Trying to remember a song with a spoken word element

June 26, 2015 11:05 AM

I'm trying to remember a song I listened to many times years ago - it had a great spoken word part at the beginning of a woman talking about how we use wheels and doors for their emptiness - very similar to the Tao Te Ching chapter 11: http://earlywomenmasters.net/tao/ch_11.html

I'm not 100% sure it was the exact same writing, but it was very close. It was an EDM type song from either DJ Spooky or DJ Shadow I think. It was from the early 2000s at the latest. I thought it was on DJ Spooky's Under the Influence album, but I just skimmed through on Youtube and I can't find it there.

posted by clockworkjoe to Media & Arts (2 answers total)

Best answer: You were close, it was on Riddim Warfare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qNjsdqZsC8
posted by outlaw of averages at 8:40 AM on June 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: "“Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub, by vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use. The use of clay in molding pitchers comes from the hollow of its absence. Doors, windows, in a house, are used for their emptiness. Thus we are helped by what is not, to use what is.”

— Laotze

http://www.themediumisthemassage.com/thirty-spokes-are-made-one-by-holes-in-a-hub/

Thanks! That quote has haunted me for years.
posted by clockworkjoe at 12:48 PM on July 26, 2015