an old writer and his words

  • THE CLASSICS

    He says he has always hated classical music,and would rather listen to nails dragged across a chalkboard.He has been out of school for many years so Isuspect he no longer realizes what nailson a chalkboard really sounds like, how evenopera, which I can’t tolerate, would be preferable.He rattles off a list of composers he despises,Mozart,…

    Lou Faber

  • A SONG FOR A LOVER

    It is hard, looking back, to recalljust how many hours I spent searchingwith a fair amount of diligence for justthe right song to express my love.Most often I would find it,but only after that love had beenreplaced by another, demandinga new song — you cannot usethe same song for two different loves,that crosses well over…

    Lou Faber

  • THE GIFTS

    They brought him myrrh on a flaming salver and all he could do was say “This is something I would expect from a butcher or a carpenter, and the camera angles would never work, so bring me napalm or punji stakes that we have proven to work.” They brought him ripe oranges and the sweet…

    Lou Faber

  • BACK IN THE DAY

    My uncle and I would sneak away from the seemingly endless party, no one wanted to attend and couldn’t leave. We go up to my room and turn on the radio. He’d want to look for the Senators game, but they’d left town and no radio could pull in Minneapolis anyway, but despite Killebrew, Arbitron…

    Lou Faber

  • A NIGHT AT THE ROSE

    Three beers over two hours and, giddy, I want to sing along with the Irish house band in my horribly off key voice, just two choruses of Irish Rover or Four Green Fields. It’s beginning to snow outside and it’s a four-block walk to the Government Center station. I suppose it would sober me up…

    Lou Faber

  • NAME THAT TUNE

    He says, “I write songs without music, my head Is a libretto warehouse.” She says, “You string words like random beads, no two strands the same.” He says, “Symmetry is for those with linear minds who can’t see out of the tunnel.” She says, “Dysentery, verbal, is a disease to be avoided particularly by poets.”…

    Lou Faber

  • BLESSING

    There is a blessing in silence that we so often deny ourselves, unaware that it lies just beyond the noise of our minds and lives. We crave it, beg for it, and hearing the beggar, shun him for the noise he carries like the skin he cannot molt. Beethoven understood silence in his later years…

    Lou Faber

  • RADIO DAZE

    There was a great deal I wanted to say, after all when you end the broadcast career that spanned forty-three years you want to be entitled to a farewell address. She said, “you’ve been on the air here for two years, and reading the news to the blind once a week for half an hour…

    Lou Faber

  • NAME THAT CLOUD

    The weather, he announced to no one in particular, ought to be musical or at least incorporate some jazz. Spring is bebop, Trane and Parker, the sudden clash of Blakey the downpours of Dizzy and the hint of what’s to come on the fingers of Monk, and Kenny and Milt. Summer brings the slow easing…

    Lou Faber

  • EARLY NIGHT AT THE CLUB

    It begins lowly quietly, then grows builds until, all players together, it hits a point where you hope it is a crescendo, but it still grows ever louder and you retreat from the club, half-finished glass of wine on the table, knowing that when you reach the back door your evening is over.

    Lou Faber