|
|
Post by freakydeaky on Oct 3, 2015 13:29:09 GMT -5
Regardless of how you feel about guns or abortion, I thought this, from Raviv Ullman on twitter, was really well thought out...  |
|
|
|
Post by toramenor on Oct 19, 2015 13:13:31 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by toramenor on Oct 19, 2015 13:20:57 GMT -5
I haven't been here in a while - RL took over: the beginning of the new academic year is always a busy period for me (I'm a college professor), so I haven't had much time lately to post. But I do drop by Adamtopia to check out what's happening - I'm loving all the developments and enjoying Adam's new video. However, I also came across this, and I think it's perfect for any day, not just Monday  , so I thought I'd share with all music and/or dance lovers. It's contemporary dance, but it reminds me of those classic old movies when emotions were painted big and when actors danced in the rain  . Enjoy! www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCrrWNlUy94&sns=tw |
|
|
|
Post by rosepetal on Nov 17, 2015 6:58:37 GMT -5
I also have been absent for sometime RL has become overwhelming. I'm stoping in today to post a verse I wrote I because the loss of life in the terror attacks had been weighing heavily on my heart . It's my hope of what the moment of death is like and it's had brought me comfort so I'm sharing:
I heard a voice in the wind ....it spoke my name and called me friend,
It ask me please to come with haste...to a clam and ancient place.
To lay in fragrant meadows green...to touch the face of one unseen ,
To play with moonbeams from on high... To dance across the starry sky.
To know pure and endless love... to free my soul and rise above.
These words drifted over me they sounded like a melody.
Suddenly I felt so light...was then it whispered that I had died.
|
|
|
|
Post by freakydeaky on Nov 17, 2015 13:26:11 GMT -5
I also have been absent for sometime RL has become overwhelming. I'm stoping in today to post a verse I wrote I because the loss of life in the terror attacks had been weighing heavily on my heart . It's my hope of what the moment of death is like and it's had brought me comfort so I'm sharing: I heard a voice in the wind ....it spoke my name and called me friend, It ask me please to come with haste...to a clam and ancient place. To lay in fragrant meadows green...to touch the face of one unseen , To play with moonbeams from on high... To dance across the starry sky. To know pure and endless love... to free my soul and rise above. These words drifted over me they sounded like a melody. Suddenly I felt so light...was then it whispered that I had died. Ah, what lovely poetry, kind of bitter sweet... I love this - Beautiful words from Isobel Bowdery, who survived the massacre inside the Bataclan Theatre.. (You'll need to click on it to enlarge it)  |
|
|
|
Post by toramenor on Jan 7, 2016 2:06:34 GMT -5
It's been a while since I last wrote here, but I thought it might be nice to restart this thread in the new year. I don't think I'm mistaken in believing that there are plenty of people (lurking or participating) on Adamtopia who like to write or be creative in other ways, and this After Hours thread can be the right place for them. I hope. My experience of watching TV againI have just returned from a week-long visit to my parents and it was really nice, but they have this hundred-year-old computer ( ) and slow (for my standards) Internet, so that I spent a great deal less time on the web than I normally do. However, I did watch loads more television, especially when you consider I don't ever watch TV at home. There is a TV-set in my flat, but it hasn't actually been connected to anything for the past 6 years or so. That is not to say I don't ever watch TV shows. I do, I just do it online - whenever I want, without commercials and waiting for set times, etc. It was, therefore, interesting when I had to go back to the old way of watching television, through an actual TV-set. First off, I realized you can have 300 channels and still not have anything interesting to watch. (What's the point, then? I'd rather amuse myself than be subjected to mindless or silly content that TV channels often provide.) Second, each time I switched on MTV Music Channel (and I did it 3 times during the week), they were playing Adele's "Hello" music video. I'm not making this up - every single time! (And, I'm sorry, but hearing that song once when it first came out was more than enough for me. I don't dislike Adele - "Rollin' in the Deep" is my go-to singing-in-the-bathroom song, but "Hello", in my opinion, is nothing to write home or phone call anyone about ). Third, I remembered how much I love