Happy New Year!

May ALL your quests in the New Year end Happily Ever After!

From Here to Forever....

That's Where I Am....

Merry Christmas!

h/t - Woodsterman

Crabs for Christmas?

Fairy Tale Time...

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man....

Unlimited Potential?

The River...

Paris Blues...

Loving the 'Other'...

Hums...

Jenny, Screech... and Violet

Divine Perfection? Not Egg-zactly!

“Gala and I incarnate the sublime myth of the Dioscuri, hatched from one of Leda’s two divine eggs”

-Salvador Dali 

Is it Easter yet?

“Madonna and Child with Saints, Angels and Federico da Montefeltro” (San Bernardino Altarpiece), Piero della Francesca (1472–1474)

Leon of Athens

Yorgos Lanthimos - On Social Hyper-Realities

Lobster Dances

137/138

Radiation Poisoning's Cure...

A Huguenot

The Blue Canterbury Bells that can be seen at the left of the scene are indeed a symbol of constancy and faith.

Here, I Love You - Pablo Neruda

Roll-Out 8/16/22... Target Launch 8/29.

Can you hear? Are we clear?

Cleared for lift off, takeoff

For making reverberations

Are we affirmative? No, negatory

Come in, come in, radio, what's your story?

Are you Oscar Kilo? Will you Wilco?

Are you ready for a bit of

A bit of Echo Victor?

Feeling wider than awake, yeah

Better crooked than straight

Ah, invincible, when we love

Ah, invincible, when we love

When we love

Now there's smoke on the horizon

And the clouds are looking violent

There's a future in need of a frame

Compass spinning in my brain

There's a theory for everything

Resurrection to the big ol' bang

Rachmaninoff to the excitement gang

We got the density of our beings

The unbearable weight, the unbearable light

The unbearable weight, let's lift it up

Ah, invincible, when we love

Ah, invincible, oh

Feeling honest as a promise

Troubled times have come upon us

At the core of the cosmos

We are so much more than particles

Sonic to the subatomic

You are a whisper and a scream

You are, we are

All part of this everything

Yeah, so feel important

You are light, you are principle

When you love, invincible

Our shared light, indivisible

When we love, we're invincible

Ah, invincible, when we love

Ah, invincible, when we love

Ah, invincible, oh, when we love

Ah, invincible, oh, when we love

Oh, when we love

Ah, the humanity, the calamity

The spilling blood, the gravity

We got the heavens, we got the Earth

And in between we got big surf

Who could ask for more?

The only rule is to keep your cool

When we love

We are light

Hey, you got a light?

Painting with Light...

Answers to Unasked Questions

Expertise...

It's Not Unusual?

Pablo

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente,

y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te toca.

Parece que los ojos se te hubieran volado

y parece que un beso te cerrara la boca.

Como todas las cosas están llenas de mi alma

emerges de las cosas, llena del alma mía.

Mariposa de sueño, te pareces a mi alma,

y te pareces a la palabra melancolía.

Me gustas cuando callas y estás como distante.

Y estás como quejándote, mariposa en arrullo.

Y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te alcanza:

déjame que me calle con el silencio tuyo.

Déjame que te hable también con tu silencio

claro como una lámpara, simple como un anillo.

Eres como la noche, callada y constelada.

Tu silencio es de estrella, tan lejano y sencillo.

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente.

Distante y dolorosa como si hubieras muerto.

Una palabra entonces, una sonrisa bastan.

Y estoy alegre, alegre de que no sea cierto.

Sylvia Plath

I wish I had a Sylvia Plath

Busted tooth and a smile

And cigarette ashes in her drink

The kind that goes out and then sleeps for a week

The kind that goes out on her own

To give me a reason, for well, I dunno

And maybe she'd take me to France

Or maybe to Spain and she'd ask me to dance

In a mansion on the top of a hill

She'd ash on the carpets

And slip me a pill

Then she'd get me pretty loaded on gin

And maybe she'd give me a bath

How I wish I had a Sylvia Plath

And she and I would sleep on a boat

And swim in the sea without clothes

With rain falling fast on the sea

While she was swimming away, she'd be winking at me

Telling me it would all be okay

Out on the horizon and fading away

And I'd swim to the boat and I'd laugh

I gotta get me a Sylvia Plath

And maybe she'd take me to France

Or maybe to Spain and she'd ask me to dance

In a mansion on the top of a hill

She'd ash on the carpets

And slip me a pill

Then she'd get me pretty loaded on gin

And maybe she'd give me a bath

How I wish I had a Sylvia Plath

I wish I had a Sylvia Plath

Daddy

 

I feel so Mortified...

