Bono home homeless Archives

Follow-Up to Big Smoke

The Del Barber deer story and my own Blackbird story from yesterday’s post led me to think of this powerful song. I Hung My Head (Words and Music by Sting) (Performed by Sting – listen here and Johnny Cash – listen here) Early one mornin’ with time to kill I borrowed Jeb’s rifle and sat…

Big Smoke

Del Barber (composer and performer; album: Praireography, 2014) (Listen while you read the lyrics) Blinded by the city lights No one can see you stallin’ It’s been so long since you’ve seen the prairie stars You’re not sure you can recall them But there is something here for you to find You may have found…

George Harrison and Copyright Law

There is a common misconception about copyright law. It is often said that one song-writer can sample three bars or less and not infringe the other song-writer’s copyright; but this is not the case. As Alan Korn, an expert in copyright litigation says, “in determining whether one song infringes on another, it is common for…

Homes and Angels

My friend and fellow song-writer, Mike Charko, was in a store the other day when a song came over the system. He heard the melody of the hook and thought to himself, “That sounds a lot like one of our songs!” He didn’t hear the name of the band and so after a bit of…

Longing To Reach Home

Part of what attracts me to the writing of C.S. Lewis is the transparency with which he writes. He was a person of immense intellect, but also, immense emotion. He shared these emotions in his writings and prompted his readers to experience similar sentiments. His awe inspiring book, Til We Have Faces, was published in…

Flight Behaviour

I just finished reading Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, Flight Behavior. As usual, this Kingsolver book is about the concept of “home.” In this particular narrative, she speaks of the tenuous nature of the “home.” She weaves a story that describes the tension between the draw toward home and the desire to fly away to something…

Follow-up to Home

Two days ago I posted the latest Key of Zed song on this blog. “Home” is a song that captures three impressions of the concept of home. When we use the word “home” it can mean a number of different things. For many of us that grew up in a good family, “home” can be…

Home

Home(Lyrics and Music by Mike Charko and Keith Shields – SOCAN 2013)(Click here to listen while reading the lyrics) Home HomeHomeHome Follow this lane to the clothes on the line The garden, the trees, and the hills that we’d walkThe buzzing of summer, the ponds, and the hayBlossom of thistle, and sweet evening…

Home, Hard To Say What It Is

I once again find myself thinking about the concept of home. Home is so much more than a house or a city or a family or a marriage or a collection of people with whom we feel an affinity. Home is at the deepest core of what it means to be human. Coyotes have dens…

Homeless

As I watch new stories of the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, it is sad to realize that my own hunger for things made from oil is part of the problem. Brian Walsh and Steven Bouma-Prediger (in their book Beyond Homelessness) speak of ecological homelessness and its causes. They describe ten such causes.…