Span Song Quotes

How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn’t touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things? I would like to shelter it, among remote lost objects, in some dark and silent place that doesn’t resonate when your depths resound. Yet everything that touches us, me and you, takes us together like a violin’s bow, which draws one voice out of two separate strings. Upon what instrument are we two spanned? And what musician holds us in his hand? Oh sweetest song. - Love Song

It was fucking weird. They had gone from a sickening, "in love" couple doing a duet to the complete opposite in the span of two songs. Who knew the Beatles were still so controversial.

He fell in love with Manhattan's skyline, like a first-time brothel guest falling for a seasoned professional. He mused over her reflections in the black East River at dusk, dawn, or darkest night, and each haloed light-in a tower or strung along the jeweled and sprawling spider legs of the Brooklyn Bridge's spans-hinted at some meaning, which could be understood only when made audible by music and encoded in lyrics.

I guess in this culture of ever-shortening attention spans, it's good if a song can lift us out of the madness, even if only for a few minutes.

How shall I hold my soul that it may not Be touching yours? How shall I lift it then Above you to where other things are waiting? Ah, gladly would I lodge it, all forgot, With some lost thing the dark is isolating On some remote and silent spot that, when Your depths vibrate, is not itself vibrating. You and me – all that lights upon us though, Brings us together like a fiddle bow Drawing one voice from two strings, it glides along. Across what instrument have we been spanned? And what violinist holds us in his hand? O sweetest song.

Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth's wing, and past, present, and future are one.

This poem is very long So long, in fact, that your attention span May be stretched to its very limits But that’s okay It’s what’s so special about poetry See, poetry takes time We live in a time Call it our culture or society It doesn’t matter to me cause neither one rhymes A time where most people don’t want to listen Our throats wait like matchsticks waiting to catch fire Waiting until we can speak No patience to listen But this poem is long It’s so long, in fact, that during the time of this poem You could’ve done any number of other wonderful things You could’ve called your father Call your father You could be writing a postcard right now Write a postcard When was the last time you wrote a postcard? You could be outside You’re probably not too far away from a sunrise or a sunset Watch the sun rise Maybe you could’ve written your own poem A better poem You could have played a tune or sung a song You could have met your neighbor And memorized their name Memorize the name of your neighbor You could’ve drawn a picture (Or, at least, colored one in) You could’ve started a book Or finished a prayer You could’ve talked to God Pray When was the last time you prayed? Really prayed? This is a long poem So long, in fact, that you’ve already spent a minute with it When was the last time you hugged a friend for a minute? Or told them that you love them? Tell your friends you love them …no, I mean it, tell them Say, I love you Say, you make life worth living Because that, is what friends do Of all of the wonderful things that you could’ve done During this very, very long poem You could have connected Maybe you are connecting Maybe we’re connecting See, I believe that the only things that really matter In the grand scheme of life are God and people And if people are made in the image of God Then when you spend your time with people It’s never wasted And in this very long poem I’m trying to let a poem do what a poem does: Make things simpler We don’t need poems to make things more complicated We have each other for that We need poems to remind ourselves of the things that really matter To take time A long time To be alive for the sake of someone else for a single moment Or for many moments Cause we need each other To hold the hands of a broken person All you have to do is meet a person Shake their hand Look in their eyes They are you We are all broken together But these shattered pieces of our existence don’t have to be a mess We just have to care enough to hold our tongues sometimes To sit and listen to a very long poem A story of a life The joy of a friend and the grief of friend To hold and be held And be quiet So, pray Write a postcard Call your parents and forgive them and then thank them Turn off the TV Create art as best as you can Share as much as possible, especially money Tell someone about a very long poem you once heard And how afterward it brought you to them

The music is a safe place to practice being human. In the span of one song I can feel it all, let it all come—joy and hope and terror and rage and love—and then let it pass. The song always ends. I survive every time. This is how I know I’m getting better: I become able to survive the beauty of music. I have accepted another one of life’s dangerous invitations: the invitation to feel.

I steal one glance over my shoulder as soon as we are far from the foreboding luminance of the neon glow, and it is there that my stomach leaps into my throat. Squatting just shy of the light and partially concealed by the shade of an alley is a sinister silhouette beneath a crimson cowl, beaming a demonic smile which spans from cheek to swollen cheek.

Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every sound, every musical note, every song, every word.

Death of a beloved flattens and dulls everything. Mountains and skyscrapers and grand ideas are brought down to eye level or below. Great loves and large hates no longer cast such huge shadows or span so broad a distance. Connections do not adhere so closely, and important events lose some of their glow.

For suddenly above him far and faint his song was taken up, and a voice answering called to him. Maedhros it was that sang amid his torment. But Fingon climbed to the foot of the precipice where his kinsman hung; and then he could go no farther, and he wept when he saw the cruel device of Morgoth. Maedhros therefore, being in anguish without hope, begged Fingon to shoot him with his bow; and Fingon strung an arrow, and bent his bow. And seeing no better hope he cried to Manwe, saying: 'O King to whom birds are dear, speed now this feathered shaft, and recall some pity for the Noldor in their need!'....Now, even as Fingon bent his bow, there flew down from the high airs Thorondor, King of Eagles, mightiest of all birds that have ever been, whose outstretched wings spanned thirty fathoms; and staying Fingon's hand he took him up, and bore him to the face of the rock where Maethros hung.

When you wait a few span or month to hear a finished song, the anticipation adds savor. But after a year excitement begins to sour. By now, a year and a half had passed and folk were almost mad with curiosity.

Why do we care about singers? Wherein lies the power of songs? Maybe it derives from the sheer strangeness of there being singing in the world. The note, the scale, the chord; melodies, harmonies, arrangements; symphonies, ragas, chinese operas,jazz, the blues: that such things should exist, that we should have discovered the magical intervals and distances that yield the poor cluster of notes, all within the span of a human hand from which we can build our cathedrals of sound, is alchemical a mystery as mathematics, or wine, or love. Maybe the birds taught us. Maybe not. Maybe we are just creatures in search of exaltation. We don't have much of it. Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many painful ways deficient. Song turns them into something else. Song shows us a world that is worthy of our yearning, it shows us our selves as they might be, if we were worthy of the world.

There's something I have learned from what I've lived: lf you're to live something, live it to its fullest Your beloved should fall exhausted from your kisses You should fall exhausted from smelling a flower One can watch the sky for hours Can for hours watch the sea, a bird, a child To live on earth is to mingle with it Growing roots that cannot be eradicated When you hug a friend you should hug him vigorously You should fight with all your muscles, body, passion And once you stretch out on the hot sand You should rest like a grain of sand, a leaf, a stone One should listen to all the beautiful music on earth So as to fill all his being with sounds and songs One should dive into life as if Diving from a rock into an emerald sea Distant lands should lure you, people you do not know You should burn with desire to read all the books, to know all the lives You should not exchange for anything the pleasure of drinking a glass of water All the joys should fill you with the yearning to live And you should live grief also, with honor, with all your being For grief also, like joy, matures a person Your blood should mingle with the great circulation of life In your veins must circulate the eternal fresh blood of life There is something I have learned from what I've lived: If you're to live, live big, as if you are mingling with the rivers, the sky, the whole universe For what we call a life span is a gift to life And life is a gift to mankind

Read the journals. Leslie Wilson’s words lodge in my brain like a bad Top 40 song you can’t shake. Thoreau kept a journal most of his adult life, some two million words spanning fourteen volumes.

All the men in Daddy's records sang of love with drastically imbalanced emotion. In the span of three minutes, they begged for it and kicked it to the curb. They turned to anybody, even to God, with a perpetual request: Please send me someone to love. But once they got it, love scrambled them.

When you're a child, your best friend in the world is the kid who lives next door. It doesn't occur to you then that this is a matter of arbitrary circumstance. When you grow up you like to imagine that your friendships have a more substantial basis - common interests, like-mindedness, some genuine affinity. It's always a sad revelation that when a good friend acquires a girlfriend or a husband and disappears. You realize that,for them, your friendships was always only a matter of convenience, a fallback, and they simply don't need you anymore. There's nothing especially cynical about this; people are drawn to each other because they're giving each other something they both need, and they drift apart when they aren't getting it or don't need it anymore. Friendship have natural life spans, like love affairs or favorite songs.

