I neglected to review Mr Danny Holt's fine new album when it first came out, so to balance the karmic scales, I'm going to review it MANY TIMES. It's a fresh fleshy new CD of 21st century classical piano music. And it seems worth noting from the start that I've known hundreds of pianists, & despite the broad breadth of music available to them, you'd be shocked how so few venture very far away at all from the most central spinal cord of the narrowest classical cannon. In fact, if you're an American who never studied music, you've very likely never heard classical piano music that isn't Chopin or Beethoven or a few others. Will it surprise you to know that there is such a depth and range of other piano music pianists could be playing, a span of amazing American repertoire, from the mathematical dissonant stuff, to neo-Romantic stuff, to hip downtown stuff, to no end of jazz or pop or world-music influenced music, and really just about anything you can imagine? Now most emerging concert pianists tackle the same repertoire, & always dredge out the same awe at bringing to light new shadows in these masterpieces. But I just did a search for cds of Chopin's Nocturnes on Amazon, & just among the cds available to buy from that website of those pieces, there's more than two thousand different artists. I'm sure to them, tho, the new ways and exciting ways they've approached these beloved pieces are far more illuminating than considering playing any of the great music from the past hundred years, and at least they're not lonely on Amazon.
Do a search, tho, for Lona Kozik, an American composer of high caliber (she lives in Devon, England), and the centerpiece for the virtuosic first half of Danny Holt's new album. Fast Jump is the only hit for her on Amazon! And Graham Fitkin, an older more established composer on Holt's album (and a great favorite composer of mine), gets only twenty-six. The unavailability does not reflect the quality of the solo piano music being written in the past fifty years, just the wall between pianist's brains & great music (and also major label's inability to market much new classical music to an unaware public).
Danny Holt is a performing artist who takes great care in packaging likable music to timid audiences. He is not a secluded genius tinkering at horrible noises for a possible alien future where people will learn to love horrible noises. He attempted many gimmicks in his younger years to bring people into concerts halls, but most of his flash is just in the personality of his playing. Which of course is not lost in these studio recordings. He is wild & fun, & his taste always steers him towards music that can showcase his playful playing & deepest emotions. Style, tho, is what really sets him apart from other "emerging concert pianists" - his background in percussion and composition has left him with superior skills at playing difficult rhythms with precision, & everything always with crisp cleanliness. (These things seem like they're not worth pointing out, but much of the pianosphere is awash with romantic sloppiness, "expressive" rhythm, & in general, mush. It's like, everyone devotes great respect & adoration for Arthur Rubinstein & Glenn Gould, but fail to notice that a lot of what made those guys great was that they could count, their passion was tempered by clarity, & even groove.) Everything about Mr Holt's approach to classical piano music is alive - his composers are alive and paying attention, his playing is full of life, and his audience is awake.
Anyway, like I said, I wanted to review this CD in a couple pieces, without bogging the blogosphere with long essays. Look for this CD, altho it's easier to find it at Amazon, iTunes, or the innova website. Find yourself only about ten dollars poorer, play it at your wildest bacchanals. There's also some sample tracks at his music MySpace. The next installment will have less rant & focus more on individual pieces, what they mean to the galaxy, and an unbelievable narrative about Mr Holt & a rodent gynecologist.
August 31, 2009
Music Review: Danny Holt's Fast Jump (2009), First Attempt of Many!
August 30, 2009
From the Tweetosphere: Nico Muhly twits Josh Groban
Our comrade Shani alerted us to a brief tweeted conversation earlier this month between young New York composer Nico Muhly (collaborator with Sam Amidon) & cheesy chanteur Josh Groban about using Apple's Garage Band to compose, that ineffable process of inspiration:
joshgroban
so i says, to hell with it, give me garage band, i'll do it my damn self. i mean...ya know? hun, could you pass me the vitamin water?
nicomuhly
@joshgroban girl, everything I do starts in garage band with "musical typing" enabled.joshgroban
I do have to remember everytime I say "hell" or "damn" on here how many times I will be scolded by elementary school tweechers.
August 29, 2009
Breaking News: Our old travel correspondent, Jenny Ruth, on a new assignment
She will be reporting for duty in October.
More fun facts about this fascinating island chain coming soon.
