Birthday

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Happy Birthday

The great poet Charles Bukowski was born on this day in 1920. 🍺

“…great writers are indecent people

they live unfairly

saving the best part for paper.

good human beings save the world

so that bastards like me can keep creating art,

become immortal.

if you read this after I am dead

it means I made it.”

Posted by Poetic Outlaws

Ugliest Poet on the Planet. But I’m sure glad he made it. And now he’s one of the Ugliest Immortals—yay! and rock on!

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Just A Little Nudge…

And just when I needed this. And Happy Birthday dear Alan!

Posted by Marginalia

On Alan Watts’s birthday, dive into a wealth of his wisdom on life and death and the meaning of it all: https://www.themarginalian.org/tag/alan-watts/

It’s beautifully cold today, and snow is in the forecast. Be still my heart! The only thing better could be to live in the middle of the woods as it does so. Happy golden sweet white days!

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The Divine

Happy Birthday to our dear brother Beethoven! He of the absolute Divine.

Posted by Nadia Nasr
  • Nihal Büyükeroğlut Happy Birthday Ludwig van Beethoven.jpg

Did you know that most if not many of the great composers were born in the cold months? November—January, and even February. What a beautiful time to be born. Those days when the Pagan and the Christian combine, when the thin time meets the ringing of the bells, when music begets genius.

YoYo Ma joined in to the Happy birthday for Beethoven. Honored to join thousands of people from over 70 countries in a #GlobalOdeToJoy. Explore the project’s playlist: https://bit.ly/3ntAfb5.

The season of Joy is welcomed by the Ode to Joy.

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In Keeping and Why Not

  • Happy Birthday, Thomas Sterns, just a little belated, we still go through “those certain, half-deserted streets, the muttering retreats…”
  • Born: September 26, 1888, St. Louis
  • Died: January 4, 1965, London
  • Cause of Death: Emphysema
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
Ah, yes, the man.
The hero of many a lit class, many an English survivor. Who among us did not read “The Wasteland” or at least “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”? It occurs to me now though not then, why were we not queried on behalf of “love song”? Why indeed is it called a love song?
And about the above, how do we make it thru the parts where there is not only no ecstasy, but torment?
 In The Paris Review

2nd June 1951: American-English poet and playwright, TS Eliot (1888 – 1965). He wrote amongst many other things, ‘The Waste Land ‘ and the plays, ‘The Cocktail Party’ and ‘Murder in the Cathedral’. Original Publication: Picture Post – 5314 – Are Poets Really Necessary? – pub. 1951 (Photo by George Douglas/Picture Post/Getty Images)

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Happy Birthday 2 and oh my!

I seem to be running one day behind on things, most especially on birthdays. It was Glenn Gould’s birthday yesterday, September 25. *Sigh*

  • Born: September 25, 1932, Toronto
  • Died: October 4, 1982, Toronto

He’s an all-time favorite, the best of pianists, and an all-around honorable fellow. He predicted his own death at 50 years of age, saying he would die then and of a stroke. In later years he became obsessed with checking his blood pressure. The question then becomes, did he indeed know it in advance, or did he direct it by obsessing over it? Truth is such a tricky thing at times.

Photo at top is from the Boston Globe and the one on the bottom from the NY Times.

When you watch a video you can clearly see how he uses his left hand to direct his right hand, especially when playing Bach.