Chorus Line Quotes

Everyone knows that quote because of the Doors." Jace looked at her blankly. "The Doors. They were a band." "If you say so," he said. "I suppose you don't have much time for enjoying music," Clary said, thinking of Simon, for whom music was his entire life, "in your line of work." He shrugged. "Maybe the occasional wailing chorus of the damned.

The Chorus Line: A Rope-Jumping Rhyme we are the maids the ones you killed the ones you failed we danced in air our bare feet twitched it was not fair with every goddess, queen, and bitch from there to here you scratched your itch we did much less than what you did you judged us bad you had the spear you had the word at your command we scrubbed the blood of our dead paramours from floors, from chairs from stairs, from doors, we knelt in water while you stared at our bare feet it was not fair you licked our fear it gave you pleasure you raised your hand you watched us fall we danced on air the ones you failed the ones you killed

The people who visit the [Lincoln] memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there reading the Gettysburg Address next to a Hasidic Jew. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had linked arms with a woman in a burka and a Masai warrior, to belt out ‘It’s a Small World After All,’ flanked by a chorus line of nuns and field-tripping, rainbow-skinned schoolchildren

[in reference to turkey bowling] He [Tommy] squinted and picked his target, then took his steps and sent the bird sliding down the aisle. A collective gasp rose from the crew as the fourteen-pound, self-basting, fresh-frozen projectile of wholesome savory goodness plowed into the soap bottles like a freight train into a chorus line of drunken grandmothers.

On a clear day the Oregon coast is the most beautiful place on earth—clear and crisp and clean, a rich green in the land and a bright blue in the sky, the air fat and salty and bracing, the ocean spreading like a grin. Brown pelicans rise and fall in their chorus lines in the wells of the waves, cormorants arrow, an eagle kingly queenly floats south high above the water line.

The jumbled appearance of my chorus line stems not from chance but from cunning calculation.

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad’s voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of “Yellow Submarine,” which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d’être, which is a French expression that I know. Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted. If I wanted to be extremely hilarious, I’d train it to say, “Wasn’t me!” every time I made an incredibly bad fart. And if I ever made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall of Mirrors, which is in Versailles, which is outside of Paris, which is in France, obviously, my anus would say, “Ce n’étais pas moi!” What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboard down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.

Banding together with others to achieve a common pursuit cannot help but engender a strong feeling of community, whether you’re baling hay or mounting A Chorus Line in a tiny theater space.

I believe every man who stood up was either killed or wounded," said Lieutenant Oliver Williams, who was himself hit. This regiment had participated in a touching event, well remembered by both armies. At Fredericksburg in late 1862, after the Sharpsburg campaign, it had held a dress parade at which the band played "Dixie." Across the Rappahannock a Northern band heard and played back the song as a bit of camaraderie. The band of the 20th North Carolina responded by playing "Yankee Doodle." Then both bands, as if by prearrangement, joined in "Home, Sweet Home." This chorus ran along the lines and both armies sang and wept.

Inside me, a chorus line of devils in tutus did a fast little cancan.

…Sam [Raimi] wanted the climactic sword fight to play out as elegantly as a Fred Astaire movie and he wanted it all in one crane shot. I must have rehearsed the routine for three weeks, but when it came time to shoot, the rigors of running up and down steps, fighting with both hands, and flipping skeletons over my head was too much to pull off without cuts. After ten takes, I knew Sam was pissed off, because he yanked the bullhorn from John Cameron. ‘Okay, obviously, this is NOT WORKING, and it’s NOT GOING TO WORK, so we’re going to break it up into A THOUSAND LITTLE PIECES.’ When Sam gets upset, he lets you know it, and he’ll torture you for days afterward because he’s one of those guys who never forgets. The first ‘little piece’ of the sequence was a shot of me ducking as a sword glances off the stone wall behind me. ‘So, you think you can do this, Bruce?’ he’d say, loud enough for the entire crew to hear. ‘Or should I break this ONE shot into THREE MORE SHOTS?’ Sam also threatened to put Ash in a chorus line with skeletons.

Ten Best Song to Strip 1. Any hip-swiveling R&B fuckjam. This category includes The Greatest Stripping Song of All Time: "Remix to Ignition" by R. Kelly. 2. "Purple Rain" by Prince, but you have to be really theatrical about it. Arch your back like Prince himself is daubing body glitter on your abdomen. Most effective in nearly empty, pathos-ridden juice bars. 3. "Honky Tonk Woman" by the Rolling Stones. Insta-attitude. Makes even the clumsiest troglodyte strut like Anita Pallenberg. (However, the Troggs will make you look like even more of a troglodyte, so avoid if possible.) 4. "Pour Some Sugar on Me" by Def Leppard. The Lep's shouted choruses and relentless programmed drums prove ideal for chicks who can really stomp. (Coincidence: I once saw a stripper who, like Rick Allen, had only one arm.) 5. "Amber" by 311. This fluid stoner anthem is a favorite of midnight tokers at strip joints everywhere. Mellow enough that even the most shitfaced dancer can make it through the song and back to her Graffix bong without breaking a sweat. Pass the Fritos Scoops, dude. 6. "Miserable" by Lit, but mostly because Pamela Anderson is in the video, and she's like Jesus for strippers (blonde, plastic, capable of parlaying a broken nail into a domestic battery charge, damaged liver). Alos, you can't go wrong stripping to a song that opens with the line "You make me come." 7. "Back Door Man" by The Doors. Almost too easy. The mere implication that you like it in the ass will thrill the average strip-club patron. Just get on all fours and crawl your way toward the down payment on that condo in Cozumel. (Unless, like most strippers, you'd rather blow your nest egg on tacky pimped-out SUVs and Coach purses.) 8. Back in Black" by AC/DC. Producer Mutt Lange wants you to strip. He does. He told me. 9. "I Touch Myself" by the Devinyls. Strip to this, and that guy at the tip rail with the bitch tits and the shop teacher glasses will actually believe that he alone has inspired you to masturbate. Take his money, then go masturbate and think about someone else. 10. "Hash Pipe" by Weezer. Sure, it smells of nerd. But River Cuomo is obsessed with Asian chicks and nose candy, and that's just the spirit you want to evoke in a strip club. I recommend busting out your most crunk pole tricks during this one.

Out ahead of them, Arkady began something very like a marching song, chanting lines answered by the other ferals, their voices ringing out across the sky, each to each. Temeraire added his own to the chorus, and little Iskierka began to scrabble at his neck, demanding, "What are they saying? What does it mean?" "We are flying home," Temeraire said, translating. "We are all flying home.

Before I answered, Seth broke into song, cracking out the Backstreet Boys classic, I Want It That Way. Caleb picked up the next line on cue and Seth started clicking his fingers to the beat. They both started dancing, sashaying their way toward us and I stared on in surprise. Seth looked to Caleb and they both belted out the last line of the chorus together with their hands on their hearts.

Here’s a guy and everybody’s there, right? Up to him to put down what’s on everybody’s mind. He starts the first chorus, then lines up his ideas, people, yeah, yeah, but get it, and then he rises to his fate and has to blow equal to it. All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the chorus he gets it - everybody looks up and knows; they listen; he picks it up and carries. Time stops. He’s filling empty space with the substance of our lives, confessions of his bellybottom strain, remembrance of ideas, rehashes of old blowing. He has to blow across bridges and come back and do it with such infinite feeling soul-exploratory for the tune of the moment that everybody knows it’s not the tune that counts but IT.

I believe every man who stood up was either killed or wounded," said Lieutenant Oliver Williams, who was himself hit. This regiment has participated in a touching event, well remembered by both armies. At Fredericksburg in late 1862, after the Sharpsburg campaign, it had held a dress parade at which the band played "Dixie." Across the Rappahannock a Northern band heard and played back the song as a bit of camaraderie. The band of the 20th North Carolina responded by playing "Yankee Doodle." Then both bands, as if by prearrangement, joined in "Home, Sweet Home." This chorus ran along the lines and both armies sang and wept.

Between the roof of the shed and the big plant that hangs over the fence from the house next door I could see the constellation Orion. People say that Orion is called Orion because Orion was a hunter and the constellation looks like a hunter with a club and a bow and arrow, like this: But this is really silly because it is just stars, and you could join up the dots in any way you wanted, and you could make it look like a lady with an umbrella who is waving, or the coffeemaker which Mrs. Shears has, which is from Italy, with a handle and steam coming out, or like a dinosaur. And there aren't any lines in space, so you could join bits of Orion to bits of Lepus or Taurus or Gemini and say that they were a constellation called the Bunch of Grapes or Jesus or the Bicycle (except that they didn't have bicycles in Roman and Greek times, which was when they called Orion Orion). And anyway, Orion is not a hunter or a coffeemaker or a dinosaur. It is just Betelgeuse and Bellatrix and Alnilam and Rigel and 17 other stars I don't know the names of. And they are nuclear explosions billions of miles away. And that is the truth. I stayed awake until 5:47. That was the last time I looked at my watch before I fell asleep. It has a luminous face and lights up if you press a button, so I could read it in the dark. I was cold and I was frightened Father might come out and find me. But I felt safer in the garden because I was hidden. I looked at the sky a lot. I like looking up at the sky in the garden at night. In summer I sometimes come outside at night with my torch and my planisphere, which is two circles of plastic with a pin through the middle. And on the bottom is a map of the sky and on top is an aperture which is an opening shaped in a parabola and you turn it round to see a map of the sky that you can see on that day of the year from the latitude 51.5° north, which is the latitude that Swindon is on, because the largest bit of the sky is always on the other side of the earth. And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don't even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in your life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means that they are so small you don't have to take them into account when you are calculating something. I didn't sleep very well because of the cold and because the ground was very bumpy and pointy underneath me and because Toby was scratching in his cage a lot. But when I woke up properly it was dawn and the sky was all orange and blue and purple and I could hear birds singing, which is called the Dawn Chorus. And I stayed where I was for another 2 hours and 32 minutes, and then I heard Father come into the garden and call out, "Christopher...? Christopher...?

All five of them were short and bowlegged, making them look like a chorus line of wishbones.

A map has no vocabulary, no lexicon of precise meanings. It communicates in lines, hues, tones, coded symbols, and empty spaces, much like music. Nor does a map have its own voice. It is many-tongued, a chorus reciting centuries of accumulated knowledge in echoed chants. A map provides no answers. It only suggests where to look: Discover this, reexamine that, put one thing in relation to another, orient yourself, begin here... Sometimes a map speaks in terms of physical geography, but just as often it muses on the jagged terrain of the heart, the distant vistas of memory, or the fantastic landscapes of dreams.

Let us pause and drink to that. To a radically, perpetually unnecessary world; to the restoration of astonishment to the heart and mystery to the mind; to wine, because it is a gift we never expected; to mushroom and artichoke, for they are incredible legacies; to improbable acids and high alcohols, since we would hardly have thought of them ourselves; and to all being, because it is superfluous: to the hairs on Harry’s ear, and to the seven hundred and sixty-eighth cell from the upper attachment of the right gluteus maximus in the last girl on the chorus line. Prosit, Dear Hearts. Cheers, Men and Brethren. We are free: nothing is needful, everything is for joy. Let the bookkeepers struggle with their balance sheets; it is the tippler who sees the untipped Hand. God is eccentric; He has loves, not reasons. Salute!

