Dave Lindholm:- Pieni Ja Hento Ote

I was told this sound file was not working, have been back and fixed it... Nice to see I get so many visitors from Finland!
From 1982 album, Äino.
My translation would not be very good, but just listen and enjoy.

Dave Lindholm - Pieni ja hento ote
language finnish
text+music Ralf Lindholm

Pidin siitä mistä kerroit, ihmisestä joka halusi muistoksi talon
Pidän siitä miten kerrot asioita tunteita
Pidän siitä mitä teet, teet sen kauniisti ja hyvin
Sinä yllätät kaikki paitsi ne jotka tietää

refrain:
Pieni ja hento ote ihmisestä kiinni
Aivan sama tunne kuin koskettava tuuli
Pieni ja hento ote - siinä kaikki

Olemisen riemu ei ravistele olkapäitä
Runoilijan kehto ei ole ruusuista tehty koskaan
Hiljaisuuden huntu ei milloinkaan petä kuulijaa
Mikä nämä yhdistää? Rakkaus suureen elämään

refrain

Turhanpäiväinen älykkyys syö ihmistä rotan lailla
Miten kaikki voi olla valmista kun ei ole edes tehty mitään?
Miten niin jalat maassa? Oletko nähnyt kenenkään kävelevän ilmassa?
Pidän sinusta siinä kaikki. Pitääkö se todistaa tuhansilla sanoilla?

refrain

Valoa ja pimeää, ei siin ole mitään luonnotonta
Kummassakin laulussa hyvä tunne kasvaa ja kasvaa
En pidä siitä että siirtyminen vaatii mahtavia tekoja
Sateen jälkeen hiekkatiellä kauneus hehkuu ja kumartaa syvään

refrain Small and gentle touch


I like what you said, about a man who wanted a house as a souvenir.
I like the way you tel of matters of emotion.
I like what you do, you do it beautifully and well.
You amaze everyone, except those who know.

Tiny, gentle, touch holding mankind,
Feels just like the wind's caress.
A small and gentle touch - that's all.

The joy of existence doesn't shrug shoulders.
The poet's cradle is never made of roses.
The veil of silence never betrays the listener.
What joins these? Love of life.

Superfluos intelligence eats at man like a rat.
How can all be ready when nothing has been made?
How come down-to-earth? Have you seen someone walking in the air?
I like you, that's all. Does it need to be proved in thousands of words?

Light and dark, it's nothing unnatural.
In both songs the good feeling rises and rises.
I don't like that changes ask for mighty acts.
After rain on a dirt-road beauty glows and takes a bow.

The Bear is Back

The Bear, in earlier post, titled The Sheep Look Up seemed popular. Here he is again, having a little trouble with a balloon.

This Site Does NOT Condone Violence Against Gnomes

Despite provocative behavior by some Gnomes, led no doubt by Bjorn Tealeavery, in response to an earlier post, I must say this site does not and will not support violence against gnomes.
To do so would be to descend to their level.
So I deplore the perpetrators of the Gnomesville Massacre, against the Gnome populace near Dardanup, Western Australia, which lists Gnomesville as one of its no-doubt many cultural attractions.
I quote "The population of Gnomesville has grown from a handful of statues placed covertly in the forest a few years ago, making it a popular stop off for tour buses visiting nearby vineyards.
It's being called the "Gnomesville Massacre" and emergency workers in Western Australia are offering a reward for the capture of vandals who smashed their way through a local tourist attraction.
An unknown number of attackers lopped off the heads or smashed several dozen of the pot-bellied statues this week at Gnomesville, a collection of more than a 1,000 colorful characters deep in a forest south of Perth.
"We are incensed by the damage done to the gnomes and willing to pay a reward to catch the culprits," State Emergency Service Volunteer Association President Phillip Petersen told Reuters.
Six orange-colored gnomes depicting emergency workers were among those destroyed, Petersen said, adding the reward was A$500 ($390) Remember, readers, most gnomes are moderate, and are no threat to humans. And over the millennia they have successfully kept their dissident hotheads under control.
Stay away from Gnomesville, don't travel in the region at night, keep your doors locked. Report any suspicious activity to the police. If you know who might have done this, call the police."

