rain; some rain; more rain; the rain

 

Sky Study with a Shaft of Sunlight, 1822, John Constable.

  

Dear Under-the-Clouds,

I have your song for today; it's a rainy one.  But, you know, with Marianne Faithfull, it's hard to stop at just one bite, so please, if you have time, take another.  Is there a message we can take from these two songs?  I think so, I think so.  And I think it is this: be gentle with the fragile things you know and love.

PS  Should you find yourself wanting more from fragile beauties, try this, and then, oooh, this!  If you don't have rain, you could have yourself an artificial cloud.  You could also look at this beautiful painting of a cloud-filled sky, by Johann Jakob Frey.

baby blue

 

Ellsworth Kelly,  Yellow Blue, at the Rijksmuseum.

Dear Unborn,

I thought you might like some small introduction to human life.  Everything is reason and science, all of it.  Everything you might not like comes from it: toothpaste, surgeries, missiles, economic policy, borders.  Anything negative can be proven to be so and so to be necessary.  Anything you might like, anything good at all, is magic.  A winning lottery ticket, chocolate bars, love, beauty, kindly fairies.

So, there you have it, our essential dualism.

I am not a big fan either.  Still, we only do it this way because we choose to, so resist as much as you are able the pull of those two poles, and listen to this beautiful song of rebirth and regeneration; it's your song of the day!

Song & Spectacle

 

Dear Listener,

Here is your song for today.  And that goes double from me:  I got you.