to watch ski jumping. Thank you, Eurosport, for complete coverage of the Four Hills Tournament. While I was at my parents', I got to see two Hills (two competitions), which were both thrilling and great to watch - I saw some old names and was introduced to some new ones. (And, to top it, my favourite won three competitions, and the entire Tournament!) OK, to conclude, TV isn't all bad, but it can be annoying and uninteresting. In the end, watching TV again did remind me why I stopped watching it - I felt like I was (more often than not) just wasting my time on uninteresting content that was doing nothing for me intellectually or emotionally. I'm definitely not going to start it up again, but I may renew my subscription to Eurosport Player ( ). Catch & ReleaseOne other good thing I got from TV was that I saw this song being played on another music channel (not MTV - they're too busy replaying Hello twelve hundred times a day). The lyrics read like poetry and I love that. Plus, it's such a chill song - I like the music as well. Perhaps I should, more appropriately, post this in the thread about music and musicians other than Adam, but maybe it's not out of place here either, as I've often tried to explore similar topics in this thread - creativity, imagination, self-realization, poetry... and I think this song really touches all of those concepts. It is surprisingly profound in some parts... These are the parts that I appreciate the most: - the beginning There's a place I go to Where no one knows me-It's not lonely,It's a necessary thing.
It's a place I made up -Find out what I'm made of...The nights I've stayed up -Counting stars and fighting sleep...
- the chorusEverybody got their reason, Everybody got their way -We're just catching and releasing What builds up throughout the day. It gets into your body, It flows right through your blood; We can tell each other secrets And remember how to love...www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LXsm9y-z3IHAPPY NEW YEAR and I hope to see this thread revived... *** ETA: I just saw rosepetal's poem about death - truly beautiful... |
|
|
|
Post by saraswati on Jan 7, 2016 11:24:05 GMT -5
Thank you Toramenor! I love these lyrics |
|
|
|
Post by toramenor on Jan 11, 2016 3:36:23 GMT -5
Sad news about David Bowie's death... When I think of him, I think: FREEDOM... He did what he wanted in his art, no limits and no limitations... He knew how to dream and how to be free...
Human thoughts are like rooms. There are glorious chambers, and there are dumps in the attic. There are sunny rooms, and there are dark rooms. Some have a view of the river and the sky, while others look on a greenhouse or a basement. The words inside them are like furniture, and they can be moved from one room into another. The thoughts in us, or rather those chambers in us, can be set inside castles or military compounds, or they can belong to other people, while we are just a tenant there. Sometimes, especially at night, we come across locked exits in these rooms and we cannot get out. We are trapped inside like in dungeons, until dreams set us free and release us.
(From Seven Deadly Sins—Milorad Pavić, a Serbian author)
****
I was born on a plain...
It is a land without echoes. There is nothing here to return calls. The distances absorb them.
Flights of birds are motionless and they can be plucked from the sky. Everything is leaning towards the earth. Everything is within grasp.
Here distance is measured by dawns and twilights, and time is measured by the lengths of shadows.
The milky way is up to your knees, like strewn grass.
You do not have to climb – stars grow on bushes.
You just keep going straight, then across fields of gold, and after ten paces you are already walking across heavens.
Doesn’t all this sound like freedom?
(Miroslav Antić, a Serbian poet)
|
|
|
|
Post by toramenor on Jun 17, 2016 2:46:50 GMT -5
I don't know where else to post this, so I've decided to raise this thread from the dead (unintentional rhyme there, sorry; perhaps my head is too much in the world of rhymes right now...)
I've written several new poems and/or songs since the last time I posted anything here (in January!), but this poem is one I feel I want to share. It is in part related to the recent Orlando tragedy, but really it is about the state of our entire world. I started writing it yesterday and I finished it today, and the starting point, the first idea for it, was not what it ended up as. The truth is, I didn't start writing this poem at all; I started writing something else entirely. But somewhere between the second and the fifth line, something else took over and I wrote this poem you have in front of you.
