To try and speed up my music making process and getting more things to completion, I made this track on a one hour timer. Hope you enjoy!

Pond on the Hilltop

A cover of this great song, played by Cavendish - Peter Rechsteiner and Rob Noordeloos.

James Taylor - You've Got A Friend

We lived north of the future, days opened
letters with a child’s signature, a raspberry, a page of sky. 

My grandmother threw tomatoes
from her balcony, she pulled imagination like a blanket            
over my head. I painted
my mother’s face. She understood
loneliness, hid the dead in the earth like partisans.
 
The night undressed us (I counted
its pulse) my mother danced, she filled the past
with peaches, casseroles. At this, my doctor laughed,
    his granddaughter
touched my eyelid – I kissed  
                                                            
the back of her knee. The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail.
And my classmate invented twenty names for Jew.
He was an angel, he had no name,
we wrestled, yes. My grandfathers fought

the German tanks on tractors, I kept a suitcase full
of Brodsky’s poems. The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail. 
At night, I woke to whisper: yes, we lived. 
We lived, yes, don’t say it was a dream. 

At the local factory, my father
took a handful of snow, put it in my mouth.
The sun began a routine narration,
whitening their bodies: mother, father dancing, moving
as the darkness spoke behind them.
It was April. The sun washed the balconies, April. 

I retell the story the light etches
into my hand: Little book, go to the city without me.
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My melody to Kaminsky's words: 2-3
https://www.ilyakaminsky.com
Pic by Henn Kim
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This sung-poem had an unusual start, perhaps synchronistic, wu wei, ‘in tune’. 

I wandered into the book shop with no clear aim, except to stop by the poetry corner. Felt tired. One book, longer than the others, its black spine standing out, insisted on being read. I objected to wasting time and energy; it wasn't for me, but it insisted: ‘Starry Night, Blurry Dreams’ by HENN KIM (in capitals). As I opened it, a new song started over the shop speakers: ‘Starry Starry Night’. I was…gobsmacked. What could it mean? A line of poetry on one page accompanied a drawing on the other. Good - but still, not for me. I looked either side of the book. One had Milk and Honey by poet Rupi Kaur I'd been recommended just a few days before. The other had a slim book I didn't know: Dancing in Odessa. It might work with song. I had to do something with this synch. 

On the way to the cashier, another song began over the shop speakers: Do you want to know a secret? Of course I do. An early Beatles song, but with an ethereal quality moving it to another zone. The cashier shazammed and said it was Fairground Attraction. Following her brought me to the music section, where three books called and were answered.

With all this magic in the air, I looked forward to the poems. Oh but where was there anything to put into song? The critics all raved about its musicality, but I saw only musical phrases, not verses. So I just spoke a poem in the train. Then as certain rhythms of words and phrases arose so did the idea of song without verses. It was evening; the platform was empty, and I recorded.

Dancing In Odessa - Ilya Kaminsky (in song)

Bring me all of your dreams,  
You dreamers. 
 Bring me all of your 
 Heart melodies 
That I may wrap them 
 In a blue cloud-cloth 
Away from the too rough fingers 
Of the world. 

------------
My melody to Hughes' words
p64 8-14sc
From The Weary Blues (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926) by Langston Hughes.
Dreams - https://soundcloud.com/user-734457954/dreams-langston-hughes-in-song?si=761e8412f6864530aa6f67783c5242e8&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing 
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Langston often takes the part of another in his poems, and I am wondering who The Dream Keeper is here. In his poem ‘Dreams’, he says ‘Hold fast to your dreams’, while here he says give them to the dream keeper to stay safe from the too rough fingers of the world. The first says stay true to your dreams despite all the knocks you suffer, while this seems to say give me your dreams to avoid the hard knocks. 

Did he change his mind? Is he testing two viewpoints? Or is there some place where the opposites meet? If the Dream Keeper is God or the Poet, the message might be - put your dreams into their safekeeping, so they remain untarnished, unbroken and potent while you fight for them, like, perhaps, the flag that flies high while the battle rages all around it. 

What would this mean in practice? I suppose do not let setbacks destroy your dream. 'Dream' links to 'Heart melodies' - so perhaps connected with love.  If the dream is valid, its day may yet come. In this respect, it relates to Whittier’s Don’t Quit.

