Issa's Sunday Service, #131: Ehson Rad & D. Kent Watson, via Guest DJ, Ed Baker

William Butler Yeats, attributed to John Butler Yeats

As most know who tread the creative path, the very best things are birthed in the moment of inspiration, the moment of un-thought, spontaneous, serendipitous, alive.  And so, the birthing of the guest DJ on Issa's Sunday Service, with this winning bit of musical adaptation by Ehson Rad and D. Kent Watson (I wanted to type by the awesome folk rock duo "Rad and Watson" but I don't want to be too spontaneous ...). The song is an adaptation of William Butler Yeats's pointed poem, Politics.

Oh, and who might this guest DJ/MC be?  Why the inestimable Ed Baker, of course, poet/artist/raconteur/lover and now Guest DJ.  First the poem, then the song ...



Politics
  `In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in
   political terms' - Thomas Mann

     How can I, that girl standing there,
     My attention fix
     On Roman or on Russian
     Or on Spanish politics?
     Yet here's a travelled man that knows
     What he talks about,
     And there's a politician
     That has read and thought,
     And maybe what they say is true
     Of war and war's alarms,
     But O that I were young again
     And held her in my arms!

     W. B. Yeats

While he's at it, Ed is also recommending connecting with the avant band "Sun Rock Man", via Professor Martin Jack Rosenblum. Ed says:

these guys shades of Cage and Glass and Xenakis and Schoenberg and Antheil & etc I like the discordant way they progress back into the darkness(silence)

There is the Cid Corman connection and Carl Rakosi was mentioned, too.  Some of "Sun Rock Man's" debut videos can be found on YouTube and, so, I'm passing along those, too, for the experimentally minded.

Looking through some of Cid's volumes, a number of postcards and a letter fell out of one (Aegis), and on one of the cards, this:




Death explains
every
thing at once

Cid Corman

rainstorm--
monk-like on a rock, under a tree
a minor official

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

PS. Get 2 free issues. Get 2 more free issues

Lillie poem archive

Send a single haiku for the Wednesday Haiku feature. Here's how.

Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 131 song