Mixtape – Winwood, Hesse, Michelangelo
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. A Song
This was one of my favourite albums when it came out — Steve Winwood’s Back in the Highlife. Was it cool at the time? I didn’t really care — I played that cassette to death. So finding it at Value Village recently while my daughter did her shopping felt like a homecoming. I love especially “Higher Love.”
Think about it, there must be higher love
Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above
Without it, life is wasted time
Look inside your heart, I'll look inside mine
Things look so bad everywhere
In this whole world, what is fair?
We walk blind and we try to see
Falling behind in what could be
Bring me a higher love
Bring me a higher love (oh oh)
Bring me a higher love
Where's that higher love I keep thinking of?
Worlds are turning and we're just hanging on
Facing our fear and standing out there alone
A yearning, and it's real to me
There must be someone who's feeling for me
Covers of the song include this one by Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir and another popular one is the Kygo remix of Whitney Houston which you can read more about here.
2. A Poem
To a Leaf Wilting
by Hermann Hesse
Every blossom wants to become fruit.
Every morning turns into evening without regret.
Nothing on earth is eternal
except change, except taking leave.
The most splendid summer
yearns to fade into fall.
Oh, autumn leaf, be still and yielding
when the wind wants to seize you.
Do not resist, be a player in the game.
Surrender to the change in motion.
Let yourself be broken, seized,
and blown to the next home.
The surrendering in the above poem speaks to me. And whenever I read from my volume of Hermann Hesse poems translated by Ludwig Max Fischer I am always taken with the commentary by Fischer. He quotes Hesse, “To cut through the charades of this world, to despise it, may be the aim of the great thinkers. My only goal in life is to be able to love this world, to see it and myself and all beings with the eyes of love and admiration and reverence…”
I’m interested in his insistence on love. I like that he “saw himself as an advocate for the soul, as an activist for the spirit in everyone beyond ideologies and doctrines.” Hesse saw words as instruments for the possible, and which could lead us to joy.
How many thousands of time in a life do we need to relearn the path to joy? Writing all this I’m reminded of the ending of an essay I wrote about Springsteen in my book, Apples on a Windowsill:
“The year I spent listening to Bruce Springsteen was a year of allowing myself to be absorbed by something without questioning why. It didn’t so much change me as remind me about a lot of things that I knew in one way but needed to learn in another. My torn soul became easier, the ride smoother, the car I was metaphorically driving became cooler. I asked myself the age-old question — what were you born for? Was I born to run? Born to hold it together? Born to recluse? It didn’t even have to be just one thing. But in the end the answer was right there. Born to love.”
And I wrote that before I heard the song by Ray LaMontagne, “I Was Born to Love You.” It’s a nice continuation of all this thinking and a bonus song for you today.
3. A Picture
The photograph below is by me from our trip to Firenze in November. I’m going to look at a sculpture in this post rather than a picture, per se, and that is the copy of Michelangelo’s David which is in the Piazza della Signoria in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. The original was moved to the Accademia in 1873.
There is a fascinating article about moving the original and then creating copies here.
I can’t stop thinking about this next photo which appeared in the article:
Michelangelo’s David inside a wagon in Piazza della Signoria just before being transported on rail to the Accademia di Belle Arti of Florence, 31/07-04/08 1873. Photographer: Vincenzo Paganori (credit: Alinari Archives, Florence).
I love the incredible amount of planning and care that went into moving the David. The reverence, the love for this work. The way people from all over the world come to queue up to see the original. I think about all the love went into making copies because we need to keep the original safe but because it’s also amazing to know it in an outdoor setting. The beauty of it, the oddness of the too large hand. I love the whole story around the sculpture. The way that it was carved from a single block of marble which three other artists had rejected. The way that David’s pupils are heart-shaped. And maybe more than anything, I love the statue as a symbol for courage — the little chap who took down a giant with a rock and a slingshot. (I like the story metaphorically — which I suppose needs to actually be said these days). We can overcome the odds, seeing with love.
There’s nothing like seeing the original, though. To think of the hand of Michelangelo carving this. A human hand carving a human hand.
— This will be my last post of the year! Thank you for being here. I’ll resume in 2025 with a New Year’s Day post if all goes my way! Warm wishes to you all and an early happy Solstice!
December 18, 2024
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