  

Killing off the old... and beginning the new

Don't you?

Analysis of Lady Lazarus

Kintsugi - Step 1: Break the dish

High School Graduation Years...

The Scandalous Madam X

Musings of a Paranoiac Critical Theorist...

Franz Kafka, "The Burrow" (As interpreted by Larry Cedar)

AI Times...

*snap*

A Paean to Poultry...

...and the dreams that sustain them

Notes:

The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) is India's largest Central Armed Police Force. It functions under the authority of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) of the Government of India. The CRPF's primary role lies in assisting the State/Union Territories in police operations to maintain law and order and counter insurgency. It came into existence as the Crown Representative's Police on 27 July 1939. After Indian Independence, it became the Central Reserve Police Force on enactment of the CRPF Act on 28 December 1949.

Besides law and order and counter-insurgency duties, the CRPF has played an increasingly large role in India's general elections. This is especially true for the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar and in the North East, with the presence of unrest and often violent conflict. During the Parliamentary elections of September 1999, the CRPF played a major role in the security arrangements. Of late, CRPF contingents are also being deployed in UN missions.

With 246 battalions and various other establishments, the CRPF is considered India's largest central armed police force and has a sanctioned strength of more than 300,000 personnel as of 2019.^[4]

Fallen Women

"Monica Lewinsky"

I wanna make, wanna make history (Like who?)

Like Britney, like Lindsey

Stunna like Monica Lewinsky (So cute)

No, really

That stone cold, hot girl feelin'

Unapologetic with the fucked up mind

Doin' all the crazy like it's lady like, like woo

History (I wanna make)

I wanna make, wanna make history

On the year that I was born, yuh

Girls were fucking presidents

In the residence

Then when I was four

Shavin' all their heads and toyin' with the press

Yea I, I, I just gotta know

Where'd bad bitches go?

Who's gonna do it like they did back then?

One, two, three, check

I wanna make, wanna make history (Like who?)

Like Britney, like Lindsey

Stunna like Monica Lewinsky (So cute)

No, really

That stone cold, hot girl feelin'

Unapologetic with the fucked up mind

Doin' all the crazy like it's lady like, like woo

History (I wanna make)

I wanna make, wanna make history

All of these songs gone viral (Gone viral)

But when's the last time you saw a pop star spiral?

Too many tits with the blurred out face

I just dropped an album, so I think I'll drop a tape

Hannah raised me, Miley made me

Pulled some psycho on the daily

I'll make you love me till you hate me

'Cause, baby, lately

I wanna make, wanna make history (Like who?)

Like Britney, like Lindsey (Yuh)

Stunna like Monica Lewinsky (So cute)

No, really

That stone cold, hot girl feelin' (Yuh)

Unapologetic with a fucked up mind (Mind)

Doin' all the crazy like it's lady like, like woo

History (I wanna make)

I wanna make, wanna make history

Oh, oh, stunna like Monica Lewinsky (Like Monica, like Monica)

(Like Monica, like Monica)

Monica, Monica Lewinsky (Like Monica)

I just wanna make, I just wanna make, wanna make history

Siddal's "Ophelia"

Jenny BY DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

“Vengeance of Jenny’s case! Fie on her! Never name her, child!”—Mrs. Quickly

Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,
Whose head upon my knee to-night
Rests for a while, as if grown light
With all our dances and the sound
To which the wild tunes spun you round:
Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen
Of kisses which the blush between
Could hardly make much daintier;
Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair
Is countless gold incomparable:
Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell
Of Love’s exuberant hotbed:—Nay,
Poor flower left torn since yesterday
Until to-morrow leave you bare;
Poor handful of bright spring-water
Flung in the whirlpool’s shrieking face;
Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
Thus with your head upon my knee;—
Whose person or whose purse may be
The lodestar of your reverie?

This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
A change from mine so full of books,
Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
So many captive hours of youth,—
The hours they thieve from day and night
To make one’s cherished work come right,
And leave it wrong for all their theft,
Even as to-night my work has left:
Until I vowed that since my brain
And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
My feet should have some dancing too:—
And thus it was I met with you.
Well, I suppose ’twas hard to part,
For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
You seem too tired to get to bed.

It was a careless life I led
When rooms like this were scarce so strange
Not long ago. What breeds the change,—
The many aims or the few years?
Because to-night it all appears
Something I do not know again.

