To mark Edinburgh's 20th anniversary as UNESCO City of Literature and the city's 900th birthday, Edinburgh Makar Michael Pedersen has written "Be more", a love-letter to Auld Reekie
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CreativityTranscript
00:00Be more Edinburgh
00:09It's high time you came in for a heart check-up
00:13And not shy of a thousand years old
00:16It's scandalously overdue
00:19The big question's not why
00:22But where that flesh-thumping genius
00:25Has been hunkering down
00:28First stops the volcano top
00:30Or is it somewhere closer?
00:32A castle terrace, sandstones sculpted and cannon-clad
00:37Perhaps within the lava cliffs of Samson's Ribs
00:42An outside bets the Jack Kane Sports Centre
00:46And don't count out the film house
00:48Warrioring back into sight and sound
00:52Fair call for the Royal Infirmary
00:54With its elegies and swan songs
00:57Those requiems of life
00:59Whilst the Portobello Bookshop and Moss Kitchen
01:03Are hot contenders for the heart's atria
01:07The National Library and Sheepheat Inn Skittle Alley
01:11Strike claim to the ventricles
01:14Edinburgh
01:15I've heard it said
01:16A good heart's a rescued vessel rescuing vessels
01:21It's complicated
01:23You're complicated
01:25Abstruse and arcane
01:27Treacherous closes and summer rain
01:30Hugs boson
01:31With a double helix twist of Jekyll and Hyde
01:36Edinburgh
01:37Radgeworks
01:39Cut in gallous shapes on the dance floor
01:41One minute
01:42Fists bumping
01:44Urane craggy chest
01:46With tears in the cobbled gutters
01:48The next
01:49Limbs entwined
01:51All curly-whirly and cayley-canny
01:54Fluming down a row of open arms
01:57Beaming like a mother
01:58Whose bairn has grown up to be kind
02:03Those cherry-blossom walkways
02:06Timeless
02:07Those gum clinics
02:08Vital
02:09And the nurses
02:11Praise be the nurses and the teachers
02:14That polish up kids' rusty luster
02:17As patches on arms are just the start of the battle
02:22Nine hundred street lamps are an insufficient number
02:26To light your mottled darks
02:29Such garish, gothic splendour
02:32Edinburgh
02:33I love you
02:35You hurt me
02:36I'm so, so grateful
02:39Easy
02:40On the reins of your art
02:43May your melange of mackers
02:45Stir the city's soul's soup
02:49Long beyond this troubled epoch
02:52Edinburgh
02:53Both more glam and scuzzier
02:57Than the movies make you
02:58Than the scribes ink you
03:00We double decade
03:02As the world's first city of literature
03:06Let's say that again
03:08The world's first
03:10Yikes
03:11Swoon
03:13Gurgle
03:14Gardyloo
03:16Edinburgh
03:17Stay humble and open
03:19As the pages in your oldest and newest books
03:24Stay soft as the jam jelly
03:27In the warm bellies of your wall walkers
03:30Litter pickers
03:32Blood donors
03:33And stone skimmers
03:35Jackie
03:36Caius
03:37Shirley
03:38Val
03:39Hannah
03:40Kat and Davy
03:42Gemma
03:43Eamon
03:44Jono
03:45Greg
03:46Jeanette
03:46Jenny
03:47Ian and Irv
03:49They're all rooting for you
03:51They too love you
03:53Edinburgh
03:54Don't waver
03:56In doling out your precious sucker
03:58At home and afar
04:01There's risk in every tender protest
04:04Ache in every bolt of growth
04:07If it hurts, it's real
04:10Remember
04:11It was you who taught us that