In her memoir of living among the Bushmen, The Old Way: A Story of the First People, my friend Liz lovingly invokes an image first coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins: “You are standing beside your mother, holding her hand. She is holding her mother’s hand, who is holding her mother’s hand. . . . ” Eventually the line stretches three hundred miles long and goes back five million years, and the clasping hand of the ancestor looks like that of a chimpanzee. I loved picturing one of Octavia’s arms stretching out to meet one of her mother’s arms, and one of her mother’s mother’s arms, and her mother’s mother’s mother’s. . . . Suckered, elastic arms, reaching back through time: an octopus chorus line stretching not just hundreds, but many thousands of miles long. Back past the Cenozoic, the time when our ancestors descended from the trees; back past the Mesozoic, when dinosaurs ruled the land; back past the Permian and the rise of the ancestors of the mammals; back, past the Carboniferous’s coal-forming swamp forests; back past the Devonian, when amphibians emerged from the water; back past the Silurian, when plants first took root on land—all the way to the Ordovician, to a time before the advent of wings or knees or lungs, before the fishes had bony jaws, before blood pumped from a multichambered heart. More than 500 million years ago, the tides would have been stronger, the days shorter, the year longer, and the air too high in carbon dioxide for mammals or birds to breathe. All the earth’s continents huddled in the Southern Hemisphere. And yet still, the arm of Octavia’s ancestor, sensitive, suckered, and supple, would have been recognizable as one of an octopus.

I was hoping you had a secret kinky side. If you ever want to know what I fantasize about, I'll be more than happy to share." Layla groaned. "I'm not interested in hearing about your aspirations to be a dancer in the Broadway production of A Chorus Line.

To this day, the behavior of straight men is something I’ve never been able to wrap my head around. Have you ever met one? They’re really weird. Sometimes they want to have sex without A Chorus Line playing in the background. Yuck. How is that even possible?

I guess Chook is about twenty-three or -four. Her face is a little older than that. It has that stern look you see in old pictures of the plains Indians. At her best, it is a forceful and striking face, redolent of strength and dignity. At worst it sometimes would seem to be the face of a Dartmouth boy dressed for the farcical chorus line. But that body, seen more intimately than ever before, was incomparably, mercilessly female, deep and glossy, rounded—under the tidy little fatty layer of girl pneumatics—with useful muscle.

The Chorus Line: The Birth of Telemachus, An Idyll Nine months he sailed the wine-red seas of his mother's blood Out of the cave of dreaded Night, of sleep, Of troubling dreams he sailed In his frail dark boat, the boat of himself, Through the dangerous ocean of his vast mother he sailed From the distant cave where the threads of men's lives are spun, Then measured, and then cut short By the Three Fatal Sisters, intent on their gruesome handcrafts, And the lives of women also are twisted into the strand. And we, the twelve who were later to die by his hand At his father's relentless command, Sailed as well, in the dark frail boats of ourselves Through the turbulent seas of our swollen and sore-footed mothers Who were not royal queens, but a motley and piebald collection, Bought, traded, captured, kidnapped from serfs and strangers. After the nine-month voyage we came to shore, Beached at the same time as he was, struck by the hostile air, Infants when he was an infant, wailing just as he wailed, Helpless as he was helpless, but ten times more helpless as well, For his birth was longed-for and feasted, as our births were not. His mother presented a princeling. Our various mothers Spawned merely, lambed, farrowed, littered, Foaled, whelped and kittened, brooded, hatched out their clutch. We were animal young, to be disposed of at will, Sold, drowned in the well, traded, used, discarded when bloomless. He was fathered; we simply appeared, Like the crocus, the rose, the sparrows endangered in mud. Our lives were twisted in his life; we also were children When he was a child, We were his pets and his toythings, mock sisters, his tiny companions. We grew as he grew, laughed also, ran as he ran, Though sandier, hungrier, sun-speckled, most days meatless. He saw us as rightfully his, for whatever purpose He chose, to tend him and feed him, to wash him, amuse him, Rock him to sleep in the dangerous boats of ourselves. We did not know as we played with him there in the sand On the beach of our rocky goat-island, close by the harbour, That he was foredoomed to swell to our cold-eyed teenaged killer. If we had known that, would we have drowned him back then? Young children are ruthless and selfish: everyone wants to live. Twelve against one, he wouldn't have stood a chance. Would we? In only a minute, when nobody else was looking? Pushed his still-innocent child's head under the water With our own still-innocent childish nursemaid hands, And blamed it on waves. Would we have had it in us? Ask the Three Sisters, spinning their blood-red mazes, Tangling the lives of men and women together. Only they know how events might then have had altered. Only they know our hearts. From us you will get no answer.

I am an ordinary woman who did extraordinary things. The first to qualify as a ground engineer. The first to fly to Australia single-handed. A million people lined the streets of London when I came home. I waved to them from an open-topped car like the queen, the queen of the air.

So-called real life has only once interfered with me, and it had been a far cry from what the words, lines, books had prepared me for. Fate had to do with blind seers, oracles, choruses announcing death, not with panting next to the refrigerator, fumbling with condoms, waiting in a Honda parked round the corner and surreptitious encounters in a Lisbon hotel. Only the written word exists, everything one must do oneself is without form, subject to contingency without rhyme or reason. It takes too long. And if it ends badly the metre isn't right, and there's no way to cross things out.

Pistols, please,” she said, once they’d all returned. She traded her bow and arrow for a single-barreled weapon. Each lady in line lifted a similar firearm and held it in braced, outstretched arms, staring down her respective bull’s-eye. When Susanna cocked her pistol, the others followed suit. The chorus of clicks raced down Bram’s spine. “I find this scene wildly arousing,” Colin murmured, echoing Bram’s own thoughts. “Is that wrong?” “If it is, I can promise you company in hell.” His cousin made an amused sound. “And you thought we have nothing in common.” Susanna leveled her pistol and took aim. “One... Two...” Crack.

You’re sure you want to do this,” Galen says, eyeing me like I’ve grown a tiara of snakes on my head. “Absolutely.” I unstrap the four-hundred-dollar silver heels and spike them into the sand. When he starts unraveling his tie, I throw out my hand. “No! Leave it. Leave everything on.” Galen frowns. “Rachel would kill us both. In our sleep. She would torture us first.” “This is our prom night. Rachel would want us to enjoy ourselves.” I pull the thousand-or-so bobby pins from my hair and toss them in the sand. Really, both of us are right. She would want us to be happy. But she would also want us to stay in our designer clothes. Leaning over, I shake my head like a wet dog, dispelling the magic of hairspray. Tossing my hair back, I look at Galen. His crooked smile almost melts me where I stand. I’m just glad to see a smile on his face at all. The last six months have been rough. “Your mother will want pictures,” he tells me. “And what will she do with pictures? There aren’t exactly picture frames in the Royal Caverns.” Mom’s decision to mate with Grom and live as his queen didn’t surprise me. After all, I am eighteen years old, an adult, and can take care of myself. Besides, she’s just a swim away. “She keeps picture frames at her house though. She could still enjoy them while she and Grom come to shore to-“ “Okay, ew. Don’t say it. That’s where I draw the line.” Galen laughs and takes off his shoes. I forget all about Mom and Grom. Galen, barefoot in the sand, wearing an Armani tux. What more could a girl ask for? “Don’t look at me like that, angelfish,” he says, his voice husky. “Disappointing your grandfather is the last thing I want to do.” My stomach cartwheels. Swallowing doesn’t help. “I can’t admire you, even from afar?” I can’t quite squeeze enough innocence in there to make it believable, to make it sound like I wasn’t thinking the same thing he was. Clearing his throat, he nods. “Let’s get on with this.” He closes the distance between us, making foot-size potholes with his stride. Grabbing my hand, he pulls me to the water. At the edge of the wet sand, just out of reach of the most ambitious wave, we stop. “You’re sure?” he says again. “More than sure,” I tell him, giddiness swimming through my veins like a sneaking eel. Images of the conference center downtown spring up in my mind. Red and white balloons, streamers, a loud, cheesy DJ yelling over the starting chorus of the next song. Kids grinding against one another on the dance floor to lure the chaperones’ attention away from a punch bowl just waiting to be spiked. Dresses spilling over with skin, matching corsages, awkward gaits due to six-inch heels. The prom Chloe and I dreamed of. But the memories I wanted to make at that prom died with Chloe. There could never be any joy in that prom without her. I couldn’t walk through those doors and not feel that something was missing. A big something. No, this is where I belong now. No balloons, no loud music, no loaded punch bowl. Just the quiet and the beach and Galen. This is my new prom. And for some reason, I think Chloe would approve.

Kingbitter, as he did frequently nowadays, was standing at his window and looking out onto the street below. This street offered the most mundane and ordinary sights of Budapest's mundane and ordinary streets. The muck-, oil-, and dog-dirt-spattered sidewalk was lined with parked cars, and in the one-yard gaps between the cars and the leprotically peeling house walls the most mundane and ordinary passersby were attempting to go about their business, their hostile features an outward clue to their dark thoughts. Every now and then, perhaps in a hurry to overtake the single file inching along the front, one of them would step off the sidewalk, only for an entire chorus of rancorous car horns to give the lie to any groundless hope of breaking free from the line.

Mother and Father apologize. They sing a show tune: 'What are we to do? What are we to do? She's so blue, we're just two. What, oh what, are we supposed to do?' In my headworld they jump on Principal Principal's desk and perform a tap-dance routine. A spotlight flashes on them. A chorus line joins in, and the guidance counselor dances around a spangled cane. I giggle. Zap. Back in their world.

When I was young and full of grace And spirited - a rattlesnake When I was young and fever fell My spirit, I will not tell You're on your honor not to tell I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract Explain the change, the difference between What you want and what you need, there's the key, Your adventure for today, what do you do Between the horns of the day? (chorus) I believe my shirt is wearing thin And change is what I believe in When I was young and give and take And foolish said my fool awake When I was young and fever fell My spirit, I will not tell You're on your honor, on your honor Trust in your calling, make sure your calling's true Think of others, the others think of you Silly rule golden words make, practice, practice makes perfect, Perfect is a fault, and fault lines change I believe my humor's wearing thin And change is what I believe in I believe my shirt is wearing thin And change is what I believe in (repeat chorus) When I was young and full of grace As spirited a rattlesnake When I was young and fever fell My spirit, I will not tell You're on your honor, on your honor I believe in example I believe my throat hurts Example is the checker to the key I believe my humor's wearing thin And I believe the poles are shifting

Agnes shut her eyes, clenched her fists, opened her mouth and screamed. It started low. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. The prisms on the chandelier chimed gently as they shook. It rose, passing quickly through the mysterious pitch at fourteen cycles per second where the human spirit begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable about the universe and the place in it of the bowels. Small items around the Opera House vibrated off shelves and smashed on the floor. The note climbed, rang like a bell, climbed again. In the Pit, all the violin strings snapped, one by one. As the tone rose, the crystal prisms shook in the chandelier. In the bar, champagne corks fired a salvo. Ice jingled and shattered in its bucket. A line of wine-glasses joined in the chorus, blurred around the rims, and then exploded like hazardous thistledown with attitude. There were harmonics and echoes that caused strange effects. In the dressing-rooms the No. 3 greasepaint melted. Mirrors cracked, filling the ballet school with a million fractured images. Dust rose, insects fell. In the stones of the Opera House tiny particles of quartz danced briefly... Then there was silence, broken by the occasional thud and tinkle. Nanny grinned. 'Ah,' she said, 'now the opera's over.