The cloud’s not danced out of my brain,—
The cloud that made it turn and swim
While hour by hour the books grew dim.
Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—
For all your wealth of loosened hair,
Your silk ungirdled and unlac’d
And warm sweets open to the waist,
All golden in the lamplight’s gleam,—
You know not what a book you seem,
Half-read by lightning in a dream!
How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,
And I should be ashamed to say:—
Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!
But while my thought runs on like this
With wasteful whims more than enough,
I wonder what you’re thinking of.

If of myself you think at all,
What is the thought?—conjectural
On sorry matters best unsolved?—
Or inly is each grace revolved
To fit me with a lure?—or (sad
To think!) perhaps you’re merely glad
That I’m not drunk or ruffianly
And let you rest upon my knee.

For sometimes, were the truth confess’d,
You’re thankful for a little rest,—
Glad from the crush to rest within,
From the heart-sickness and the din
Where envy’s voice at virtue’s pitch
Mocks you because your gown is rich;
And from the pale girl’s dumb rebuke,
Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look
Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak,
And other nights than yours bespeak;
And from the wise unchildish elf,
To schoolmate lesser than himself
Pointing you out, what thing you are:—
Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,
From shame and shame’s outbraving too,
Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—
But most from the hatefulness of man
Who spares not to end what he began,
Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,
Who, having used you at his will,
Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
I serve the dishes and the wine.

Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up:
I’ve filled our glasses, let us sup,
And do not let me think of you,
Lest shame of yours suffice for two.
What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
Your head there, so you do not sleep;
But that the weariness may pass
And leave you merry, take this glass.
Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless’d
If ne’er in rings it had been dress’d
Nor ever by a glove conceal’d!

Behold the lilies of the field,
They toil not neither do they spin;
(So doth the ancient text begin,—
Not of such rest as one of these
Can share.) Another rest and ease.
Along each summer-sated path
From its new lord the garden hath,
Than that whose spring in blessings ran
Which praised the bounteous husbandman,
Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
The lilies sickened unto death.

What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
Like winter on the garden-bed.
But you had roses left in May,—
They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
But must your roses die, and those
Their purfled buds that should unclose?
Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
Still red as from the broken heart,
And here’s the naked stem of thorns.

Nay, nay mere words. Here nothing warns
As yet of winter. Sickness here
Or want alone could waken fear,—
Nothing but passion wrings a tear.
Except when there may rise unsought
Haply at times a passing thought
Of the old days which seem to be
Much older than any history
That is written in any book;
When she would lie in fields and look
Along the ground through the blown grass,
And wonder where the city was,
Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
They told her then for a child’s tale.

Jenny, you know the city now,
A child can tell the tale there, how
Some things which are not yet enroll’d
In market-lists are bought and sold
Even till the early Sunday light,
When Saturday night is market-night
Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
And market-night in the Haymarket.
Our learned London children know,
Poor Jenny, all your pride and woe;
Have seen your lifted silken skirt
Advertise dainties through the dirt;
Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
On virtue; and have learned your look
When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
Along the streets alone, and there,
Round the long park, across the bridge,
The cold lamps at the pavement’s edge
Wind on together and apart,
A fiery serpent for your heart.

Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!
Suppose I were to think aloud,—
What if to her all this were said?
Why, as a volume seldom read
Being opened halfway shuts again,
So might the pages of her brain
Be parted at such words, and thence
Close back upon the dusty sense.
For is there hue or shape defin’d
In Jenny’s desecrated mind,
Where all contagious currents meet,
A Lethe of the middle street?
Nay, it reflects not any face,
Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,
But as they coil those eddies clot,
And night and day remembers not.

Why, Jenny, you’re asleep at last!—
Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—
So young and soft and tired; so fair,
With chin thus nestled in your hair,
Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue
As if some sky of dreams shone through!

Just as another woman sleeps!
Enough to throw one’s thoughts in heaps
Of doubt and horror,—what to say
Or think,—this awful secret sway,
The potter’s power over the clay!
Of the same lump (it has been said)
For honour and dishonour made,
Two sister vessels. Here is one.

My cousin Nell is fond of fun,
And fond of dress, and change, and praise,
So mere a woman in her ways:
And if her sweet eyes rich in youth
Are like her lips that tell the truth,
My cousin Nell is fond of love.
And she’s the girl I’m proudest of.
Who does not prize her, guard her well?
The love of change, in cousin Nell,
Shall find the best and hold it dear:
The unconquered mirth turn quieter
Not through her own, through others’ woe:
The conscious pride of beauty glow
Beside another’s pride in her,
One little part of all they share.
For Love himself shall ripen these
In a kind of soil to just increase
Through years of fertilizing peace.

