Forgotten Treasure

Slip Inside This House                                 
                                by Tommy Hall and Rocky Erickson
                                The Thirteenth Floor Elevators

      The urge to remember that we are not several but one rises like the lotus again and again in the most unexpected times and places, as Aldous Huxley reminds us in The Perennial Philosophy. One recent flowering was in Austin in the 1960s. "Slip Inside This House," for all its imperfect and forced rhymes, its halting meter, its time-bound jargon, is as succinct a re-statement of the Old Wisdom as America has produced.

      And the music . . .  Rocky's reed-like voice, the thudding 60s bass, and the obbligato of the electric jug ride the words to a place where Easter is everywhere, if we would only remember.

      Easter Everywhere, the album containing the song, is available on CD (Easter Everywhere).

                                                     Show me the words.

Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould

      Please, please don't be put off by "classical" or "Bach". Your ears will thank you if you let them hear Glenn Gould, the late Canadian pianist, play Bach's Goldberg Variations.

      He recorded them twice. The first recording, from ????, when he was young, is Day (full of light, joy, hope). The second, 25 years later, shortly before he died, is Night (wisdom, space, serenity).
     
      The best midi version is that of John Sankey, the Toronto-based, self-styled "harpsichordist to the Web" (http://www.midiworld.com/cmc/sankey.html).

      But Gould is in a class by himself. Give yourself a treat and pick up the CD (Goldberg Variations)
.

The Three Rings
      Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise), an 18th century play by Lessing, contains a re-telling of a Boccaccio story concerning religion and, well, truth. And exposes the presumptuous and dangerous fallacy behind the remark, "I hate the sin but love the sinner."

Send this page to a friend.

Magellan's Log front page

Magellan's Log 2