happy international talk talk day

As some of you might very well know, today is International Talk Talk Day.  Sometime in 1987 or 1988—the memory fades—Kevin McCormick and I vowed that every April 5th, we would listen to the entirety of Talk Talk’s mid-period masterpiece, The Colour of Spring, as a reminder of three things.

First, that no matter how dark the world might become, beauty endures and promises—through the seasons—eternal renewal.

Second, that no matter where we are in the world, our friendship endures.

Third, that Mark Hollis (RIP) was a genius.

Since the late 1980s, Tad Wert has joined in the pledge.  Please join us in celebrating that miracle that was Talk Talk.

Here she comes
Silent in her sound
Here she comes
Fresh upon the ground
Come gentle spring
Come at winter’s end
Gone is the pallor from a promise that’s nature’s gift
Waiting for the color of spring
Let me breathe
Let me breathe the color of spring
Here she comes
Laughter in her kiss
Here she comes
Shame upon her lips
Come wanton spring
Come for birth you live
Youth takes it’s bow before the summer the seasons bring
Waiting for the color of spring

–Mark David Hollis, 1986

To get a copy of The Colour of Spring, go here: https://burningshed.com/talk-talk_the-colour-of-spring_cd?filter_name=talk%20talk&filter_sub_category=true
Painting by James Marsh, ©1986.

Keep the Faith: Marillion’s “Afraid of Sunlight” at 25 ~ The Imaginative Conservative

Each of these four tracks builds in soulful intensity and bardic purpose until Mr. Hogarth is begging us to answer, “how do we now come to be afraid of sunlight”? It is a plea for a recognition of the human condition, in all of its majesty and tragedy.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/04/keep-faith-marillion-bradley-birzer.html

The Founders’ Moral Mind Was Revolutionary, and Free | The American Conservative

Thompson sees his own work as a fulfillment and filling out of the work of his beloved mentors, Bailyn and Wood. As such, Thompson’s book is, properly and justly, filled with attempts to understand free will. Where Bailyn and Wood gave too much credence to the power of ideas (again, as somewhat determinisms and deterministic), Thompson wrestles with the much more difficult problem of individual free will. After all, imagine a world in which every single person—past, present, and future—is a moral agent. The world gets very, very complicated, very, very quickly
— Read on www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/bradley-thompson-birzer-america-revolutionary-mind-founders/