Tom Waits,

Amelia, by Joni Mitchell, For RedDirtGirl.

Amelia, The Amelia in the song, is Amelia Earhart, pioneering aviatrix. She was the first woman to fly the atlantic, more importantly, she was , after Charles Lindbergh, the second person to fly solo across the atlantic. She was attempting to be first to fly around the world, when she disappeared near Howland Island in the Pacific, 1937.

I was driving across the burning desert
When I spotted six jet planes
Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain
It was the hexagram of the heavens it was the strings of my guitar
Amelia it was just a false alarm

The drone of flying engines
Is a song so wild and blue
It scrambles time and seasons if it gets thru to you
Then your life becomes a travelogue
Of picture post card charms
Amelia it was just a false alarm

People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
Oh, Amelia it was just a false alarm

I wish that he was here tonight
It's so hard to obey
His sad request of me to kindly stay away
So this is how I hide the hurt
As the road leads cursed and charmed
I tell Amelia it was just a false alarm

A ghost of aviation
She was swallowed by the sky
Or by the sea like me she had a dream to fly
Like Icarus ascending
On beautiful foolish arms
Amelia it was just a false alarm

Maybe I've never really loved
I guess that is the truth
I've spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitude
And looking down on everything I crashed into his arms
Amelia it was just a false alarm

I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel
To shower off the dust
And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust
I dreamed of 747s
Over geometric farms
Dreams Amelia - dreams and false alarms

Those Subliminal Gnomes

These gnomes were borrowed from Rozanne,
at Ragwater, Bitters and Blue Ruin
Go over there, she's got some interesting stuff, and she made me laugh too.

Gnomery:

Thanks are due to mist1, who spotted the significance of the subversive gnomes in the post about Delores. We all see them, sitting idly by ponds, wheeling barrows through the rockery. It occurred to me it was time to find out more. If any of you have more knowledge or documentation of their dastardly deeds, please post it in a comment. The blogosphere should be warned.

mist1 said...

The curio shop with subversive gnomes? That's so funny to me. Those gnomes have always scared me. It's like they know something that I don't. And now I know...they do.

20 January 2007 16:51

soubriquet said...

Those submersible Gnomes worry us all. Under cover of their garden rockery activities, Soubriquet Investigations has unearthed a plot so spine chilling... Under one suburban rockery, Soubriquet, using his patent 'shrinkometer' obtained access to a tiny intercontinental ballistic missile launch site. In the silos were little 'minute-man 3' missiles fuelled and ready, in the control room, one gnome, pistol outstretched, confronts another, "sir! Turn your key, sir, we have a launch order!" The other gnome, frantic, shouts "It's a drill, it's got to be a drill, oh my god, they'll call stand down, they must!" Sure enough, the tannoy bleats "All Gnome stations, all gnome stations, launch order is rescinded, return to defcon 3"
They stand down, mopping sweaty brows. They notice me, I smile politely- I'm from headquarters, just observing the drill.....
I make a steady retreat for the door, then leg it to the exit, a concealed tunnel behind the hydrangeas. Outside, gnomes are pushing wheelbarrows, fishing, as suburban gnomes do. The duplicitous beasts.

