Game on!

Well, I'm in a slightly better place than last time. The show will still happen, thank you very much. An acquaintance even offered to help me find some folks tonight. Still a lot (lot lot lot) of work to do. Still evidence that I am fundamentally insane. But maybe it's at least a useful kind of insane.

What have I gotten myself into?

Or: Oh lord god I'm losing my mind!!!

Right. So all of you no doubt know that my sister is sick. Old hat. Been going through this for far too long now.

Well, around Christmas, on a whim, I decided to give her a piece of music. I sounded some people out to see if I could raise enough money to make it happen. Surprisingly, they nearly all said yes. So I started asking musicians and they too nearly all said yes. So I've been slowly building this thing ever since. Found a hall. Booked it. Edited parts. Worked late nights. E-mailed friends and acquaintances. Everything seemed to be going fine. But then people started backing out. At first it was one, and then later a second.

Well, it's become a case of two steps forward and one back. And this weekend I worry that the forward steps are disappearing. This is an enormous amount of work. No one is bloody willing to help me organize this and let me tell you what a great bloody organizer I am. I still believe I can do this, that together we can make this happen. Hell, I know damn good and well that together we can make this happen. I need forty people, all told, to make this happen. This is not bloody impossible. It can occur. But damn it, I'm going to slit my own throat out of sheer stress. (And no worries to the psychologists out there. I'm not actually contemplating any such thing. This is hyperbole. I'm simply suffering under too much stress and so I'm venting a little.) (Okay, a lot.)

Oh, please god, help me out here. For once in your god forsaken godlike existence take pity on a mere mortal. After all, without us this would be one boring little rock with no decent conversation to be found. (Yeah, I know. An atheist who prays. How odd is that ladies and gents?) So help me. I don't expect much. I don't ask for much. But I want to give this piece to my sister, and in order to render it meaningful to her she has to hear it. (She can't, in the end, read a score.)

Right. Sorry for the vent. Thank you for your patience. Keep me in mind oh my friends. This must happen and thus it will happen. The show MUST BLOODY GO ON. First axiom of theatre. The show MUST go on. And it always does. No matter how many people get ground into the dirt in the process.

The Song of a Laundry Gnome

What's the percentage in
Folding other people's
Underwear to the
Hip-hop beats of
Fast R and B?

What's the arithmetic of
Fluorescent lights, cheap
Beer, and
Laundry soap?

Do the fragrances of stale
Sweat, spilled
Perfume, and yesterday's
Dog urine
Multiply to a sum
So closely approximating
Zero as to justify
Discarding them?

But
The
Boy
is Pretty, and

I am young, so I'll
Spend my salvaged minutes on the
Dividend of
Stolen pleasure

While mechanisms spin and whir
Washing away the
Iniquities
of
Strangers' pasts
To the tune of a buck sixty a pound.

November 2009

October Light

Heavy skies dance over my head
As a brittle wind whispers
Tidings of more expressive weather
Lurking past the spiral fold of my
Calendar.

The breeze lends an ominous energy to
This twilight season of the year.
The grey weather washes away the
Contrast painted on the foliage.
Expectation hovers all around me, turning the
Thin atmosphere viscous, like cold gravy, or my own
Blood of a December morning.

Red drops congeal beneath the cold heavens.
A cat pauses near me. She preens herself
And watches the blowing leaves, looking for some
Drab mouse, whom she might make bright
Beneath the sunset; whose hidden colors she might spill
Garish upon the brown earth and her own
White jaws.

There is no season like the autumn. More
Desolate than the frozen marrow of winter,
More alive in its decadence, the
Frenzied tarantala of a dieing year.
Seasons come, pass, and change,
But on a crisp October night, paralyzed in
Fading light,
Autumn is always the same.

10-2008

I drink to you

My landlay died today. That’s not quite true, actually. In all probability, she died several days ago or more, but I discovered it this evening. This has precipitated several events. First, I find myself wishing I had done more. I wish I’d acted sooner. I wish I’d talked to her more often. I wish I knew more of her stories. And wishes can neither breathe nor swim, and thus they do me no good. So I move on to the memories and the drinking. I remember her patience, her tolerance, her love. I remember her hobbies and those that she herself loved. And I drink to her memory. And of course I find myself wondering why it is that we drink to the dead.

