{"id":16156,"date":"2014-11-14T11:38:28","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T16:38:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=16156"},"modified":"2014-11-14T11:38:28","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T16:38:28","slug":"just-dancing-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/just-dancing-through\/","title":{"rendered":"Just Dancing Through"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"top\"><\/a><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mIbbWR8FwxQ?rel=0\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: black-and-white still images over Leonard Cohen&#8217;s &#8220;Dance Me to the End of Love,&#8221; sung by Madeleine Peyroux. (<a title=\"Lyrics: 'SongTitle'\" onclick=\"javascript:wopenScroll('https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/lyrics\/dancemetotheendoflove_madeleinepeyroux.html', 'new', 500, 600); return false;\">Lyrics here<\/a>.) See <a href=\"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/just-dancing-through#note\">the note<\/a> at the foot of this post for more information.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From <a title=\"whiskey river: Mel Weitsman, on dancing through time\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2014\/11\/the-way-we-move-within-time-is-kind-of.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The way we move within time is a kind of dance. We are always keeping time within one rhythm or another. Music, of course, is exemplary. One reason we love music so much is that it&#8217;s so complete and the notes harmonize with one another in time to make a beautiful, ideal statement; not like our daily life where the rhythms are more subtle or hard to find or are constantly being interrupted or changed in ways that aren&#8217;t so easy to handle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Mel Weitsman [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.abuddhistlibrary.com\/Buddhism\/C%20-%20Zen\/Modern%20Teachers\/Mel%20Weitsman\/The%20Form%20of%20Our%20Life.htm\" title=\"A Buddhist Library: 'The Form of Our Life,' by Mel Weitsman\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: 'Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,' by Barbara Crooker\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2014\/11\/sometimes-i-am-startled-out-of-myself.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,<br \/>\nflapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek<br \/>\nacross the sky made me think about my life, the places<br \/>\nof brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief<br \/>\nhas strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,<br \/>\nthe leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.<br \/>\nHope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold<br \/>\nfor a brief while, then lose it all each November.<br \/>\nThrough the cold months, they stand, take the worst<br \/>\nweather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves<br \/>\ncome April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,<br \/>\nland on the pond with its sedges and reeds.<br \/>\nYou do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find<br \/>\nshelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.<br \/>\nAll we do is pass through here, the best way we can.<br \/>\nThey stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Barbara Crooker [<a href=\"http:\/\/writersalmanac.publicradio.org\/index.php?date=2011\/10\/29\" title=\"The Writer's Almanac (October 29, 2011): 'Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,' by Barbara Crooker\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: Robert Brault, on the growing treasure of life and age\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2014\/11\/why-be-saddled-with-this-thing-called.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Why be saddled with this thing called life expectancy? Of what relevance to an individual is such a statistic? Am I to concern myself with an allotment of days I never had and was never promised? Must I check off each day of my life as if I am subtracting from this imaginary hoard? No, on the contrary, I will add each day of my life to my treasure of days lived. And with each day, my treasure will grow, not diminish.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Robert Brault [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Round-Up-Usual-Subjects-Everything\/dp\/1499593783\/\" title=\"Amazon.com: 'Round Up the Usual Suspects: Thoughts About Just About Everything,' by Robert Brault\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Not from <em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Exploring the Pastime Reaches and Beyond<\/strong><br \/>\n<em><strong>(excerpt)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Living among the trilobites<br \/>\nI learn you cross great lengths of time<br \/>\nby stilling the waiting in yourself.<br \/>\nFrom scavengers I see how you can live<br \/>\noff your own dead kind.<br \/>\nI gum the grit of a tidal flat<br \/>\nand have no name.<\/p>\n<p>A chance letter brings me home,<br \/>\ntelling how I was found.