Thursday, October 13, 2011

With immense gratitude to Steve Jobs






















Listen to "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" from 1964:

"... I gazed down in the river's mirror
And watched its winding strum
The water smooth ran like a hymn
And like a harp did hum

Lay down your weary tune, lay down
Lay down the song your strum
And rest yourself 'neath the strength of strings
No voice can hope to hum"

In 1979, when I was 29 years old (and had a different name), and personal computers were just coming up on the horizon, and I didn't want anything to do with them, I made the above linocut, inspired by a photo of Bob Dylan on the Basement Tapes album, never dreaming that Steve Jobs (another serious fan of Bob Dylan) would design a computer that would open up a world of creativity for me, including allowing me to compose a book of my art work and poetry and to self-publish it.

While I was out walking on the South Bay Trail along Bellingham Bay this morning, it occurred to me that the creative energy and gratitude in this song likely spoke to Steve Jobs.

If you have time, listen to this. I had heard this once before. It's worth listening to again.

2 comments:

The Solitary Walker said...

SJ RIP. I've only recently bought a Mac and wish I'd done so a whole lot earlier. After years of virus-prone Windows-based Microsoft PCs it's a revelation to me.

am said...

The first computer I bought (that must have been in 2004) was a Windows-based Microsoft PC. That was what I needed to work as a transcriptionist at home. It was a clumsy tool, and I was disappointed in every way.

Then a friend whose husband is an artist made the simple offhand suggestion that I might really enjoy having an Apple computer. The word she used about Apple computers was intuitive. About that time, another friend offered to sell me her used desktop Apple computer, as she was going to buy a new one, but I ended up going to the Apple store in Bellingham and buying the iBookG4. Apple computers are elegant tools. More expensive and worth the money many times over.