Something For the Festive Weekend #3

It is the function of creative men to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expression that may seem utterly different and to be able to combine them into some new form’. William Plomer

Some inspirational snippets and recommendations for your weekend

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Something to Watch:  

DVD:  REQUIEM FOR A DREAM

A Darren Aronofsky film from 2000 starring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto & Jennifer Connelly, on the surface a high octane tale about drug addiction.

Why you could watch it:

because it’s actually an edgy panoramic tale about love and identity that draws you in powerfully despite the uncomfortable moments; and it has an amazing performance by Ellen Burstyn

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Here are a few clips. It’s harrowing but it’s worth sticking with:

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Something To Listen To: 

Ralph Vaughan Williams 

(1872-1958)

But in the next world I shan’t be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.  Ralph Vaughan Williams 

 

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Read more at:

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/ralph_vaughan_williams.html#sY7c64lHtu939SIC.99

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Christmas Songs

Lark Ascending

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DESERT ISLAND DISKS – Annie Lennox

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/desert-island-discs/castaway/a3635f2a#b00b6x4g

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Something To Look At:

Edward Hopper (182-1967)

American Realist painter

Truthful, Insightful, As Is, Elegant 

Automat 1927

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See For more information:

http://poulwebb.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/edward-hopper.html

 

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Early Sunday Morning, 1930

Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.  Edward Hopper 

 

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Read more at:

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/edward_hopper.html#GRhoK45ddZTFllAg.99

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Something To Read:

William Blake

(1757-1827)

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Holy Thursday (Innocence)

Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean
The children walking two & two in red & blue & green
Grey headed beadles walked before with wands as white as snow
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow

O what a multitude they seemed these flowers of London town
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own
The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands

Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among
Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door

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Holy Thursday (Experience)

Is this a holy thing to see.
In a rich and fruitful land.
Babes reduced to misery.
Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak & bare.
And their ways are fill’d with thorns
It is eternal winter there.

For where-e’er the sun does shine.
And where-e’er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.

 

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/holy-thursday-experience/

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/holy-thursday-innocence/

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Something To Think About:

1. Albert Camus

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.  Albert Camus 

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Read more at:

 http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/albert_camus.html#BU5Cl0r81ct9vg8c.99

In Our Time: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008kmqp

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2. OSHO

EXPRESS YOURSELF IN AS MANY WAYS AS POSSIBLE WITHOUT FEAR.THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR.THERE IS NOBODY WHO IS GOING TO PUNISH OR REWARD YOU. EXPRESS YOUR BEING IN ITS TRUEST FORM, IN ITS NATURAL FLOW, YOU WILL BE REWARDED IMMEDIATELY, NOT TOMORROW BUT TODAY, HERE & NOW. YOU ARE PUNISHED ONLY WHEN YOU GO AGAINST YOUR NATURE. BUT THE PUNISHMENT IS A HELP. IT IS SIMPLY AN INDICATION THAT YOU HAVE MOVED AWAY FROM NATURE, THAT YOU HAVE GONE A LITTLE ASTRAY-OFF THE ROAD-COME BACK. PUNISHMENT IS NO REVENGE.NO, PUNISHMENT IS ONLY AN EFFORT TO WAKE YOU UP: ‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’ . SOMETHING IS WRONG, SOMETHING IS GOING AGAINST YOURSELF. THAT’S WHY THERE IS PAIN, THERE IS ANXIETY.

  EVOLUTION IS INTRINSIC TO MAN’S NATURE, EVOLUTION IS HIS VERY SOUL, AND THOSE WHO TAKE THEMSELVES FOR GRANTED REMAIN UNFULFILLED. THOSE WHO THINK THEY ARE BORN COMPLETE REMAIN UNEVOLVED. THEN THE SEED REMAINS THE SEED. IT NEVER BECOMES A TREE AND NEVER KNOWS THE JOYS OF SPRING AND THE SUNSHINE AND THE RAIN AND THE ECSTASY OF BURSTING INTO MILLIONS OF FLOWERS.   From The Book of Understanding

http://astrodreamadvisor.com/OSHO_Quotes.html

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CHRISTMAS PICTURE QUIZ: Who is Who?

Answers given in the next snippet. Or take a stab yourself and leave your answers in the reply box ! 

W. G Sebald

Virginia Woolf

Einstein

Anne Sexton

Edith Sitwell

Orson Welles

Henry Moore

Claude Monet

Marlene Dietrich

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Mozart

Nanci Griffiths