De Canadese dichter, folk singer-songwriter en schrijver Leonard Cohen werd geboren op 21 september 1934 te Montréal. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Leonard Cohen op dit blog.
Take This Waltz
(After Lorca)
Now in Vienna there are ten pretty women.
There’s a shoulder where death comes to cry.
There’s a lobby with nine hundred windows.
There’s a tree where the doves go to die.
There’s a piece that was torn from the morning,
and it hangs in the Gallery of Frost—
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws.
I want you, I want you, I want you
on a chair with a dead magazine.
In the cave at the tip of the lily,
in some hallway where love’s never been.
On a bed where the moon has been sweating,
in a cry filled with footsteps and sand—
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take its broken waist in your hand.
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
with its very own breath
of brandy and death,
dragging its tail in the sea.
There’s a concert hall in Vienna
where your mouth had a thousand reviews.
There’s a bar where the boys have stopped talking,
they’ve been sentenced to death by the blues.
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
with a garland of freshly cut tears?
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz, it’s been dying for years.
There’s an attic where children are playing,
where I’ve got to lie down with you soon,
in a dream of Hungarian lanterns,
in the mist of some sweet afternoon.
And I’ll see what you’ve chained to your sorrow,
all your sheep and your lilies of snow—
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz
with its “I’ll never forget you, you know!”
And I’ll dance with you in Vienna,
I’ll be wearing a river’s disguise.
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
my mouth on the dew of your thighs.
And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there and the moss.
And I’ll yield to the flood of your beauty,
my cheap violin and my cross.
And you’ll carry me down on your dancing
to the pools that you lift on your wrist—
O my love, O my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
it’s yours now. It’s all that there is.
Leonard Cohen (Montréal, 21 september 1934)
De Amerikaanse schrijver Stephen Edwin King werd geboren in Portland, Maine, op 21 september 1947. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Stephen King op dit blog.
Uit: Under the Dome
“From two thousand feet, where Claudette Sanders was taking a flying lesson, the town of Chester’s Mill gleamed in the morning light like something freshly made and just set down. Cars trundled along Main Street, flashing up winks of sun. The steeple of the Congo Church looked sharp enough to pierce the unblemished sky. The sun raced along the surface of Prestile Stream as the Seneca V overflew it, both plane and water cutting the town on the same diagonal course.
“Chuck, I think I see two boys beside the Peace Bridge! Fishing!” Her very delight made her laugh. The flying lessons were courtesy of her husband, who was the town’s First Selectman. Although of the opinion that if God had wanted man to fly, He would have given him wings, Andy was an extremely coaxable man, and eventually Claudette had gotten her way. She had enjoyed the experience from the first. But this wasn’t mere enjoyment; it was exhilaration.Today was the first time she had really understood what made flying great.What made it cool.
Chuck Thompson, her instructor, touched the control yoke gently, then pointed at the instrument panel. “I’m sure, ”he said, “but let’s keep the shiny side up, Claudie, okay?”
“Sorry, sorry.”
“Not at all.” He had been teaching people to do this for years, and he liked students like Claudie, the ones who were eager to learn something new.She might cost Andy Sanders some real money before long; she loved the Seneca, and had expressed a desire to have one just like it, only new. That would run somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars. Although not exactly spoiled, Claudie Sanders had undeniably expensive tastes which, lucky man, Andy seemed to have no trouble satisfying.
Chuck also liked days like this: unlimited visibility, no wind, perfect teaching conditions. Nevertheless, the Seneca rocked slightly as she overcorrected.
“You’re losing your happy thoughts. Don’t do that. Come to one-twenty.Let’s go out Route 119. And drop on down to nine hundred.”
She did, the Seneca’s trim once more perfect. Chuck relaxed.”
Stephen King (Portland, 21 september 1947)
De Franse schrijver Frédéric Beigbeder werd geboren op 21 september 1965 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Frédéric Beigbeder op dit blog.
Uit: Windows on the World
“Vous connaissez la fin : tout le monde meurt. Certes, la mort arrive à plein de gens, un jour ou l’autre. L’originalité de cette histoire, c’est qu’ils vont tous mourir en même temps et au même endroit. Est-ce que la mort crée des liens entre les hommes ? On ne dirait pas : ils ne se parlent pas. Ils font la gueule, comme tous ceux qui se sont levés trop tôt et mastiquent leur petit déjeuner dans une cafétéria de luxe. De temps en temps, certains prennent des photos de la vue, qui est la plus belle du monde. Derrière les immeubles carrés, la mer est ronde ; les sillages des bateaux y dessinent des formes géométriques. Même les mouettes ne vont pas aussi haut. La plupart des clients du Windows on the World ne se connaissent pas entre eux. Lorsque leurs regards se croisent par mégarde, ils raclent leur gorge et replongent illico dans les journaux. Début septembre, tôt le matin, tout le monde est de mauvaise humeur : les vacances sont terminées, il faut tenir bon jusqu’à Thanksgiving. Le ciel est bleu mais personne n’en profite.
