There Are Also Musicians.

There Are Also Musicians

by Michael Coady

Though there are torturers in the world

There are also musicians.

Though, at this moment,

Men are screaming in prisons,

There are jazzmen raising storms

Of sensuous celebration,

And orchestras releasing

Glories of the Spirit.

Though the image of God 

Is everywhere defiled,

A man in West Clare

Is playing the concertina,

The Sistine Choir is levitating

Under the dome of St. Peter's,

And a drunk man on the road

Is singing, for no reason.

The power of music is an unmitigated one, constantly reinventing itself, molding and folding and empowering - affecting a single soul for a moment, or legions of souls for lifetimes.  When words cannot comfort you and reason can't sustain you, music is an offering to the Divine Conductor, a jaunt through His unwritten orchestrations.  It can give purpose without meaning, or meaning without purpose, as you close your eyes and feel the conduit between heaven and earth, present and past and future.  It's just...glorious.

Images: LCT - Street Musicians in Boulder, CO. 1999; shorpy.com, blind fiddler and musicians from 1935

Thought of the Day.

Growing where you are planted is overrated.

But while you're there, you should at least make an impression.

photo: LCT-Atlanta Botanical Gardens, 2009

Inspiration.

The sound of a great name dies like an echo;

The splendor of fame fades into nothing;

but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, 

like the haunting loveliness of a mignonette.

                                                                                            ~James Thurber

photo: LCT - Giardino di Boboli, Firenze, 2007.

Go West, Young Woman.

Impending Westward Expansion.  After a solid 26+ years living East of the Mississippi, some wild birdy landed on my shoulder and whispered in my ear and said, "Go West, Young Woman."  And so I shall.  I don't know what the destination is yet, but I know that the plan is simple: no plan.  It's time to shake up my world, to bite off more than I may be able to chew, to manufacture a challenge in self-confidence.  It's an exercise in Faith and Hope, muscles that are crying to be flexed, even if they end up aching a little.

And it's a long time coming.  I remember discovering Albert Bierstadt at a young age - the age when most landscapes seemed boring.  Bierstadt and the Hudson River Valley painters were not boring.  They gazed upon the great, wild, raw power of the west and brought it east, replicated in rich oil and rolled canvas, to give civilization a glimpse of what can never be harnessed.  I most love the powerful dichotomy of the mountains coexisting with the sweet details in the foreground - if you get close enough, you can see the rabbits and the bugs upon the rushes.  

Oh to be Alice and to step through to the other side.

Summer Flashback

I found this image the other day and it drew me backward through the years.  In the thick summer days of the south, I would spend hours lying on the lawn beneath a pink umbrella, reading, with a tutu on my head.  (...no doubt one of the earliest signs of impending quirkiness.)

So here's to the carefree days of childhood, may they never fully fade.  And here's to the sultry days of summer, because firefly-catching through the ivy and swinging in the hammock while the crickets and cicadas come out to play are palpable snippets of life.  And here's to the mad ones, on the road for somewhere beyond the horizon.

photo: Sidonie, found in Photo Club de Louviers,