This Communitea Concert is simple. Please go out and support the places in your neighborhood that you really care about. For me, that's Communitea; it's the place I go on the weekends to do crossword puzzles, where I've gotten to make music with so many friends for the last three years, and where pre-pandemic, I was planning to celebrate getting married this June. While it's harder to do these things now, Mom & Pops like Communitea need your support because they are the glue that holds us together. One of Communitea's baristas, Talia, wrote an article in Eater this week. It's important that you read it; she says all this and much more so elegantly and it's shared at the end of this email.
How can you help? Next time you run out of tea or coffee, buy it locally from Communitea. They sell over 60 loose-leaf teas and Irving Farm Coffee. Call (718) 729-7708 and get a gift card. When you're eating lunch there, consider also picking up some fresh pesto, zucchini bread, pickled beets & jalapenos, or salad dressing to use at home.
John Dowland: Lachrimæ or Seaven Teares (1604)
Lachrimæ gementes (Sighing Tears) - Sarah Stone, viols
Flow My Tears
Modern translation from Dowland's
The Second Booke of Songs or Ayres (1600)
Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!
Exiled for ever, let me mourn;
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn.
Down vain lights, shine you no more!
No nights are dark enough for those
That in despair their last fortunes deplore.
Light doth but shame disclose.
Never may my woes be relieved,
Since pity is fled;
And tears and sighs and groans my weary days, my weary days
Of all joys have deprived.
From the highest spire of contentment
My fortune is thrown;
And fear and grief and pain for my deserts, for my deserts
Are my hopes, since hope is gone.
Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to contemn light
Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite.
Dowland writes, "And though the title doth promise tears, unfit guests in these joyful times, yet no doubt pleasant are the teares which Musicke weepes, neither are tears shed always in sorrow, but sometimes in joy and gladness."
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