Working with Kelly Bishop was a lifesaver. She played Lorelai’s mother on Gilmore Girls and was Sheila in the original Broadway production of A Chorus Line. She is a broad through and through—and she taught me how to navigate this new world. 'Don’t focus on learning the entire script,' she advised early on. 'Prep for what you need to do three days ahead. Learn it in little chunks. And when you’re done filming a scene, let it go and move on.

For years Belpher oysters had been the mainstay of gay supper parties at the Savoy, the Carlton and Romano's. Dukes doted on them; chorus girls wept if they were not on the bill of fare. And then, in an evil hour, somebody discovered that what made the Belpher oyster so particularly plump and succulent was the fact that it breakfasted, launched and dined almost entirely on the local sewage. There is but a thin line ever between popular homage and execration.

There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields. In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of color that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. Then foxes barked in the hills and deer silently crossed the fields, half hidden in the mists of the fall mornings. Along the roads, laurel, viburnum, and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler's eye through much of the year. Even in winter the roadsides were places of beauty, where countless birds came to feed on the berries and on the seed heads of the dried weeds rising above the snow. The countryside was, in fact, famous for the abundance and variety of its bird life, and when the flood of migrants was pouring through in spring and fall people traveled from great distances to observe them. Others came to fish the streams, which flowed clear and cold out of the hills and contained shady pools where trout lay. So it had been from the days many years ago when the first settlers raised their homes, sank their wells, and built their barns. Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens, the cattle, and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death. The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. In the town the doctors had become more and more puzzled by new kinds of sickness appearing among their patients. There had been sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children whoe would be stricken suddently while at play and die within a few hours. There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example--where had they gone? Many people spoke of them, puzzled and disturbed. The feeding stations in the backyards were deserted. The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh. On the farms the hens brooded, but no chicks hatched. The farmers complained that they were unable to raise any pigs--the litters were small and the young survived only a few days. The apple trees were coming into bloom but no bees droned among the blossoms, so there was no pollination and there would be no fruit. The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the streams were not lifeless. Anglers no longer visited them, for all the fish had died. In the gutters under the eaves and between the shingles of the roofs, a white granular powder still showed a few patches; some weeks before it had fallen like snow upon the roofs and the lawns, the fields and streams. No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of life in this stricken world. The people had done it to themselves.

Relly fired off the opening riff. Butt laid down the beat, old doom and new joy mixed together. "I wait till I, like fire, shall rise," Jerod sang. And then again, louder, wailing sure and true. I was the last one to join in. I had a bass line all wroked out, of course. I'd been waiting weeks for this momment. My fingers colosed on the strings, pressed them hard to the frets. Butt and Relly were locked in, repeating the four-bar intro. Louder and louder, fierce as a war cry. "Ok," I whispered into the pounding noise. I joined in, doubling Relly at first, then splitting off to coil our riffs together. It was great, it was huge, it was endless. The song rose, churning and sucking everything in like a cyclone. "The will my voice in great goodbyes," Jerod screamed from the speakers. "Join to the chorus of the skies." Silence was inside me, riding the Ghost Metal tornado. Right at the center, at the heart of the song. I didn't need a voice. I had a bass. I didn't need to hear myself talk or sing. Jerod could make the words for me. Or maybe it was Silence herself, pouring out through the PA system. Either way, any way, They were my words. And all the world would hear them.

: I said, “You’re Tiny Love?” And Daisy started telling me this story about her and Wyatt and how she came up with those lines about “Big eyes, big soul/big heart, no control/but all she got to give is tiny love.” I loved the chorus of that song. I had always loved it. Daisy: Billy listened to me.

In the late-day sun, the square had become a hive of preparation for the School Master’s arrival. The men sharpened swords, set traps, and plotted the night’s guard, while the women lined up the children and went to work. Handsome ones had their hair lopped off, teeth blackened, and clothes shredded to rags; homely ones were scrubbed, swathed in bright colors, and fitted with veils. Mothers begged the best-behaved children to curse or kick their sisters, the worst were bribed to pray in the church, while the rest in line were led in choruses of the village anthem: “Blessed Are the Ordinary.

And so, with extra Leslie help and a chorus of angels disguised as teachers and librarians for years unstinting with love and hours of practice, those ants finally marched in straight lines for me shaped words, danced sentences, constructed worlds for a girl finally learning how to read I unlocked the treasure chest and swallowed the key.

I won't live to see the future that I fight for, Maybe no one gets to reach that perfect day If the work is never over, Then how do you keep marching anyway? Do you carry your banner as far as you can? Rewriting the world with your imperfect pen? Till the next stubborn girl picks it up in a picket line over and over again? And you join in the chorus of centuries chanting to her. The path will be twisted and risky and slow, But keep marching, keep marching. Will you fail or prevail? Well, you may never know, But keep marching, keep marching. 'Cause your ancestors are all the proof you need That progress is possible, not guaranteed. It will only be made if we keep marching, keep marching on.

There is a new song on Top 40 radio right now that's so good I want to kill myself. I'm not sure why exceptionally good hip-hop singles make me want to commit suicide, but they often do. I don't know what the title of the song is, but it's that religious woman with the perfect stomach from Destiny's Child and Jay-Z doing a duet featuring a horn riff from the '70s that I've never heard before (but that sounds completely familiar), and the chorus is something along the lines of, "Your love is driving me crazy right now/ I'm kind of hoping you'll page me right now." It's also possible that Jay-Z compares himself to Golden State Warriors guard Nick Van Exel during the last verse, but I can't be positive. ANYWAY, by the time you read this sentence, the song I am referring to will be ten thousand years old. You will have heard it approximately 15,000 times, and you might hate it, and I might hate it, too. But right now -- today -- I am living for this song. As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing that matters as much as hearing it on the radio; I am interested in nothing beyond Beyonce Knowles's voice. All I do is scan the FM dial for hours at a time, trying to find it.

There is one in this tribe too often miserable - a child bereaved of both parents. None cares for this child: she is fed sometimes, but oftener forgotten: a hut rarely receives her: the hollow tree and chill cavern are her home. Forsaken, lost, and wandering, she lives more with the wild beast and bird than with her own kind. Hunger and cold are her comrades: sadness hovers over, and solitude besets her round. Unheeded and unvalued, she should die: but she both lives and grows: the green wilderness nurses her, and becomes to her a mother: feeds her on juicy berry, on saccharine root and nut. There is something in the air of this clime which fosters life kindly: there must be something, too, in its dews, which heals with sovereign balm. Its gentle seasons exaggerate no passion, no sense; its temperature tends to harmony; its breezes, you would say, bring down from heaven the germ of pure thought, and purer feeling. Not grotesquely fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage; not violently vivid the colouring of flower and bird: in all the grandeur of these forests there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness. The gentle charm vouchsafed to flower and tree, - bestowed on deer and dove, - has not been denied to the human nursling. All solitary, she has sprung up straight and graceful. Nature cast her features in a fine mould; they have matured in their pure, accurate first lines, unaltered by the shocks of disease. No fierce dry blast has dealt rudely with the surface of her frame; no burning sun has crisped or withered her tresses: her form gleams ivory-white through the trees; her hair flows plenteous, long, and glossy; her eyes, not dazzled by vertical fires, beam in the shade large and open, and full and dewy: above those eyes, when the breeze bares her forehead, shines an expanse fair and ample, - a clear, candid page, whereon knowledge, should knowledge ever come, might write a golden record. You see in the desolate young savage nothing vicious or vacant; she haunts the wood harmless and thoughtful: though of what one so untaught can think, it is not easy to divine. On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, being utterly alone - for she had lost all trace of her tribe, who had wandered leagues away, she knew not where, - she went up from the vale, to watch Day take leave and Night arrive. A crag, overspread by a tree, was her station: the oak-roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat: the oak-boughs, thick-leaved, wove a canopy. Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple fire, and parting to the farewell of a wild, low chorus from the woodlands. Then Night entered, quiet as death: the wind fell, the birds ceased singing. Now every nest held happy mates, and hart and hind slumbered blissfully safe in their lair. The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir; occupied, however, rather in feeling than in thinking, - in wishing, than hoping, - in imagining, than projecting. She felt the world, the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty. Of all things, herself seemed to herself the centre, - a small, forgotten atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed, - a star in an else starless firmament, - which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest, tracked as a guide, or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something within her stirred disquieted, and restlessly asserted a God-given strength, for which it insisted she should find exercise?

I keep returning to the last chorus of All Apologies, where Kurt sang: 'In the sun, I feel as one / All in all is all we are.' And to these lines from his journals: 'No true talent is fully organic. Yet the obviously superior talented have not only control of study, but that extra special little gift at birth fueled by passion. A built-in, totally spiritual, unexplainable, new age, fucking cosmic, energy-bursting love.

In 1938, blues musician Lead Belly sang a song he wrote about “the Scottsboro boys,” a group of Black teenagers who were sent to jail after being falsely accused of raping two white women on a train (one of the women later admitted it was a made-up charge). After the song, Lead Belly talked about the case and advised fellow Black Americans “to stay woke—keep their eyes open.” Stay woke. The term has been a part of the Black American lexicon for a very long time. In more recent years, the term has evolved from the way Lead Belly was using it—warning Black people to stay alert to dangerous situations that might arise—to a broader meaning about staying aware of racist systems of oppression. After the release of Erykah Badu’s 2007 song Master Teacher, with a chorus that repeated the line “I stay woke,” the term exploded into the mainstream.

After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the first tee of the golf-course and see the country-club windows as a yellow expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this ocean, so to speak, were the heads of many curious caddies, a few of the more ingenious chauffeurs, the golf professional's deaf sister--and there were usually several stray, diffident waves who might have rolled inside had they so desired. This was the gallery. The balcony was inside. It consisted of the circle of wicker chairs that lined the wall of the combination clubroom and ballroom. At these Saturday-night dances it was largely feminine; a great babel of middle-aged ladies with sharp eyes and icy hearts behind lorgnettes and large bosoms. The main function of the balcony was critical. It occasionally showed grudging admiration, but never approval, for it is well known among ladies over thirty-five that when the younger set dance in the summer-time it is with the very worst intentions in the world, and if they are not bombarded with stony eyes stray couples will dance weird barbaric interludes in the corners, and the more popular, more dangerous, girls will sometimes be kissed in the parked limousines of unsuspecting dowagers. But, after all, this critical circle is not close enough to the stage to see the actors' faces and catch the subtler byplay. It can only frown and lean, ask questions and make satisfactory deductions from its set of postulates, such as the one which states that every young man with a large income leads the life of a hunted partridge. It never really appreciates the drama of the shifting, semicruel world of adolescence. No; boxes, orchestra-circle, principals, and chorus are represented by the medley of faces and voices that sway to the plaintive African rhythm of Dyer's dance orchestra.

One lovely twilight, with the near garden in riotous bloom, Genji stepped onto a gallery that gave him a view of the sea, and such was the supernal grace of his motionless figure that he seemed in that setting not to be of this world at all. Over soft white silk twill and aster 49 he wore a dress cloak of deep blue, its sash only very casually tied; and his voice slowly chanting “I, a disciple of the Buddha Shakyamuni…” 50 was more beautiful than any they had ever heard before. From boats rowing by at sea came a chorus of singing voices. With a pang he watched them, dim in the offing, like little birds borne on the waters, and sank into a reverie as cries from lines of geese on high mingled with the creaking of oars, until tears welled forth, and he brushed them away with a hand so gracefully pale against the black of his rosary that the young gentlemen pining for their sweethearts at home were all consoled.

