Category: Insight
Deva Premal: the tranquility of Gayatri Mantra
A day of stress and frustrations and, in the end, a recognition that I’m not ready to move forward on a course of action requiring a one-year commitment…not just yet…not without a more careful consideration of the options and possibilities. So, a little something to calm the soul…. This is perhaps my favourite of Deva…
Missy Higgins: You have opened up a new door; you can steer
This song featured in a beautiful and moving story told in the comments of of a now defunct post, Kate Miller-Heidke doesn’t like to be ‘poked’. I’ve been looking at the lyrics…I can see why it would have touched so deeply on that night. It’s fascinating to me how the lyrics, or passages in a…
Roberta Flack & Johnny Cash: The first time ever I heard your voice
I love covers. Have I said that before? It’s always a bit of a thrill when I find some beloved song masterfully covered by another artist. (See my post regarding Feist’s transcendant cover of Secret Heart.) What I also love are the emotional inflections each cover artist brings to a song. For example, eighteen renditions…
Who are they? A former supergroup at the Super Bowl with still a bit of super left.
I was never much of a The Who fan.. Sure, I enjoyed the songs I heard of theirs, but I’ve never bought an album, wouldn’t pick one out of someone else’s collection to play, and never would’ve bothered going to a concert…until some buddies at work in the late ’80s cajoled me into joining them…
The beginning of a beautiful friendship: Rick and Louie in Casablanca
As much as I’m a huge fan of Casablanca, I’m a bit ambivalent about the ending between Rick and Ilsa. Fortunately, the film fully redeems itself in the final moments between Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains.
A Manual on the Art of Fiction, fact and truth
It is only in the vocabulary of very careless thinkers that the words truth and fiction are regarded as antithetic. A genuine antithesis subsists between the words fact and fiction; but fact and truth are not synonymous. The novelist forsakes the realm of fact in order that he may better tell the truth, and lures…
Butterflies: Hope for the caterpillars
While we’re still fresh with images of butterflies… ‘How does one become a butterfly?’ she asked pensively. ‘You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.’ ~ Trina Paulus, from Hope for the Flowers I posted this as a note on my Facebook profile a while…
Speaking of spew… Jack Nicholson can’t handle the Witches of Eastwick.
This post in response to a now defunct post, “Jack spews the truth and nothing but” in which the author lauds Nicholson’s memorable line from A Few Good Men… “You can’t handle the truth!” and a few other memorable film quotes. I’d add to that list Jack Nicholson’s delivery of “Wait ’til they get a…
Winnie the Pooh and the Vinegar Tasters
The Vinegar tasters is among my favourite allegories and provides an excellent introduction to the three philosophies that dominated China through thousands of years: Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. For me, the most important of these is Taoism, a gentle, soulful and luminous philosophy. I’m going to be lazy and let someone else explain it all.…
