Thursday, August 11, 2005

Lucinda brings us home-- or, still under the spell of the Mediterranean.




Rome--
  photo by Jack

After weeks in Europe, like ripe olives upland from the Mediterranean, we have fallen, pits and all, back to Atlanta.

Yet, tonight, Lucinda Williams
has brought us back to Earth from our sea voyage with such a performance that we are ready for anything.
When she sang "Lake Charles," all that magic from Louisiana came flowing over us like the water of the Delta over the levee. We were swept away. And when she sang "My Joy," Lord, we were all so filled with her joy that the quarter moon came right out of the clouds and shone. Lucinda Williams and her three-man band simply transcended, and we were all transported from the Botanical Garden and transformed, like the frogs whom she saw in the pond before the stage, into princes of the kingdom of music.

OK, I had too much wine. OK, I've just returned from weeks of Dionysian rule. Weeks of Revelry at Sea plus all those inland jaunts along the Mediterranean. Weeks of San Giminano Towers over Italy. Weeks of swimming, usually naked, in the sea of Ibiza or the beaches of Mykonos. Weeks of the splendors of civilization: Byzantium's Hagia Sophia, Rome's Pantheon, The Parthenon and Arch of Hadrian in Athens, or gazing at that noble, divine bust of Antinous.


Darryl Sips Retsina on our balcony below the Parthenon.

Yes, and dancing on the deck of the Millennium with lasers, and the music of the last few decades--- and last, this new uncharted century. Mardi Gras, Toga, Disco parties as our vessel divided the seas. And Istanbul greeted us with gardens, mosques, lamb, and the Bosporus. We were sailors of The Odyssey, and of the Sirens , filling the night at sea with our song.

Here are Photographs, mere images of an experience so aesthetic that all I can say is:
Life is a Banquet and we have feasted.

With Love,
Jack Jameson



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