those damned irish

Irish musical culture seems to excel in exploiting music’s power as a social oil,
and it sees no point in waiting until we are inside a music venue.
It sees it as a power that can be deployed anywhere, anytime, anyhow.


Secondly, the concept of transmission or ‘passing on’ is valued:
at traditional music sessions, I am regularly struck by the status that a child playing music can have. An eight-year-old playing the simple ‘Kerry Polka’ on the tin whistle will command rapt attention from both musicians and audiences. The standard is not important;
the fact that they are expressing themselves is.
Musicians do not hesitate to share their knowledge or skills with someone younger,
regardless of whether they are their ‘teacher’ or not; it
is the way they learned and they instinctively realise the importance of continuing on this act.
 Many Irish traditional musicians describe themselves as ‘self-taught’,
but it is only in a musical culture in which everyone is your teacher that this could happen.












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___________________________  Toner Quinn


































.

autumn paints herself in russet and gold


her perfume the sweet intoxicants of earth

let's get real

      HOMO     EVEHO
































      

ushering the snakes back into ireland

"It's about time.
Discrimination has no place on America's streets,
least of all on Fifth Avenue."


                          sarah kate ellis  -    green goes gay









......








.

well here's something new you don't read every day

"  Let woman assert herself in all her native purity, dignity, and strength, and end this wholesale suffering and murder of helpless children. With centuries of degradation, we have so little of true womanhood, that the world has but the faintest glimmering of what a woman is or should be.  "






Elizabeth Cady Stanton  -  in response to real degradation

the death of a blog

a certain lethargy
an ennui has set in in regards to blogging
all the initial excitement about
communicaton via the blog world has subsided
now i look over the effort of a few years
and see a theme of intellectual idleness

this particular blog has been a bit parasitic
i've yanked texts from hither thither and yon
and strung them together for no great purpose

nothing in the world would change
if this were to end
the effort was completely superfluous
to everything else in the world....except for the rare human exchange that
did in fact occur

time to think of other possibilities

the light and lively breeze of original thought
settles into a cognitive doldrum

ah well
nothing is changed once more








...

such is our discipline

   In love, no certainty is ultimate...
        That elementary thing -
             the feeling that you are loved -
                 must be certified again and again,
                    because one doubt,   one mistake
                       razes everything to madness and ecstasy.






                                Mircea Eliade