| Favorite Albums of 1997 |
Music, more particularly the marriage of tunes and words, is among my main interests and pleasures. I maintain web sites for a few performing songwriters, out of deep appreciation for their art:
Can it be that we both see the same hard-hearted moon?
- Jack Hardy, "Dun Do Shuile"
There are things in this life a man just does not get to choose.
- Bill Morrissey, "Man from out of Town"
A brother needs a sister
To watch what he can do,
To protect and to torture,
To boss around--it's true;
But a brother will defend her
For a sister's love is pure,
Because she's thinks he's wonderful
When he is not so sure.
- Loudon Wainwright III, "The Picture"
And the world is big and full of autumn,
And I'm hungry as can be...
- Greg Brown, "Brand New '64 Dodge"
Other musical and poetic interests, some of whom already have good web pages and some who don't yet:
People don't live or die;
People just float.
- Bob Dylan, "Man in the Long Black Coat"
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.
- Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"
...arriving, as I did, at the end of that age, I caught whiffs of something
old as the glaciers. There were ghosts in the stones, in the trees, and
the walls, and each field and hill had several. The elder people knew about
these things and would refer to them in personal terms...
- Laurie Lee (British writer), Cider with Rosie
Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose
Upon a morn in June,
And sae I flourish'd on the morn,
And sae was pu'd or [ere] noon.
- Robert Burns (18th-century Scottish poet and songwriter), "Sweet Are the Banks"
And I wish that I were made of stone
So that I would not have to see
A beauty impossible to define,
A beauty impossible to believe.
- Nick Cave, "Brompton Oratory"
There were no cuckoos, no sycamores;
We played about the forest floor,
Underneath the silver maples,
The balsams, and the sky.
We popped the heads off dandelions,
Assuming roles from nursery rhymes,
And rested on a river bank,
And grew up by and by.
- Kate and Anna McGarrigle, "Goin' back to Harlan"
Did you ever stand and shiver
Just because you were looking at a river?
- Ramblin' Jack Elliott, "912 Greens"
Hace algún tiempo en ese lugar [Some time ago in that place
Donde hoy los bosques se visten Where today the woods are dressed
de espino, in hawthorn,
Se oyó la voz de un poeta gritar: The voice of a poet was heard to cry out:
"Caminante, no hay camino; "Traveler, there is no road;
Se hace camino al andar." One makes his road as he goes."]
- Joan Manuel Serrat (Spanish/Catalan singer/songwriter),
"Cantares" (Machado/Serrat)
First we forgot where we'd planted those bulbs last year,
Then we forgot that we'd planted at all.
- Dar Williams, "February"
But I woke with the frost
And noticed she'd lost
The veil that covered her eyes...
- Al Stewart, "Leave It"
For your amusement: "Along the Same Line"