Music for Sunday

 This is one goes out to Ginger, who recently referred to the T.S. Eliot poem.
With love.  

For I have known them all already, known them all:— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,         50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.   So how should I presume?

For the entire T.S. Eliot poem The Love Song of J.A. Prufrock, click here

What is it that makes me just a little bit queasy?

Theres a breeze that makes my breathing not so easy
Ive had my lungs checked out with X rays
Ive smelled the hospital hallways

Someday Ill have a disappearing hairline
Someday Ill wear pyjamas in the daytime

Times when the day is like a play by Sartre
When it seems a bookburnings in perfect order
I gave the doctor my description
Ive tried to stick my prescriptions

Someday Ill have a disappearing hairline
Someday Ill wear pyjamas in the daytime

Afternoons will be measured out
Measured out, measured with
Coffeespoons and T.S. Eliot

Maybe if I could do a play-by playback
I could change the test results that I will get back
Ive watched the summer evenings pass by
Ive heard the rattle in my bronchi...

Someday Ill have a disappearing hairline
Someday Ill wear pyjamas in the daytime

Afternoons will be measured out
Measured out, measured with
Coffeespoons and T.S. Eliot (2x)

Music for Sunday - Joni Mitchell demo for Shades of Scarlett Conquering

and some related American art

 

 From the album The Hissing of Summer Lawns

1974

Shades of Scarlett Conquering

Out of the fire like Catholic saints
Comes Scarlett and her deep complaint
Mimicking tenderness she sees
In sentimental movies
A celluloid rider comes to town
Cinematic lovers sway
Plantations and sweeping ballroom gowns
Take her breath away

Out in the wind in crinolines
Chasing the ghosts of Gable and Flynn
Through stand-in boys and extra players
Magnolias hopeful in her auburn hair
She comes from a school of southern charm
She likes to have things her way
Any man in the world holding out his arm
Would soon be made to pay

Friends have told her not so proud
Neighbors trying to sleep and yelling "not so loud"
Lovers in anger "Block of Ice"
Harder and harder just to be nice
Given in the night to dark dreams
From the dark things she feels
She covers her eyes in the X-rated scenes
Running from the reels

Beauty and madness to be praised
'Cause it is not easy to be brave
To walk around in so much need
To carry the weight of all that greed
Dressed in stolen clothes she stands
Cast iron and frail
With her impossibly gentle hands
And her blood-red fingernails

Out of the fire and still smoldering
She says "A woman must have everything"
Shades of Scarlett Conquering
She says "A woman must have everything"

A Bright Future

Harry Roselan
 American
1906

Morris Museum of Art

Augusta, Georgia

The Smiths - Half A Person