The Man In The Arena

This is a song made from my poem expressing a philosophical stance in a way that is directed to a certain audience that listens to country music. The song quotes Teddy Roosevelt’s "The Man In The Arena". More and more my lyric poems express philosophical ideas in formats that I think may reach a wider, and in some cases a more targeted, audience. I recently discovered SoundCloud and in about 10 days the songs made from my lyric poems have been listened to over 100,000 times. Far more powerful than YoutTube, Spotify, Pandora, etc. for emerging artists trying to build an audience. I’m experimenting to figure out how to have my lyric poems listened to by more people in this ever changing world. I now translate the lyric poems that garner the most plays in English into Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, French, Russian, Italian, Vietnamese, and Hindi. (So far, and I have a surprisingly large audience in Vietnam of all places.) I want the poems that have what I consider to be the best ideas in them heard by as many people as possible, not for fame, but to spread those ideas so that hopefully they may inspire me the way the following short poems by William Blake and Enda St. Vincent Malay did me:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise

Eternity, William Blake

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light!

First Fig, Edna St. Vincent Malay