Photo of Kurt Eisen's locker in the Tech Fit, shared with me by a friend.
Jackson Browne - For A Dancer
Warren Zevon - Keep Me in Your Heart
Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed
The Verve - Bittersweet Symphony
Bruce Springsteen - Dancing in the Dark
Sarah Jarosz - When Doves Cry
Valerie June - On My Way/Somebody To Love
Conor Oberst - Lenders in the Temple
Bob Dylan - I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine
Wilco - Capitol City
Wilco - My Darling
Wilco - Before Us
Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence
Grateful Dead - Brokedown Palace
Leonard Cohen - Waiting for the Miracle
Johnny Cash - In My Life
Tom Waits - Somewhere
Richard Thompson - Wall of Death
Bill Callahan - Lonesome Valley
Bruce Cockburn - It Won’t Be Long
Bruce Cockburn - Joy Will Find A Way (A Song About Dying)
Bruce Cockburn - Festival of Friends
audio archive is here:
https://soundcloud.com/teacherontheradio/totr-368-before-us-for-kurt-eisen-rip
Poems read on the air:
For Kurt
3 September 2019
note: written in love
first by hand
in a Cookeville coffee place
I know that this is not all that
there is
I know there is humor & hope too
next time I will write that poem
---------------------------
I wanted to write you something
sweet or profound
but nothing comes quickly
not to pen or tongue or typewriter
there’s nothing sweet or profound
about this painful diagnosis
this palpable distance
what a long way we are
from the parties at the Osburns
on Maple in the aughts
or your once pilgrimage
to Pumpkin Hollow
we’ve both wandered & traveled far
but your journey
these last years
seems bent toward a different distance
landing in a gap
between the worlds
between this life &
whatever heaven awaits
of course I pray
for a sweetness sometime
even a reason something
anything to explain the suffering now
but it’s hard to get the head
from here to there
when pondering the already
arbitrary awful of
a disease meeting a body
a body begging God for
a different outcome even
a different world for
a better reality than this bitter brew
even in this same broken world
in all its tender broken beauty
love is still a world of
global warming
gun massacres &
maddening cancers
all the arbitrary suffering
that is just not
supposed to happen
to people
like you
-----
-----
Kurt, after a dream
There you are
we are at the door
of what must
be our work
you are stronger
laughing
younger
smiling
our conversation
isn’t long
but I am
surprised to
see you
looking so good
but when
I wake
from the dream
it is 4am &
I am
scared
because
the only thought
that remains
after the dream
is that I have
seen
your
resurrection body
I don’t want
to wonder when
or wait to
get the news
that you are gone
but part of me
just has to believe
the promises of God
somehow
we are just holding
you at the banks
of a special river
waiting for the
boat that only
now you must
board
crossing over
has come for you
as it will come
for all of us
one day
and I have to
believe that when
you get on that boat
that something better
and more beautiful
waits for you
on the other side
9/12/2019
AWS
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