Still point

     While holly might be more appropriate just now, this narcissus seems to have its relevance, too. It's a reminder that we are nearing the shortest day and it's almost time to look forward.

     Does anyone know the Bryan Ferry song "As the world turns"? I've been trying to track it down and all I can find are the lyrics, but I remember liking it very much, and as the world is about to turn towards the light once more (at least in this hemisphere) it came into my head.

     In the strange way that mental pathways work, that led me to think of T.S. Eliot's "still point of the turning world" (you can read "Burnt Norton" here). We each need our own still point, I think.

Comments

[Avice]

Thank you for the reminder of Burnt Norton. There was a time in my life when I turned to The Four Quartets and read each, in turn, over and over again as a kind of solace.

[Peter the flautist]

I think there are no legal mp3 available of "As the world turns".

The winter solstice is at 06:08 on December 22nd. Dark Puss actually quite looks forward to the dark days as he has a better chance of some astronomical obervations, however since he also observes the sun in hydrogen-alpha light longer days have their advantages too! If it is clear in Edinburgh tomorrow night around 22:00 then look out at the nearly full moon occulting some members of the Pleiades in Taurus.

[Curzon Tussaud]

I have sung in two performances of Michael Tippett's "A child of our time" this week, which begins with the words (by Tippett himself) "the world turns onto its dark side". It was inspired by the shooting of a German diplomat by a young Jewish boy desperate to find out what had happened to his mother. The reprisals to this act were the events of Kristallnacht.

[Barbara MacLeod]

A Bryan Ferry website says it was a b-side to an EP called Mamouna so it's probably pretty rare and not likely to be in someone's collection unless they're a real fan. Sometimes Amazon has a wee clip of each track you can listen too but again a quick search under Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music/As The World Turns/Mamouna EP proves fruitless. Nothing on U-tube either.