August 28, 2009
Elsewhere in the Blogosphere: Thoughts for the future
I had a couchsurfer this week, a Swedish girl who I met four months ago, she was supposed to stay with me then, disappeared & reappeared this week in urgent need of amnesty. She writes about sustainable cities also, like our Department of Non-Violent Non-Driving, at her weblog, environmentalistonamission.blogspot.com. For complicated reasons involving failed San Franciscan romance, she flew home early today back home to Sweden, & she was just gee-chatting with me from the airplane & writing more reactions of the bay area's urban planning. (I'm not sure if the drama influenced her opinion of San Francisco's public transit.) Her post is charming, so I will repost it word-for-word here:It's easy to walk in San Francisco for sure, but the city is build for cars with straight roads (with an small exceptions of Lombart steet) and highways in different levels (!) at entrences and exits from busy roads. Where does everyone goes? Where does they come from? Do they need to take their car?
If you take the bay bridge over to Oakland and later to Berkeley you will see the highways in different levels, and maybe you would think in the same way as me- "is that a bridge for a railway?" -"no it was for cars" ""is that a bridge for a railway?!" "-no its another for cars" "that one then?!!!" and you look again and you see a truck like 50 meter up in the air.
Catastrophe!
Also.. when I walk I see things that people in cars doesn't matter (anyway you have to have the eyes on the road), and I just realised that many of both ugly buildings and spaces are just ugly cause noone is never walking there anyway. It's just the cars, and they don't look.
Originally posted here. Catastrophe!
Here's some of our airborne gee-chat, I'm not sure how much of my conspiracy theory is verity or truthiness, but it's worth spreading rumors about nonetheless. Pay closer attention to Judge Doom's plot in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
August 27, 2009
Republican Senator Orrin Hatch Songwriting Prowess: Headed Home (for Senator Ted Kennedy)
In our continuing series on Republican Politicians who double as songwriters, Orrin Hatch wrote this song last year about Teddy Kennedy, who died on Tuesday. The Huffington Post pointed out that it was originally about Kennedy "heading home" to the Senate after his sickness, but it doubles perfectly as a eulogy, he's heading home to Kennedy heaven? We saw Ted Kennedy with our congresswoman Barbara Lee plug for Obama at a black church in Oakland, where he really roared - my comments on that were blogg'd here.
August 26, 2009
Department of Beards: John Steinbeck's Peacock Beard
On the famous mug of American author John Steinbeck we usually picture a thin private-eye mustache. But I've been reading his later non-fiction Travels with Charley, & in a section where he is describing his camping costume ("utilitarian if a bit bizarre"), he has a fine paragraph in praise of beard:My face has not ignored the passage of time, but recorded it with scars, lines, furrows, & erosions. I wear a beard & mustache but shave my cheeks; said beard, having a dark skunk stripe up the middle & white edges, commemorates certain relatives. I cultivate this beard not for the usual given reasons of skin trouble or pain of shaving, nor for the secret purpose of covering a weak chin, but as pure unblushing decoration, much as a peacock finds pleasure in his tail. And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.
It's a little hard to find photos of Steinbeck's beard. For such a public figure, why is it so hard to find pictures of his bearded phase - is the anti-beard establishment deliberately repressing them? Here's one of Steinbeck lurking behind his son, John Steinbeck IV, a journalist in Vietnam, meeting President Johnson:
Charley is also a fine hairy man. We think of manly Steinbeck, roughing it around the continental United States with his camper & his dog, an American archetype. But Charley is not only a poodle, but a large black French Poodle born & raised in France. (His nationality especially shows in his skill with romance.) With his peacock beard & his French poodle, there's a nice redefinition of American masculinity.
August 24, 2009
August 23, 2009
August 22, 2009
August 21, 2009
The Legend of Stray Dog No. 242
-Bicycles.
-Small children.
Things Two-For-Two did like:
-Being scratched on the rump.
-Our party of travelers.
Miss Proinseas was very taken with this dog, & vaguely schemed to sneak him out of the country. He followed us for a long time, but eventually went his way. Here are some photographs from her scribd book "Beautiful to Forget", stills grabbed from her camcorder:
A day or so later, at an outdoor pub that served Guinness along one of the main boulevards in Varna, in a different neighborhood than the beaches where we earlier saw the cur, we were admiring some other non-stray dogs. I believe we even toasted to #242. A few moments later, our couchsurfing host Mr Yavor said "you know there's a dog underneath your bench." And there he was, asleep underneath my bench! He acted very nonchalant about our re-acquaintance, but we couldn't believe it. I told Miss Proinseas, things happen in threes, & since we saw him twice, we were sure to run into him again. She said, it could not be, because our time in Varna was over & she was journeying North across the Danube & by plane back to another continent.