Of the same lump (as it is said)
For honour and dishonour made,
Two sister vessels. Here is one.

It makes a goblin of the sun.

So pure,—so fall’n! How dare to think
Of the first common kindred link?
Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn
It seems that all things take their turn;
And who shall say but this fair tree
May need, in changes that may be,
Your children’s children’s charity?
Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn’d!
Shall no man hold his pride forewarn’d
Till in the end, the Day of Days,
At Judgement, one of his own race,
As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—
His daughter, with his mother’s eyes?

How Jenny’s clock ticks on the shelf!
Might not the dial scorn itself
That has such hours to register?
Yet as to me, even so to her
Are golden sun and silver moon,
In daily largesse of earth’s boon,
Counted for life-coins to one tune.
And if, as blindfold fates are toss’d,
Through some one man this life be lost,
Shall soul not somehow pray for soul?

Fair shines the gilded aureole
In which our highest painters place
Some living woman’s simple face.
And the stilled features thus descried
As Jenny’s long throat droops aside,—
The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
Whit Raffael’s, Leonardo’s hand
To show them to men’s souls, might stand,
Whole ages long, the whole world through,
For preachings of what God can do.
What has man done here? How atone,
Great God, for this which man has done?
And for the body and soul which by
Man’s pitiless doom must now comply
With lifelong hell, what lullaby
Of sweet forgetful second birth
Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
What measure of God’s rest endows
The many mansions of his house.

If but a woman’s heart might see
Such erring heart unerringly
For once! But that can never be.

Like a rose shut in a book
In which pure women may not look,
For its base pages claim control
To crush the flower within the soul;
Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,
Pale as transparent psyche-wings,
To the vile text, are traced such things
As might make lady’s cheek indeed
More than a living rose to read;
So nought save foolish foulness may
Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
And so the life-blood of this rose,
Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows
Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:
Yet still it keeps such faded show
Of when ’twas gathered long ago,
That the crushed petals’ lovely grain,
The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
Seen of a woman’s eyes, must make
Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
Love roses better for its sake:—
Only that this can never be:—
Even so unto her sex is she.

Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
The woman almost fades from view.
A cipher of man’s changeless sum
Of lust, past, present, and to come,
Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
To challenge from the scornful sphinx.

Like a toad within a stone
Seated while Time crumbles on;
Which sits there since the earth was curs’d
For Man’s transgression at the first;
Which, living through all centuries,
Not once has seen the sun arise;
Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
The earth’s whole summers have not warmed;
Which always—whitherso the stone
Be flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
Aye, and shall not be driven out
Till that which shuts him round about
Break at the very Master’s stroke,
And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—
Even so within this world is Lust.

Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—
You’d not believe by what strange roads
Thought travels, when your beauty goads
A man to-night to think of toads!
Jenny, wake up. . . . Why, there’s the dawn!

And there’s an early waggon drawn
To market, and some sheep that jog
Bleating before a barking dog;
And the old streets come peering through
Another night that London knew;
And all as ghostlike as the lamps.

So on the wings of day decamps
My last night’s frolic. Glooms begin
To shiver off as lights creep in
Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,
And the lamp’s doubled shade grows blue,—
Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight,
Like a wise virgin’s, all one night!
And in the alcove coolly spread
Glimmers with dawn your empty bed;
And yonder your fair face I see
Reflected lying on my knee,
Where teems with first foreshadowings
Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings:
And on your bosom all night worn
Yesterday’s rose now droops forlorn,
But dies not yet this summer morn.

And now without, as if some word
Had called upon them that they heard,
The London sparrows far and nigh
Clamour together suddenly;
And Jenny’s cage-bird grown awake
Here in their song his part must take,
Because here too the day doth break.

And somehow in myself the dawn
Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn
Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep.
But will it wake her if I heap
These cushions thus beneath her head
Where my knee was? No,—there’s your bed,
My Jenny, while you dream. And there
I lay among your golden hair
Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
These golden coins.
For still one deems
That Jenny’s flattering sleep confers
New magic on the magic purse,—
Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
Between the threads fine fumes arise
And shape their pictures in the brain.
There roll no streets in glare and rain,
Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
But delicately sighs in musk
The homage of the dim boudoir;
Or like a palpitating star
Thrilled into song, the opera-night
Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
Or at the carriage-window shine
Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
Whirls through its hour of health (divine
For her) the concourse of the Park.
And though in the discounted dark
Her functions there and here are one,
Beneath the lamps and in the sun
There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
Apparelled beyond parallel.
Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.

