Category: Books, Music, and Film to Wake Up Your Muse and Help You Change the World

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If I’m poor because I’m lazy and wasteful, then my poverty is a reproach. If I’m poor because I’m generous and industrious, then my poverty is a crown on my head. If I’m poor because I’ve been exploited and oppressed, then my poverty is a sword that will one day break from its sheath.

wandawaterman@themindfulbard.com

If I’m poor because I’m lazy and wasteful, then my poverty is a reproach. If I’m poor because I’m generous and industrious, then my poverty is a crown on my head. If I’m poor because I’ve been exploited and oppressed, then my poverty is a sword that will one day break from its sheath. ~~~~~ Si je suis pauvre parce que je suis paresseux et inutile, alors ma pauvreté est un reproche. Si je suis pauvre parce que je suis généreux et industrieux, alors ma pauvreté est une couronne sur ma tête. Si je suis pauvre parce que j’ai été … Continue reading If I’m poor because I’m lazy and wasteful, then my poverty is a reproach. If I’m poor because I’m generous and industrious, then my poverty is a crown on my head. If I’m poor because I’ve been exploited and oppressed, then my poverty is a sword that will one day break from its sheath.

ThoughtsLeave a comment

Why did the banks give us the shaft? Because we let them.

wandawaterman@themindfulbard.com

Those of us whose early lives were grounded in sixties counterculture movements were witness to a number of social experiments that failed— free love, communal living, and use of narcotics, for example— things that may not have started out as experiments (we were so sure we were right!) but ended up being mostly abandoned in favour of practices that actually made the world a better place. One of these experiments was the libertarian rearing of children. After all children had rights too and who were we to judge what was best for them? We had seen how how own stifling … Continue reading Why did the banks give us the shaft? Because we let them.

Books, Music, and Film to Wake Up Your Muse and Help You Change the WorldLeave a comment

What is the Avant-Garde and Why Does it Matter? Part I

wandawaterman@themindfulbard.com

Although it literally means vanguard, in general the term is applied to the arts, where it’s used to describe the experimental (John Cage), the alternative (Frank Zappa), the underground (Finnegans Wake and Mrs Dalloway), the eccentric (Klaus Nomi), and the new (steampunk). Many works created years ago are far more avant-garde than what is being created today, so it really isn’t about what’s hip and current. Occasionally the avant-garde does spring into notoriety (e.g., Mondrian-influenced mod clothing or beatnik poetry), but avant-garde is less about the box’s tinsel than about the seriousness of its contents. Philip Glass, for example, is avant-garde; Lady … Continue reading What is the Avant-Garde and Why Does it Matter? Part I

Books, Music, and Film to Wake Up Your Muse and Help You Change the WorldLeave a comment

The Little Mermaid (poem)

wandawaterman@themindfulbard.com

The Little Mermaid (Wanda Waterman, 2011, from They Tell My Tale to Children Now to Help Them to be Good)  My dancing was bathed in a gaze That dripped like honey  through moonlight, While unseen swords and knives sliced at my thighs. Oh, searing phantom pain of severed tail, That pretty tail that steered me through the deep Past wet azure spaces marked with gilded, silvered life!   Did you know I was silenced, due to you? My tongue cut out just like a cow’s, for you? My singing might have tortured you at nightfall, Or driven your sailors mad, … Continue reading The Little Mermaid (poem)