But I was right! One of our traveling party, Martichka, went back to Varna a few weeks later & saw Two-For-Two, & sent this photograph as corroboration:
If to Varna you are going, please send word from Stray Dog No. 242.
August 20, 2009
Illuminations: Emancipation Prayer
August 19, 2009
Palinode to the Five Prayers
The sun has been set free,
Then the poor are fed with honey cream,
And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily,
Like a pocket of railway steam,
The sun & me, booty-hunters on a merry sea.
From London Still: "O! It was [but is now no longer, thanks to the internet] lost!"
In May, I linked to Alexandra Silber's fine theatrical weblog London Still, after she had contacted me:Al Silber wrote me one of the most beautiful letters a month ago, titled "a song you wrote has always been in my head", which was partially an apology for using a recording of a string quintet I wrote in high school in a number of theater productions in Britain over the years. I want to dig those recordings out of the archives & post them here with our recent correspondence, so look for that here in the next few weeks.
Now, I guess fatigued with waiting for me, she just got around to posting those correspondences herself, she is very good for my faltering ego. I'll just repost what she wrote, but I'll one-up her by adding the music she's referring to. If you require mp3s of this old music, go here.
Check out the wonderful blog of my long lost friend James Welsch here.
James is a very talented composer that I met at Interlochen in 1999. He was terribly clever with rhythms-- in fact, percussive pieces both instrumental and vocal, stood out as one of his finest achievements. It was his compositions for the voice that brought us together collaboratively, I sang his beautiful and achingly original "Sigh No More" (from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing) for his Senior Recital in May of 2000, at high noon the same day as our Prom (or, MORP as we strange Interlocheners called it).
But, all this being said, it was his string quintet that has stayed with me for nearly a decade, and been a part of my creative life. throughout the entirety of this time. I used it in my teaching from 2002-2005, and his piece featured heavily in several productions I did at RSAMD. When his music was going to be used for The Cherry Orchard, I tried desperately to find him and ask for his permission (and for his blessing), to no avail.
Then, a few months ago I found James again after a nine year hiatus. The glories of the internet bestowed a reunion upon us, and I had the opportunity to contact him (I can still sing the entire haunting melody of that string quintet from memory).
The following is our exchange which I include here because... I just think reconnecting is a magical thing. A magical thing. And those moments are sometimes so marvelous, they simply must be shared.
Look out for him. He was a wildly talented teenager. I can't imagine how incredible he must be now.
* * *
James. Okay.... I am about to describe a piece you wrote that was performed in your Senior Recital: it was a string quartet (possibly quintet?) with an emphasis on the viola. It is, one of my favourite pieces of music in the world. I believe there were four movements, the third very vibrant, the second (?) very melancholic and epically heartbreaking.
So.... I would be lying if I told you that over the years, this piece of music was NOT a part of the stage movement class I taught at Interlochen in 2002, or the mask classes I taught in Glasgow from 2003 to 2005. Or that, the whole piece in its entirety did not underscore/orchestrate a beautiful student production of The Cherry Orchard I did in Scotland in 2003 (you were credited in the program by the way, I just had no idea how to FIND you at the time, despite multiple fruitless attempts...)
I will now utilize bullet points for the next section of thoughts.
1. Um, thank you.
2. I hope you don't mind.
3. What is the NAME of this piece?! An old version of iTunes erased the name of it from the files I had.
4. Do you have any other recordings of this piece?
5. If so, could I have them?? I promise not to use them in any other rogue Scottish Chekhovian productions ... or productions of any other kind for that matter...
6. How are you? How are things?
7. Thank you, again. In an odd way, you have been with me all these years, orchestrating my life though you didn't even realize it. Amazing thing, music, isn't it? Evocative, haunting, and far reaching.
All the best,
Al x
* * *
His response:
Good Morning Alexandra! And how do you do,
Isn't it amazing that piece was from NINE years ago. Gracious heavens. I was thinking writing a faux angry letter with a copyright citation from my lawyer, then saying just kidding, but then I didn't want to hurt you if you didn't get the joke!
