A Simple Case of Symphony

Picture, if you will, two very different seekers of solace: one, a self-assured, independent, intelligent, deeply sad, upwardly mobile, academically accomplished, woman of colour.Used to, thankfully, and comfortable in, a Canada where both her own freedom and her own search for self-identity are both possible, (if admittedly imperfect) , possibilities, the simplicity and solace of a concert where one is simultaneously at one with, and yet apart from, others, is still a defiant miracle, despite difference.
She has still managed, despite her insane academic schedule, her absence of social life, and deep concern at an externally imploding world, to fit in a mentally self-stabilizing concert where LIVE musicians still exhibit skill, mete out meter in measured doses of self-imposed regimen, and remind her of how little she still knows, and will continue to know, as her time, age, and academic credentials increase. She hopes she always bemoans too little time and the absence of required knowledge in her continued attempts to make sane, impassioned, reasonable assessments of the collection of knowledge, hoping, in doing so, that the application of that same will mean the difference in an uncertain world. It is hard, sometimes, to imagine the instances where that is made real.

Picture, if you will, a traditional, deeply sad (although not outwardly so) older man; used to being presumed to be brave; used to being presumed to be capable, comfortable with, responsible for, and the reason for problems with and for, the aforementioned young woman. He, too, defiantly attends, surrounded by, apart from, and yet enclosed within, the cocoon of the love of the gift of music. He is troubled, hypersensitive, bothered by an absence of appreciation and opportunity for, this gift that has given him this balm. He stands guard as artist and hero, fierce in his appreciation for, recognition of, and thankfulness for, the health and safety and......a flash! My God...he prays he might sleep without thoughts of guns or bombs or dead young people. His music is now all the balm of seeking he made in all of the songs he sang loudly, yelled fiercely, played loudly....instead and in place of, Death. Music still helps him see his way through it.

Angry with himself for thinking it might be, he grows gruff in his speech; abrupt in his gestures....makes contact clumsily but without malice, aside from that which age and Death insist upon, as our movements falter, our hearts contemplate....and our minds give us three seconds to act upon, in a stadium full of people despite the seemingly insane possibility that snatching away a gun or a bomb might result in his own death. The expected bravado, turned inwards, made silly.....denied balm, with hanging head, inwardly weeping heart, the protective somewhat stern father having been denuded.......desparked.

Hypersensitive to the idea of bonking heads or making contact in a modern/ancient frustration made doubly frustrating by being misinterpreted or assimilated into excessive, somewhat combative, academic arrogance........the old hero is vanquished. The enemy is unclear, however.

Its name is Fear, and it has, for a time, destroyed them both, prevented them from speaking, made them both presume, caused them both to move uncharacteristically and suspiciously, and....denied them what they both loved, for a time: a shared Balm.

This is a tragedy. It is especially so, because it is in my country, and despite understanding every terrible thing, both unspoken, and spoken, instinctively, which leads two such different people to attend the same place, for the same reason.....

Alas....despite the beautiful accompaniment which neither was able to attend, together...

My voice is absent.     

I am wearied, and ashamed, at having been too busy to get there in time to prevent it....the absence, I mean. Shabba Ranks would understand.

Dylan Thomas reciting his villanelle 'Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Ni...

Siouxsie And The Banshees - Cities In Dust

New Audio Recording Release - Dawn M. Nevills

AVAILABLE NOW! $9.99 - just in time for Christmas!

poetry favourites read aloud - Vol. 1

Read aloud by Dawn M. Nevills

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In this volume:

Swinburne, Malloch, Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sandburg and others!

poetry favourites read aloud   - Vol. 1  Dawn M. Nevills

                                         

This year's "Message to Michael"

This year's underestimated women have something to say, quietly, too....


"Kiva.org" Be part of watching something Bloomin' wonderful grow.....People. xo...everywhere.

Towards Democracy with Integrity

Much has been said about the ideals of democracy.

Its goals are lofty, its ideals are the stuff of the best of man's aspirations, practices, and beliefs, and its precepts - presumably, and by definition - are supposedly reflective of what its most precious values keep sacred, in the daily infrastructures of a free and just society.

And yet.....not until 1947 did Quebec officially recognize the equality of women, and allow them to vote. Think about that. Slaves were emancipated from the Deep South of the United States and FLED to this country ....and women could not participate, legally, in the official declaration of the idea of freedom, within the very democracy that supposedly rescued other human beings from institutional bondage.

For all of our discussions of language, inclusion, cultural representation, religious, sexual, and minority-driven equalities......the Second World War did not include women who could officially vote in Quebec. Little is said by a smug Nation about the reality of its history - and its treatment - of women.

Herded onto official plots of land deemed not threatening enough to deter "progress", blood percentage quotas were also "officially" imposed upon the main aboriginal inhabitants of the country by its "officials" in order to determine and institutionalize governmental subsistence, intertribal racism, caste mentality, and "dependences" which were encouraged and instituted as "equal", while instantly creating a "removed citizen" system which isolated, "zooed" and reduced its First Nations generationally. They created pogroms of the popular, with punishment-popular systems of accountability and shaming with little or no ways and means for governmental and operational foundation-building training....and then, having reduced recipients to recalcitrant child status, moaned about waste and accountability, when the imposed system began to implode. The well-crafted "problem child Frankenstein" failed to perform like the much-hoped-for sainted dancing bear.

  Only recently have some of these systemic norms been acknowledged, recognized, and exposed for the ways in which they have "retarded" normal societal growth and inculcated gross misunderstandings, terrible degradations, and complete ignorance about who, what and why the idea of "status" came to be in the first place.

Recent footage revealed the horrific poverty and alarming suicide rates of people in the Far North. More alarming, amidst supposed increases in connectivity and "available wealth" was, simply, a sense of hopelessness in the young....and the elderly. Removed from a knowledge of their own tradition, the void between the two, and the lack of understanding, had become vast, and disturbing.

