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When she appeared swaying
The beauty of my lover infatuated us.
No one can relieve my suffering from my love sickness
But the queen of beauty.
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Lamma Bada Yatathanna, Translated to English, Author Unknown
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The celebration of creativity continues.
Some songs and stories are so powerful they grab our imaginations and bodies and continue to reverberate through us. Today, I’ve been wrapped up in a song that’s drifted across centuries and oceans and I’m pondering the notions of songlines and stories of the Dreamtime.
In Braving the Wilderness, Brené Brown describes art as a “shared expression and a deep collective experience.” The performance video below fits the bill. In it, the lovely Jasmine performs an improvisational dance to Joe Michael’s modern instrumental twist of the classic Lamma Bada Yatathanna. Enjoy!
The first time they walked the bridge linking Memphis to Arkansas was December 26, 2016. She didn’t have her phone, so she asked him to take the picture she wanted. It later became his album cover.
The second time they crossed the bridge spanning the big river was November 24, 2019. She didn’t have her phone, so she asked him to take the picture she wanted.
Does the geometry of the scene remind anyone else of the arcade game Tempest? She wonders. When she looks at it she hears electronic white noise and feels like she might suddenly swirl around the playing field and warp to the next level.
On the bridge they walk and they talk. One thought bubbles up after another in a constant stream that flows as fast as the muddy water beneath their feet.
“Remember that performance years ago at the Church on the River?”
“Yeah, that was weird.”
She thinks of a friend, an atheist who sometimes teaches a Sunday school class at church, and she giggles.
A man rides by on a motorized unicycle. She’s instantly flooded with envy. One churchy thought primes the next, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s unicycle.”
They stop at the in-between point and stand half in Tennessee and half in Arkansas. There a sign warns that the powers-that-be have no qualms about cutting off love locks, so couples might as well go lock their love elsewhere. Near the sign, others have continued to lock their love defiantly in harder-to-reach places.
They walk on.
At the end of the bridge, there’s another picture she wants. He takes it. Team work makes the dream work.
That’s the view from the fence going west. She ask for his phone so she can take the view going east.
They sit in Arkansas on a park bench and marvel at this bridge, where industry, commerce, construction, technology, logistics, architecture and nature collide.
Brimming with wild ideas and errant thoughts, she babbles on and on. He patiently listens, sort of. There’s music happening inside his mind, but he bobs his head and makes noises in all the right places.
On the way back across the bridge, they run into a friend, a teacher, who talks about recently recording a “Tuck You In” story for her students. Suspended high above the Mississippi River they discuss all sorts of things. They make plans and share ideas, then they go separate ways and the river flows on.
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Recommended viewing:
History of Big River Crossing — there are vintage photos of the construction and bridge plans, drawings and such.
Recommended listening:
Little Sunshine — her theme song, written by Joe Michael, Making Waves
The earth flower and sky flower unite.
The Murdering Crows were phantastic at the Woodruff-Fountain Haunted Happenings show. Next performance: Halloween night at Growlers.
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If you’re looking for something fabulous and spectacular to do tonight in Memphis, here it is:
There will be an array of beautiful dancers paying homage to authors and their great works: Edgar Allen Poe’s Mask of the Red Death, Isaak Asimonv’s Robot Visions, Nicolaus Coperneicus’ On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Anne Rice’s Witching Hour, Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland, Shi Jin’s Ancient Book of Songs, George Martin’s Game of Thrones, and of course One Thousand and One Nights…and many, many more!!
Come celebrate art in its many forms.
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
November was exceedingly strange. Here are a few pictures I’ve taken this month of things that happened.
There was this…
Moving on.
“I just can’t” said the bear in the Costco parking lot.
(I was waiting on a friend in the car when the bear showed up seemingly unaccompanied.)
“Rawr” said the dinosaur.
(The dino was my contribution to a SoKaN event for #901 Rocks – a delightfully fun community craft movement taking the city by storm. These are some of the other SoKaNers’ painted rocks…)
[And finally, coming home fr0m this mad, funny, heartbreaking, and beautiful world to retreat (not to be confused with retweet) and recharge.]
Mad Catter crashing my tea party
Thinker on a Rock, Sculpture Garden in D.C.
Somewhere in the bowels of D.C.
South Main, Memphis, TN
An Invasion at the Squirrel Nut Zippers Concert
Below is a video of another dance from the show Philomena’s Dream. This medley is a collaboration of two dances across three different dance groups in Memphis: IDA, Jasmine’s Jewels, and Mystic River Dance.
The choreographer of the candle dance is Isidora Hart. The song is Pachyderm Picnic by Brent Lewis.
Jasmine (of Dance with Jasmine) choreographed the second dance. The song is Misirlou by Mosava.
