La curvatura del espacio

Reminiscences gone astray
Coming back to enjoy the fray
In a tangle of night and daylight sounds…

(King Crimson, Book of Saturday, 1973)

Are you lonely just like me?

Pretty woman
Walking down the street
Pretty woman
The kind I like to meet
Pretty woman

I don't believe you, you're not the truth
No one could look as good as you

Mercy!

Pretty woman
Won't you pardon me?
Pretty woman
I couldn't help but see
Pretty woman

That you look lovely as can be
Are you lonely just like me?

Grrrrrr!

(Roy Orbison, Bill Dees, Oh, Pretty Woman, 1964)

Visiteurs de passage

«Nous ne cessons de nous étonner du passage du temps… Cela montre que le temps n´est pas notre élément naturel… C´est que notre vraie patrie est l´Éternité; dans le temps, nous ne sommes que des visiteurs de passage.»

(Simon Leys, Le Bonheur des petits poissons: Lettres des Antipodes, Éditions Jean-Claude Lattès, 2008)

Femme fatale

Hello, I love you

Won't you tell me your name?

Hello, I love you

Let me jump in your game

She's walking down the street

Blind to every eye she meets

Do you think you'll be the guy

To make the queen of the angels sigh?

She holds her head so high

Like a statue in the sky

Her arms are wicked, and her legs are long

When she moves my brain screams out this song

Sidewalk crouches at her feet

Like a dog that begs for something sweet

Do you hope to make her see, you fool?

Do you hope to pluck this dusky jewel?

(The Doors, Hello, I love you, 1968)

El Velo de Maya

«La compasión es el fundamento único de la moral… Tiene la virtud de la compasión quien levanta el Velo de Maya y capta, de un modo inmediato, la identidad de la voluntad en todos sus fenómenos. Dicho más llanamente, “quien reconoce en todos los seres su yo más íntimo y auténtico“»

(Arthur Schopenhauer, El mundo como voluntad y representación, 1819)

Anoche soñé que volvía a Burgess Shale

I carry the dust of a journey
That cannot be shaken away
It lives deep within me
For I breathe it every day

You and I are yesterday's answers
The earth of the past come to flesh
Eroded by times rivers
To the shapes we now possess.

(Greg Lake, The Sage, 1972)

Year of the Cat

By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
There's a hidden door she leads you to
These days, she says, I feel my life
Just like a river running through
The year of the cat

(Al Stewart, Year of the Cat, 1976)

Summertime Blues

Gonna take two weeks, gonna have a fun vacation
Gonna take my problem to the United Nations.
Well I called my congressman and he said (quote):
"I'd like to help you son but you're too young to vote"
Sometimes I wonder what I'm a-gonna do
Lord, there ain't no cure for the summertime blues.

(Eddie Cochran, Summertime Blues, 1958)

what remains behind

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;

(William Wordsworth, Ode: Intimations of Immortality…, 1807)

ne vus sanz mei, ne mei sanz vus

Kar ne pot nent vivre sanz li;
D'euls deus fu il tut autresi
Cume del chevrefoil esteit
Ki a la codre se perneit:
Quant il s'i est laciez e pris
E tut entur le fust s'est mis,
Ensemble poënt bien durer;
Mes ki puis les volt desevrer,
Li codres muert hastivement
E li chevrefoil ensement.
«Bele amie, si est de nus:
ne vus sanz mei, ne mei sanz vus!»

[Ya que no puede vivir sin ella;
los dos unidos
como la madreselva
que se abraza al avellano:
cuando es atrapada y enlazada
alrededor de sus ramas
juntos permanecerán;
pero si los intentaran separar,
pronto el avellano moriría
y la madreselva poco después.
«Bele amie, si est de nus:
ne vus sanz mei, ne mei sanz vus!»]

(Marie de France, Le Lai du Chevrefoil, 1160)

…the frightened heart of me

… … …

And still the ripe fruit and the branch

Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer,
With no betrayal of despair.

O Courage! Could you not as well
Select a second place to dwell
Not only in that golden tree
But in the frightened heart of me?