In the memory of Dottie, my dearly departed landlord I drink to you my living friends and lovers. I drink to you Kelly, my beloved partner in this brief span of artistic endeavor. I drink to you Ronald and you Sandra who reared me and gave me all that I am and all that I know. I drink to you Milton and you Juanita who sacrificed so much to preserve my freedom, even though you likely agree with few of my decisions. (Rest assured that I decide based on what I believe is right. I do not expect you to agree. Nor do I in any way think less of you for all our differences. I love you. I respect you. I hope that I am worthy of the sacrifices that you have made on some absolute metaphysical scale that neither of us may read.) I drink to my sister and my brother. They have weathered much. They have found good. They have pursued it. I am proud to be cut from the same cloth as they, and I pray that they may find all that they seek and more.

I drink to my friends. I drink to Ali and Pat. I drink to Sidhebaap and Chellery. I drink to both of the Rachels that I have known, and Debbie, and both Joes. (Both are dear to me. The UrQuan lord and the author equally.) I drink to Kelly Ludwig and Ryan Gozer and Jeff Cole. I drink to all my friends: new old and unmentioned. I have known many people over my life. Many good friends. I cannot hope to name them all here, but I drink to all of them as might hope to read this. I drink to a variety of Cats. I drink to an Elizabeth or two. I drink to all my loves: past, and present. Elizabeth, Avril, Amy, George (girl George, you perverts), Tonya, and indeed Kelly, whom I have mentioned before, and should mention again so often as I have breath.

Indeed, I drink to all the living. No, we are no more worthy than the dead. I would drink equally to Kenneth and Jane, to Elizabeth Parsons and to Vernon, George, Ellah, Raymond, Esther, Fred, and all that have gone before. I would drink to all my dead friends and forbears. But we the living poses one special trait that the dead no longer share. We can appreciate the love of our fellows. We can feel the lack of those whom we miss. I drink to my honored dead, yes, but I drink also to the living. Let me not wait until you are dead to tell you how much you mean to me. Let me tell you now. You are wonderful and special. All of you. You Zenkas and Cats that I know only by virtue of mail, and you Michaels and Christels that I know in person, but have not thanked nearly often enough. I drink to you. The wonderful people in my life. And if by misdeed or mischance I have left you worthies that might see this out of the list of accolades, know that I would have included you were I better than a flawed man. I drink to all the living that have affected me. All that have shaped me and helped me. I drink to you in the name and memory of my honored dead, but also in your own names and honors, as you have honor and your memory is cherished. I fight that it may not erode so long as I live. Thank you.

New Music

Appearances of late might cause one to think this should be called New Poetry. I like poetry, and I'm not completely horrible, but this simply is not the case. I actually spend much more time writing music, and the volume of music I've written is proof of as much. I just haven't plastered so much of it here.

So here's a bit of my more recent work, in this case two pieces for brass quintet as performed by John Perkins and Alex Pickard on trumpet, Bruce Gordon on horn, and Dan Witter and Todd Yatsook on trombone.

Fanfare and Fugue for Brass Quintet

Romon's March

This is a slightly more extended piece. I'd even go so far as to say it's somewhat better, but at present the only recording I have is one executed by a computer. And they've got no soul, to say the least, so it's missing a certain something. But here it is anyway:

Toccata for Keyboard

In the slightly less new music category (but still quite new in the grand scheme of things) here are two pieces performed by Rachel Aubuchon for a recital in the University of Missouri at Columbia’s Whitmore Hall in April of 2004:

Rondo on a Lullaby for Norah

Fugue in G-sharp Minor

There's quite a lot more where that came from, including a growing body of orchestral works, and scores to a few radio plays, but this will suffice for now. While this is very much at the core of my being, it may well be that the majority of the people on here will prefer not to delve that deeply into me. I seem to have a musical style that's horribly out of fashion embedded into the deep parts of my psyche. It's my private curse, I suppose, but I wouldn't trade it for all the world. It would be a very bad trade if I did.

So happy surfing net fans. And enjoy what you may.

Sincerely,
The Composer

The Flesh

What exactly does one do
When one hates the flesh?
It’s difficult to comprehend
Why nothing seems to mesh,
All broken crags and tortured ground.

The devils of psychology
Let loose upon our souls
Run marathons with energy
Borrowed from our goals
Wreak havoc, leave us bound
To with’ring limbs and useless pounds.

How do we win redemption
From the demons of the mind
Whose cold compressive tentacles
Round ‘bout our egos wind?
We’ve lost our way, our corpse unsound,
With failing sight, our key unfound,
The tumblers rust, the lock froze shut
We’re trapped within our mound.

19 December 2004