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8th & 9th December, 2005
Rod in Concert
Holland, December 2005!
San Sebastian Strings
albums now available on CD! Order
now!
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Photo by Edward McKuen 9/24/2005
A Thought for Today
I desire to meet God in this life so that I might keep an open
mind for the next.
FROM the¨BOOKS
While Drifting
This is the way it was
while I was waiting for your eyes
to find me.
I was drifting
going no place.
Hypnotized by sunshine
maybe,
barking back at seals along the beach.
Skipping flat stones on the water,
but much too wise for sandcastles.
My castles were across the sea
or still within my mind.
There were the beach bars
and the other beach people
sometimes little bedrooms were my beach
but I was drifting.
I must have thought the night could save me
as I went down into pillows
looked up through dirty windows
smiled back from broken mattress’
turned in Thunderbirds
and kissed in elevators.
I cried too sometimes.
For me.
I loved every face I thought was pretty
and every kindred eyes I caught in crowds.
But I was drifting
before you.
-from the album “The Sea,” 1967 & “Alone,”1975”
The Time of Noon
When you’re alone at night
and the old memories you call back
to help you do the things
that will put you to sleep
don’t work any more
and even the aphrodisiac of magazines
doesn’t help
and there is no place to go, no one to call,
try thinking about the sun.
The way it catches in the trees sometimes.
They way it follows you while riding in a car.
The way it plays in the hair of strangers on the beach.
The way it climbs hills with you and pushes
you from bed in morning.
Think about the time of noon
when everybody’s just a little crazy.
Remember that the cliffs are white and steep
and you’ll grow tired climbing them
tired enough to sleep.
What you’re thinking about
isn’t really the cause of perspiration on your forehead
it’s only the sun.
It’s just the time of noon.
-from “Listen to the Warm,” 1967 and the album “The Sea,” 1967
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ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
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Thursday 8 December
Buddha Day
Gregg Allman o
Morgan Ames o
Kim Basinger o
David Carradine o
Lee J. Cobb o
Sammy Davis, Jr. o
James Galway o
Teri Hatcher o
Joel Chandler Harris o
Horace o
Sam Kinison o
Mary Queen of Scots o
James MacArthur o
Jim Morrison o
Sinead O'Connor o
Jean Ritchie o
Diego Rivera o
John Rubinstein o
Maximillan Schell o
Jean Sibelius o
Adele Simpson o
James Thurber o
Eli Whitney o
Flip Wilson
Friday
9 December
Joshua Bell o
Beau Bridges o
Dick Butkus o
John Cassavetes o
Broderick Crawford o
Rick Danko o
Dame Judi Dench o
Jakob Dylan o
Emjay o
Kirk Douglas o
Morton Downey, Jr. o
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. o
Redd Foxx o
Hermione Gingold o
Margaret Hamilton o
Robert Hawke o
Buck Henry o
Deacon Jones o
Emmett Kelly o
David Kersh o
Joe Lando o
John Malkovich o
Freddy Martin o
John Milton o
Dina Merrill o
Michael Nouri o
Tip O'Neill o
Donny Osmond o
Elizabeth Schwarzkopf o
Dick Van Patten |
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Avoid self-pity. But
sorrow can be the school of intelligence.
Memories live on. They are the yardstick we measure our current lives by.
Never fear life or death, only mere
existence.
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FOR HIS PLEASURE |
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Morning is the
greatest architect,
the builder of the grass and clouds,
the maker of the anthems
made for love and death
the one whose testimony
will be passed from pasture to hill,
to hill above
by all things living,
moving through its eyes.
The terrible detonations of the rain,
the bickering of the thunder
from the sea,
the confidences betrayed by breeze
and finally wind
cannot, together or alone,
affect the master draftsman, Morning.
The soul is bastardized by night.
Caught in its pitch with no road out
the heart, the mind will stutter
and grow cold,
a little older and apart.
But nearly everything that’s killed by dark
can be resurrected by the dawn,
that sweet designer of the river’s thaw -
the ocean’s rise and fall.
Morning is the greatest dreamer
of them all.
He is the first apostle of the living God,
the only one allowed to talk to trees
and hear the answers.
In the mornings diamond chambers
the daffodil is not forgotten.
The new-plowed field is damp, delicious,
and stretches, lifts toward eternity.
The sun now rising
comes to bake the ladybug’s enamel
and with its wand ignites the grass, the leaf,
the aspirations of the dormant hedge.
Only in the a.m. hour
do these fires start the root to rise.
Between the two immensities of dusk and dawn
lie only waiting hours,
time to waste or roundabout.
And man,
the littlest of all things Morning touches
can only sigh as sunlight touches him -
each sigh a little loss of life,
each bit of sunlight something
that regenerates the loss.
Morning, with its catalogue of hope,
has never seen the face of doubt
not crushing poverty or crushing wealth,
only that creation and procreation
of itself.
Some naked piece of something
called Authority
will always try to take our Morning
from us;
but we, its children, will resist, fight back,
until the Resurrection.
As the stars will not be harvested
the subjects of the sun will not be bound.
We know our ignorance.
We know our helplessness.
But most of all we know our own proximity
to our Maker,
thus armed we cannot have
the Morning wooed from us or taken.
-from “Valentines,” 1986 |
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