My Muse ~ Movies, Music & Books
Journeys and words inspired by the arts...
I’m going to tell you a story about someone who became a part of my life in a way few other people ever experience. Well, I wonder about that. I wonder how many other people go about their day-to-day lives only vaguely aware that there’s something unusual going on in […]
Camel’s lilting, melancholic and epic instrumental, Ice is among my favourite pieces of music. Discovered on a late-night college radio station in 1979 in Rochester, New York, it stands out on the album I Can See Your House From Here (despite the DJ’s touting of Remote Romance as, “Best on […]
In 1994 I criss-crossed Australia, much of it across the expansive aridity of the so-called Red Centre, and all of that was sharing a ’79 Holden Gemini with my travel partner. A Gemini is a sub-compact sedan. This one had no air-con, and so we trundled across the expanse with […]
OK… something to end this very loooong, but very productive day. A song that I will always associate with a beautiful beach in a faraway land and a short strip of magical bistros and restaurants barely more than a stone’s throw from the beach. There were sacred sunrises, and uncanny […]
Aside from being among the most beautiful songs in Sheryl Crow’s very large catalogue of extraordinary, Chances Are lyrically reaches deep down inside and churns about, exploring within. The lyrics seem to be about trying to make a difficult relationship work, but I enjoy reading it as a light on […]
I was digging into Stephen Mitchell’s The Second Book of the Dao one day back in January (over a lovely Red Snapper Soup @ Granville Island) when a passage in the second chapter inspired the following poem.
Metaphor. I love metaphor. Matches. I just posted one about matches. Matches and pain. This one isn’t about pain. Not at all. It’s about perfection. This one is about the fire that burns inside each of us. Well, maybe there’s a little pain. It’s the pain you feel in your […]
Heart’s Dog & Butterfly has been on my mind and in my ears a lot the last few days, both the album and the title song from it. I love the song for the mirthful image of a dog futilely leaping after a fluttering butterfly, and for its wisdom in […]
I’ve always loved this scene introducing Peter O’Toole in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. In a film rife with extraordinary storytelling and wisdom, it remains my favourite. In hindsight perhaps it’s the spiritual undertone of Lawrence’s statement that’s always intrigued me most because, of course, Lawrence isn’t only talking about […]
I haven’t been living the sacred enough lately. Sometimes I forget how sacred life is, become caught up in the mundane, the day-to-day of existing in a corporeal world, in the meanness that can be everyday life. I stop, for a while, living a life that is sacred. I’m often […]
