Voices that matter

Sam Cooke said this when told he had a beautiful voice: He said, “Well that’s very kind of you, but voices ought not to be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth.” Think about that the next time you are listening to a singer.   

            Bob Dylan, in a speech accepting the 2015 MusiCares Person of The Year award 

 

 

 

 

 

History does not always repeat itself.
        Sometimes it just yells,
                'Can't you remember anything I told you?'
                        and lets fly with a club.

                        John W. Campbell, Analog Science Fiction/Fact magazine

 

 

 

 

 

More time

Which of us is not saying to himself ―
    which of us has not been saying to himself all his life:
            "I shall alter that when I have a little more time"?
                We never shall have any more time.
                        We have, and we have always had, all the time there is.

                                Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day

Beginning

If the angel deigns to come
    it will be because you have convinced her,
        not by tears but by your humble resolve
            to be always beginning;
                to be a beginner.

                        Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to Merline

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Messenger

Someone has been painting
NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE
across the backs of bus benches
blotting out the advertisements beneath
with green so the the strong silver letters
appear clearly at corners,
in front of taco stands
and hardware stores.

Whoever did this
must have done it in the dark,
clanging paint cans block to block
or a couple of sprays --
they must have really
wanted to do it.

Among the many distasteful graffiti on earth
this line seems somehow honorable.
It wants to help us.
It could belong to anyone,
Latinas, Arabs, Jews,
priests, glue sniffers.
Mostly I wonder about
what happened or didn't happen
in the painter's life
to give her this line.
I don't wonder about the person
who painted HIV under the STOPs
on the stop signs in the same way.

NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE

Did some miracle startle
the painter into action
or is she waiting and hoping?

Does she ride the bus with her face
pressed to the window looking
for her own message?

Daily the long wind brushes YES
through the trees.

                     Naomi Shihab Nye 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social creatures

We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being.
    The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch,
        free from the past, or unindebted to others,
            could not conceivably be more wrong.

                                    Karl Popper, Popper, Bryan Magee