For even the Paphian Venus seems,
A goddess o’er the realms of love,
When silver-shrined in shadowy grove:
Aye, or let offerings nicely placed
But hide Priapus to the waist,
And whoso looks on him shall see
An eligible deity

Why, Jenny, waking here alone
May help you to remember one,
Though all the memory’s long outworn
Of many a double-pillowed morn.
I think I see you when you wake,
And rub your eyes for me, and shake
My gold, in rising, from your hair,
A Danaë for a moment there.

Jenny, my love rang true! for still
Love at first sight is vague, until
That tinkling makes him audible.

And must I mock you to the last,
Ashamed of my own shame,—aghast
Because some thoughts not born amiss
Rose at a poor fair face like this?
Well, of such thoughts so much I know:
In my life, as in hers, they show,
By a far gleam which I may near,
A dark path I can strive to clear.

Only one kiss. Good-bye, my dear.

Note:  Jenny was first published privately in 1870 in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Poems but it is said that this version is vastly different from the original draft Rossetti wrote in 1847, that was heavily revised in 1858 and 1869.  Elizabeth Siddal married Rossetti in 1860, had a miscarriage, and then died in February of 1862.

,,,round 35, for those with stamina, "Goblin Market"

PsyOps

Clouds for Breakfast - Crystabell

Clicking away counting the days ahead

And those before

Flickers of light in oceans of night

Are rushing by

Man or machine something between

Zeros and ones, don't know

Flash of desire, hints of a smile

Each detail I must record

Scan the sky for any signs of life

Follow programs set to run

Run forever at the speed of light

Slow and steady, here I come

A drop on my tongue filling my lungs

I feel it in every cell

Remember my skin, mirrors within

This tender shell

Future rewind circles of time

Echo through sliding doors

Falling tonight my star that diеd

A million years ago

Clouds for breakfast with a velvеt sun

Millions like me far above

(Clicking away)

Diamond rain drops for Her Majesty

(Counting the days)

We were sent to look for love

Searching

Searching

Searching

Searching

La la la la love, we look for love

La la la la love, we look for love (Clicking away)

La la la la love, we look for love (Counting the days)

La la la la love, we look for love (Clicking away)

La la la la love, we look for love

La la la la love, we look for love (Love)

La la la la love, we look for love (We look for love)

La la la la love, we look for love (We look)

La la la la love, we look for love (Yeah, yeah)

La la la la love, we look for love (We look)

La la la la love, we look for love

We look for, for love

We look for

(We look for love)

You're the One

Dali... 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship

To a Stranger

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
-Walt Whitman, "To a Stranger"

The Camera Eye

I

Grim-faced and forbidding

Their faces closed tight

An angular mass of New Yorkers

Pacing in rhythm

Race the oncoming night

They chase through the streets of Manhattan

Head-first humanity

Pause at a light

Then flow through the streets of the city

They seem oblivious

To a soft spring rain

Like an English rain

So light, yet endless

From a leaden sky

The buildings are lost

In their limitless rise

My feet catch the pulse

And the purposeful stride

I feel the sense of possibilities

I feel the wrench of hard realities

The focus is sharp in the city

II

Wide-angle watcher

On life’s ancient tales

Steeped in the history of London

Green and grey washes

In a wispy white veil

Mist in the streets of Westminster

Wistful and weathered

The pride still prevails

Alive in the streets of the city

Are they oblivious

To this quality?

A quality of light

Unique to every city’s streets.

Pavements may teem

With intense energy

But the city is calm

In this violent sea

Advanced Post-Humanism

Baracuda!

Florence, et al

Retro's Only Direction...

Guinivere

Autonomy

[Verse 1]

Memory’s a blessing in a safe mind

Feels lucky somebody could replace mine

I know these things take time

I can see the angels marching in a straight line

[Pre-Chorus]

Feeling new

Seeming used

Birthday suit

When they shoot

[Chorus]

Autonomy

They’re on the move

And they’re onto me

Like they’re onto you

[Post-Chorus]

What do you see in me?