No, thank you Al I'm glad you like that piece & you've found use for it. (Did you know: to make a piece not-copyrighted, you have to state that it's in the public domain, otherwise its AUTOMATICALLY considered copyrighted & protected by congress? I publish all my music anonymously these days & I have to specifically state that it's not copyrighted. I've been planning on UN-copyrighting that old stuff, so in such a hypothetical situations like old recordings played in Chekhov plays in Scotland, people don't have to worry about paying men in suits to use my music.) But anyway, that was the nicest letter I've gotten in a while, & a few days later another Interlochen friend Danny sent a random note saying he dug up an old video of another piece, Parallel Obsessions, &, in his words, "What a blast! I love that piece, James!" So, thank you friends, for lifting my spirits when my artistic moral is low.
OKAY! Let's answer all your questions in NUMERICAL ORDER*:
1.
& 2. No worries, as we say in the Sierra Nevadas.
3. It's called "String Quintet of", & there's two violas which is why its so viola-y. I wrote a bunch of pieces that year with similar titles, such as the "String Quartet of". The four movements are unlabeled, like "I", "II", "III", "IV". The musicians were Eska Laskus, Katherine Bormann, Carrick (neé Nathan) Bell, Emily Eng, & Melissa Solomon.
4. I'm assuming you have the second recording from my Senior Recital (which starred you!) No, it's never been played again! Perhaps your repayment could be someday, when you come upon a wandering band of string musicians, ala the Muppet Movie, to get it playd again some day. Those Interlochen friends did a great job, but it would be great to get a recording with tighter rhythms &c.
5. You know I was in England for a year,02-03 at Oxford, I wish we were in touch, I woulda come and seen it! And I was just back last summer, in Derbyshire for my friends' wedding, then singing in Newcastle & Liverpool, but I avoid London like I avoid NY. I hope you like living there tho.
6. Well, thank you for asking. I'm still in my "lost years", working to emerge from them. I didn't write music for many years, frustrated by a lack of performance opportunities & a non-existent audience for new classical music. These days I write FOLK HYMNS, mine are non-traditional tunes sort of in the traditional American "shape-note" genre. Like this one I just put on my blog. I'm working on a west coast folk hymnal called the Western Harmony. Otherwise, I serve champagne to rich people at lavish San Francisco parties & drink beer & hike a lot & play the ukulele & write other things also. Hmm, I guess that's a fair summary. I live in a groovy 1905 flat in Berkeley with my friend Jenny & we throw spectacular parties, like yesterday's FAKE WEDDING, with a randomly chosen bride & groom, a beautiful service in the hills, & speeches & dancing!
7. You've been with me too! I enjoyed looking thru yours photos of you in a variety of plays, & I'm glad you're working in THE THEATER.
Come visit California! Great plays in Berkeley. Happy Easter & Christmas & write from time to time!
Many happy returns of the day,
James
* Addressing points is numerical order is one of my favorite things (as Louise can attest) and it 1. makes me love James even MORE and 2. I believe this addressing things numerically business will most definitely make it on to the next list of favorites... naturally most likely to be titled "Whiskers on Kittens..." Watch this space.
August 18, 2009
Le point d'ironie et l'interrobáng tué nos visagelivres!
In May, I wrote about the interrobang (‽) & the irony mark (
), & other unfairly marginalized punctuation. My brother had changed his facebooks' name to "Lee ‽ Welsch". It irritated my mother, so I changed mine to "James ؟ Welsch".
Here's the wikipedia's history of the irony mark:
Anyway, my facebooks' account was deactivated last week. It's very abrupt when they do that to you, everything you've done, comments & pictures & everything, is just suddenly missing, like christians after the rapture. And I couldn't figure out how I could have "violated their terms of service." After a week of waiting & several e-mails to their "deactivated" help center, I got this message:
) certitude point (
), acclamation point (
), authority point (
), indignation point (
), and love point (
).
| from | "The Facebook Team" appeals+n1bnanq@facebook.com | ||
| reply-to | "The Facebook Team" appeals+n1bnanq@facebook.com | ||
| to | _@itwaslost.org | ||
| date | Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 3:47 PM | ||
| subject | Re: My account was disabled by mistake! | ||
Hi James,
Please note that we have standardized your name information, as the use of special characters is not permitted. We apologize for any inconvenience. If you have any further questions, please visit our Help Center at the following address:
http://www.facebook.com/help.php
Thanks for contacting Facebook,
Tatsuya
User Operations
So I guess it's a bit ambiguous, if that's the reason the account was deleted, or just a symptom of it being reinstated. It seems a strange reason to deactivate an account, four months after I've had my irony mark middle name, without any warning. Anyway, it was restored seemingly completely in tact.
