17 Replies to “In the sweet embrace of opacity

    • Thanks Marion – hope it’s a good one. Nobody can stop us hoping, right?

      Just about to switch on. Think I’ll see ’21 in with a touch of Jools Holland’s Hootenanny!

    • applause, applause, life is our cause

      From Blue, hugely popular on its 1971 release. And now, half a century on? Few albums have stood the test of time as well as this flat out masterpiece. Another of its songs featured a few days ago on this site’s tune for the day – Joni wishing she had a River

      It’s credibly held that another Blue classic was written to her fellow Canadian, one time lover and lifelong friend, Leonard Cohen:

      I could drink a case of you, darling/And I would still be on my feet/I would still be on my feet

  1. Hey man, who are you (and Coogan) calling a dick?
    Thank you for getting 2021 off to a cheering and hopeful start with these beautiful photographs and for the reminder of the classic album Blue and its bittersweet memories.
    Happy New Year to you and yours,
    Caroline

    • Happy new year Caroline!

      I’ll replicate the quote here as it’ll soon be usurped by the next steel city sagacity.

      We’re all a bit of a dick. It’s the human condition. Nothing to be afraid of.

      I find Steve Coogan’s words incredibly affirmative. We’re so mortified by the stupid things we do, it’s good to realise – another of the many compensations of being sixty-eight rather than twenty-eight – that we’re all in the same boat. Everybody – embrace your inner dickhead! We can never accept others till we learn to accept ourselves.

      Another Coogan quote I love, and for similar reasons:

      I don’t like new bands. I don’t want to be one of those pathetic old men in their forties who knows exactly what 18-year-olds are into.

      See ya in ’21 – I’m sure of it x

      • OK, a bit harsh on ‘pathetic old men’ but in truth they are ageless. I knew them at school as the kids who couldn’t play cricket or soccer to save their lives but would reel off, walking encyclopaedias that they were, batting averages and current league position for any team you threw at them.

        More a boy thing, this: they’re the ones who go straight from childhood to middle age without ever having been that marvellous thing; a young man.

    • Happy new year to you John!

      What a trio – the man in black, the woman he walked the line for and (there in spirit) the man who penned the hammer song, Pete Seeger.

      Here’s Bruce Springsteen, live in East Germany, with a magnificent delivery that brings out all the power of Dylan’s Chimes of Freedom

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