Tired of the same old shit — time for a quick Monday evening serenade-musical respite of just listening for a few minutes to something other than the grinding noise clanking off this scary, freakish life we’re experiencing right now. A kind of clamor left unattended can swiftly become heart-felt deafening.
And a quiet moment, too, for this Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Beyond the mountain, King could really read the tea leaves in many circumstances. In July 1963 regarding voting rights, he pointed to the US Senate as a shithole stopper with a massive problem that’s way-still currently plaguing us even now:

“I think the tragedy is that we have a Congress with a Senate that has a minority of misguided senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting. They won’t let the majority senators vote. And certainly they wouldn’t want the majority of people to vote, because they know they do not represent the majority of the American people. In fact, they represent, in their own states, a very small minority.”

In a lot of news stories today, Republicans gave the celebration a sour taste with such unmitigated hypocrisy — King was a guy way beyond his years who was cut down way too ahead of his time.

Anyway, some music. First up, one of my favorite way-old time songs from Joni Mitchell, and off my way-most-favorite of her albums, “Court and Spark,” and ‘Twisted,’  an old Annie Ross tune from 1952, done Mitchell style:

The Annie Ross version; the flavor of far, far away black-and-white:

Next, another Annie and an acoustical take on a neat song that becomes way-emotional, and even deeper into another realm — Annie Lennox and ‘Here Comes The Rain Again.” — unplugged:

And Annie in Eurythmics mode from nearly 40 years ago:

Plus some mystery as a bonus — Enigma and ‘The Child in Us,’ ending with a sense of optimism:

Any what, another day gone.
And once again, here we are…

(Illustration out front: Salvador Dalí’s 1958 painting, “Meditative Rose,” and found here)