<br \/>\nReturned I sit<br \/>\nlike water in a jar,<br \/>\nlight from a window passing through,<br \/>\na slow rain of precipitate<br \/>\nremembering the bottom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(John Barr [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poem\/246684\" title=\"Poetry Foundation: 'Exploring the Pastime Reaches and Beyond,' by John Barr\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy&#8217;s wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: <\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center; font-variant: small-caps; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: .5em; padding-top: 0; padding-bottom: 0;\">god grant me<br \/>\nthe serenity to accept<br \/>\nthe things I cannot change,<br \/>\ncourage<br \/>\nto change the things I can,<br \/>\nand wisdom always<br \/>\nto tell the<br \/>\ndifference.<\/div>\n<p>Among the things Billy Pilgrim could not change were the past, the present, and the future.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Kurt Vonnegut [<a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=FM4y7N1kM9AC&#038;pg=PA76#v=onepage&#038;q&#038;f=false\" title=\"Google Books: 'Slaughterhouse-Five,' by Kurt Vonnegut\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Husband<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What could be more picturesque<br \/>\nthan us eating lobster on the water,<br \/>\nthe sun vanishing over the horizon,<br \/>\nwilling, once again, to allow us almost<br \/>\nany satisfaction. William James said<br \/>\nmarriage was overlooking, overlooking,<br \/>\nyes, but also overlapping: opinions,<br \/>\nhistories, the truth of someone not you<br \/>\nsitting across the table seeing the you<br \/>\nyou can&#8217;t bear to, the face behind<br \/>\nthe long fable in the mirror. Freud said<br \/>\nwe&#8217;re cured when we see ourselves<br \/>\nthe way a stranger does in moments.<br \/>\nAm I the I she tried to save, still lopsided<br \/>\nwith trying to be a little less or more,<br \/>\nescaping who I was a moment ago?<br \/>\nHere, now, us, sipping wine in this<br \/>\ncandlelit pause, in the charm of the ever<br \/>\ncasting sky, every gesture familiar,<br \/>\npainfully endearing, the I of me, the she<br \/>\nof her, the us only we know, alone together<br \/>\nall these years. Call it what you like,<br \/>\nhappiness or failure, the discreet curl<br \/>\nof her bottom lip, the hesitant green<br \/>\nof her eyes, still lovely with surprise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Philip Schultz [<a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=QEJgNBvT4owC&#038;pg=PA27#v=onepage&#038;q&#038;f=false\" title=\"Google Books: 'Failure,' by Philip Schultz\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"note\"><\/a>_____________________________<\/p>\n<p><strong>About the video and song:<\/strong> From Madeleine Peyroux&#8217;s 2004 album, <em>Careless Love<\/em>, this song has become something of a signature piece for her. Unsurprisingly, nearly all the YouTube videos which feature it take the title literally &#8212; mashing up images and clips from Broadway and Hollywood musicals, ballet, and so on. The ones which play the music over dance numbers struck me as the least successful; the failure of the dance(s) depicted to match up with the rhythms of the song itself really clanged, in my eyes and ears. The visuals in the video I&#8217;ve used here seemed to be the most restrained.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, Leonard Cohen didn&#8217;t start out to write this as a &#8220;love song.&#8221; In a 1993 interview, he told Jools Holland that his inspiration came from the practice, in Nazi death camps, of using string quartets and other classical musicians to glue a veneer of faux civilization over the horror of every passing minute.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">[<a href=\"#top\"><em>back to top<\/em><\/a>]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: black-and-white still images over Leonard Cohen&#8217;s &#8220;Dance Me to the End of Love,&#8221; sung by Madeleine Peyroux. (Lyrics here.) See the note at the foot of this post for more information.] From whiskey river: The way we move within time is a kind of dance. We are always keeping time within one rhythm or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,74,5,251,372],"tags":[475,2340,2619,3394,3922,3923,3924,3925],"class_list":{"0":"post-16156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-music","9":"category-06_writing","10":"category-poetry-writing_cat","11":"category-style-and-craft","12":"tag-madeleine-peyroux","13":"tag-kurt-vonnegut","14":"tag-leonard-cohen","15":"tag-barbara-crooker","16":"tag-philip-schultz","17":"tag-john-barr","18":"tag-robert-brault","19":"tag-mel-weitsman","20":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-4cA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16156"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16167,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16156\/revisions\/16167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}