You & Oblivion, 1995). I wonder where my love has
been, tonight -- "Just imagine I'm Art Garfunkel:" Swirling
(Queen Elvis, 1989), which "I wrote when I was in the middle of
splitting up with someone, and also splitting up with with the second
person... it was a memorable experience." He explains how we
have to be angry, or we wouldn't be alive -- so "do you indulge
your quite justified rage at existence, or bite the bullet and inherit the
earth?"
From here he moves straight into The Devil's
Coachman (also from Queen Elvis). A bit of a digression
here about how his guitar strings are all worn out -- just yesterday they
were fresh and new, like tulips! "But thrash on tulips for a few hours,
they're not tulips anymore. You're just beatin' on that daffodil, baby! ...I
see we're just over Iceland now." Travel in the future, you learn, will be
much easier: just reduce yourself to a powder and FedEx yourself to your
destination to be rehydrated. "Wilbur! You're here! Welcome to Marin
County." All you've got to do is Ride... (Perspex Island, 1991) "Oxycontin
for mama, baby Jesus for the rest of us:" Madonna of the
Wasps (Queen Elvis again), going out to P. Buck.
"The practice known as vudu has been around for a long time. (Like
most things.) When you wish ill on somebody, a tiny grain inside you dies.
But you can't wish well on everybody -- can you? What do you think when
you look in the mirror? -- besides wishing for a face lift..." Wax Doll (yes,
Queen Elvis).
And now the harmonica is out! Drink a little coffee! ("We proudly brew
Starbucks™! ...How else can you brew Starbucks™?
shamefacedly?...") And a bit of tuning, tuning "as an agent provocateur,
pushing the string farther out of tune and then bringing it back so it
sounds better," leads into Queen Elvis (Eye, 1990) A bit of a digression
here asking whether the lamp by the mic stand (not the one he hung his
glasses on, a different one) is a Tiffany lamp... What distinguishes it
from a Tiffany lamp? Could it be made into a Tiffany lamp? Various
people from the audience are throwing in commentary, differing on a
variety of points, which is good -- "Consensus is very disturbing; if
everyone thinks along the same lines it usually means there's some kind
of fascism afoot." Maybe tonight you're dreaming... Arms of Love
(Respect, 1993). "If you're in Nashville, be sure to stop by the 5
Spot... especially if you like smoke and alcohol, like I do. (I'm from the
past, where it's not dangerous.)" More tuning -- "this guitar took a fall
today, coming into Amboy, South Amboy, it might be a problem..." -- and One Long Pair of
Eyes (Queen Elvis!) is the last of the back-catalogue tunes.
He closes out the set with two covers, Oh Yeah by
Roxy Music and She Belongs to Me by Tubby the Evangelist, and a
new song not yet released*, with the lyric "A window of bliss/ that
opened just once/ for the price of a kiss."
The encore happens in Mark's dining room next to the potluck supper,
and is 100% Basement Tapes tunes -- "Tiny Montgomery", "Lo and
Behold", "Quinn the Eskimo", and "Open the Door, Richard". You have some
baked beans and some pasta salad and a beer, and marvel at the glow of
happiness on everybody's faces.
 †(On the video tape of GLTHO -- It was not released on a record until You & Oblivion)
* (as far as I can tell -- not able to find anything about it on Google or in conversation with other fans.)
posted morning of March first, 2014: 6 responses
➳ More posts about Robyn Hitchcock -- gig notes
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