Quote 1 – Roy Harper – In some ways, I lament the introduction of civilisation on such a huge scale, because it has given us a lot of room to abuse each other, which we continue to do.
Quote 2 – Captain Beefheart – We’re all colored, or you wouldn’t be able to see anyone.
Quote 3 – Frank Zappa – There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.
Well that will do for starters. Three of my favourite people.
I have just finished reading The Tree by John Fowles (writer of the Magus and French Lieutenants Daughter and one of my favourite writers). It was a splendid little book. It encapsulated his feeling of oneness with nature and trees – the wild – something that cannot be captured by science or art but that is a state of being.
While reading it I was particularly struck by one paragraph that resonated with me and would like to share it with you.
‘There is a spiritual corollary to the way we are currently deforesting and denaturing our planet. In the end what we must most defoliate and deprive is ourselves. We might as soon start collecting up the world’s poetry, ever line and every copy, to burn it in a final pyre; and think we should lead richer and happier lives thereafter.’
That sums up the grief and anguish I feel inside at the constant cruelty and destruction we are wreaking around the world. Each tree and creature is a poem in my world – a poem lost forever – and one that makes me all the poorer.
‘Where do I get my ideas from?
You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him.
It was music.
I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out.
It was disgust with civilisation.’
Kurt Vonnegut Jnr
I think I feel the same!
Bertie was a philosopher who spoke it like it was. What he said always made sense.
All I want for my birthday is another birthday.
Unfortunately Ian, who was suffering from cancer, didn’t get that next birthday. It sends a message to me that we should enjoy every minute that we have! Life is wonderful!
I rate Neil Young up there near to Dylan. But he’s a complex man. I don’t go along with everything the man comes out with. Here’s a few quotes that make sense to me.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1477349606&sr=1-2-ent
In the USA:
https://www.amazon.com/Opher-Goodwin/e/B00MSHUX6Y/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1477349625&sr=1-2-ent
tps://www.amazon.com/Vice-Verse-Opher-Goodwin-ebook/dp/B010U4E9B6/ref=la_B00MSHUX6Y_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1477387551&sr=1-15&refinements=p_82%3AB00MSHUX6Y
The scary thing about someone like Dan Quayle is to think that this awesome intellect actually rose to become the second most powerful person in the world and, if there had been an accident or a stroke of ill health, could have had his finger on the nuclear button.
The other observation I would make is that the most hilarious things to come out of a person’s mouth are when an idiot speaks and is not trying to be funny at all.
This President is going to lead us out of this recovery.
Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It’s the other way around. They never vote for us.
It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.
If we don’t succeed we run the risk of failure.
Bank failures are caused by depositors who don’t deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement.
Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.
He certainly made me chuckle. He also made me even more aware that these people are put up there as puppets. The real power lies behind the throne. There are unseen people pulling the strings. They don’t want leaders who are too bright.
I wasn’t sure what to file it under – philosophy? Humour?
A lot of people are bewildered by Bob doing a no-show for the Nobel prize for literature – I’m not. I think he found all that business of being ‘The Voice of a Generation’ a millstone round his neck. He doesn’t need it. It stops him being creative by putting too much weight of expectation on him. That dries up the creativity. He jettisoned all that as quickly as he could.
Having these colossal accolades and titles, they get in the way.
If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.
You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.
I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.
I do love Kurt Vonnegutt Jnr – I adore his perceptiveness, light touch and humour.
I am reading Armageddon in Retrospect for the third time. I thought I’d share an extract from the intro by his son Mark on his father:
‘He couldn’t help thinking that all the money we were spending blowing up things and killing people so far away, making people the world over hate and fear us, would have been better spent on public education and libraries. It’s hard to imagine that history won’t prove him right, if it hasn’t already.’
I was surprised when looking around Graceland to have a glimpse of a man with more intelligence than I had assumed. I think Elvis’s problem was that he was directed by Tom Parker into unsatisfying, but profitable, enterprises. He did not know who to trust and so surrounded himself with a bunch of people who knew him from before he was famous – on the premise that they liked him and not his money. Unfortunately they tended to be not the brightest or most interesting of characters. I think he could have d4eveloped a lot more than he did. He was stuck in an isolated rut.