The Dream Keeper - Langston Hughes (in song)

Angelia D. Angel - Millions Of Years Still Love You

Novo Começo

Be Free

Warm - (Piano Only Instrumental)

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.

A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and full of dark advice.

Cold worlds shake from the oar.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;

Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.

—————————————-
My melody to words by Sylvia Plath
SPlatt 93 x2
————————-
This seems a dream about death and perhaps suicide and what lies on the other side. In the Greek myth, Charon ferries the dead souls across to the next world. Are the paper people made from the black trees that drink here, perhaps of the water of mortality, of death, that covers Canada?

Among this inevitable death of all, and in the water of death, however, live the water flowers that ‘filter’ a little light. So if black symbolises death, then light must be life. The flowers filter the light, perhaps of immortality, so that it is a limited life. And the leaves of the flowers want us to live this life and not hurry away to the immortal light, for example by suicide. The spirit of death lies within us, of mortality. And it is in the fishes - they who live in the mortal water.

And yet there is another element in these waters - the snag, the unexpected obstacle, in this case, perhaps, to the continuing pursuit of mortal life. This snag has a ‘pale hand’ - half-way between the light and dark - and it is waving goodbye. The leaves of the flowers filtering the light do not want us hurrying to death, but the snag says, go, farewell.

Immediately after this farewell, stars open among the lillies. No longer is the light filtered. Its direct light calls as irresistibly as the ancient Greek sirens. And we are not blinded by it; we are astounded by it - stunned, greatly surprised, says the dictionary. The context of this great surprise suggests more a positive than a negative surprise from a blinding starlight that does not blind the writer.

——————————
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath
Sylvia Plath Oct 27, 1932 – Feb 11, 1963) was an American poet and author. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for The Colossus and Other Poems (1960), Ariel (1965), and The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her suicide in 1963. The Collected Poems was published in 1981…For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Plath graduated from Smith College… and the University of Cambridge, England, where she was a student at Newnham College…She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England. Their relationship was tumultuous and, in her letters, Plath alleges abuse at his hands. They had two children before separating in 1962…

Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life and was treated multiple times with early versions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). She died by suicide. 

Plath met poet Ted Hughes on February 25, 1956…We kept writing poems to each other. Then it just grew out of that, I guess, a feeling that we both were writing so much and having such a fine time doing it, we decided that this should keep on… In June 1957, Plath and Hughes moved to the United States…The couple moved back to England in December 1959 and lived in London at 3 Chalcot Square, near the Primrose Hill area of Regent's Park, where an English Heritage plaque records Plath's residence…in July 1962 Plath discovered Hughes was having an affair with Wevill; in September, Plath and Hughes separated.

Beginning in October 1962, Plath experienced a great burst of creativity and composed most of the poems on which her reputation now rests…

Crossing the Water - Sylvia Plath (in song)

John Milton - On His Blindness - Poem

1 Treaty 
2 Going Home 
3 Famous Blue Raincoat 
4 Dance Me to the End of Love (Live) 
5 If I Didn't Have Your Love 
6 Never Any Good 
7 You Want It Darker 
8 It Seemed the Better Way 
9 On That Day 
10 Everybody Knows 
11 Suzanne 
12 Darkness 
13 Tower of Song 
14 Closing Time 
15 Anthem 
16 So Long, Marianne 
17 If It Be Your Will 
18 Steer Your Way 
19 Hallelujah 
20 In My Secret Life 
21 Lullaby 
22 Leaving the Table 
23 The Future 
24 I'm Your Man 
25 Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye 
26 Take This Waltz

Leonard Cohen

For the best experience, 
-  Click on the song's picture for words and notes.
-  in Album/Playlist/Spotlight, first click on the big picture to the left, then on the new page click the track title. Really, it's worth the effort :) 

With Blake you will see his painting too. Each picture is in dialogue with the words (not just illustrating them).

Bards have combined music & poetry from earliest times. Many poets continue the connection, not least William Blake. But often their melodies are lost or neglected.

Crossing the Water - Sylvia Plath (in song)

Ian

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