The Durable Dozen - Monuments Of Love

Every once in a while I have to take a picture like this.

Over my first fifty years, I was provided with the insights of these great artistic works, the company of which, alongside the obvious clarity of Bob Dylan and The Beatles and Aaron Copland and Dionne Warwick, has kept my ambitions and motivations intact. 

Whenever I lose sight of the horizon, when the focus blurs and the excruciating hammering of the commonplace starts to dent my head, these are my refuges, and my remedies. 

Immediately new every time, and as startling and joy-spiced, now, as ever. 

I might think I know them well, but they have more poignance and bristling majesty than it is possible to circumscribe, and they bring renewal like a wave, like a sunrise when the night has overstayed its welcome, like the whiff of ozone after lightning has arced jagged through a damp sky.

Specifically,

The Byrds - "For every hung-up person in the whole wide universe."

Buffalo Springfield - "Deeply and beyond seeing"

The Band - "Ain't no reason to hang my head. I could wake up in the morning dead."

Mississippi John Hurt - "He laid his Bible down for his lovin'..."

Jimi Hendrix - "Will the wind ever remember?"

Bob Marley - "So who's gonna stay at home When freedom fighters are fighting?"

Captain Beefheart - "Take my kind hand, my smile is stuck, I cannot go back to your Frownland."

Steely Dan - " Sharing the things we know and love with those of my kind
Libations, sensations that stagger the mind."

Laura Nyro - "Wine of wonder."

Thelonious Monk - Blue Crepuscules, Straight Misterioso, Ruby, My Dear, You Needn't

Bjork - "One day It will happen
One day, one day It will all make sense"

Little Feat - "Somethin' real, somethin' to feel

I can't find a soul who'll take on this mess
It's those rock and roll hours, early graves without flowers
Please, please darlin' put my mind at rest."

   and the last word from Bjork's "Family" off Vunicura

I raise a monument of love

There is a swarm of sound

Around our heads

And we can hear it

And we can get healed by it

It will relieve us from the pain

It would make us a part of it

This universe of solutions

That being said, the new and beautiful music that continues to rise up still provides me with the best courage and confidence to continue forward.

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