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The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

989: Signs, Music

The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

American Public Media

Arts, Performing Arts

4.81.2K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2023

⏱️ 7 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today’s poem is Signs, Music by Raymond Antrobus. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.


In this episode, Major writes… “I believe life, even the cosmos, is saturated with sound. I’m not alone. The ancient mathematician Pythagoras and his followers discovered that a harmony of sounds exists in our solar system, based on each planet’s orbit around the sun.”


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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'm Major Jackson, and this is the Slowdown.

0:20.0

Once, as I walked with a colleague past a group of street buskers,

0:25.0

they said very casually, music is overrated.

0:30.0

I couldn't believe my ears.

0:32.0

This was in New Orleans.

0:34.0

It is from this city that some of the world's greatest musicians

0:39.0

gifted us an ability to hear our joyous moments

0:43.0

and to withstand our saddest occasions.

0:46.0

From Louis Armstrong to Irma Thomas to Big Frida.

0:52.0

For a few minutes longer, I lingered and listened

0:55.0

awed by the banjo, watchtub, bass, and violin of a jug band

1:00.0

playing with fervor and humor.

1:03.0

What in life at my afternoon registered merely as faint amusement

1:09.0

to my colleague.

1:11.0

I knew we'd never grow to become real friends.

1:15.0

I believe life, even the cosmos, is saturated with sound.

1:21.0

I'm not alone.

1:22.0

The ancient mathematician Pythagoras and his followers discovered

1:27.0

that a harmony of sounds exist in our solar system based on

1:32.0

each planet's orbit around the sun.

1:35.0

I would have been friends with him and those subsequent generations

1:40.0

of mathematicians and astronomers who then sought to represent

...

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