On the beach at night alone, As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future. A vast similitude interlocks all, All distances of place however wide, All distances of time, All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, All nations, All identities that have existed or may exist All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future, This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd, And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

ON the beach at night alone, As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining—I think a thought of the clef of the universes, and of the future. A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, comets, asteroids, All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the same, All distances of place, however wide, All distances of time—all inanimate forms, All Souls—all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes—the fishes, the brutes, All men and women—me also; All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages; All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any globe; All lives and deaths—all of the past, present, future; This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd, and shall forever span them, and compactly hold them, and enclose them.

Beware o’ Bonie Ann (Song) YE gallants bright, I rede you right, Beware o’ bonie Ann; Her comely face sae fu’ o’ grace, Your heart she will trepan: Her een sae bright, like stars by night,   5 Her skin sae like the swan; Sae jimply lac’d her genty waist, That sweetly ye might span.

They are also difficult to reconcile with archaeological evidence of how cities actually began in many parts of the world: as civic experiments on a grand scale, which frequently lacked the expected features of administrative hierarchy and authoritarian rule. We do not possess an adequate terminology for these early cities. To call them ‘egalitarian’, as we’ve seen, could mean quite a number of different things. It might imply an urban parliament and co-ordinated projects of social housing, as with some pre-Columbian centres in the Americas; or the self-organizing of autonomous households into neighbourhoods and citizens’ assemblies, as with prehistoric mega-sites north of the Black Sea; or, perhaps, the introduction of some explicit notion of equality based on principles of uniformity and sameness, as in Uruk-period Mesopotamia. None of this variability is surprising once we recall what preceded cities in each region. That was not, in fact, rudimentary or isolated groups, but far-flung networks of societies, spanning diverse ecologies, with people, plants, animals, drugs, objects of value, songs and ideas moving between them in endlessly intricate ways. While the individual units were demographically small, especially at certain times of year, they were typically organized into loose coalitions or confederacies. At the very least, these were simply the logical outcome of our first freedom: to move away from one’s home, knowing one will be received and cared for, even valued, in some distant place. At most they were examples of ‘amphictyony’, in which some kind of formal organization was put in charge of the care and maintenance of sacred places. It seems that Marcel Mauss had a point when he argued that we should reserve the term ‘civilization’ for great hospitality zones such as these. Of course, we are used to thinking of ‘civilization’ as something that originates in cities – but, armed with new knowledge, it seems more realistic to put things the other way round and to imagine the first cities as one of those great regional confederacies, compressed into a small space.

In a moving world filled with endless distractions, time is the most valuable currency. When someone gives you theirs, they cut a slice of their life span and serve it to you. In their brief existence, in their undeterminable episode of consciousness, you were chosen. And the equation goes: with others, you mean.

Imagine not thinking again. Consciousness will completely end one day and you won’t even be able to check. You won’t have you, but for the moment, you are here. For a limited time, you can feel things and think. You get a glimpse of the universe, to participate in a nanosecond of its infinite life span. Everyone will be mashed potatoes, so why not be a few different things before then?

When the main crowd of worshipers reached the short bridge spanning the pond, the ragged sound of honky-tonk music assailed them. A barrelhouse blues was being shouted over the stamping of feet on a wooden floor. Miss Grace, the good-time woman, had her usual Saturday-night customers. The big white house blazed with lights and noise. The people inside had forsaken their own distress for a little while. Passing near the din, the godly people dropped their heads and conversation ceased. Reality began its tedious crawl back into their reasoning. After all, they were needy and hungry and despised and dispossessed, and sinners the world over were in the driver's seat. How long, merciful Father? How long? A stranger to the music could not have made a distinction between the songs sung a few minutes before and those being danced to in the gay house by the railroad tracks. All asked the same questions. How long, oh God? How long?

