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S P A C E
Space is not the final frontier of that I’m certain nor was Debussy right, though some does live between the notes, nor do I want more, what I have will suffice. No space is the damned key on this keyboard that sometimes sticks anddrivesmetodistraction.
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SPACED OUT
I laughed at my parents when they talked about a typewriter as something of a marvel when they were so commonplace. Of course as a boy, half the fun of helping my father at work was knowing the mimeo ink would stain my fingers purple for a week and even borax would only render them…
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NOTELESS
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 said, “Dysentery is a disease to be avoided particularly by poets.” He…
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PRECISELY
On the radio this morning the DJ played the classic “In the Midnight Hour,” and I pause to reflect on the fact that midnight is a moment and cannot be an hour, by definition, since the halfway is only a point, not a range, and you cannot put a home on an hour, for…
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4/4 TIME
Musicians have a clock that runs on its own time and all that is constant is the beat, in four second increments. They start, they say, when the music is ready, never before and music is fickle: tonight it wanted to sit off stage and rest an hour, another night it begins precisely as advertised…
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SEOUL MUSIC
The hardest part of getting old isn’t the near constant aches and pains but the senses that slip away, replaced by an ever deeper truth. She says to really play the blues on piano you must have Seoul and listening to her, you agree, although you aren’t sure if hers is Gangnam-gu or Jung-gu, but…
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ONE FLAVOR ZEN
How far must you wander to taste the pure essence, hear the pure note, see deeply into beauty, smell the first flower of spring, touch another heart? Will you grow tired from standing still in total silence contemplating this? A reflection on Shobogenzo Case 65 (Dogen’s True Dharma Eye)
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EUTERPEAN EVENING
An evening: spring retreating in the face of summer, two garnacha, a piano, standup bass, drums, her voice lifts the weight of the sky and we float up on a melody, unchained. In heaven George and Ira smile and we, here, smile with them.
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THE MUSIC OF SPRING
The music hides, just out of sight, beyond the edge of hearing. We assume it must be something by Mozart or at least Bach, a tocatta and fugue, swallowed by the trees, the cardinal singing faintly, mirroring the tune, but there is only the wind meandering throught the pines which have cast off the weight…
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DREAMS
Somewhere, tonight a bagpiper is playing., Notes from the drone and chanters lick the sky, piercing passing clouds, embedding themselves in the stars. Somewhere else a flute player fingers the stops as notes pour forth and dance on the moonlit lawn. Neither piper nor flautist hear each other, but I weave both into a song,…