You may believe that civilization deafens us with tens of thousands of voices, but listen well to that clamour, for with each renewed burst so disparate and myriad, an ancient force awakens, drawing each noise ever closer, until the chorus forms but two sides, each battling the other. The bloody lines are drawn, fought in the turning away of faces, in the stoppering of ears, the cold denial, and all discourse, at the last, is revealed as futile and worthless.

How To Save A Life" Step one, you say, "We need to talk." He walks, you say, "Sit down. It's just a talk." He smiles politely back at you You stare politely right on through Some sort of window to your right As he goes left and you stay right Between the lines of fear and blame You begin to wonder why you came [Chorus] Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend Somewhere along in the bitterness And I would have stayed up with you all night Had I known how to save a life [Chorus] Let him know that you know best 'Cause after all you do know best Try to slip past his defense Without granting innocence Lay down a list of what is wrong The things you've told him all along Pray to God, he hears you And I pray to God, he hears you As he begins to raise his voice You lower yours and grant him one last choice Drive until you lose the road Or break with the ones you've followed He will do one of two things He will admit to everything Or he'll say he's just not the same And you'll begin to wonder why you came

When a man seats before his eyes the bronze face of his helmet and steps off from the line of departure, he divides himself, as he divides his ‘ticket,’ in two parts. One part he leaves behind. That part which takes delight in his children, which lifts his voice in the chorus, which clasps his wife to him in the sweet darkness of their bed. “That half of him, the best part, a man sets aside and leaves behind. He banishes from his heart all feelings of tenderness and mercy, all compassion and kindness, all thought or concept of the enemy as a man, a human being like himself. He marches into battle bearing only the second portion of himself, the baser measure, that half which knows slaughter and butchery and turns the blind eye to quarter. He could not fight at all if he did not do this.” The men listened, silent and solemn. Leonidas at that time was fifty-five years old. He had fought in more than two score battles, since he was twenty; wounds as ancient as thirty years stood forth, lurid upon his shoulders and calves, on his neck and across his steel-colored beard. “Then this man returns, alive, out of the slaughter. He hears his name called and comes forward to take his ticket. He reclaims that part of himself which he had earlier set aside. “This is a holy moment. A sacramental moment. A moment in which a man feels the gods as close as his own breath. “What unknowable mercy has spared us this day? What clemency of the divine has turned the enemy’s spear one handbreadth from our throat and driven it fatally into the breast of the beloved comrade at our side? Why are we still here above the earth, we who are no better, no braver, who reverenced heaven no more than these our brothers whom the gods have dispatched to hell? “When a man joins the two pieces of his ticket and sees them weld in union together, he feels that part of him, the part that knows love and mercy and compassion, come flooding back over him. This is what unstrings his knees. “What else can a man feel at that moment than the most grave and profound thanksgiving to the gods who, for reasons unknowable, have spared his life this day? Tomorrow their whim may alter. Next week, next year. But this day the sun still shines upon him, he feels its warmth upon his shoulders, he beholds about him the faces of his comrades whom he loves and he rejoices in their deliverance and his own.” Leonidas paused now, in the center of the space left open for him by the troops. “I have ordered pursuit of the foe ceased. I have commanded an end to the slaughter of these whom today we called our enemies. Let them return to their homes. Let them embrace their wives and children. Let them, like us, weep tears of salvation and burn thank-offerings to the gods. “Let no one of us forget or misapprehend the reason we fought other Greeks here today. Not to conquer or enslave them, our brothers, but to make them allies against a greater enemy. By persuasion, we hoped. By coercion, in the event. But no matter, they are our allies now and we will treat them as such from this moment. “The Persian!

There is one myth about writers that I have always felt was particularly pernicious and untruthful—the myth of the "lonely writer," the myth that writing is a lonely occupation, involving much suffering because, supposedly, the writer exists in a state of sensitivity which cuts him off, or raises him above, or casts him below the community around him. This is a common cliché, a hangover probably from the romantic period and the idea of the artist as a Sufferer and a Rebel. Probably any of the arts that are not performed in a chorus-line are going to come in for a certain amount of romanticizing, but it seems to me particularly bad to do this to writers and especially fiction writers, because fiction writers engage in the homeliest, and most concrete, and most unromanticizable of all arts. I suppose there have been enough genuinely lonely suffering novelists to make this seem a reasonable myth, but there is every reason to suppose that such cases are the result of less admirable qualities in these writers, qualities which have nothing to do with the vocation of writing itself.

Together with an elderly artist (I regret that I don't remember his name) he occupied a separate room in the barracks. And there Yuri painted for nothing schmaltzy pictures such as Nero's Feast and the Chorus of Elves and the like for the German officers on the commandant's staff. In return, he was given food. The slops for which the POW officers stood in line with their mess tins from 6 a.m. on, while the Ordners beat them with sticks and the cooks with ladles, were not enough to sustain life. At evening, Yuri could see from the windows of their room the one and only picture for which his artistic talent had been given him: the evening mist hovering above a swampy meadow encircled by barbed wire; a multitude of bonfires; and, around the bonfires, beings who had once been Russian officers but had now become beastlike creatures who gnawed the bones of dead horses, who baked patties from potato rinds, who smoked manure and were all swarming with lice. Not all those two-legged creatures had died as yet. Not all of them had yet lost the capacity for intelligible speech, and one could see in the crimson reflections of the bonfires how a belated understanding was dawning on those faces which were descending to the Neanderthal.

I know as soon as we hit the sweet spot, an intangible instant when the music gains control of fluttering wings to take real flight - soaring, swooping, diving and rising in the small studio. No single one of us is in control. The wall of sound is its own thing - lifted, weight shared, by five pairs of hands. I shake hair from closed eyes just because I need to move. If I let the pressure build and build and keep it in my hands, in the guitar, I'll explode. We carve out places for the verses, the chorus repetitions, and the coda. We line the edges of sonic space with rhythm and melody and stand Scope's sharp samples at each corner.

Let those souls who think their work has no value recognize that by fulfilling their insignificant tasks out of a love of God, those tasks assume a supernatural worth. The aged who bear the taunts of the young, the sick crucified to their beds, the ignorant immigrant in the steel mill, the street cleaner and the garbage collector, the wardrobe mistress in the theater and the chorus girl who never had a line, the unemployed carpenter and the ash collector — all these will be enthroned above dictators, presidents, kings, and cardinals if a greater love of God inspires their humbler tasks than inspires those who play nobler roles with less love.

I noticed it the other night hearing Rabbit do a commercial. No matter who's talking, the different power spectra are the same, give or take a small percentage. So you and Rabbit have something in common now. More than that. Everybody who says the same words is the same person if the spectra are the same only they happen differently in time, you dig? But the time is arbitrary. You pick your zero point anywhere you want, that way you can shuffle each person's time line sideways till they all coincide. Then you'd have this big, God, maybe a couple hundred million chorus saying "rich chocolaty goodness" together and it would all be the same voice.

Barbara took her accustomed place by the door but as the singing began Margerit beckoned her over to her side. "I haven't been following much except that it's all ancient Greeks and battles and such. What's happening now?" Barbara knelt beside her and leaned close to whisper so as not to disturb the rest of the party. A brief synopsis of what had gone before took up the time while the chorus escorted the principles to the centre of the stage. "I haven't seen this performance before," Barbara added, "but I imagine this will be the grand love duet." As the soprano began, she concentrated on the stage to follow the opening phrases. The chorus had abandoned the field to the principles who faced each other against a backdrop of fluted columns. "O! What strange fate is mine!" Barbara paused as the signature line was repeated several times. "I loved you in the guise of Mars, but now I am betrayed by Venus. The iron in your glance turns soft beneath my touch. I am undone. O Venus, you are cruel to mock me so." It continued on in the same vein until it was the mezzo's turn. Her lyrics ran much parallel with the soprano's. With less concentration required, Barbara ventured a glance to see Margerit's reaction. Margerit turned at the same moment and their eyes met as Barbara whispered Ifis's lines. "O! What a strange fate is mine! In the guise of Mars I love you but now as Venus I'm betrayed. The Iron in my soul turns soft beneath your touch." Unconsciously, Margerit placed a hand on hers where it lay on the arm of her chair. "Fire runs through my veins - I am undone." Fire indeed ran through her veins. Her hand burned sweetly where Margerit touched it and she dared now take it back. Her voice grew husky. "Why do the gods mock me with desire I cannot sate?" Their eyes were still locked and Margerit's lips had parted in a little "o" of wonder. "O Venus, have mercy on one new come to your shrine." When the soprano joined again for the duet, Margerit breathed along with her, "O! What strange fate is mine!" With effort, Barbara wrenched her gaze away.

My stump speech became less a series of positions and more a chronicle of these disparate voices, a chorus of Americans from every corner of the state. “Here’s the thing,” I would say. “Most people, wherever they’re from, whatever they look like, are looking for the same thing. They’re not trying to get filthy rich. They don’t expect someone else to do what they can do for themselves. “But they do expect that if they’re willing to work, they should be able to find a job that supports a family. They expect that they shouldn’t go bankrupt just because they get sick. They expect that their kids should be able to get a good education, one that prepares them for this new economy, and they should be able to afford college if they’ve put in the effort. They want to be safe, from criminals or terrorists. And they figure that after a lifetime of work, they should be able to retire with dignity and respect. “That’s about it. It’s not a lot. And although they don’t expect government to solve all their problems, they do know, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities government could help.” The room would be quiet, and I’d take a few questions. When a meeting was over, people lined up to shake my hand, pick up some campaign literature, or talk to Jeremiah, Anita, or a local campaign volunteer about how they could get involved. And I’d drive on to the next town, knowing that the story I was telling was true; convinced that this campaign was no longer about me and that I had become a mere conduit through which people might recognize the value of their own stories, their own worth, and share them with one another. —

TAKING LEAVE Of the unhindered motion in the million swirled and twisted grooves of the juniper driftwood lying in the sand; taking leave of each sapphire and amber thread and each iridescent bead of the swallowtail's wing and of the quick and clever needle of the seamstress in the dark cocoon that accomplished the stitching. Goodbye to the long pale hairs of the swaying grassflowers, so like, in grace and color and bearing, the nodding antennae of the green valley grasshopper clinging to its blade; and to the staircase shell of the butter-colored wendletrap and to the branches of the sourwood making their own staircase with each step upward they take and to the spiraling of the cobweb weaver twirling as it descends on its silk out of the shadows of the pitch pine. Taking leave of the sea of spring, that grey-green swell slowly rising, spreading, its heavy wisteria-scented surf filled with darting, gliding, whistling fish, a current of cries, an undertow of moans and buzzes, so pervasive and penetrating and alluring that the lungs adapt to the density. Determined not to slight the knotted rockweed or the beach plum or the white, blue-tipped petals of the five spot; determined not to overlook the pursed orange mouth of each maple leaf just appearing or the entire chorus of those open leaves in full summer forte. My whole life, a parting from the brazen coyote thistle and the reticent, tooth-ridged toad crab and the proud, preposterous sage grouse. And you mustn't believe that the cessation which occurs here now is more than illusory; the ritual of this leave-taking continues beyond these lines, in a whisper beside the window, below my breath by the river, without noise through the clearing at midnight, even in the dark, even in sleep, continues, out-of-notice, private, incessant.