The song she heard from the meadow was the same tune as the bird's call.She looked up in the trees.For a moment she thought she'd lost the bird, and she nearly cried out for him, but he fluttered down,landed right at her feet, and grew into a man." "Oh." Meg sighed.She'd always liked that part. "He whistled the tune once more, then the fey man said, 'My lady,will you dance?" "'I will.' She crossed the bridge to the meadow,and danced with the whistler." "Tell us they married," Meg said. "The story doesn't go like that," Poppy reminded. "It should." Meg stroked Tom's blood-clotted hair. I fumbled with the charcoal in my blackened fingers. As the story went, the girl danced through the seasons, but when she wandered home at last and reached her cottage door, she was a shriveled-up old women, for a hundred years had passed while she danced with the whistler,and everyone she'd known in her former life had died. Meg knew how it went.But when our eyes locked, I saw tonight she couldn't bear it. I found another bit of charcoal. "That very spring when the meadow was in bloom,the whistler, who had fey power to transform into a bird and sing any girl he wished to into the wood, chose the one girl who'd followed him so bravely and so far to be his wife. And she lived with him and the fey folk deep in Dragonswood in DunGarrow Castle, a place that blends into the mountainside and cannot be seen with human eyes unless the fairies will it so." I drew the couple hand in hand, rouch sketches on the cave wall; the stone wasn't smooth by any means. "She lived free among the fey folk and never wanted to return to her old life that had been full of hunger and sorrow under her father's roof." I sketched what came next before I could think of it. "A dragon came to their wedding," I said, drawing his right wing so large, I had to use the ceiling. "He lit a bonfire to celebrate their union." I drew the left wing spanning over the couple in the meadow. "And they lived all their lives content in Dragonswood.

Projectors are like hymn books, except they are an average of 123,400 percent more expensive. They are used to help humans follow along with the music because their memories are very poor. The only thing worse than a human’s memory is his attention span, which the projector remedies by adding flashing lights and pictures of clouds to the worship lyrics. It’s odd that they even need this, considering the song that morning consisted of a single line sung forty-eight times. Humans are such limited creatures.

And at the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney on Sixty Minutes, have you ever wondered why we say fiddle-faddle and not faddle- fiddle? Why is it ping-pong and pitter-patter rather than pong-ping and patter-pitter? Why dribs and drabs, rather than vice versa? Why can't a kitchen be span and spic? Whence riff-raff, mish-mash, flim-flam, chit-chat, tit for tat, knick-knack, zig-zag, sing-song, ding-dong, King Kong, criss-cross, shilly-shally, see-saw, hee-haw, flip-flop, hippity-hop, tick-tock, tic-tac-toe, eeny-meeny-miney-moe, bric-a-brac, clickety-clack, hickory-dickory-dock, kit and kaboodle, and bibbity-bobbity-boo? The answer is that the vowels for which the tongue is high and in the front always come before the vowels for which the tongue is low and in the back.

On the Beach at Night Alone On the beach at night alone, As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future. A vast similitude interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, All distances of place however wide, All distances of time, all inanimate forms, All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes, All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages, All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe, All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future, This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d, And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

