Senses working overtime #477

1 Theme of the week: I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more - Bob Dylan.

More about the song here.

2 Listening: Wonderful Life - Black

A great video to this one too. Always worth watching.

3 Reading: George Orwell - Selected Essays

4 Watching: The Yellow Birds (on Netflix)

I really loved this film. Would hold up to repeat viewings too.

5 Listening: WTWMC True Colours

Yes this is still going strong - we had a brief hiatus while Greg and his wife were overseas. But the boys are back!

Latest colour was Purple and its offshoots.

Watch in real time as offshoots of Green is up for exploration this week.

Overtime: 

"One of life's counterintuitive lessons is that you will often gain energy by spending a little bit of energy.

When you feel lethargic and like you want to lay around all day, it is usually the case that getting up and moving will make you feel better than simply sitting around. Getting outside for 10 minutes or doing the first set of a workout or simply stretching on the floor for a moment — anything to get your body moving — will often leave you feeling more energized.

If you want to get your day going, then get your body going. It's harder for the mind to be sluggish when the body is moving."

James Clear

Senses working overtime #287

1 Starship Troopers

Sci-Fi covers for this week - love that Yes song - inspired by this Heinlein novel!

2 Ursula

"Hard times are coming, when we'll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We'll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality." —Ursula K. Le Guin

3.1 RIP Diane di Prima

3.2 RIP Sean Connery

4 Jane Fonda's blog (is cool)

5 What if Trump refuses to concede to Biden?

Overtime: Black - Wonderful World

Had this clip running all week.

Senses working overtime #54

1 Prince
I've had enough of celebrity deaths in 2016. It's quite a list so far: Merle Haggard, Garry Shandling, Patti Duke, Frank Sinatra Jnr., Vanity (like her former producer Prince, she was only 57), Dan Hicks, Maurice White, Terry Wogan, Abe Vigoda (a.k.a. Fish), Jimmy Bain, Glen Frey, Dale Griffin (from Mott The Hoople), Victoria Wood, Alan Rickman, Dan Haggerty, Pierre Boulez, Robert Stigwood, Paul Bley, and Vilos Zsigmond are the big ones.

Enough already! This has been a bad four months so far. I thought I'd dedicate this week's SWO to five + one of those who have joined all of those listed and Polly, the famously stunned Norwegian Blue.

Prince was only 57. I'm also a baby boomer, a year older than Prince.



2 Kantner and Anderson

Kantner far left, Anderson up front.

Freakishly, Paul Kantner and Signe Anderson left the Planet Earth Rock 'N' Roll Band together on the same day in January and are now among the stars. 

Signe was the vocalist before Grace took over.




3 Emerson
Keith Emerson. Sadly, prog titan Keith Emerson has made sure ELP never play again.




4 George  
Dear old George Martin. Bless his cottons.




5 Black
Tragically, Colin Vearncombe (a.k.a. Black) died from a car crash in Ireland in January. He was only 53!

No need to laugh or cry/ It's a wonderful, wonderful life



Overtime: Bowie
This continues to resonate and appall really. How is all this possible?

My choice - how to pick one Bowie song? Changes? Ashes To Ashes? Heroes? Sorrow? Lazarus? All are appropriate, but I'm going for a slightly more obscure one from Hunky Dory: the prophetic Quicksand.