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Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.

--Andre Maurois

*Jobim*

Waters of March

by Antonio Jobim

A stick, a stone,

It's the end of the road,

It's the rest of a stump,

It's a little alone.

It's a sliver of glass,

It is life, it's the sun,

It is night, it is death,

It's a trap, it's a gun.

The oak when it blooms,

A fox in the brush,

A knot in the wood,

The song of a thrush.

The wood of the wind,

A cliff, a fall,

A scratch, a lump,

It is nothing at all.

It's the wind blowing free,

It's the end of the slope,

It's a beam, it's a void,

It's a hunch, it's a hope.

And the river bank talks

of the waters of March,

It's the end of the strain,

The joy in your heart.

The foot, the ground,

The flesh and the bone,

The beat of the road,

A slingshot's stone.

A fish, a flash,

A silvery glow,

A fight, a bet,

The range of a bow.

The bed of the well,

The end of the line,

The dismay in the face,

It's a loss, it's a find.

A spear, a spike,

A point, a nail,

A drip, a drop,

The end of the tale.

A truckload of bricks

in the soft morning light,

The shot of a gun

in the dead of the night.

A mile, a must,

A thrust, a bump,

It's a girl, it's a rhyme,

It's a cold, it's the mumps.

The plan of the house,

The body in bed,

And the car that got stuck,

It's the mud, it's the mud.

Afloat, adrift,

A flight, a wing,

A hawk, a quail,

The promise of spring.

And the riverbank talks

of the waters of March,

It's the promise of life

It's the joy in your heart.

A stick, a stone,

It's the end of the road

It's the rest of a stump,

It's a little alone.

A snake, a stick,

It is John, it is Joe,

It's a thorn in your hand

and a cut in your toe.

A point, a grain,

A bee, a bite,

A blink, a buzzard,

A sudden stroke of night.

A pin, a needle,

A sting, a pain,

A snail, a riddle,

A wasp, a stain.

A pass in the mountains,

A horse and a mule,

In the distance the shelves

rode three shadows of blue.

And the riverbank talks

of the waters of March,

It's the promise of life

in your heart, in your heart.

A stick, a stone,

The end of the road,

The rest of a stump,

A lonesome road.

A sliver of glass,

A life, the sun,

A knife, a death,

The end of the run.

And the riverbank talks

of the waters of March,

It's the end of all strain,

It's the joy in your heart.

*Music*

Mr Jurek sure has a way of extolling Joe Henry. By Thom Jurek:

"Blood from Stars is the album Joe Henry's been getting at since Scar. He's worked with jazz musicians often, but he's never made a record that employs the form so prominently. His band includes Marc Ribot, Patrick Warren, Jay Bellerose, David Pilch, and now his son Levon on saxophones and clarinet, as well as vibist Keefus Ciancia. Engineer Ryan Freeland is as important as the players: he managed to give this record its strange yet welcoming sound. It begins with the short "Prelude," played by Jason Moran. It introduces all the characters here, with a note or two here, a chord flourish there. Some are immediately identifiable; others you've never met before and perhaps hope never to. Henry's love of traditional jazz has blossomed--the album sprawls over history, genre, and song forms, but there is no consciously retro aspect in its presentation and it is not a jazz album. Many of these songs are based on the blues (and even folk-blues); some are standards-style pop; some walk out the jazz of New Orleans, St. Louis, and Kansas City from the early 20th century; some even rock--a little. Many are dressed in horn arrangements and offbeat sounds that seem to enter in from the rafters. They drift in and out and are allowed to play a part in the songs. Who cannot relate to the swinging blues (à la "St. James Infirmary") led by piano, upright bass, acoustic guitar, and a minimal trap kit? The music seems to come from antiquity in "The Man I Keep Hid," but Henry's voice is right firmly in the historical present: his protagonist voices his desires and how they are thwarted--usually by himself--as horns, organs, piano, and rhythm section swell and offer the chaos just under the surface of the singer's voice.

""Channel" follows it, a love song about disorder that is played as anything but. Henry's character asks simple questions that offer significant difficulties in his inner world, but he embraces them: "I want my story straight/But all the others bend/From wondrous to strange/To beauty at the end...." It's a haunting melody that would be--if we had them anymore--a parlor song. Both songs reflect something lost and hidden in the wires and satellites of modern life: that individuals--no matter how lost, determined, angry, displaced, hopeful, or praying for redemption at any cost--still have human voices that speak, at least on the inside, constantly. Musical traditions bend and blend into and through one another and are painted by the sounds Freeland allowed to enter from the ghosts in the walls, the ceilings, or up from the floorboards. "Death to the Storm" reveals this better than just about any track here, a simple blues with Ribot's electric guitar weaving through Henry's lines and phrases about characters--including the protagonist, who could have come from Steinbeck, Dos Passos, or O'Connor. "Bellwether"--another early 20th century jazz-blues--is a modern tale of Sisyphus. He's climbing a hill, digging a well, changing his name, leaving his shame, etc., until the story gets better. Ultimately, Blood from Stars is the most sophisticated, redemptive, and romantic album Henry's cut; the love songs are simply raggedly breathtaking. It reflects an America that wasn't so much lost as consciously wiped away near the end of the 20th century. Its remnants still live, however, in the shadows of memory, and in the broken-hearted ghosts that continue to haunt its landscape and atmosphere, and sometimes even its people. Henry welcomes them, lending his voice to theirs in all of these songs."

*Quotations*

Without a family, man, alone in the world, trembles with the cold.

--Andre Maurois

Until the Women's Movement, it was commonplace to be told by an editor that he'd like to publish more of my poems, but he'd already published one by a woman that month. This attitude was the rule rather than the exception, until the mid-sixties. The highest compliment was to be told, 'You write like a man.'

--Maxine Kumin

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

--George Orwell

"On with the dance; let joy be unconfined," is my motto, whether there's a dance to dance or any joy to unconfine.

--Samuel Clemens

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

--EO Wilson

Gather your strength and listen; the whole heart of man is a single

outcry. Lean against your breast to hear it; someone is struggling

and shouting within you. If you do not hear this cry tearing at your entrails, do not set out.

--Nikos Kazantzakis

I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

--Richard Strauss

Practice love first on animals; they are more sensitive.

--George Gurdjieff

If there is any single factor that makes for success in living, it is the ability to draw dividends from defeat.

--William Marston

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall--think of it, _always_.

--Gandhi

Peace love and ATOM jazz