So the shortest day came, and the year died, And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world Came people singing, dancing, To drive the dark away. They lighted candles in the winter trees; They hung their homes with evergreen; They burned beseeching fires all night long To keep the year alive, And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake They shouted, reveling. Through all the frosty ages you can hear them Echoing behind us—Listen!! All the long echoes sing the same delight, This shortest day, As promise wakens in the sleeping land: They carol, feast, give thanks, And dearly love their friends, And hope for peace. And so do we, here, now, This year and every year. Welcome Yule!
Hunters in the Snow– painting by Pieter Bruegel the Eider
As we experience the shortest day of the year, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting, “Hunters in the Snow,” is an almost perfect picture of the contrasting scenes we experience this time of year, depicting isolation and melancholy producing a sense that we are being pulled into a silent landscape where the deep drifts of snow where you can “feel the cold and sense the audible dullness as the landscape sucks the sound from every little human vignette.”
His paintings are beautiful because his compositions make one of the opposites, based on Eli Siegel’s principle of aesthetic realism: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making of one of the opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”
David Hidalgo, Los Lobos Guitarist — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Cortez the Killer
He came dancing across the water With his galleons and guns Looking for a new world A palace in the sun On the shore lay Montezuma With his cocoa leaves and pearls In his halls he often wondered The secrets of the worlds Oh, and his subjects gathered round him Like leaves around a tree In their clothes of many colors For the angry gods to see And the women all were beautiful And the men stood straight and strong They offered life in sacrifice So that others could go on
Hate was just a legend And war was never known The people worked together And they lifted many stones They carried them to the flat-lands And they died along the way They built up with their bare hands What we still can’t build today And I know she’s living there And she loves me to this day I can still remember when Or how I lost my way
Cortez, Cortez He came dancing across the water Cortez, Cortez
Came dancing across the water
Came dancing across the water Cortez, Cortez Dancing across the water Dancing across the water Dancing across the water Came dancing across the water Cortez, Cortez Dancing across the water Dancing across the water Dancing across the water
Chris Duarte at the Cactus Moon, Humble, Texas (January 2003) — Images by kenne
When it comes to Blues/Rock guitar players, Texas has produced some of the best. I saw Chris live several times in the late ’90s and early ’00s, and each time his performance drained me. He is very intense and emotional — literally mindblowing.
I always wonder what they think the niggers are doing while they, the pink and alabaster pragmatists, are containing Russia and defining and re-defining and re-aligning China, nobly restraining themselves, meanwhile, from blowing up that earth which they have already blasphemed into dung: the gentle, wide-eyed, cheerful ladies, and their men, nostalgic for the noble cause of Vietnam, nostalgic for noble causes, aching, nobly, to wade through the blood of savages— ah—! Uncas shall never leave the reservation, except to purchase whisky at the State Liquor Store. The Panama Canal shall remain forever locked: there is a way around every treaty. We will turn the tides of the restless Caribbean, the sun will rise, and set on our hotel balconies as we see fit. The natives will have nothing to complain about, indeed, they will begin to be grateful, will be better off than ever before. They will learn to defer gratification and save up for things, like we do.
Oh, yes. They will. We have only to make an offer they cannot refuse.