Cairo: the future city, the new metropole of plants cascading from solar-paneled roofs to tree-lined avenues with white washed facades abut careful restorations and integrated innovations all shining together in a chorus of new and old. Civil initiatives will soon find easy housing in the abandoned architectural prizes of Downtown, the river will be flooded with public transportation, the shaded spaces underneath bridges and flyovers will flower into common land connected by tramways to dignified schools and clean hospitals and eclectic bookshops and public parks humming with music in the evenings. The revolution has begun and people, every day, are supplanting the regime with their energy and initiative in this cement super colony that for decades of state failure has held itself together with a collective supraintelligence keeping it from collapse. Something here, in Cairo's combination of permanence and piety and proximity, bound people together.

SOME OF THE WOMEN YOU WILL MEET on these pages, you will already know. Some you’ll know by name, and others, including some of the very best, you may never have heard of. Frankly, some of these women have careers that deserve a book-length treatment all their own. I’m thinking, in particular, of Nathalie Baye, Sandrine Bonnaire, Isabelle Huppert, Agnès Jaoui, Sandrine Kiberlain, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Karin Viard. In any case, over the course of this book, you will come to know their best work and that of their colleagues. It is a striking thing, the sheer vastness of the working talent, a roster that includes but is hardly limited to names such as Isabelle Adjani, Fanny Ardant, Josiane Balasko, Emmanuelle Béart, Leïla Bekhti, Monica Bellucci, Juliette Binoche, Élodie Bouchez, Isabelle Carré, Amira Casar, Marion Cotillard, Marie-Josée Croze, Emmanuelle Devos, Marina Foïs, Sara Forestier, Cécile de France, Catherine Frot, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Julie Gayet, Marie Gillain, Marina Hands, Mélanie Laurent, Virginie Ledoyen, Valérie Lemercier, Sophie Marceau, Chiara Mastroianni, Anna Mouglalis, Géraldine Pailhas, Charlotte Rampling, Natacha Régnier, Brigitte Roüan, Ludivine Sagnier, Emmanuelle Seigner, Mathilde Seigner, Audrey Tautou, Sylvie Testud, Kristin Scott Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein. Some of these women are renowned for their beauty (Béart, Bellucci, Binoche, Marceau). But many others are beautiful in ways that elude analysis. They are warm or electric or magnetic or so idiosyncratic that your eyes immediately go to them. They are beautiful like the actresses of an earlier Hollywood generation, like Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert or Olivia de Havilland. In the 1930s, Busby Berkeley’s chorus lines were filled with women who were prettier, and yet these ladies became objects of cinematic fantasy. Obviously, they had some requisite base level of good looks, but what pushed them into the realm of beauty was something else, something inside them, something to do with their essential being. And yet . . . what happens if a culture or an industry isn’t interested in a woman’s essential being? Stanwyck and her exalted colleagues would have been nothing in such an environment, just as many American actresses today are going through entire careers without ever showing what’s inside of them.

There is no carriage here. The Herr is not expected after all. He will now come on to Bukovina, and return tomorrow or the next day, better the next day." Whilst he was speaking the horses began to neigh and snort and plunge wildly, so that the driver had to hold them up. Then, amongst a chorus of screams from the peasants and a universal crossing of themselves, a caleche, with four horses, drove up behind us, overtook us, and drew up beside the coach. I could see from the flash of our lamps as the rays fell on them, that the horses were coal-black and splendid animals. They were driven by a tall man, with a long brown beard and a great black hat, which seemed to hide his face from us. I could only see the gleam of a pair of very bright eyes, which seemed red in the lamplight, as he turned to us. He said to the driver, "You are early tonight, my friend." The man stammered in reply, "The English Herr was in a hurry." To which the stranger replied, "That is why, I suppose, you wished him to go on to Bukovina. You cannot deceive me, my friend. I know too much, and my horses are swift." As he spoke he smiled,and the lamplight fell on a hard-looking mouth, with very red lips and sharp-looking teeth, as white as ivory. One of my companions whispered to another the line from Burger's "Lenore". "Denn die Todten reiten Schnell." ("For the dead travel fast.")

Oh,Ella. I wish you'd had a better time at the ball." "Fuhgeddaboudit," I muttered. Greaseball. Freddy. Freak. "It's not like she and I were ever going to be BFFs." "I wasn't just referring to Amanda." Of course he wasn't. "I'll try," I moaned into the crook of my elbow. "Oh, Lord.I'll try to carry on." "That sounds rather dramatic, even for you." "It's Styx," I told him. "After your time, before mine. I don't know all the words,but those work for the moment. And for the record, I'm being ironic, not dramatic." "If you say so." I ignored him. "I have had my last flutter over Alex Bainbridge. I mean it. Frankie was right.How many signs do I need that we are never, ever going to have...anything...before I get it? Obviously, it doesn't matter that we realte to the same schizo seventies songs. Or that we can discuss antique Japanese woodblock prints. Or that when he sits next to me, he kinda takes my breath away. You would think that would count for a lot,wouldn't you?" Edward gets the concept of rhetorical questions, so I went on. "I wouldn't even want to hazard a guess about what makes Amanda's pulse go all skittery, but I would bet anything it's not Alex. And he's still with her. He doesn't belong with her, but apparently he feels he belongs to her. Explain that,please." "Oh,Ella.We men are not always the best at looking beyond the...er..." "Boobs,Edward. You can say it. Amanda Alstead has boobs and blonda hair. Beyond that, I can't see a single thing that's special about her." "Because there isn't a single thing. Beyond the...er, obvious. You,on the other hand,are a creature of infinite charms. Shall I list them alphabetically or from the top down?" I scowled up at him. "Y'know, you are beginning to sound a little too much like Frankie and Sadie,my deluded Greek chorus." "yes,well,I rather thought that's what friends are for." "You're not supposed to be my friend," I muttered. "You're supposed to be my Prince Charming." "Ahem." Edward's sculpted lips compressed into a grim line. "Have you looked at me lately? I am supposed to be startling and even a bit scary." "Nope.Neither." I rested my chin on my forearm. "To me,you are perfect. You are loyal and reliable and completely lacking in surprises." "That is a good thing?" "Absolutely," I said. "It's an excellent thing.I don't want any more surprises, over." "Hardly an admirable goal,that." "Maybe not," I agreed, "but pleasant. Among all the other bizarreness tonight, I found something new to be afraid of. Evil girlfriends." "Now,Ella. You can't go on being afraid forever." "Oh,yes,I can. As far as Amanda Alstead is concerned, I can." Edward tilted his head and studied me for a moment. He looked annoyed. "Why do you insist on having these conversations with me when you ignore everything I have to say?" It was a pretty good question. "Fine." I sat up straight and folded my hands in my lap. Home Truth time. "Go ahead. On this night when we celebrate the mysteries of life and death..Say something profound, something startling." There was a long silence. Then, "Boo," Edward said. "Thank you,Mr. Willing." "Don't mention it, Miss Marino. I am yours to command.

And yet, being surveilled with the intention of assault or rape is practically mundane, it happens so often. It’s such an ingrained part of the female experience that it doesn’t register as unusual. The danger of it, then, is in its routine, in how normalized it is for a woman to feel monitored, so much so that she might not know she’s in trouble until that invisible line is crossed from “typical patriarchy” to “you should run.” So now, when I drink, I’m far more cautious. I don’t like ordering draft beers from taps hidden from view. I don’t like pouring bottles into pint glasses. I don’t leave my drink with strangers, I don’t let people I don’t know order drinks for me without watching them do it, and I don’t drink excessively with people I don’t think I can trust with my sleepy body. I don’t turn my back on a cocktail, not just because I like drinking but because I can’t trust what happens to it when I’m not looking. The intersection of rape culture and surveillance culture means that being a guarded drinker is not only my responsibility, it is my sole responsibility. Any lapse in judgment could not only result in clear and present danger, but also set me up for a chorus of “Well, she should’ve known better.” The mistake we make is in thinking rape isn’t premeditated, that it happens by accident somehow, that you’re drunk and you run into a girl who’s also drunk and half-asleep on a bench and you sidle up to her and things get out of hand and before you know it, you’re being accused of something you’d never do. But men who rape are men who watch for the signs of who they believe they can rape. Rape culture isn’t a natural occurrence; it thrives thanks to the dedicated attention given to women in order to take away their security. Rapists exist on a spectrum, and maybe this attentive version is the most dangerous type: women are so used to being watched that we don’t notice when someone’s watching us for the worst reason imaginable. They have a plan long before we even get to the bar to order our first drink.

Not long after I learned about Frozen, I went to see a friend of mine who works in the music industry. We sat in his living room on the Upper East Side, facing each other in easy chairs, as he worked his way through a mountain of CDs. He played “Angel,” by the reggae singer Shaggy, and then “The Joker,” by the Steve Miller Band, and told me to listen very carefully to the similarity in bass lines. He played Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” and then Muddy Waters’s “You Need Love,” to show the extent to which Led Zeppelin had mined the blues for inspiration. He played “Twice My Age,” by Shabba Ranks and Krystal, and then the saccharine ’70s pop standard “Seasons in the Sun,” until I could hear the echoes of the second song in the first. He played “Last Christmas,” by Wham! followed by Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” to explain why Manilow might have been startled when he first heard that song, and then “Joanna,” by Kool and the Gang, because, in a different way, “Last Christmas” was an homage to Kool and the Gang as well. “That sound you hear in Nirvana,” my friend said at one point, “that soft and then loud kind of exploding thing, a lot of that was inspired by the Pixies. Yet Kurt Cobain” — Nirvana’s lead singer and songwriter — “was such a genius that he managed to make it his own. And ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’?” — here he was referring to perhaps the best-known Nirvana song. “That’s Boston’s ‘More Than a Feeling.’ ” He began to hum the riff of the Boston hit, and said, “The first time I heard ‘Teen Spirit,’ I said, ‘That guitar lick is from “More Than a Feeling.” ’ But it was different — it was urgent and brilliant and new.” He played another CD. It was Rod Stewart’s “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” a huge hit from the 1970s. The chorus has a distinctive, catchy hook — the kind of tune that millions of Americans probably hummed in the shower the year it came out. Then he put on “Taj Mahal,” by the Brazilian artist Jorge Ben Jor, which was recorded several years before the Rod Stewart song. In his twenties, my friend was a DJ at various downtown clubs, and at some point he’d become interested in world music. “I caught it back then,” he said. A small, sly smile spread across his face. The opening bars of “Taj Mahal” were very South American, a world away from what we had just listened to. And then I heard it. It was so obvious and unambiguous that I laughed out loud; virtually note for note, it was the hook from “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy.” It was possible that Rod Stewart had independently come up with that riff, because resemblance is not proof of influence. It was also possible that he’d been in Brazil, listened to some local music, and liked what he heard.

The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came up, came out—if not in the word, in the sound;—and as frequently in the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone. Into all of their songs they would manage to weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this, when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following words:— "I am going away to the Great House Farm! O, yea! O, yea! O!" This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do. I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul,—and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because "there is no flesh in his obdurate heart." I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.