It's hard to form a lasting connection when your permanent address is an eight-inch mailbox in the UPS store. Still,as I inch my way closer, I can't help the way my breath hitches, the way my insides thrum and swirl. And when he turns,flashing me that slow, languorous smile that's about to make him world famous,his eyes meeting mine when he says, "Hey,Daire-Happy Sweet Sixteen," I can't help but think of the millions of girls who would do just about anything to stand in my pointy blue babouches. I return the smile, flick a little wave of my hand, then bury it in the side pocket of the olive-green army jacket I always wear. Pretending not to notice the way his gaze roams over me, straying from my waist-length brown hair peeking out from my scarf, to the tie-dyed tank top that clings under my jacket,to the skinny dark denim jeans,all the way down to the brand-new slippers I wear on my feet. "Nice." He places his foot beside mine, providing me with a view of the his-and-hers version of the very same shoe. Laughing when he adds, "Maybe we can start a trend when we head back to the States.What do you think?" We. There is no we. I know it.He knows it.And it bugs me that he tries to pretend otherwise. The cameras stopped rolling hours ago, and yet here he is,still playing a role. Acting as though our brief, on-location hookup means something more. Acting like we won't really end long before our passports are stamped RETURN. And that's all it takes for those annoyingly soft girly feelings to vanish as quickly as a flame in the rain. Allowing the Daire I know,the Daire I've honed myself to be, to stand in her palce. "Doubtful." I smirk,kicking his shoe with mine.A little harder then necessary, but then again,he deserves it for thinking I'm lame enough to fall for his act. "So,what do you say-food? I'm dying for one of those beef brochettes,maybe even a sausage one too.Oh-and some fries would be good!" I make for the food stalls,but Vane has another idea. His hand reaches for mine,fingers entwining until they're laced nice and tight. "In a minute," he says,pulling me so close my hip bumps against his. "I thought we might do something special-in honor of your birthday and all.What do you think about matching tattoos?" I gape.Surely he's joking. "Yeah,you know,mehndi. Nothing permanent.Still,I thought it could be kinda cool." He arcs his left brow in his trademark Vane Wick wau,and I have to fight not to frown in return. Nothing permanent. That's my theme song-my mission statement,if you will. Still,mehndi's not quite the same as a press-on. It has its own life span. One that will linger long after Vane's studio-financed, private jet lifts him high into the sky and right out of my life. Though I don't mention any of that, instead I just say, "You know the director will kill you if you show up on set tomorrow covered in henna." Vane shrugs. Shrugs in a way I've seen too many times, on too many young actors before him.He's in full-on star-power mode.Think he's indispensable. That he's the only seventeen-year-old guy with a hint of talent,golden skin, wavy blond hair, and piercing blue eyes that can light up a screen and make the girls (and most of their moms) swoon. It's a dangerous way to see yourself-especially when you make your living in Hollywood. It's the kind of thinking that leads straight to multiple rehab stints, trashy reality TV shows, desperate ghostwritten memoirs, and low-budget movies that go straight to DVD.

How can someone be so close to you and then so far away in the span of a single movement?

It was a wordless song Mouse sang. Alicia’s formal musical education extended to a single music appreciation class taken in the tenth grade. Despite that, she knew the hitchhiker’s range was extraordinary. The soprano that flowed from Mouse’s throat was pure as spring ice, and just as clear. In actuality Mouse’s voice was effortlessly spanning six octaves. This was quite impossible, but no one in the motor home knew enough about music to realize it.

When you wait a few span or month to hear a finished song, the anticipation adds savor. But after a year excitement begins to sour. By now, a year and a half had passed and folk were almost mad with curiosity. This occasionally led to hard words when someone was caught wandering a little too close to our wagon while my father and mother were working." -Kvothe

and it was surely the case also that only machines built to so large a scale and of such pristine alloys could bridge the span between heaven and earth with their song on our account and was she alone in these thoughts she wondered or did anyone else have similar feelings about these machines, this technology which of course they didn’t

If all were rain and never sun, No bow could span the hill; If all were sun and never rain There'd be no rainbow still.

Songs of Resilience In the embrace of dreams, just hours ago, A peaceful respite from the relentless woe. A pounding headache, an unwelcome guest, Little did I know, life's twists manifest. Within this short span, reality unfolds, Intricate tales in life's narrative, it molds. The stillness of night, a canvas unknown, Does fate weave a story, or am I on my own? Ups and downs, orchestrated or chance, Life's peculiar dance, a cosmic trance. Unknowingly scripting each fleeting scene, A puzzle of purpose in moments between. Change, the sole constant in this grand display, Amidst chaos, paving the extraordinary way. Understanding life's symphony, a daunting quest, Yet, in unraveling, the soul finds rest. Amidst uncertainty, duty stands tall, To weather the storm, to rise after a fall. Life's complexities may dance and twirl, Yet, steadfast commitment, an unwavering swirl. The universe, keeper of secrets untold, Yet my promises, my dreams, I'll hold. In a world of rights, respect is key, Through unexpected journeys, I'll journey with glee. Adversities may knock, storms may roar, Hope clung to, dreams cherished, forevermore. In the face of bad, promises kept, Through life's ebb and flow, I'll intercept. For every twist, every turn, in this grand scheme, I stand resolute, keeping my hope and dream. In the tapestry of life, a promise redeemed, Through the unexpected, my spirit esteemed.