Elephants in the Mist

Artwork by Charity Larrison

I know there are many people who say animals in circuses are cruelly treated. Here in England, many towns and cities will not allow circuses to camp on public land, or licence shows if animals are involved. I truly don't know enough to argue for or against that view. But for me as a child the circus was a wonderful sensory overload.
The first time I went to a circus, I must have been about six years old. My big treat in those days was to go to the local market town with my grandfather. He was a big, towering, kindly man, with white hair and a white moustach. he always wore a waistcoat, over a blue and white striped shirt, he wore brown boots, shiny, and over them and his legs below the knees, buckled leather leggings. On his head, an old flat cap. In one hand, a walking stick, in the other, my small hand.
He was a retired farmer, and his day for visiting town was the day of the livestock market. a music of lowing cattle, bleating sheep, grunting pigs, clucking hens, He'd walk slowly between the pens, cautioning me not to get too close, exchanging a few words with the men there.
On this one day, he said to me "Do you want to see a Tiger?" I stared about me, wide eyed, expecting a cattle-market pen to house a roaring cat, but he laughed, held out his hand, "Come on then." We walked, out of the market, past the cattle trucks and chatting farmers, past the fire station, and gradually out of the town. Through a gate into a field. four white horses were trotting side by side, a circle of wagons beyond them, we continued, my grandfather spoke with a big man, who smiled, turned, and led us to a row of wagons, with open bars one side. There it was, in the shade, a great striped creature, far bigger than I'd imagined, the man called to it, it got up, stretched just as our cat at home did, although its skin looked baggier, looser, it turned, took a couple of steps to the bars, the man reached his hand in and scratched it behind the ears. It yawned, great yellowy pointed teeth, and lay down, rolling toward the bars belly up, head outstretched, for the man to scratch.
"But Tigers eat people", I squeaked, "Yes, the man said, but only if they're very hungry, and only people they don't like".
Then we went to see a Zebra. And horses, lots of horses. At last, in the corner of the field, in the shade of a tree, the elephants. Oh those elephants, great grey wrinkly beasts, oh, I was in love, these were my favourite animals oh look, oh.
That evening we returned for the show. My sister was extremely jealous as I recited the few things I'd been told, and paraded my superior knowledge, and the fact I KNEW all these people in gaudy costumes, I'd even touched one of the elephants.
Those wonderful people, in their exciting bright costumes, the sounds and the smells, and appearing to me to be genuine, their love of their animals.
I was told by an old soldier who had worked with elephants in Burma, that you work with elephants by their consent. an elephant will remember forever any slight. He recalled an elephant killing a burmese timber worker. The british officer was demanding the elephant be shot. But the burmese said this man had been cruel to the elephant, and had hurt its calf some ten years previously. The elephant had never attacked any other person, and waited patiently by the body, raising its foot to allow a restraining chain to be attached. It was reprieved, and the soldier told me all his mates were extremely cautious, after that to never give offence to an elephant. If it stole your bread, or ate your hat, you learned to laugh. The elephants did work in the jungle carrying heavy loads, during the day. In the night they were set free, to roam and forage, in the morning they'd all be there, waiting for their loads.
Maybe circuses are cruel. I truly don't know.

One evening, about ten years ago, I was walking with a friend and her two dogs, in a wooded area of a city park, The night was misty, and ahead of us a great shadow loomed, making a strange rumbling sound. we were a bit spooked, the fierce brave tough dogs hid behind us.... out of the dark came two elephants, and a girl, maybe 15 years old, she spoke quietly to them, and they stopped, and waited, to let us pass, We stopped too, and spoke to her, she spoke very little english "like we, they love walk, but cannot when is many people, now in the night, they can walk in trees, they dream of their home, I too of my home" . We had cakes in a bag we showed the girl, she clapped her hands oh yes, oh yes, as we gave to the elephants my girlfriend's mother's lemon cake, and then the chocolate cake. All this time the two dogs kept a safe distance, clearly thinking we were extremely stupid.
The Elephants were gentle, exploring us with their trunks, and conveying handfuls of cake to their mouths.
Then we all moved on, that was the last time a circus with animals performed in this city.
I'd forgotten that, remembered it in the night.
We went to the circus, Didn't recognise the girl, she was probably transformed into a glittering queen of the highwire.

I recommend: Busted Wonder
Artwork by Charity Larrison and story by Kieran Gillan.
A long time ago, I found them. I found a blog called "Cabinet of Busted Wonders". What a great title, it drew me in. At the time, only the first few frames had been drawn, so I had to return many times for the story to unfold. The first few frames had me though. It's still unfolding.

Stop press: I posted this before asking permission. then I emailed Charity, seeking forgiveness, and have had it granted. And she's very kindly given a permit to use some other images. I will.
I think her drawings are great, I love the people, the style, the way she uses perspective, the choice of palette. No, She's not paying me to say this. I just really like her work.

Nick Drake