What we listen to at night

Karin & I diligently read the Bible aloud to our sons – or we’d done so until the last few weeks. 1 Chronicles is defeating us. All those genealogies.

We’ve resorted to playing a recording of 1 Chronicles.

I trust spiritual nourishment will come in time, after a little supplemental reading.

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These days, Daniel goes to sleep listening to classical music on Andrews University’s radio station, WAUS-FM.

Spotify chooses classical music better than I do. But an experienced radio DJ does better than Spotify. Longer pieces; obscurer pieces; better pieces.

Besides, Spotify sucks me into an eddy of Handel and Vaughan Williams and other British (or British-serving) composers. Not that I don’t enjoy that stuff; but Spotify’s algorithm has decided that that’s all I enjoy, which isn’t the case.

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Karin & I have been viewing the police procedural Dahaad, which is set in Rajasthan. I already knew a little about caste in India, and I’ve seen instances of racism and classism in Ecuador and the United States. But it’s been shocking to observe Indian caste dynamics play out on TV, in genre fiction.

Samuel’s favorite songs

Just a few:

Acker Bilk, “Stranger on the Shore”:

Percy Faith, “Ebb Tide”:

Also, this version by the New Hawaiian Band, with ukulele by Ohta San:

Ralph Vaughan Williams, “March Past of the Kitchen Utensils,” from The Wasps:

And of course Vaughan Williams’s “Lark Ascending”:

The Bee Gees, “Stayin’ Alive”:

And “Jive Talkin’”:

Röyksopp’s remix of “I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From” by Kings of Convenience:

“Glen Coe” by the Orb:

The theme of the Australian crime show, Murder Call:

And for nap-time, pretty much any of Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports:

August’s poems

… are from Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

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The Divine Image
(1789)

To Mercy Pity Peace and Love
All Pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy Pity Peace and Love
Is God our father dear:
And Mercy Pity Peace and Love
Is Man his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine.
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine
Love Mercy Pity Peace.

And all must love the human form.
In heathen, turk or jew
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

A Divine Image
(1794)

Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face
Terror, the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress

The Human Dress is forged in Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge
The Human Face, a Furnace seal’d
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

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Vaughan Williams’s interpretation is the ancestor of certain TV theme songs, Karin suggests.