Petty Rewind passionately revives the music of Tom Petty. These experienced musicians cover Petty's hits and recreate an authentic rock experience, profoundly resonating with fans. With a meticulously curated setlist spanning Petty's four-decade career, they aim for authenticity, capturing Petty's music's live essence and spirit. Each Tom Petty tribute band concert is an electric, palpable experience, creating enduring memories as enduring as the songs themselves.

There is snow and there is heat; there are storms and days of sunshine; there are this year’s young growing up and going their ways, and next year’s to be conceived and born: but only to the brains of men do these things reckon time. So like is a beast’s brief span to that of a whole race of men, each generation of which rears but one litter of young, for among them individuals change, but not the Great Plan, nor the order of its shaping.

Tim Hart and Maddy Prior, Folk Songs of Old England Vol. 1 (1968); Ashley Hutchings et al., Morris On (1972); Steeleye Span, Please to See the King (1971).

But it was Ireland’s mercurial folklore that supplied Bax with the dominant voice in his compositions. Beginning with Cathaleen-na-Hoolihan (1905), written three years after encountering Yeats, the list of his tone poems (spanning the years 1909–31) reads like the contents of an Arts and Crafts compendium of decadent fairy tales: In the Faery Hills, Rosc-catha, Spring Fire, Nympholept, The Garden of Fand, November Woods, Tintagel, The Happy Forest, The Tale the Pine Trees Knew. A sensualist and erotic adventurer (in 1910 he pursued a ukrainian girl he was infatuated with from St Petersburg to Kiev), Bax created lush, richly foliated sound-forests that attempted to conjure up a sense of narcotic abandon and the intoxicating conjunction of myth and landscape. In the Faery Hills (1909) takes its cue from a section in Yeats’s Wanderings of Oisin in which the Sídhe force a troubadour to sing them a song. Aware of their reputation as festive types, Oisin launches into his most joyous ditty. To the Sídhe, it still sounds like the most depressing dirge they’ve ever heard, so they toss his harp into a pool and whisk him away to show him how to party like it’s AD 99. Bax claimed to have been ‘possessed by Kerry’s self’5 while writing it.

We are eternal. We change, we die, we return, and the combinations and permutations go on forever and ever. And slowly, we progress. Ever higher and higher. I imagine that long ago, we were simple vibrations in nothingness, small songs, each individual differing only in subtleties. How long the simple songs lasted, who can say? But they became more complex and more involved with each other. The songs joined and withdrew. Again and again they found patterns together, and the patterns broke down to make new patterns. New collections of songs, new styles, new addings and takings away. At times, what might seem setbacks—even disasters—happened, but across the greatest spans of time, there was progress. You must draw back before you can leap. “And finally, that progress has come down to us. There was no beginning. There shall be no end. Only variations on a theme, never repeating, always improving.

When you wait a few span or month to hear a finished song, the anticipation adds savor. But after a year excitement begins to sour. -Kvothe, The Name of the Wind, Ch. 12

Changing sea levels have refined the palm’s understanding of the coast, an understanding coded in its genes and its relationship with both its physical and biological companions. For the few seeds that successfully germinate and become trunked palm trees, the plants life span often spreads beyond the century mark. Exactly how long sabal palms can live is unknown. Their trunks leave no tree rings of accumulating dead tissues. Our best estimates, though, suggest that about one hundred generations separate the sabal palm on the St. Catherines dune from the palms that grew at the end of the Ice Age, along shorelines one hundred kilometers east of the modern coast.

It is to change a life. That’s why you do it. An enormous urge for change is the only reason to suffer. They can call your mission cliché, but someone needs to be hideous, otherwise we’ll all believe we’re perfect. It’s important that your work is important. There’s not enough time for anything less. Not that your life span is short, but the world’s life span is short. It is being destroyed every day. Sprint your nervous legs towards the finish line of language! And we’re not so good at capturing ourselves, but thank God, because if humans were fluent in human, new art would cease.

Iconic Presentation: Sami Abouzid – A Living Music Legend

The rhythms of humpbacks are similar to those of human music. Their songs last longer than our ballads but are shorter than most symphonies. Do they have an attention span like our own? Do they use similar techniques, repeating refrains that form rhymes, to remember songs? Payne and colleagues suggest that this is so. Our evolutionary path has been separated from whales for 60 million years. Perhaps we are latecomers to music, not the inventors of song.