Follow my lead," De murmured. "We will head for the hills to the west, as far from this battle as our horses can take us." He freed one of the horses from the chariot and guided it to Luce. The horse was stunning, black as coal, with a diamond-shaped white patch on its chest.De helped Luce into the saddle and held up the king's halberd in one hand and a crossbow in the other.Luce had never fired or even touched a crossbow in her life,and Lu Xin had only used one once,to scare a lynx away from her baby sister's crib.But the weapon felt light in Luce's hand,and she knew if it came down to it,she could fire it. De smiled at her choice and whistled for his horse. A beautiful brindle mare trotted over.He hopped onto its back. "De! What are you doing?" an alarmed voice called from the line of the horses. "You were to kill the king! Not mount him on one of our horses!" "Yes! Kill the king!" a chorus of angry voices called. "The king is dead!" Luce shouted, silencing the soldiers. The feminine voice behind the helmet brought gasps from all of them. They stood frozen, uncertain whether to raise their weapons. De drew his horse close to Luce's. He took her hands in his.They were warmer and stronger and more reassuring than anything she'd ever felt. "Whatever happens,I love you.Our love is worth everything to me." "And to me," Luce whispered back. De let out a battle cry,and their horses took off at a breakneck pace. The crossbow nearly slipped out of Luce's grasp as she lurched forward to clutch the reins. Then the rebel soldiers began to shout. "Traitors!" "Lu Xin!" De's voice rose above the shrillest cry,the heaviest horse's hoof. "Go!" He raised his arm high, pointing toward the hills.

Sunday's Best Times are tough for English babies Send the army and the navy Beat up strangers who talk funny Take their greasy foreign money Skin shop, red leather, hot line Be prepared for the engaged sign Bridal books, engagement rings And other wicked little things Chorus: Standing in your socks and vest Better get it off your chest Every day is just like the rest But Sunday's best Stylish slacks to suit your pocket Back supports and picture lockets Sleepy towns and sleeper trains To the dogs and down the drains Major roads and ladies smalls Hearts of oak and long trunk calls Continental interference At death's door with life insurance Chorus Sunday's best, Sunday's finest When your money's in the minus And you suffer from your shyness You can listen to us whiners Don't look now under the bed An arm, a leg and a severed head Read about the private lives The songs of praise, the readers' wives Listen to the decent people Though you treat them just like sheep Put them all in boots and khaki Blame it all upon the darkies

The promotional material for Fourth Island is far more lavish and not at all defensive. From the Permanent Living Reenactment of the Flag Raising on Iwo Jima to the Rockets’ Red Glare Four-Hour Fireworks Display every night, from the United We Stand Steak House by way of the statue-lined Avenue of the Presidents to the Under God Indivisible Prayer Chapel, it is all on a grand scale, and every last piece of it is red, white, blue, striped, and starred. The Great Joy Corporation is evidently expecting or receiving patriotic visitors in great numbers. Interactive displays of the Museum of Our Heroes, the Gun Show, and the All-American Victory Gardens (salvia, lobelia, candytuft) feature large on the Web site, where one can also at all times recite the Pledge of Allegiance interactively with a chorus

I knew whatever they sang, it would sound like a translation because of their accents, so I wanted to keep it a bit formal. After several goes, I eventually came up with the lines, ‘I’m in serious shit, I feel totally lost / If I’m asking for help, it’s only because / Being with you has opened my eyes, could I ever believe such a perfect surprise? / I keep asking myself wondering how / I keep closing my eyes but I can’t block you out / Want to find a place where it’s just you and me / Nobody else so we can be free’. And that was it. I had the beginnings of the lyric, after which, and much to my relief, the rest of the song came. For some reason the Beatles’ song ‘Things We Said Today’ popped into my head. I changed it to ‘All the Things She Said’ and I had the chorus.

The Lottery by Stewart Stafford It was New York, 1984, The AIDS tsunami roared in, Friends, old overnight, no more, Breathless, I went for a check-up. A freezing winter's dawn, A solitary figure before me, What we called a drag queen, White heels trembled in the cold. "Hi, are you here to get tested?" Gum chewed, brown eyes stared. This was not my type of person, I turned heel and walked away. At month's end, a crippling flu, The grey testing centre called, Two hundred people ahead of me; A waking nightmare all too real. I gave up and turned to leave, But a familiar voice called out: "Hey, you there, come back!" I stopped and turned around. The drag queen stood there in furs, But sicker, I didn't recognise them, "Stand with me in the line, honey." "Nah, I'm fine, I'll come back again." "Support an old broad before she faints?" A voice no longer frail but pin-sharp. I got in line to impatient murmurs: "If anyone has a problem, see me!" Sylvester on boombox, graveyard choir. My pal's stage name was Carol DaRaunch, (After the Ted Bundy female survivor) Their real name was Ernesto Rodriguez. After seeing the doctor, Carol hugged me, Writing down their number on some paper, With their alias not their real name on it: "Is this the number of where you work?" "THAT is my home number to call me on. THAT'S my autograph, for when I'm famous!" "I was wrong about you, Carol," I said. "Baby, it takes time to get to know me!" A hug, shimmy, the threadbare blonde left. A silent chorus of shuffling dead men walking, Spartan results, a young man's death sentence. Real words faded rehearsal, my eyes watered. Two weeks on, I cautiously phoned up Carol. The receiver was picked up, dragging sounds, Like furniture being moved: "Is Carol there?" "That person is dead." They hung up on me. All my life's harsh judgements, dumped on Carol, Who was I to win life's lottery over a guardian angel? I still keep that old phone number forty years on, Crumpled, faded, portable guilt lives on in my wallet. © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.

Young at Heart [Verse] They say I'm old, and that might be true, I move a bit slower, forget a thing or two. But in my mind, I'm still twenty-two, Young at heart, and ain't nothing I can't do. [Verse 2] I see the world through a youthful lens, With memories of lost loves and old friends. My body may have wear, but my spirit's strong, Dancing to that good, old outlaw song. [Chorus] Young at heart, forever free, A little slower, but still wild as can be. You may call me old, but you'll see, One day you'll be young at heart, just like me. [Verse 3] I remember nights down by the creek, Bonfire tales and secrets we'd keep. The years might change the lines on my face, But inside me, time can't erase. [Chorus] Young at heart, forever free, A little slower, but still wild as can be. You may call me old, but you'll see, One day you'll be young at heart, just like me. [Bridge] So to all you young ones, full of fight, Live your dreams and chase the night. But never forget, when gray turns to gold, That youth is a state of mind and soul.

Lonely Hearts and Empty Roads [Verse] Footsteps echoin' on this dusty ground People circlin' like vultures round Can't shake the whisperin' in the wind Dark tales they always tryin' to spin [Verse 2] Shadows lurkin' behind every friend Fake smiles ain't gonna make amends Faces smilin' while they pull the rug Tired of dodgin' every dirty slug [Chorus] Always someone bringin’ you down Always someone jokin’ as you drown Need that soul who saw you true Never made you feel like you’s just a fool [Verse 3] Eyes betray the lies they pave Tired hearts they ain't for sale or save Wanna find someone who'd hold their tongue And sing life's song like you ain't done [Bridge] Man of wisdom said don’t cast the stone Hold the line don’t walk alone In this maze of broken lanes Seek the one who heals your pains [Verse 4] Rusty barbed wire 'round these dreams of mine Each cut deep but I’ll be fine 'Cause somewhere out there’s a heart so rare Never made me feel like life's unfair

Cowboy's Neon Dream"** Stompin' through the city with my boots and hat, Got that country soul, no denying that. The skyline's bright but it can't outshine, The cowboy spirit that's min [Verse] Stompin' through the city with my boots and hat, Got that country soul, no denying that. The skyline's bright but it can't outshine, The cowboy spirit that's mine, all mine. [Verse 2] In the honky-tonk, I found my scene, Where neon lights ignite my cowboy dream. Steel guitars and fiddles fill the air, A country heart in a world that’s rare. [Chorus] City lights try to take my joy, But they can't shake this cowboy's ploy. Underneath the urban gleam, I'm livin' a cowboy's neon dream. [Verse 3] From the high-rise windows to the crowded bars, I ride the concrete range, chasing stars. Through the winding streets where dreams collide, I wear my country pride, deep inside. [Bridge] Even when the city's loud, My spirit stays unbowed. With every step, I hold the line, This urban cowboy’s life is fine. [Chorus] City lights try to take my joy, But they can't shake this cowboy's ploy. Underneath the urban gleam, I'm livin' a cowboy's neon dream.

On train trips, Ernie always wanted the window seat. He knew the names of the trees we passed, and the clouds—nacreous, cumulus, nimbus. He was ever vigilant for animal life and appreciative of the tiny patches of humanity along the tracks that exposed the lives of the rail-side dwellers in such intimate detail. “I love sad houses,” he’d say, pointing to a chorus line of discoloured laundry waving at us, to an upturned self-propelled lawnmower, straggly gardens, leaky drainpipes, a rain-weathered pram that had been turned into a wheelbarrow. “The porch lights are on to keep the rats in their dens,” he’d said. To be a voyeur of decay at such close range was as much of an enthrallment as it was a validation of the scarcities in his own backyard. I knew exactly which days Ernie’s mum had had to choose between heating the house and putting food on the table. My mother had been there too. Before the Zipper had given her a leg up.

Boot Scootin’ Friday Night”: Verse 1: Got my boots on, ready for a wild ride, Trucks lined up, tailgates open wide, Country music blaring, feel that beat, Bonfire’s roaring, heat on our feet, Cherish these moments, hold ‘em tight, We’re boot scootin’ on a Friday night. Chorus: Underneath the stars, we’re feeling free, Dancing in the moonlight, just you and me, Guitars wailing through the night, Everything feels so right, We’re living for these moments, In this small-town paradise. Verse 2: Friends all around, smiles on every face, Cold drinks in hand, we’re setting the pace, Guitars rocking, hearts pounding along, This is where we all belong, Memories made, they’ll never fade, In this place where dreams are laid. Chorus: Underneath the stars, we’re feeling free, Dancing in the moonlight, just you and me, Guitars wailing through the night, Everything feels so right, We’re living for these moments, In this small-town paradise. Bridge: As the fire burns low, we hold each other close, Whispering secrets only the night knows, These are the times we’ll remember, Forever and ever, In our hearts, this night will stay, Never fading away. Chorus: Underneath the stars, we’re feeling free, Dancing in the moonlight, just you and me, Guitars wailing through the night, Everything feels so right, We’re living for these moments, In this small-town paradise. Outro: Got my boots on, ready for a wild ride, Trucks lined up, tailgates open wide, Country music blaring, feel that beat, Cold beers in hand, we’re feeling neat, We’re boot scootin’ on a Friday night, We’re gonna be kickin’ it up, Be kickin’ it up all night long.

In a letter dated May 30, 1937, Arthur McNamara, a friend from Brennan’s youth, recalled what a versatile and agile artist Walter already was in his early twenties, “where [Brennan] did a quick change from black face to that English dialect part.” Those were happy days, spent performing in the St. John’s Temperance Minstrels when he was not cavorting on the beach. Walter appears, tall and thin, as the centerpiece in a photograph taken in 1916 on the “Fishies” beach, with five pals forming a human chain by their hands on one another’s shoulders. They all have their left feet thrust out, with their toes sticking up in a chorus line of youth. Walter continued playing “oldsters” on stage. It was the kind of employment he enjoyed, but he wanted to make it pay. “I was never really stage-struck,” he later insisted. “Acting has always been a business with me, something to make a living by.” But in another mood, he admitted that doing comedy and vaudeville “awakened the ham in me.

