LEVI'S SE LA JOUE POÉTIQUE ET PATRIOTIQUE: WALT WHITMAN REVISITÉ

LEVI'S SE LA JOUE POÉTIQUE ET PATRIOTIQUE: WALT WHITMAN REVISITÉ


Le jeans devient l'image de la jeune Amérique conquérante. Parmi les nouveaux pionniers, un couple de gays enlacés, une image presque imperceptible que l'on entrevoit très furtivement dans la pub. Est-ce à dire que Levi's considère que le combat pour les droits des gays fait partie des nouvelles frontières à conquérir? Sur un extrait du grand poète homosexuel américain Walt Whitman (1819-1892): Pioneers! O pioneers!



PIONEERS! O PIONEERS!

Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We detachments steady throwing,
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep,
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as we go the unknown ways,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We primeval forests felling,
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the mines within,
We the surface broad surveying, we the virgin soil upheaving,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Colorado men are we,
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high plateaus,
From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail we come,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

From Nebraska, from Arkansas,
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental
blood intervein'd,
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O resistless restless race!
O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all!
O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Raise the mighty mother mistress,
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all the starry mistress,
(bend your heads all,)
Raise the fang'd and warlike mistress, stern, impassive, weapon'd mistress,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

See my children, resolute children,
By those swarms upon our rear we must never yield or falter,
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

On and on the compact ranks,
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead quickly fill'd,
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O to die advancing on!
Are there some of us to droop and die? has the hour come?
Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is fill'd.
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the pulses of the world,
Falling in they beat for us, with the Western movement beat,
Holding single or together, steady moving to the front, all for us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Life's involv'd and varied pageants,
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work,
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their slaves,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

All the hapless silent lovers,
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous and the wicked,
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

I too with my soul and body,
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way,
Through these shores amid the shadows, with the apparitions pressing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Lo, the darting bowling orb!
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and planets,
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

These are of us, they are with us,
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in embryo wait behind,
We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clearing,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you daughters of the West!
O you young and elder daughters! O you mothers and you wives!
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Minstrels latent on the prairies!
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may rest, you have done your work,)
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp amid us,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Not for delectations sweet,
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious,
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Do the feasters gluttonous feast?
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they lock'd and bolted doors?
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket on the ground,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Has the night descended?
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we stop discouraged nodding
on our way?
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your tracks to pause oblivious,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Till with sound of trumpet,
Far, far off the daybreak call--hark! how loud and clear I hear it wind,
Swift! to the head of the army!--swift! spring to your places,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Source by Gay Kosmopol

Jazz great Teddy Washington dies at 78

"Teddy Washington, a Jacksonville native who played the trumpet with such giants as James Brown, B.B. King, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and Dizzie Gillespie, died Tuesday night. He was 78.

Mr. Washington died at Shands Jacksonville, apparently from complications caused by a blood clot, said his manager, Ron Pathak.

Pathak called Mr. Washington “one of Jacksonville’s cultural jewels ... our own ambassador of music.”

“A kind and gentle man,” said Cindy Mosling, founder of the bird sanctuary B.E.A.K.S., for whom Mr. Washington played charity concerts for more than 20 years.

After moving back to Jacksonville in the early 1980s, Washington was best known for his involvement with the Jacksonville Jazz Festival. Inducted into the festival Hall of Fame in 2006, he performed in the festival 19 times, most recently this spring with other members of the Hall of Fame.

“Teddy was a giant,” said Dan Kosoff, who spent eight years as festival director. “He not only played for us, he brought a lot of friends. He was more than a local legend. He was absolutely respected all over the country. Everybody loved Teddy.”

Mr. Washington, who grew up in LaVilla, began playing music when he picked up a bugle at 8. Soon he switched to the trumpet.

One of his favorite stories from his musical boyhood was joining a band that included R.C. Robinson, a blind singer who was living with an aunt in LaVilla while attending the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind in St. Augustine. R.C. Robinson went on to fame as Ray Charles.

After graduating from Old Stanton High School in 1949, Mr. Washington was drafted and played with the Army band. Back in civilian life, he toured for a time with B.B. King.

He told the Times-Union in 2007 that he was performing at the Palms, a club at 45th and Moncrief previously known as the Two Spot, when he was spotted by James Brown in the early 1960s. Brown invited Washington to join his band.

In a 1985 interview with the Times-Union, Brown said he had wanted Mr. Washington to remain with the band. “I enjoyed working with Teddy Washington,” Brown said. “... He was a very fast and a very accurate musician.”

But Mr. Washington left Brown so he could work in New York City and Miami.

In 1975, with his mother in poor health, he made the first of a series of returns to Jacksonville. But the city, once a musical hotbed, had very few jazz venues and Washington soon moved to Atlanta.

In 1979, he was involved in an automobile accident that almost derailed his musical career. He told the Times-Union in 1985 that he fractured his pelvis and tore ligaments in his right arm. As a result, he was forced to learn how to play the trumpet left-handed, an incredibly difficult transition he eventually made.

He returned to Jacksonville in 1981 and launched a cable TV show, “The Teddy Washington Show,” that lasted about five years.

In the last decade, Mr. Washington, who had an extensive collection of musical memorabilia, became increasingly interested in musical history.

Beginning in 1999, he produced a series of awards shows, called the Teddy Washington Follies, that honored those who had contributed to Jacksonville’s musical heritage.

“He really wanted to better the conditions of his fellow musicians in Jacksonville,” said his brother, Frank Washington.

In addition to his brother, who lives in Jacksonville, Mr. Washington is survived by three sons, Teddy Washington Jr., of Washington, Roderick Washington, of Los Angeles, Terry Washington, who lives in Germany, and a daughter, Mistye Washington, who lives in Atlanta, as well as eight grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete. There will be a celebration of Mr. Washington’s life at the Jacksonville Landing at a date not yet determined."

SOURCE.: BY CHARLIE PATTON, NEWS JACKSONVILLE.COM