My Muse ~ Movies, Music & Books
Journeys and words inspired by the arts...
This is, I am So beautiful and fierce This is, violence And holy words And I swear fealty To smile beyond dignity To be kissed and salted To be kissed and salted Oh to kiss and be salted By love extreme This is Veda Hille. A pianist friend tells […]
Sometimes the words bring a song to mind. This poem was in my thoughts this morning and as the words of it washed over me a melody rose out of words. And out of a melody rose k.d. lang’s wail, Crying. Roy Orbison wrote about a cry arising from reasons […]
John Denver was a gentle, loving soul of considerable talent and purpose. He sang with heartfelt clarity and graceful gravity, qualities his music often reflected. Annie’s Song is ostensibly a love song, John Denver singing a poetic list of metaphors for how grand the experience of loving a woman is, […]
I can remember the first time I heard this album, Zuma. I was all of 20 years old, ski bumming in Whistler, BC, and gathered with a bunch of friends after the bars had closed. I can’t remember her name. She was skinny and not very attractive in any traditional […]
Blade Runner is among my favourite films. In a veritable symphony of cinematic elements — cinematography, script, production design, soundtrack, direction, acting — it doesn’t miss a note. The film touches on all the major themes of the human condition: love, death, good and evil, redemption, justice, ethics, greed, passion. […]
It was a couple years ago that this piece of music resoundingly re-entered my life. The spring in Vancouver seemed to be a never-ending stream of sunny, tranquil days, riding my bicycle along the miles and miles of sea wall ringing the city. This is a spectacularly beautiful city once […]
The text below (with some new edits) was posted as a link on my Facebook profile a week shy of three months ago. I’d just returned from a nearly 3 month-long road trip through the western US, preceded by 2 months in Australia. The story it tells begins to describe […]
A dream is a place where a wish and a fear meet. When the wish and the fear are exactly the same, we call the dream a nightmare. ~ Gregory David Roberts Shantaram
Sarah McLachlan, I’ve been told, has perfect pitch. Her performance at the opening ceremony was also pitch-perfect. She had me the very first time she flashed that smile of hers — bright as the sun, and open like a flower in full bloom. That may seem a superficial reason to […]