My brother wrote today: "farewell to the interrobang", & I responded "The standardized name nazis can't handle special characters." Here's our original post about the interrobang. No one yet has responded to the commission to create an outgribation point or patriotism mark.
August 17, 2009
This huge ambergris that she found on the beach fifty years ago...
Pele's new twitter name is anbargris, & I recalled this picture of a humongous piece of ambergris that an old lady found on the beach in New York. From the Times in December 2006:
In this season of strange presents from relatives, Dorothy Ferreira got a doozy the other day from her 82-year-old sister in Waterloo, Iowa. It was ugly. It weighed four pounds. There was no receipt in the box.-"Please Let It Be Whale Vomit, Not Just Sea Junk", by Corey Kilgannon, New York Times, December 18th, 2006Inside she found what looked like a gnarled, funky candle but could actually be a huge hunk of petrified whale vomit worth as much as $18,000.
“I called my sister and asked her, ‘What the heck did you send me?’ ” recalled Ms. Ferreira, 67, who has lived here on the eastern tip of Long Island since 1982. “She said: ‘I don’t know, but I found it on the beach in Montauk 50 years ago and just kept it around. You’re the one who lives by the ocean; ask someone out there what it is.’ ”
The chapter on ambergris in Herman Melville's Moby Dick; or, The Whale is here.
Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then running out of harm's way, as laborers do in blasting rocks. [...]
Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of that saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption; how that we are sown in dishonour, but raised in glory. And likewise call to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is that maketh the best musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of all things of ill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages, is the worst.
August 14, 2009
Shisha Department Presents: Hookah in Hip-Hop No. 2
There was a special sub-department of the Shisha Department, Hookah in Hip-Hop, which briefly appeared last June. This morning I got a twotter from "BREWSKYONLINE" saying "@itwaslost Check out 'MY' new single Smoking #Hookah, Its the new summertime anthem!!! ♫ http://blip.fm/~at9wc♫", linking to this song:
We are definitely looking out from the verge of a new era of shisha-themed lyrics. It reminded me that, close to home, Earjuice Records had a song out on their classic inaugural LP "Everyone Stoned" called "smokalottapotalotta" (click on that link to hear it), which prominently features the word 'hookah'--, altho personally I don't care to pack my water pipe with anything but the finest shisha tobacco.
_________________________________________________________________
Please "like" our band The Manna Tease on facebooks:
More shameless advertisement:
My illuminated nonsense rhyming poetry book - only $2.15 on scribd.com:
August 13, 2009
Three Years Ago: Apology to Loyalists
In continuing celebration that I've been posting to this website for three years (that's one million years in blogosphere time & twenty-one million in dogosphere), here's another offering to the series THREE YEARS AGO, where I publish posts from three years ago to the minute. I forgot that, after I had moved into the building pictured below, I had briefly considered renaming this blog Live from the Webb Block, where I still live. Now, of course, we post to it from all around the world.
______________________________________________________
Here I offer my regrets for the summer vacation of this weblog (I assure you I was listening to the below listed "summer listening") I will shortly return with a reknewed literary enthusiasm. In the past month I have been on an aimless roadtrip, with a hoped goal of settling in Berkeley, California, at the end. In the meantime I read Lolita & saw Shakespeare's King John at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival; I camped on several beaches & among the tallest lifeforms on Earth. I have finally settled at the historic building, 1985 Ashby Ave, across from the Ashby BART station in lower Berkeley. I am considering a revival of this weblog with the updated physicality, namely, "Live from the Webb Block".
August 12, 2009
Emanation Prayer
The sun & me, booty-hunters on a merry sea, & finally free,
No longer solitarily
Smoking on the Jolly Roger, pacing the fo'c's'le & surveying the expansive galaxy.
Together alone, with Henry Waxman as our sugary daddy,
Whale-riding carelessly,
Pale faces smiling gladly,
We're on a motherloving boat, sailing towards an infinite holiday.
The sun & me, booty-hunters on a merry sea, winner of hell's lotteries,
Which we spent all at once.