What will come

When we run

[Chorus]

Autonomy

They’re on the move

And they’re onto me

Like they’re onto you

[Verse 2]

Memory’s a blessing in a safe mind

Feels lucky somebody could replace mine

I know these things take time

I can see the angels marching in a straight line

Saw a fire on the runway

Feels like it’s gonna fly away someday

Always try to move it when it’s in the way

Never gonna lose it when it’s up in flames

[Chorus]

Autonomy

They’re on the move

And they’re onto me

Like they’re onto you

[Interlude]

When we run

When we run

[Pre-Chorus]

Feeling new

Seeming used

Birthday suit

When they shoot

[Chorus]

Autonomy

They’re on the move

And they’re onto me

Like they’re onto you

The Gettin' By

Gnothi Seauton

Radio Gaga

Mixed Feelings

Are You Feelin' It?

West Coast

Flash Forward....

Depuis toujours, le sens nous l’avons cherché Nous avons construit, nous avons détruit, nous avons conquis Nous avons cédé à la violence de l’Homme nourrie par la peur Mais c’est dans notre nature d’être poussé par l’espoir Durant les nuits où défilent nos frayeurs, nous prions pour qu’elles nous amènent plus loin, plus vite Vers une imperceptible utopie Nous sommes un miracle semblable à l’aube et ses manières Semblable à l’équilibre de notre système solaire Semblable à la gravité qui nous maintient sur terre Alors cherche la lumière et tu verras, tu n’es pas tout seul Nous sommes une imparfaite réussite, pleine de fissures et de compromis Nous avons besoin l’un de l’autre, nous avons besoin d’appartenir désespérément Nous aimons, nous vivons, nous espérons, nous persévérons Ne sommes-nous pas tout simplement, humains? We’ve always been looking for meaning We’ve built, we’ve destroyed, we’ve conquered We’ve given in to Man’s violence fed by fear But it is in our nature to be driven by hope During the nights when our fears flash by, we pray so that they take us further, faster Towards an imperceptible utopia We are a miracle similar to dawn and its ways Similar to the balance of our solar system Similar to gravity keeping us grounded on earth Therefore seek the light and you will see, you are not alone We are an imperfect success, full of cracks and compromises We need each other, we desperately need to belong We love, we live, we hope, we persevere Aren’t we simply human?

Flashbacks

Happy Valentine's Day!

I posted this video below back in 2019.  Now I understand why it seemed so strange.  It was literally a 'singular' valentine to his collective fan base.

"Valentine's Day"

Valentine told me who's to go

Feelings he's treasured most of all

The teachers and the football star

It's in his tiny face

It's in his scrawny hand

Valentine told me so

He's got something to say

It's Valentine's Day

The rhythm of the crowd

Teddy and Judy down

Valentine sees it all

He's got something to say

It's Valentine's Day

Valentine told me how he'd feel

If all the world were under his heel

Or stumbling through the mall

It's in his tiny face

It's in his scrawny hand

Valentine knows it all

He's got something to say

It's Valentine's Day

Valentine Valentine

Valentine Valentine

It's in his scrawny hand

It's in his icy heart

It's happening today

Valentine Valentine

It's in his scrawny hand

It's in his icy heart

It's happening today

Valentine Valentine

Claudia Schmidt, "The unlikely story behind ‘Valentine’s Day’ by David Bowie"

In 2013, David Bowie released Valentine’s Day. The track was featured on the 24th and penultimate record from the legendary musician, "The Next Day."

Yet despite what the title might suggest, Valentine’s Day was not a song which explored romance, devotion, or anything close.

Far from flowers and chocolates, Valentine’s Day by David Bowie takes a look at a darker historical event associated with the date.

In fact, Bowie’s Valentine’s Day, and its accompanying video, actually contain a sobering message about gun-control. It’s believed that the song refers to a 2008 University shooting in Northern Illinois which occurred on Valentine’s Day.

The track was recorded by American producer Tony Visconti. “The subject matter is pretty scary,” Visconti once described of the song. “It’s related to people who go postal, about people who acquire a gun and do awful things with it.”

In the video, Bowie is playing a G2T Hohner guitar. Yet if you take a closer look, you can see the shadow actually looks as though he is holding a gun. Critics have drawn similarities between the silhouette and an infamous image of Charlton Heston speaking about gun laws at an NRA convention in 2000.

Valentine’s Day was to be David Bowie’s last ever 7-inch single issued from a new album before he passed away in 2016.

 

La Belle Regrettes

Alma Mater Time

All Hail to Alma Mater

To thy glory we sing;

All Hail to Southern California

Loud let thy praises ring;

Where Western sky meets Western sea

Our college stands in majesty;

Sing our love to Alma Mater,

Hail, all hail to thee!

Shut off the Lights!

Jungean Dreams...