Having been used up, wrung out, and exploited, the "discomfort" that is "the difficult Aunt" of representational democracy, having been patted on the hand and quietly shut up in the attic to pay off everyone's bills, would not go away, amidst the hypocrisy, the glamour, the new beauty, and the remembered hours of double overtime shifts worked, like most people, with the idea of it resulting in a life made better by work and effort. Alas....1947, a propensity for enjoying the practice of patronizing hope, and the convenience of "putting them uppity niggers to good use" saw the dignity, honour, and belief in the idea of service, denigrated and debased with a viciousness and focus usually reserved for a truly threatening enemy. Education, hope, and equality, responding in bewilderment, looked around in horror, and recognized how easily enslavement of "one for all the rest who found it convenient" - oblivious to the shadows of the six million gassed to death in a fever pitch of focused and furious group envy - was allowed to continue, unchecked.

The artist, aghast at the distortion of freedom and law, retreated, wounded.......

...and then, defiant at the outrage, demanded reparations; unrepentant, determined.....unrelenting.    

Sky Sigh

I looked into the ink  of God and saw
The thoughtful eyes of moments ago
Reminding me of all that I had yet
To do
And in that instant
I flew
Higher
Under their gaze

Nobody Does it Better

http://www.thekaraokechannel.com/online/karaoke/community/Dawn-M.-Nevills/Carly-Simon/Nobody-Does-It-Better/r_842746

"Tears Dry on Their Own" - gentle thoughts of damaged lives and new tomorrows with changed Men....by Dawn M Nevills

http://www.thekaraokechannel.com/online/karaoke/community/Dawn-M.-Nevills/Amy-Winehouse/Tears-Dry-On-Their-Own/r_590271

"Fake Plastic Trees" - an unexpected interpretation, by Dawn M. Nevills

http://www.thekaraokechannel.com/online/karaoke/community/Dawn-M.-Nevills/Radiohead/Fake-Plastic-Trees/r_777790

Thought for the Day

http://www.thekaraokechannel.com/online/karaoke/community/Dawn-M.-Nevills/Annie-Lennox-Al-Green/Put-A-Little-Love-In-Your-Heart/r_1080737

Hockey Pome

Mine's a workaday thought, bound by matter.
When I close my eyes, I see it rise above the various pros and trons, electras and newts,
Winged, like all those
Higher Beings
I see pictures of, when I have a moment away from
Tidying Up.

All this order, and disorder....tidy, tidy tidy.
The rain broom sweeps the dust particles and glinted motes in the sunlight,
A reminder of the wondrous Moments, breathed into
When the matter took shape,
And Mattered.

Maybe the bees are confused, lately;
Gentle, cheery, ardent, focused:
A lot of things die when their example isn't followed.....
Joy, surprises, thoughtfulness, humour, steely possibles....Hope.....
All waiting.
It's different from constantly being
Benched.

D. Nevills
21June16

Of Cheese and Wine and Love

Oh, if this dirt could blow a carbon image of dream's imagining,
Then I might curve around, star-like
A universe contained in the eyes
of
Undiscovered, known.

Woulds't thou see, in elements undetermined, form, and fan, and fly,
Amidst the shifting winds of Time?
These shells.....these shells we inhabit - these gifts of function -
Permit us to share Each Other.
In the doing, when our minds are allowed - oh, such Brevity, Darling Mine! -
Circumference completion.

There is no other explanation.
 In the circle's half, hands hold face, embrace,
Ignite
Find, Speak, Caress, Weep, Speak Again, Moan Lost Years,
Mature, Regress, Scream Moments Gone,
Embrace the Griefs of Other,
Comfort, Wish Pain Gone....and
Love.

As years pass, the vessels are imperfect, but
We see, as years ago, the beauty and fire that
Ignited the
Joining of spirit and Ardour
In a world of
Only Briefly,
and it is
Enough,
Beautifully.

Circles and Halves

I wonder why Picasso called it
"Girl in a Mirror".

did he miss his breasts, or just wonder why they were missing?

did he just want to understand why no one would probably have bothered
to look at the painting if he'd called it

Self portrait of the surgically removed? having

denuded himself of his

feminine side, he needed to

pencil in all of the

internal organs

After all, it completed the

Hymn to the

Silence.

PRAYERS FOR FORT MCMURRAY

Thoughts and prayers going out today for the terrified 61,000 people fleeing raging fires in Fort McMurray, Alberta today, as the military is called in to assist people trying to escape, after a major exit south of the city was blocked by fire earlier yesterday. This is the largest evacuation due to disaster in Alberta's history....please stay "Caring and Canadian", as people escape, literally from an 80-foot wall of flames with their lives. Please help when you can, and in whatever way you can, during this terrible and frightening time for them....!No prayer is ever wasted.

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS ONLINE..Check out Dawn's spoken word recordings online! BUY ONE NOW!

PURCHASE HERE on REVERBNATION - "Bringing Music and Art to the Nation!"

https://www.reverbnation.com/control_room/artist/1316932/albums

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IT'S "Celebration Year" for THE BARD!.

BRING POETRY ALIVE IN CLASS.....with a SPOKEN WORD Sonnet Recording....
....BEHOLD......THE MAGIC OF WORDS BROUGHT TO LIFE!



"SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET SELECTIONS'  and

"POEMS FROM BUTTERSCOTCH COTTAGE" ............... on sale NOW!!!!



Downloadable, accessible.....memorize your favourite via MP3! Makes a great audition read!


Special gift note:
(Autographed hardcopy CD's of "Poems from Butterscotch Cottage" available upon request.!)

..........Dawn's original poetry and collection of original paintings come to life!