Mix Tape – Laméris, LaMontagne, Janvier
Here is today’s mixtape in the effort to live the words of Goethe, “One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
1. Song – Step Into Your Power by Ray LaMontagne
I really really need this song to sink in for me so I’m sharing it here. I’m not even sure I have any power to step into, lol, but I love the song all the same for the encouragement. If you’re reading in the newsletter, click here.
Ray has been there before for me, and he’s coming through now.
2. Poem — What Begins by Danusha Laméris
What begins in beauty, ends in beauty.
What begins in sorrow, ends in sorrow.
The seed once planted, soon in full bloom.
If grief, then grief. If anger, anger. They say
the first week of any love affair reveals its end.
Give me the child at seven, and so forth.
And didn’t the world begin with a bang?
Hard to argue for another truth. But I have seen
a heart worn thin, take to small repairs, have watched
a blue jay, born wild, eat out of a woman’s hand.
And didn’t we begin as tadpoles, curled and gilled?
I want to think the starting place is only
one location on a curve that we can follow
to another end. And then, begin again.
{source}
I think a lot of people found Danusha Laméris with her amazing poem “Small Kindnesses.” I love this one for what it says about beauty and sorrow, about beginning and beginning again. How beginning might be located on a repeating curve. So maybe we step into our power again and again, claiming it, losing it, claiming it again.
3. Picture — Alex Janvier
The CBC article announcing the death of renowned and beloved Alberta artist, Alex Janvier begins:
One of Canada's greatest painters, who wedded Indigenous elements to the mainstream of modern art, has died.
Alex Janvier, whose thousands of works hang in private homes and public galleries across the country, was 89.
"Painting says it all for me," Janvier said in a statement in 2012. "It is the Redmantalk in colour, in North America's language. Our Creator's voice in colour."
The rest of the article may be found here.
I worked for a year at the Milner library where this painting hangs. If you live in Edmonton, stop by and see this work on the first floor. I’ve spent a fair bit of time looking at it and it’s beautiful. The tondo format really works for me, and I think goes nicely with the idea of beginning again and again. As Laméris says in her poem, “What begins in beauty, ends in beauty.”
— Photos from our backyard this past week.