IN OLD MOSCOW’ (Tune: Clementine) In old Moscow, in the Kremlin,    In the fall of ’39, Sat a Russian and a Prussian Writing out the party line. Chorus: Oh, my darling, oh, my darling,    Oh, my darling party line;    Oh, I never will desert you,    For I love this life of mine.    Leon Trotsky was a Nazi;    Oh we knew it for a fact. Pravda said it; we all read it, Before the Stalin – Hitler Pact. Now the Nazis and the Fuehrer    Stand within the party line, All the Russians love the Prussians,    Volga boatmen sail the Rhine. Walter Gourlay, 1941

Don't Laugh At Me" I'm a little boy with glasses The one they call the geek A little girl who never smiles 'Cause I've got braces on my teeth And I know how it feels To cry myself to sleep. I'm that kid on every playground Who's always chosen last A single teenage mother Tryin' to overcome my past You don't have to be my friend Is it too much to ask? [Chorus:] Don't laugh at me, don't call me names Don't get your pleasure from my pain In God's eyes we're all the same Someday we'll all have perfect wings Don't laugh at me. I'm the cripple on the corner You pass me on the street I wouldn't be out here beggin' If I had enough to eat And don't think that I don't notice That our eyes never meet. I lost my wife and little boy Someone crossed that yellow line The day we laid 'em in the ground Is the day I lost my mind Right now I'm down to holdin' This little cardboard sign. [Chorus:] Don't laugh at me, don't call me names Don't get your pleasure from my pain In God's eyes we're all the same Someday we'll all have perfect wings Don't laugh at me. I'm fat, I'm thin, I'm short, I'm tall I'm deaf, I'm blind, hey aren't we all? [Chorus:] Don't laugh at me, don't call me names Don't get your pleasure from my pain In God's eyes we're all the same Someday we'll all have perfect wings Don't laugh at me.

Huygens noticed one day that a set of pendulum clocks placed against a wall happened to be swinging in perfect chorus-line synchronization. He knew that the clocks could not be that accurate. Nothing in the mathematical description then available for a pendulum could explain this mysterious propagation of order from one pendulum to another. Huygens surmised, correctly, that the clocks were coordinated by vibrations transmitted through the wood. This phenomenon, in which one regular cycle locks into another, is now called entrainment, or mode locking. Mode locking explains why the moon always faces the earth, or more generally why satellites tend to spin in some whole-number ratio of their orbital period: 1 to 1, or 2 to 1, or 3 to 2. When the ratio is close to a whole number, nonlinearity in the tidal attraction of the satellite tends to lock it in. Mode locking occurs throughout electronics, making it possible, for example, for a radio receiver to lock in on signals even when there are small fluctuations in their frequency. Mode locking accounts for the ability of groups of oscillators, including biological oscillators, like heart cells and nerve cells, to work in synchronization. A spectacular example in nature is a Southeast Asian species of firefly that congregates in trees during mating periods, thousands at one time, blinking in a fantastic spectral harmony.

This is why James likes birds- because they are all possibility. They make a line in the aid, the invisible line of their flight, and this line can join up with other lines or lead somewhere entirely new. All you have to do is believe that the line exists and learn how to follow it. And sometimes life will make this same invisible line for him, make him see where he came from, what he is attached to.

However,” Bob continued, and the word came down like a sledgehammer, “there is a line at which a likable bad boy becomes a nasty entitled bastard whom the public would rather see hung out to dry in the street than pay to watch prance about a stage in his bloomers. And when somebody starts abusing their fans, making an absolute arse of themselves in public places, and alienating the people who paid for their bloody Ferrari, they may consider that line crossed.” Lainie wondered if an actual “Hallelujah” chorus had appeared in the doorway, or if it was just the sound of her own glee. She still had no idea why she was the privileged audience to this character assassination, but she warmly appreciated it.

The next morning, Francine, Muffy, and Buster stood before Arthur. They weren’t taking any chances. “Do we have a turkey?” they asked. Arthur just smiled. The whole school filed into the auditorium. “OOOoo!” said the kids when the lights went out. “Shhhh!” said the teachers as the curtain went up. “In 1620, we sailed to America on the Mayflower,” recited Buster, proudly. “Phew!” said Arthur. The play continued smoothly. Muffy didn’t drop the cranberries. The Brain had his costume on correctly. Sue Ellen said her lines in a loud, clear voice. And Francine had even taken off her movie-star glasses. Then it came time for Francine’s big speech. She crossed her fingers and began. “When the Indians and Pilgrims finally found a turkey, there was great rejoicing. Today, when we think of Thanksgiving, we think of turkey.” There was a lot of fumbling behind the curtain. Arthur took a deep breath. He walked onstage. As soon as he did, the audience began to laugh. Arthur turned bright red. This was going to be even worse than he had thought it would be. “The turkey,” Arthur began, “is a symbol, a symbol of…of…” “Of togetherness and Thanksgiving!” said a chorus of voices behind him. Arthur turned around and smiled. “I guess Mom was right. The world is full of turkeys! Okay, turkeys, all together now. Let’s hear that last line, loud and clear.” “Happy Thanksgiving!

You're No Good" (feat. Santigold, Vybz Kartel, Danielle Haim & Yasmin) [Intro] You’re no good for me But the way you movin at me, oh it might be You want a Jamaican one [Verse] She say she love me and I’m nice Nothing after he return, nothing at the night She say it’s loving, make this down No time at all, she don’t wanna line She touch me, it all become nice She love me, for the rest of her life D drop it down, round kiss on mi spine Touch and make a sweet song, on top of all things My uh uh uh uh uh My ee ee ee ee ee My uh uh uh uh uh (my baby) My ee ee ee ee ee [Chorus] My aa aa aa aa me My melodea My L L L LSD I know you’ll come back around My aa aa aa aa me My melodea My L L L LSD You want a Jamaican one I know you’ll come back around [Verse] If I had you back I’ll never let you go another way Not for the life of me How could you imagine that? Well my mistake that send you on your way Well nothing I can say To you like drops of water Don’t ask me what went wrong Can’t turn back the damage I’ve done Can’t take em back after I’m gone A fool to keep on trying Can’t make me walk away ‘Cause baby I’m back and as I’m getting strung that you’ll be back one day [Chorus] [Verse] Girl you think you love me baby And you know so mi love is for my lady Deserve no faith to deserve no Slim Shady Go Shawty, it’s yo birthday No if and no maybe Take and attack it, you’re the thing, ordinary Me as boyfriend, girl come on and come save me Me and you’re tinking me, com e with me Surely inside the long shorty Til it wind, pan the flow and wind, pan the flow And if you want to get girls that do me Come here, lick it more, lick it more Mean everything, as I me love you So no one kill how I ever want Any time, get chug upon the doorway Man rest assured, pan the girl next door Oh yes I did did My uh uh uh uh uh My melodea My ee ee ee ee ee I know you’ll come back around My uh uh uh uh uh My melodea My ee ee ee ee ee I know you’ll come back around now You’re no good for me But the way you movin at me, oh it might be No one ever made me feel so sweet Now you got me begging on my knees Baby get it for me It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely [x2] It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely It’s for your eyes only, living for you solely [Chorus x2] My aa aa aa aa me

Supersoaker" [Verse 1:] My motivation has gone too soon Good vibrations all over you Act like you mean it, you mean it You've got a story you never tell Down in the delta I'm ringing bells I've never seen it, seen it Back of my mind I'm on my way I see through smiles on every face I don't believe it, believe it [Pre-Chorus:] Cause I'm a supersoaker red, white, And blew em all away With the kisses unclean as the words that you say [Chorus:] I don't mind sentimental girls at times Mister walk away, walk away [Verse 2:] The flags are flying across the plains I've got a secret picking at my brain I wanna see you, see you The exit sign is on my face Don't know my home, I don't know my place I just wanna be there, be there [Pre-Chorus] [Chorus x2] I don't mind sentimental girls at times I just lay it on the line, on the line [Chorus x2]

lit white tanks of oil refineries and petrochemical plants. “Well,” said Giordino without any particular expression in his voice, “is now a good time for a chorus of ‘Old Man River’?” “The Mississippi,” Pitt muttered. “That’s Baton Rouge to the north across the river. The end of the line. Why dig a canal to this particular spot?” “Who knows what weird machinations lurk in the mind of Qin Shang?” Giordino said philosophically. “Maybe he has plans to access the highway.” “What for? There’s no turnoff. The road shoulder is barely wide enough to hold one car.

Leave the Trash Behind" (Verse 1) I've been down that road, where the past lingers on, Holding onto memories, till the break of dawn. But I've learned my lesson, won't repeat that crime, When you take out the trash, don't go digging back through it, it's time. (Chorus) I'm moving on, got my sights set on the new, I've cleared the clutter, my skies are turning blue. I won't be a part of letting you destroy me, I'm leaving the past, where it's meant to be. (Verse 2) You can't recycle, what's meant to stay gone, Old habits, old hurts, it's all been withdrawn. I'm setting my boundaries, I'm drawing the line, When you take out the trash, it's a sign. (Bridge) I'm not a collector of yesterday's news, I'm an architect of the life I choose. No more digging through what's been declined, I'm building a future, one day at a time. (Chorus) I'm moving on, got my sights set on the new, I've cleared the clutter, my skies are turning blue. I won't be a part of letting you destroy me, I'm leaving the past, where it's meant to be. (Outro) So here's to the clean slates, the fresh starts, To the unburdened hearts, playing brand new parts. I'm walking away, from the mess, the grind, 'Cause when you take out the trash, you leave it behind.

**Verse 1:** There's a whisper in the willow, a sigh in the pine, A story of healing, line by line. The wounds we carry, hidden from sight, Begin to mend in the morning light. **Chorus:** Healing's a road, long and winding, Through the hills, a silver lining. With every step, the pain decreases, In the heart's quiet, we find our pieces. **Verse 2:** The river flows, it knows no end, Like the spirit's break, it starts to mend. The scars we wear, badges of the past, Become the strength that will forever last. **Chorus:** Healing's a journey, not a race, A gentle touch, a warm embrace. With time's soft hand, we start to see, In the mirror, who we're meant to be. **Bridge:** In the darkest night, there's a flame that glows, A seed of hope, that steadily grows. The pain we knew, starts to fade, In the tapestry of life, newly made. **Chorus:** Healing's a gift, it's ours to take, A new dawn's promise, as we awake. With each breath in, let go of grief, In healing's grace, we find relief. **Outro:** So here's to the broken, now on the mend, To the journey of healing, that never ends. May we all find peace, in the love we keep, In the quiet of healing, where the soul runs deep. May this song bring comfort and hope to anyone on the path to recovery and renewal.

I ain't the man in the silver screen, Got more scars than what can be seen. I walk a line that's thin and frayed, With every step, a price is paid. 'Cause I'm not perfect, I've got my demons, They dance in the shadows, they fight for reasons. But I stand tall, through the trials I roam, I'm not perfect, but I'm finding home. In the mirror, the truth stares back, A life of color in a world of black. I've made mistakes, I've told some lies, But redemption's song is my reprise. 'Cause I'm not perfect, I've got my demons, They whisper doubts, and plot their treasons. But I stand strong, in the light I bask, I'm not perfect, but I'm up to the task. The road is long, the night is deep, But I've got promises to keep. For every demon that I face, There's a grace that I embrace. So here's to the fighters, the broken hearts, To the dreamers playing their parts. We're all just trying to find our way, In the story of our own play. Yeah, I'm not perfect, I've got my demons, They rage like storms, through all the seasons. But I stand brave, with hope in my soul, I'm not perfect, but I'm on a roll. So let the music play, let the chorus ring, In the heart of the imperfect, let the truth sing. We've all got demons, but we've got love too, I'm not perfect, but I'm here with you.

