Name: "A Blessing for a Friend on the Arrival of Illness" by John O'Donohue [bonus track] by On Being Studios in Favorites
Duration: 2 min 22 s
Description: An exclusive track of John O'Donohue reading his poem "A Blessing for a Friend on the Arrival of Illness" during his interview with Krista Tippett on October 1, 2007 in the studios of APM in St. Paul, Minnesota. This poem is included in the On Being show "The Inner Landscape of Beauty." Download the mp3 of the produced show at onbeing.org.

Favorites

This year, piano and coffee turns five, and to celebrate, we are releasing our first compilation: Realismo Mágico — a conceptual project featuring unconventional works by new and old friends we have made along the way.

Inspired by magical realism, an artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy, this special release presents unheard material by twelve exceptional musicians — from experimental sound artist Martyna Basta to award-winning film composer Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres, and from poly-instrumental duo Brueder Selke to prolific pianist and producer John Hayes.

Each artist has contributed with a new track that invites the listeners to submerge into their very own musical universes, which, at the same time, have been re-shaped by their interpretation of magical realism. We start off on our journey with the delicate nostalgia of Tim Linghaus, passing through Jakob Lindhagen and Vargkvint’s modern take on the story of a Norse mythological creature, followed by the harmonic ambiguity in Simeon Walker’s pleasingly strong dialogue between felted piano and drums. Later on, John Hayes shares with us a chaotic composition born out of samples from an old clock in his parents’ garage and saturated voices, which precedes Lucy Claire’s processed hydrophone recordings of seaweeds and starfishes in Australian waters. Ondes Martenot, pump organ, zither, analogue synthesizers, vocal processing, musical saw, and bowed gongs are some of the unusual elements to be found on this eclectic yet coherently unified record.

Realismo Mágico has been conceptually crafted and musically curated by Peruvian composer Sergio Díaz De Rojas, and beautifully depicted by illustrator Jordan Amy Lee and graphic designer Celia Fernández González.

Simeon Walker - Saturnine

Start Close In

Zachary Cale "Blue Moth"

From the album Modern Country, out now on Merge Records.

Modern Country

William Tyler "Gone Clear"

Something I've Been Meaning To Say

Painovoimaa, valoa

Compiling four pieces for four different ensembles, David Lang’s "writing on water" is a free-flowing recording that presents several unusual and rarely revealed facets of the composer who is perhaps most well-known for his monumental choral works (the Pulitzer-winning "the little match girl passion" and the more recent epic "the national anthems"), as well as his poignant song cycles ("death speaks" and "love fail"). 

From the struggle between dissonance and melody portrayed in “pierced” to the sweeping, oceanic scope of the title piece, the music defines a path that can be as serpentine as it is rigid (“forced march”) or as minimal as it is immense. Riveting performances by Alarm Will Sound, Real Quiet, Crash Ensemble, the London Sinfonietta, Synergy Vocals and more make writing on water an electrifying, free-spirited and rambunctious addition to the Cantaloupe catalog.

writing on water

David Lang & Alarm Will Sound – increase

An exclusive track of John O'Donohue reading his poem "Beannacht" during his interview with Krista Tippett on October 1, 2007 in the studios of APM in St. Paul, Minnesota. This poem is included in the On Being show "The Inner Landscape of Beauty." Download the mp3 of the produced show at onbeing.org.

"Beannacht" by John O'Donohue [bonus track]

An exclusive track of John O'Donohue reading his poem "A Blessing for a Friend on the Arrival of Illness" during his interview with Krista Tippett on October 1, 2007 in the studios of APM in St. Paul, Minnesota. This poem is included in the On Being show "The Inner Landscape of Beauty." Download the mp3 of the produced show at onbeing.org.

"A Blessing for a Friend on the Arrival of Illness" by John O'Donohue [bonus track]

Artist: Nick Zammuto
Title: Tonight We'll Go For A Ride
Album: We The Animals: An Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Release Date: November 9, 2018 Digital / February 8, 2019 Physical

Pre-Order: www.temporaryresidence.com/products/trr308

We The Animals is the award-winning new film from Jeremiah Zagar (In A Dream). Based on the best-selling novel by Justin Torres, We The Animals is Zagar’s first narrative feature. It reunites Zagar with Nick Zammuto, the renowned composer and co-founder of beloved collage-pop pioneers, the Books. Inspired by the film’s setting in rural upstate New York – and influenced by the early ambient electronic music that galvanized the Books two decades ago – Zammuto pairs that earthen, wooded isolation with dynamic pulses of customized electronics and sparse, crystalline layers of melodic soft synths. The juxtaposition is arresting, and gives the soundtrack a unique heft befitting of its subject matter – and betraying of its minimal instrumentation. Beautifully edited and sequenced to act as both a companion to the film and a standalone album, We The Animals: An Original Motion Picture Soundtrack is as subtle as it is startling, and succeeds in making even the heaviest emotions feel momentarily weightless.

We The Animals: An Official Motion Picture Soundtrack

Nick Zammuto - Tonight We'll Go For A Ride

This is the fourth and final talk in a series titled “The Mind, Mindfulness, & Me”.
Here we examine the spiritual paradigm which should be foundational to how we live in and interact with the world.  

You are an eternal spiritual being, the seer, the inhabitant of the body.  Your presence makes it so that your body exhibits symptoms of life.  When you leave the body, the true nature of the body manifests as dead matter. But you also have another covering, a subtle body, comprised of the mind, the intelligence, and the false ego or false concept of the ‘self’.

We all possess a wonderful higher faculty, the intelligence or Buddhi.  This faculty empowers us to be able to step back from the mind, even at times when the mind is overwhelmed by heightened emotions, and effectively control the mind.  Mindfulness means to use this faculty to control the mind rather than having the mind control me. When this happens (being controlled by the mind) the soul is considered lost. The Bhagavat Purana says:

“This uncontrolled mind is the greatest enemy of the living entity. If one neglects it or gives it a chance, it will grow more and more powerful and will become victorious. Although it is not factual, it is very strong. It covers the constitutional position of the self/atma.”  BP 5.11.17

A wonderful verse from the Katha Upanisad paints the big picture:

"The individual is the passenger in the chariot of the material body, and intelligence is the driver. Mind is the driving instrument, and the senses are the horses. The self is thus the enjoyer or sufferer in the association of the mind and senses. So it is understood by great thinkers."   Katha Upanisad 1.3.3-4

4 The Body Is A Chariot

Groundbreaking Peabody Award-winning conversation about the big questions of meaning, hosted by Krista Tippett. Every Thursday a new discovery about the immensity of our lives — and frequent special features like poetry, music and Q + A with Krista.

"A Blessing for a Friend on the Arrival of Illness" by John O'Donohue [bonus track]

On Being Studios

Recent comments

Léoul

Related tracks