(Tennessee Williams, Night Of The Iguana, Nonno's Last Poem, 1961)

…et caput inter nubila condit

Extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes,
Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius ullum:
Mobilitate viget virisque adquirit eundo,
Parva metu primo, mox sese attollit in auras
Ingrediturque solo et caput inter nubila condit.

[En seguida el Rumor recorre las grandes ciudades de Libia,
Rumor, un mal veloz como ninguno: 
La velocidad le da fuerzas, que aumentan según avanza,
Pequeño y medroso al principio, pronto se remonta a los aires
y con los pies en el suelo, esconde su cabeza entre las nubes.]

(Virgilio, Eneida, IV, 173-177, citado por Thijs van Leer de Focus, Round Goes the Gossip, Focus 3, 1972)

I hear you singing in the wire

I am a lineman for the county
And I drive the main road,
Searching in the sun for another overload.
I hear you singing in the wire,
I can hear you thru the whine,
And the Wichita Lineman
is still on the line.

(Jimmy Webb, Wichita Lineman, 1968)

If your memory serves you well

If your memory serves you well
We were going to meet again and wait
So I'm going to unpack all my things
And sit before it gets too late

No man alive will come to you
With another tale to tell
And you know that we shall meet again
If your memory serves you well

This wheel's on fire
Rolling down the road
Best notify my next of kin
This wheel shall explode

(Rick Danko - Bob Dylan, This wheel's on fire, 1967)

Tallahatchie Bridge

A year has come and gone since we heard the news about Billie Joe
And Brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus going 'round, Papa caught it and he died last Spring
And now Mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything
And me, I spend a lot of time picking flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge

(Bobbie Gentry, Ode to Billie Joe, 1967)

Matchstick men and you

When I look up to the skies
I see your eyes
A funny kind of yellow

I rush home to bed I soak my head
I see your face
Underneath my pillow

I wake next morning, tired, still yawning
See your face come
Peeping through my window

Pictures of matchstick men and you
Mirages of matchstick men and you
All I ever see is them and you

(Status Quo, Pictures Of Matchstick Men, 1968)

I've given you my onliness

If I were a carpenter

And you were a lady

Would you marry me anyway

Would you have my baby

If a tinker were my trade

Would you still find me

Carrying the pots I made

Following behind me

Save my love through loneliness

Save my love for sorrow

I've given you my onliness

Come give me your tomorrow

(Tim Hardin, If I Were A Carpenter, 1967)

What might have been

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.

What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

(Thomas S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, 1936)

If you know what I mean

There she is again stepping out of her limousine,
Looking like the cover of a twenty dollar magazine.
She's got it where you find it,
If you know what I mean.

She's a…
Natural born woman,
Natural born woman,
Natural born woman.

There she is again, watch her stop the Main Street in its tracks,
Looking like a Creole Queen hair hanging down her back.
I said don't look too long, boy,
She'll make your glasses crack.

(Steve Marriott, Natural Born Bugie, 1968)

The Open Door

«Probably it had been a servants' entrance, a backdoor, or opening into what are called "the offices" in Scotland. No offices remained to be entered, —pantry and kitchen had all been swept out of being; but there stood the door-way open and vacant, free to all the winds, to the rabbits, and every wild creature. It struck my eye, the first time I went to Brentwood, like a melancholy comment upon a life that was over. A door that led to nothing, —closed once, perhaps, with anxious care, bolted and guarded, now void of any meaning. It impressed me, I remember, from the first; so perhaps it may be said that my mind was prepared to attach to it an importance which nothing justified.»
(Margaret Oliphant, The Open Door, 1881)

Le chat et le temps

Good sense, innocence, cripplin' mankind
Dead kings, many things I can't define
Occasions, persuasions clutter your mind
Incense and peppermints, the color of time

Who cares what games we choose?
Little to win, but nothing to lose

Incense and peppermints, meaningless nouns
Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around
Look at yourself, look at yourself…

(Strawberry Alarm Clock, Incense and Peppermints, 1967)