True to Me" City lights, wild nights, chasing what feels right, Living loud, in the crowd, but my heart's in a quiet fight. I've walked the line, lost and found, my reflection's my new company, In the noise, I found my voice, it's singing, "I'm true to me." They'll try to change your rhythm, say you're not enough, But your melody's your own, and it's made of tougher stuff. 'Cause there's nothing better than being true, In a world that's shifting, I'm my own breakthrough. Don't be ashamed, embrace the view, I'm always me, and that's my virtue. I've felt the sting, heard the rings, of words that cut so deep, But I'm a diamond in the rough, and I've got promises to keep. To the mirror, I say, "You're okay," and the truth starts to breakthrough, I'm a star, just as I are, and there's nothing I can't do. So let them talk behind my back, let them draw their lines, I'm a masterpiece in progress, and I'm fine. (Chorus) 'Cause there's nothing better than this heart of mine, Through every setback, I just redefine. I'm not afraid to love, to cross that line, I'm feeling everything, and it's a sign. How can you deal with love, if you're afraid to feel? How can you heal, if you don't believe you're real? I'm standing strong, I'm feeling free, 'Cause there's nothing better than the me I see. Yeah, there's nothing better than this path I choose, With every step, I know I won't lose. I'm not just a face in the crowd, I'm a headline news, I'm living out loud, 'cause there's nothing better than being true. So here's to the brave, to the love we crave, To being ourselves, to the waves we make. With every heartbeat, with every move, There's nothing better, nothing more true than you.

(Verse 1) In the glow of a **dawn's early light**, With the dew on the grass, shining so bright, A cup of coffee, a **gentle breeze**, These little things, oh how they please. (Chorus) **Grab your hat and dance in the rain,** **Kick off your boots, forget the pain,** **Laugh with friends, under the sun's reign,** **Life's a sweet ride, hop on the train!** **Raise your glass to the stars above,** **Sing with heart, push and shove,** **Every little moment, fit like a glove,** **It's the simple things that we love!** (Verse 2) A **dog's wagging tail**, a **porch swing's sway**, The **colors of flowers** that brighten the day, A **song on the radio** that takes you back, To the **sweet old memories** that never lack. (Bridge) **Lights down low, we're just starting up,** **Fill up the tank, let's raise our cup,** **To the moments that feel like a live wire,** **Simple sparks igniting our fire.** **Sync to the beat of the city's pulse,** **Every little win, every single result,** **We're living loud in the here and now,** **In the simple life, we take our bow.** (Verse 3) **Under the wide-open sky so blue,** **Life's painting scenes, each one anew,** **A simple hello, a wave goodbye,** **In these little things, our dreams fly high.** **With every sunrise, we start again,** **Finding joy in the whisper of the wind,** **A hearty laugh, a warm embrace,** **In the simple life, we find our grace.** (Chorus) **Turn it up, let the bass line roll,** **Simple life's got that rock 'n' roll soul,** **Snap your fingers, tap your feet,** **Living for the moment, life's so sweet.** **Catch the vibe, let it take control,** **These little things are how we roll,** **From the heartland to the city's grip,** **It's the simple life that makes us flip.** (Verse 4) **The jukebox plays a tune that's bittersweet,** **Echoing tales of love and deceit,** **But in the neon glow, we find our truth,** **In simple things, we reclaim our youth.** **A twist of fate, a turn of the key,** **Life's full of surprises, as we can see,** **A chance encounter, a new beginning,** **In the simple life, we keep on winning.**

Stand Together August 10, 2024 at 12:15 PM [Verse] There's an old town square where the flag flies high, Folks gather 'round, as day kisses night. With a strong will and a steady mind, We'll build a place where no one stays behind. [Verse 2] From the rolling plains to the mountain high, Voices loud and clear, there's no divide. With a heart so big and hands so kind, Together we stand, no one's left behind. [Chorus] What this country needs, is a place together, Where the change we seek, goes on forever. Stand for what's right, let your light shine, If we all stand up, governments will sit in line. [Verse 3] From the farmer's field to the factory line, We're brothers, we're sisters, we'll be just fine. With each hand held and each promise signed, We'll carve out a future, no one's left behind. [Bridge] Times are tough, they'll test our might, But our unity will light the darkest night. In every heart and every find, Together we'll stand, no one's left behind. [Chorus] What this country needs, is a place together, Where the change we seek, goes on forever. Stand for what's right, let your light shine, If we all stand up, governments will sit in line.

Small Town Nights Verse 1: Woke up early, sun’s shining bright, Got my boots on, ready for the light, We’re gonna have a good time, Laugh and sing, feel so fine, Friends all around, Making memories in this small town. Chorus: Bonfire’s cracklin’, stories being told, Hearts are warm, even when nights get cold, Cherish these moments, hold 'em tight, Under the stars, everything feels right. Verse 2: Trucks lined up, tailgates down, Country music playing, love that sound, Dancing in the moonlight, Everything’s just right, With you by my side, In this sweet, simple life. Chorus: Bonfire’s cracklin’, stories being told, Hearts are warm, even when nights get cold, Cherish these moments, hold 'em tight, Under the stars, everything feels right. Bridge: As the embers glow, and the night winds down, We know these days are the best around, Hold on to this feeling, never let it go, In this small town, where love always grows. Chorus: Bonfire’s cracklin’, stories being told, Hearts are warm, even when nights get cold, Cherish these moments, hold 'em tight, Under the stars, everything feels right. Outro: Woke up early, sun’s shining bright, Got my boots on, ready for the light, We’re gonna have a good time, In this small town, where everything’s fine.

Forgive Me, Lord [Verse] Lord, I've been lost for a long, long time, Done things I'm ashamed of, crossed that line. Down those dusty back roads, runnin' wild, Haunted by a past that’s cruel and vile. [Verse 2] Whiskey and women, they stole my soul, Late night bar fights took their toll. In the glow of neon, sin’s easy to see, Prayin' for the dawn to set me free. [Chorus] Forgive me, Lord, I'm on my knees, Fightin' these demons, beggin' please. I've walked in shadows, lived in sin, Hope someday Your light will let me in. [Verse 3] I’ve lied to my mama, broke her heart, Tore our family clean apart. With calloused hands and a heavy heart, I seek redemption, need a new start. [Verse 4] I hear Your whispers, a distant call, Feel Your presence through it all. In the church pews, under the steeple, Yearnin' to be one of Your people. [Chorus] Forgive me, Lord, I'm on my knees, Fightin' these demons, beggin' please. I've walked in shadows, lived in sin, Hope someday Your light will let me in.

With God on Our Side August 13, 2024 at 7:30 AM [Verse] This country’s going to hell, it's plain to see, So let's put God back where He should be. We, the people, must take a stand, Together we're strong, hand in hand. [Verse 2] Out here in the country, where life is tough, With calloused hands, we know how to be rough. We'll take back this land, through toil and fight, With faith in our hearts, we'll set things right. [Chorus] Proud Americans, leading the way, We won't back down, come what may. Standin' up for what's ours, with God on our side, For our country, we'll rise, never backslide. [Verse 3] Through fields of golden grain, where freedom grows, In small-town squares, where everyone knows, We'll stand united, let our voices be heard, Living by truth, not just by word. [Verse 4] In every church bell's toll, in every prayer, Our spirit's strong, we'll show we care. No room for compromise, we'll hold the line, For faith and country, through the test of time. [Chorus] Proud Americans, leading the way, We won't back down, come what may. Standin' up for what's ours, with God on our side, For our country, we'll rise, never backslide.

Proud Americans outlaw country gritty defiant [Verse] Stompin' boots on dusty trails, where the thunder rolls, Stars and stripes hang high, in the heartland of our souls, Old-time whiskey in our veins, and the spirit of the free, Riding through the winds of change, it's where we wanna be. [Chorus] We're proud Americans, our hearts beat as one, The time has come, to heal and embrace, So let's stand united, let our voices be heard, Proud Americans, leading the way. [Verse 2] Front porches and pickup trucks, where stories still unfold, From sea to shining sea, we've got so much untold, Mending fences, crossing lines, together we are strong, In the land of milk and honey, where we all belong. [Chorus] We're proud Americans, our hearts beat as one, The time has come, to heal and embrace, So let's stand united, let our voices be heard, Proud Americans, leading the way. [Bridge] Through the trials and pain, we’ve always pulled through, In every small town and city, under skies of blue, With grit and love, in each verse we say, We're fighting for a brighter day. [Verse 3] Guitars strum like battle cries, in the twilight’s golden hue, From the shadows to the spotlight, we sing a country tune, Bonfires light the night, with hope and memories, Echoes of freedom, carried by the breeze.

Daddy's Little Girl acoustic melodic country [Verse] I see the pictures on your wall, moments I missed First steps, school plays, birthdays, and dusty Christmas gifts I know I've let you down, in ways too many to say But you're always on my mind, every single day [Verse 2] Your mama raised you strong, through storm and sunshine I see her in your eyes, the way you hold the line I was lost and wandering, trying to find myself But I’ve found my way back home, where you always dwelt [Chorus] I'm sorry I wasn't there, when you needed me the most I'm sorry I wasn't the father, you needed me to be But I'll always love you, 'cross the miles and in the dark You'll always be daddy's little girl, forever in my heart [Verse 3] The years keep slipping by, like a river to the sea Moments I can't get back, the man I used to be But I promise you right here, I'll never let you down From this day on, I'll always be around [Verse 4] Forgiveness ain't easy, you’ve built walls so high But I’ll keep on trying, till my last goodbye I’ll be your rock, your anchor, the father that you need The hand to hold, the heart that bleeds [Chorus] I'm sorry I wasn't there, when you needed me the most I'm sorry I wasn't the father, you needed me to be But I'll always love you, 'cross the miles and in the dark You'll always be daddy's little girl, forever in my heart

that room, which had more drawers than a Victorian chorus line

One side of the church auditorium was shouting, “Halle-Loo, Halle-Loo, Halle-Loo, Halle-loo-yah!” The other side would retort at a volume many decibels above a jet airplane’s with the phrase, “Praise – Ye – The – Lord.” They would counter each other several times before switching roles. If there ever was a perfect illustration of making a joyful noise, this was it. Several kids appeared to be close to unconsciousness from over-exertion. There’s not a shadow of a doubt that God heard it, but I wasn’t quite sure how He’d feel about the display. He hadn’t accepted Cain’s gift, and this seemed kind of along the same lines to me.

The band was playing Something To Remember You By. The stag line was scattered over the floor by the time the band was working on the second chorus of the tune, and when Johnny Dibble suddenly appeared, breathless, at the place where his cronies customarily stood, there were only two young men for him to address. “Jeez,” he said. “Jeezozz H. Kee-rist. You hear about what just happened?” “No. No,” they said. “You didn’t? About Julian English?” “No. No. What was it?” “Julian English. He just threw a highball in Harry Reilly’s face. Jeest!

Rent creates new possibilities for characters’ sexualities in musicals by representing multiple gay and lesbian characters with frank and casual openness. Rent is peopled with a gay male couple (Angel and Collins) and a lesbian couple (Maureen and Joanne) and it takes those sexualities for granted in the musical’s world of NYC’s East Village circa 1990. Rent’s structure—a single protagonist, Mark, surrounded by a close-knit community—borrows formal conventions of ensemble musicals of the late 1960s and 1970s, including Hair, Company, Godspell, and A Chorus Line. This structure enables the musical to nod to nonheterosexual identities and relationships, an ideological gesture that speaks to its (successful) intention to address musical theater’s wide range of spectators and even make them feel politically progressive. This device of including a few gay characters in a community-based story is repeated with the gay male couples in Avenue Q and Spring Awakening, and perhaps foretells a musical theater future with a more consistent nod to gay people (or gay men, at least).