Get all 68 Arthur Durkee releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Gangsa, Vol. 2, All Is Calm, All Is Bright (Album 2023), Ambire Musica, Dangerous Odds: Colors of Green, Tiki Takataapui, Tempest Elegies, Bamboo, Avalanche Vortex, and 60 more.
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Elasticity
05:34
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Red Sails, Tall Ships
04:59
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Pulse 1
04:49
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Interlude: Night Swimmers
Walt Whitman, from "Leaves of Grass"
. . . It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy,
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.
I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming
naked through the eddies of the sea,
His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he
strikes out with courageous arms, he urges
himself with his legs,
I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes,
I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash
him head-foremost on the rocks.
What are you doing, you ruffianly red-trickled waves?
Will you kill the courageous giant? Will you kill him in the prime of his middle age?
Steady and long he struggles,
He is baffled, banged, bruised—he holds out while
his strength holds out,
The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood —
they bear him away, they roll him, swing him, turn him,
His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies,
it is continually bruised on rocks,
Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse. . . .
("Night Swimmers" is the provisional title of an extended poem in "Leaves of Grass." The title does not appear in every edition, and the poem itself changed somewhat between early and later editions. This is a long passage that was one of the poems of Whitman's that first caught and held my imagination, lo these many years of reading his poems.)
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5. |
Pulse 2
07:12
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6. |
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Interlude: Piedra del Sol (Sunstone)
Octavio Paz (trans. Eliot Weinberger)
Un sauce de cristal, un chopo de agua,
un alto surtidor que el viento arquea,
un árbol bien plantado mas danzante,
un caminar de río que se curva,
avanza, retrocede, da un rodeo
y llega siempre:
un caminar tranquilo
de estrella o primavera sin premura,
agua que con los párpados cerrados
mana toda la noche profecías,
unánime presencia en oleaje,
ola tras ola hasta cubrirlo todo,
verde soberanía sin ocaso
como el deslumbramiento de las alas
cuando se abren en mitad del cielo . . .
•
willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:
the calm course of a star
or the spring, appearing without urgency,
water behind a stillness of closed eyelids
flowing all night and pouring out prophecies,
a single presence in the procession of waves
wave over wave until all is overlapped,
in a green sovereignty without decline
a bright hallucination of many wings
when they all open at the height of the sky . . .
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7. |
Pulse 3
05:36
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8. |
Interlude: Cold Mountain
03:35
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Interlude: Cold Mountain
a poem by the great Zen poet of ancient China, Han Shan,
trans. Kazuaki Tanahashi & Peter Levitt
A hand moves a brush freely,
the body as remarkable as rare jade.
But life comes to an end
and death makes one a nameless spirit.
From ancient times it has been this way,
so here’s what you can do:
Come inside the white cloud,
I will teach you the purple mushroom song.
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9. |
Adrift
05:19
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10. |
Painted Desert
08:18
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Arthur Durkee Ann Arbor, Michigan
Arthur Durkee is a composer & songwriter who records & performs on Chapman Stick, bass, analog modular synths, bamboo & wood flutes, keys, frame drums, and voice. He has won awards for composed, notated music as well as for his recordings, & is a published poet, & designer & illustrator. ... more
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