When he was an infant, his nurse thought his father wanted him signed up for infant pilates,
Now the sun's a pirate's apprentice, tennis on the poop deck, love letters in the furnace,
Victims of tasteless puns,
The seven seas' dreadful menace:
Now the sun's a dreadful awe-shocking uncircumcised terror, liberated as the houris.
The sun & me, booty-hunters on a merry sea, the new Jerusalem
Comes down wearily,
Norma Jean left behind in Damascus, like slaves in rhythm to the kettle-drum,
James Dean stoned to death by Thracians, & woship him that made the heavens, the earths, & the seas.
Not necessarily,
Stage seven, from births to disease,
The mansion is also a hospital & sanitarium, please pray we remembered our keys.
The sun & me, booty-hunters on a merry sea, boiling the five oceans,
Deforesting the coral,
What are you? a liquid dream, a cocktail, or one of Professor Snape's potions?
What are you? our human marriage is like a roofie slipped in Lake Baikal
With its own fecal moral.
What are you? I recall
That you were the Jonah with a peace-pipe blow-hole, I seem to recall.
The sun & me, booty-hunters on a merry sea, rest your goose nipples,
Children, & go to bed.
The sun & me, we believe in treasure, we believe our ship's wake is Jesus Christ's ripples.
We will eat insects. We will wear linen bonnets upon our heads.
And never departed,
With myrrh & incense,
Children, & dream of the future of money, sail to space from your beds.
August 11, 2009
Travel Notebook Art: Marshall Mullett is Born
While we were traveling last month, we each had our own notebooks, with many pretty drawings. We'll scan more, I reckon. Here's a character which could or could not be further developed: Marshall Mullett. By a Joseph Heller-esque coincidence, his mother named him Marshall & then he grew up to become a marshal of the law; & similarly, his paternal surname is Mullet, & he proudly wears the hairstyle his great-grandfather brought to this country in 1831. He has no problem sporting the full "MM" on his solid gold diamond belt buckle because of his broad pelvic structure.
Department of Hobos - Department of Bridges - Department of Hart Cranes
It would be an exaggeration to say we're working hard on the extensive endnotes for our illuminated poetry book Prophecy & Doggerel. But I got several e-mails wondering about the reference to "Hart Crane the Hobo" in the recent nonsense poem Evacuate the Species Prayer. The full line - "Flying over Brooklyn like Whitman or Hart Crane the Hobo" - is a reference to how both American poets wrote about crossing into Brooklyn, Whitman by ferry, Hart Crane by Brooklyn Bridge.
We had looked up Brooklyn Bridge poetry because for our William McGonagall projects. He famously disses the Brooklyn Bridge in his poem "An Address to the New Tay Bridge", which inspired us to set it to hot hip-hop beats & ignite a rap battle between Dundee's Tay Bridge (once the longest in the world) & the mighty Brooklyn Bridge. Turns out there's plenty of poetry about the latter, but none quite as doggerelesque as McGonagalls, & certainly none that call out challenges to lesser bridges. Gold Diamonds rapped a lyric by D. B. Steinem, Brooklyn Bridge at Nightfall. But Hart Crane's poem we deemed too good. The whole battle is at our Department of Bridges.
Hart Crane published The Bridge in 1930, two years before he jumped off an ocean liner at age 33. I was trying to echo The Bridge's westward train trip in "Evacuate the Species Prayer", & I couldn't resist the hobo passage in "The River":
Rail-squatters ranged in nomad raillery,
The ancient men—wifeless or runaway
Hobo-trekkers that forever search
An empire wilderness of freight and rails.
Each seemed a child, like me, on a loose perch,
Holding to childhood like some termless play.
John, Jake or Charley, hopping the slow freight
—Memphis to Tallahassee—riding the rods,
Blind fists of nothing, humpty-dumpty clods.
Yet they touch something like a key perhaps.
From pole to pole across the hills, the states
—They know a body under the wide rain;
Youngsters with eyes like fjords, old reprobates
With racetrack jargon,—dotting immensity
They lurk across her, knowing her yonder breast
Snow-silvered sumac-stained or smoky blue—
Is past the valley-sleepers, south or west.
—As I have trod the rumorous midnights, too...
