Review: If you're looking for rousing music to get you going in the morning let's make it clear right now - Be Earth Now ain't it. If you've been looking for a recording of Joanna Macy and Anita Barrow's translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's 1899 poem, 'The Book of Hours', then you, friend, are very much in the right place. The prose itself is as deep as they come, touching on mysticism, the depth of emotions humans are capable of, our loss of connection to the planet (well ahead of its time, then), and ideas around achieving some degree of spiritual satisfaction. Made at a time when industrialisation had already transformed Europe and increasingly large swathes of the US, in many ways the sentiments expressed are just as relevant now, at a point in time when the journey to modernism is pretty much complete across the world, and the repercussions of that are only just starting to be acknowledged.
… Read more