Brenda Song Quotes

(about William Blake) As for Blake's happiness--a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me." And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition. ...He burned most of his own work. Because he said, "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy." ...He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven.

The guitar poured out its soul, its history, its dreams, its pain, its victories, its secrets. The guitar’s strings purred with blues and ended with a haunting solitary song with no lyrics.

Songs. Books. Poetry. Paintings. These things reveal truth. I believe lies and truth are tangled together.

Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom— there I will give you my love. —Song of Solomon 7:12

Brenda was six when she fell out of the apple tree.

STAINS With red clay between my toes, and the sun setting over my head, the ghost of my mother blows in, riding on a honeysuckle breeze, oh lord, riding on a honeysuckle breeze. Her teeth, the keys of a piano. I play her grinning ivory notes with cadenced fumbling fingers, splattered with paint, textured with scars. A song rises up from the belly of my past and rocks me in the bosom of buried memories. My mama’s dress bears the stains of her life: blueberries, blood, bleach, and breast milk; She cradles in her arms a lifetime of love and sorrow; Its brilliance nearly blinds me. My fingers tire, as though I've played this song for years. The tune swells red, dying around the edges of a setting sun. A magnolia breeze blows in strong, a heavenly taxi sent to carry my mother home. She will not say goodbye. For there is no truth in spoken farewells. I am pregnant with a poem, my life lost in its stanzas. My mama steps out of her dress and drops it, an inheritance falling to my feet. She stands alone: bathed, blooming, burdened with nothing of this world. Her body is naked and beautiful, her wings gray and scorched, her brown eyes piercing the brown of mine. I watch her departure, her flapping wings: She doesn’t look back, not even once, not even to whisper my name: Brenda. I lick the teeth of my piano mouth. With a painter’s hands, with a writer’s hands with rusty wrinkled hands, with hands soaked in the joys, the sorrows, the spills of my mother’s life, I pick up eighty-one years of stains And pull her dress over my head. Her stains look good on me.

A song rises up from the belly of my past and rocks me in the bosom of buried memories.

Beyoncé honoured Brenda Fassie with her Break My Soul song. What a beautiful idea!

Every tree has a resonance. When wind blows at that exact vibration, then the tree and the wind are in resonance. It's like music. The wind makes a different song moving through each tree.

Indigenous Lives Holding Our World Together, by Brenda J. Child American Indian Stories, by Zitkala-Sa A History of My Brief Body, by Billy-Ray Belcourt The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman, by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert Apple: Skin to the Core, by Eric Gansworth Heart Berries, by Terese Marie Mailhot The Blue Sky, by Galsan Tschinag Crazy Brave, by Joy Harjo Standoff, by Jacqueline Keeler Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, by Sherman Alexie Spirit Car, by Diane Wilson Two Old Women, by Velma Wallis Pipestone: My Life in an Indian Boarding School, by Adam Fortunate Eagle Split Tooth, by Tanya Tagaq Walking the Rez Road, by Jim Northrup Mamaskatch, by Darrel J. McLeod Indigenous Poetry Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, by Joy Harjo Ghost River (Wakpá Wanági), by Trevino L. Brings Plenty The Book of Medicines, by Linda Hogan The Smoke That Settled, by Jay Thomas Bad Heart Bull The Crooked Beak of Love, by Duane Niatum Whereas, by Layli Long Soldier Little Big Bully, by Heid E. Erdrich A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation, by Eric Gansworth NDN Coping Mechanisms, by Billy-Ray Belcourt The Invisible Musician, by Ray A. Young Bear When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, edited by Joy Harjo New Poets of Native Nations, edited by Heid E. Erdrich The Failure of Certain Charms, by Gordon Henry Jr. Indigenous History and Nonfiction Everything You Know About Indians Is Wrong, by Paul Chaat Smith Decolonizing Methodologies, by Linda Tuhiwai Smith Through Dakota Eyes: Narrative Accounts of the Minnesota Indian War of 1862, edited by Gary Clayton Anderson and Alan R. Woodworth Being Dakota, by Amos E. Oneroad and Alanson B. Skinner Boarding School Blues, edited by Clifford E. Trafzer, Jean A. Keller, and Lorene Sisquoc Masters of Empire, by Michael A. McDonnell Like a Hurricane: The Indian Movement from Alcatraz to Wounded Knee, by Paul Chaat Smith and Robert Allen Warrior Boarding School Seasons, by Brenda J. Child They Called It Prairie Light, by K. Tsianina Lomawaima To Be a Water Protector, by Winona LaDuke Minneapolis: An Urban Biography, by Tom Weber