Dans un instant, au Windows on the World, une grosse Portoricaine va se mettre à crier. Un cadre en costume cravate aura la bouche bée. « Oh my God. » Deux collègues de bureau resteront muets de stupéfaction. Un grand rouquin lâchera un « Holy shit! » La serveuse continuera de verser son thé jusqu’à ce que la tasse déborde. Il y a des secondes qui durent plus longtemps que d’autres. Comme si l’on venait d’appuyer sur la touche « Pause » d’un lecteur de DVD. Dans un instant, le temps deviendra élastique. Tous ces gens feront enfin connaissance. Dans un instant, ils seront tous cavaliers de l’Apocalypse, tous unis dans la Fin du Monde. »
Frédéric Beigbeder (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 21 september 1965)
De Vlaamse dichter Xavier Roelens werd op 21 september 1976 in Rekkem (Menen). Zie ook alle tags voor Xavier Roelens op dit blog
vingerafdrukken
bij zonsopgang oefent ze in breekbaarheid
in ongebruinde huid, het kortgerokte meisje
droomt aan het venster van weet niet wat
vingerafdrukken nalaat;
die bellenblaast en alarm slaat
en verdampt, die een spons
uitwringt en duimdikke ringen trekt;
ze ziet een venster maar een uitzicht
op aanvaardbaar hol;
ziet een vensterbank met een vingerplant.
Verjaardagsfeest
Het is geen tijd voor droeve gedichten.
Gedichten ontdoen zich van slipjes
moeten zich op de buik draaien. Ze worden
op gebruinde huid gezoend en zowel
binnenskamers verbruikt als ontgeurder verwonderen
zich over puistjes met de rolluiken
dicht om zich in de cadans van je flanken
te ontmuizen zweten het zwijgen uit
bevuilen
de reclametanden zuigen zich aan de vliezen
en ontsteken poëzie. Leve seriële monogamie!
Xavier Roelens (Rekkem, 21 september 1976)
De Amerikaanse schrijfster en actrice Fannie Flagg (eig. Patricia Neal) werd geboren op 21 september in Birmingham (Alabama). Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en evenneens alle tags voor Fannie Flagg op dit blog.
Uit: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
“Evelyn Couch had come to Rose Terrace with her husband, Ed, who was visiting his mother, Big Momma, a recent but reluctant arrival. Evelyn had just escaped them both and had gone into the
visitors’ lounge in the back, where she could enjoy her candy bar in peace and quiet. But the moment she sat down, the old woman beside her began to talk …
“Now, you ask me the year somebody got married … who they married … or what the bride’s mother wore, and nine times out of ten I can tell you, but for the life of me, I cain’t tell you when it was I got to be so old. It just sorta slipped up on me. The first time I noticed it was June of this year, when I was in the hospital for my gallbladder, which they still have, or maybe they threw it out by now … who knows. That heavyset nurse had just given me another one of those Fleet enemas they’re so fond of over there when I noticed what they had on my arm. It was a white band that said: Mrs. Cleo Threadgoode … an eighty-six-year-old woman. Imagine that!
“When I got back home, I told my friend Mrs. Otis, I guess the only thing left for us to do is to sit around and get ready to croak….
She said she preferred the term pass over to the other side. Poor thing, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that no matter what you call it, we’re all gonna croak, just the same …”
Fannie Flagg (Birmingham, 21 september 1944)
De Britse schrijver Herbert George Wells werd geboren op 21 september 1866 in Bromley, Kent. Zie ook mijn blog van 21 september 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor H. G. Wells op dit blog.
Uit: The War Of The Worlds
“And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their would is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them. And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit? The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety—their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours—and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet—it is odd, by-the-bye, that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war—but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready. During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first in the issue of Nature dated August 2. I am inclined to think that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us.”
H. G. Wells (21 september 1866 – 13 augustus 1946)
Orson Welles in 1938 tijdens de radiobewerking van de roman die bij veel luisteraarspaniek veroorzaakte.
Zie voor nog meer schrijvers van de 21e september ook mijn blog van 21 september 2014 deel 2.