Art – Literature – Music – Movies
… Dino D’Agata discusses Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking and Rieff’s Swimming in a Sea of Death in his “Hope as Forbidden Metaphor“. “Yet Didion also, to my chagrin, succumbs to post-modernity’s coercion when she, like Rieff, begins recriminating herself for wanting to believe her husband still lives. You want to shake her and […]
grief and eternity … Read More »
… performed this weekend by the Wichita Symphony Orchestra. Maestro Hege discusses. listen to excerpts … Much like life and death … “There’s a sense of tragedy at the beginning, a visceral quality that grabs you right from the outset. Then it goes through all these different moods — of being ambivalent; of being very
mahler symphony #2 … resurrection … Read More »
… Vaclav Havel opens the “Forum 2000” conference … Much of what he says has direct applicability to health care, health care reform & palliative care … “I sense behind all of this not only a globally spreading short-sightedness, but also the swollen self-consciousness of this civilisation, whose basic attributes include the supercilious idea that
close together … but otherwise desperately remote … Read More »
John Prine performs “Hello in There” Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger, And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day. Old people just grow lonesome Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello.” So if you’re walking down the street sometime And spot some hollow ancient eyes, Please don’t just pass ’em by
… a film that has won many awards … tells the experiences (through the recovered diary) of an elderly lady living alone in Brooklyn. “Jessie Singer Sylvester moved anonymously through old age in Brooklyn in the 1970s, absorbing one loss after the next — her job of 59 years, her beloved sister, her friends, her
beautiful hills of brooklyn … Read More »
Millet’s ‘The Sick Child’ “The simple and daily gesture of a mother, when looked at deeply, reflects the love and patience of those who elect to entirely devote themselves to keep the ill person company. But it may be that only she who takes part in giving birth can most serenely accept the tribulations and
accompanying the sick … Read More »
… and Thou art calling me … So starts Newman’s meditation on death through the prayer of a dying man – The Dream of Gerontius – set to music in Elgar’s master choral work. a related prayer of Newman’s … ‘May He support us all the day long, till the shadows lengthen and the evening
I am near to death … Read More »
“Prince Andrei not only knew that he would die, but felt that he was dying, that he was already half dead. He experienced an awareness of that estrangement from everything earthly and a joyful and strange lightness of being. Without haste or worry, he waited for what lay ahead of him. The dread, the eternal,
the death of Prince Andrei … Read More »
… “In [Mozart’s] last letter written to his dying father, dated April 4, 1787, he wrote, speaking precisely of the final stage of life on earth: “For about a year I have become so familiar with this sincere and greatly loved friend of man, [death], that its image no longer holds anything that is terrifying,
great, dramatic and serene meditation on death … Read More »
Discussing the many psychological and spiritual maladies of our times, John Waters suggests the root problem may lie in our failure to recognize our utter dependence … “The desire to impose order on the universe and to become unsettled at our inevitable failure to do so may be ultimately a symptom of the expression in
autonomy … control … unhinged? Read More »