I have no real words to talk about how horrible that mass murder was. I am an LGBT activist and a queer person myself, so I more than feel for everyone affected by that tragedy (which is more than just the people who were actually there), but this poem is not about grief or about being LGBT. It's about us as humans and our world - the planet Earth and the civilizations we have created. It's about our present and our future. It is what I wish for. I wish to sing the song of life.
The Song of Life
We have built our dreams
On the foundations of strife,
And now, to me it seems,
Few of us remember
How to sing songs of life.
We must discover
The song of life.
If we were notes in silence,
In the music of our hearts
There would be no pretense
When it came to this passage:
We'd all know our parts.
We need another language
To play our parts.
Being hard and ruthless –
(Rules for soldiers and warriors) –
Must give way to peacefulness,
And a very different colour
Must paint our world free of tears.
We must uncover
A world without tears.
No one can follow or lead:
We must all go together
To the one place we all need,
The only escape from violence,
The place of calm and shelter.
In the universe of silence
We must find shelter.
I will walk across love to touch you,
For there must be no more hate.
I have lived all of your lives, too,
In my mind, along with my own.
We've always shared the same fate.
We must now know
We share one fate.
We must create ourselves again
And, instead of a gun or a knife,
Raise a paint brush or a pen;
We must raise our voice
To sing new songs of life.
We must rejoice
In the song of life.
In a world without tears:
No more battles, no more plight,
We must shed only our fears
And find shelter in all the pieces
Of our shared fate, our one life.
We must each play our part
And paint anew with colour and light
The world which lives in our heart.
We must say at last: Truly this is
The Song of Life.
***
(credit where credit is due: I used a quote by Italian singer-songwriter Eros Ramazzoti: "L'amore attraverserò." which means "I will walk across love." - I just adore that lyric and it fits perfectly into what I wanted to say.)
|
|
|
|
Post by Jablea on Jul 23, 2016 2:10:13 GMT -5
Beautiful words toromenor and sad/scary too. But I think it's very interesting that when faced with the fear and anger that your poetry doesn't turn to revenge and isolation. graciejane posted this article on the main thread today that shows research of how some people may react when faced with the same thing. www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/HeWhoCannot amed-authoritarianism It's called The Rise of American Authoritarianism and while in this case linked to what they see as HeWhoCannot amed's not unlikely rise the research goes beyond that to the crux of human reaction to fear and change. And I'm going to quote graciejane again and mszue from the main thread on how this intensely personal fear/fight and change resistant personality can make a huge impact on group consciousness. I read what I think may have been the original research article that this one is based on and it reminded me of my teaching Small Groups class at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In this class, we taught the dynamics of small groups in organizational formats [for the most part] and students were put into groups of between 5 and 7 students and then given group presentation tasks that required a distribution of tasks etc. It was up to the instructor to use whatever format she or he wished to make the group choices. We used numerous personality tests and after teaching this class in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 times, I finally concluded that there was only one constant to the well functioning groups and that was a congruent approach to leadership. Both a laissez faire, do your own thing, consultive and cooperative appproach could and did work just as well as a structured, authotarian approach, AS LONG AS ALL IN THE GROUP SHARED A COMMON SENSE OF WHAT GOOD LEADERSHIP LOOKED LIKE. But if you put a couple of vocal authoratarian students with a group that felt all should have a direct say in how the group operated, you were bound for group hell and usually nothing got done well and everyone was unhappy. Until I worked that out, it was hard to see why some odd ball groups did so well and loved the process and others that looked good on paper, just fought or 'dropped out' of the whole process with one or two people doing everything and complaining loudly the whole time. Really interesting..... I have had to deal with some work groups that experienced exactly what you are talking about, it just never dawned on me that this is the dynamic that might have been in play. Learn something new everyday. |
|
, so I thought I'd share with all music and/or dance lovers. It's contemporary dance, but it reminds me of those classic old movies when emotions were painted big and when actors danced in the rain 
.