I'm not sure is the breast is twelve-year-old Pocahontas's (as the symbol of Natural America), or some sort of Grand Teton. I wondered, considering the hobo connection, if John Hodgman had jumped on any reference in his "Here are the 700 Hobo Names You Have Requested". I don't see any Harts or Cranes, but there's plenty of Johns, Jakes, & Charleys. "Humpty-Dumpty Clods", from the poem, would be a good hobo name. You know there's a website called E-Hobo.com where people have been posting their illustrations of the 700 hobos. Here's #112 Lois "Charles" Ladyfingers:
Also, I just put up a another excerpt mini-book from Prophecy & Doggerel on Scribd, the poem Remember Artie Wongay, with illustrations by Grainne Proinseas (taken from her Beautiful to Forget travelogues) & Olaf Mary Mohammad:
August 09, 2009
The Theremin in Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow"
So this is the biggest song on top of the charts in 2009: People were quoting the rhymes in Bulgaria, & people were dancing to it at the Evangelical Christian wedding I worked Saturday. I believe Fergie when it sa
ys "It's basically kind of to the left. We've always been kind of misfits, and so it kind of fits. The song is to the left, but it works, because we're being true to ourselves."
What is this song about. Is it about the future - - - & the sounds we might hear therein? It has robot voices, auto-correct, & 8o8 beats. The sounds of 2009, right? Maybe even 3008. But, perhaps because it's in the final minute of a four minute song, have you been hearing the bizarre un-talented theremin solo at the end? I forgive you for missing it if you were too busy getting it down. I was reminded of it, because I just came from a house-warming party, which ended in a jam session featuring a theremin which no one was sober enough to play. What futuristic song is complete without a retro theremin? I wonder if Black Eyed Peas had a real vacuum tube theremin in the studio, or if it's a computer imitation? Here's just the final fifty seconds of "Boom Boom Pow":
August 08, 2009
Scribd Reminder: Prophecy & Doggerel & Others
The illuminated poetry book on Scribd is undergoing some subtle adjustments, but still no endnotes. Believe you me, you'll be the first to know. I'm still having trouble with some of the pictures (some of them aren't supposed to have that annoying gray border.) It's been expanded to include Remember Artie Wongay. You could be the first costumer to pay $2.15 for the complete version. E-mail me if you want the whole thing for free. (Push F11 for fullscreen, then toggle to scibd's fullscreen - beautiful!)
S. Sandrigon - Prophecy and Doggerel 2009
Also, don't forget Grainne's Beautiful to Forget, our Balkan travels illuminated:
Beautiful to Forget
August 06, 2009
Answering Machine Conversations #52 & #53
In June, I posted the recording of a phone call my pocket had placed to Pele. In the similar spirit of the mundane, I just found two recordings from my housemate Jenny Ruth's ground line answering machine, from at least a year ago, where the machine started recording our boring conversation
(The art is from that same Biology Today textbook).
Evacuate the Species Prayer
Like a pocket of railway steam in the morning, let us come home,
And eat lettuces & pontificate.
Free your televisions from their cages, let them out to be free to roam,
Let them play Jack Benny's violin, let them eat your grandmother's famous baked ziti,
And eat cabbages & recreate.
Can we ride this train towards Salt Lake City,
Or pay for it with pocket change or redecorate the White House with graffiti?
Like a pocket of railway steam up your nose, I suppose,
Orientalled & occidentalled,
I would dress up like a hero to rescue you, tight pants over my pantyhose,
Flying over Brooklyn like Whitman or Hart Crane the hobo,
Cemented like they were entitled,
Accolade the empty air bestow,
Don't you know the off-tracks, the lost train & stony loco-voodoo blow.
Like a pocket of railway steam, bespectacled westward,
Myopic but not nearsighted,
But some men take their railway liquor to the buffalo herd,
But some men sew a pocket below the hole in their pocket:
The rubber trees blighted,
Ediford's automobulb in its socket,
And boom. But some men take their troubles up in a crayfish rocket.
Like a pocket of railway steam at tea, let it be me
Who eats the spinaches,
Let us drink Hennessy thru Tennessee & set free our shackled teevee,
Open tributaries, meal to meal I'm skinnier & full of honey,
Until the minstrel finishes,
And out drops funny money,
Open tributaries of the great river, crossed & cross-eyed as Christ's Easter Bunny.
Like a pocket of railway steam, evacuate the species,
Take it all to Californo,
Exploring empty empathy toward yuppies & the doomed humble-bees,
Take these leafs out of the busted refrigerator car, make a giant salad by the side of the tracks,
Trade it for Hart Crane's porno,
Replace what the planet lacks
With girded iron & 1980's pop, & gird up for when the mothership attacks.
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