Getting back to topic of language

I hope you're still enjoying the new year. Here's something to put a smile on your face.

This is too good not to share

S sent me this this morning. It was just exactly what I needed.



No wonder he's called The King.

Coming full circle

Thank you to ...45+ and aspiring for the link that led me to this little bit of fun. It makes me miss my grandkids. Enjoy it.

Just watch

This is actually a commercial from Thailand. I stole it from Butterfly Dreamer, whose site you should absolutely see. But, here's the rub: Watch it more than once; watch it at least three times. Get beyond the Pantene pitch. (She would have gotten there without beautiful hair.) Then, tell me what it does to you. -- I agree with Butterfly dreamer: It is "one of the most inspirational and beautiful videos I have ever seen."

Some of us would never get where we're going.

I got the link to this video from High Desert Diva's blog, which if you don't know, you should definitely check out. Why don't we have more initiatives like this?

Don't Worry Be Happy

I stole this video from the November Sky Poetry blog. Enjoy.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

California drifitn', back next week

adrift in Northern California
enjoying a private Edenic retreat
listening to Bob Marley's One Love
on S's play list
contemplating generations
and anticipating the soft sweetness
of the freshly picked blackberries
I plan to add to my next pot
of Twinings green tea

This Fascinates Me

Ok. Cloudia caught me sitting at my desk and really made me feel guilty with her latest comment on my last post. (If you've never visited her at Comfort Spiral you are really missing something special.)

I promise I'm coming back to the Blogosphere soon. But I have been busy writing articles about the health benefits of having pets, Ewing's sarcoma, DTaP, and the like, and editing articles about things like rheumatoid arthritis or how to get your dog to eat dog food. (My days are simply eclectic.)

But I am coming back. In the meantime I found this little gem by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and thought you might enjoy it. (I was looking for a video of the theme to High Noon, but came across this instead and found it fascinating.) Have fun. And in the meantime, please do not forsake me. . .

From the Choir Loft

Singing is twice praying.

On alternating days we sang the Mass
At seven, boys, then girls, then boys again.
Sometimes the only ones who'd show
To sing were me and Hal the organist,
And I could barely hum a note. Refrains
Eluded me, so Hal would sing it solo.

Now Hal had music in his hands and feet;
The organ's pipes were a part of him.
But when he tried for music from his throat,
Well, Father said it sounded kind of sweet
If sweet meant scratchy, hoarse, and thin
And not unlike the bleating of a goat.

From Kyrie to Agnus Dei, Hal
Sang all the parts, sang treble, alto, bass
And never worried what the music said.
The words were all that mattered. Still somehow
He'd hit the final note then turn his face
And wink at me and proudly raise his head.

Hal quit the church when Kyrie became
The simple English Lord and anyone
Who wanted stood and strummed communal chords
For Masses where the singing was the same
As elevator sap, and Hal seemed stunned
To learn that music is in deed the words.


Originally published in Birmingham Poetry Review, Summer/Fall, 2005.
© copyright 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved

Sharing

Check out the new song by Rachael Chatoor. It reminded me of some lyrics I wrote several years ago. I also did the music but wasn't really happy with it. If Rachael wants to do music for it, she can have the lyrics. (Anyone else, please ask first. It's copyrighted.)

Paper in the Wind
(Song Lyrics)
By the Grandpa

[A]
The music stopped while I was dancing
On a street all by myself,
And all the questions I’d been asking
Felt like dust inside my mouth

[B]
The friends I had around me
Are like paper in the wind
Their faces lost in shadows
Of other places I have been

[Chorus]
I tried to call from San Francisco,
I got caught in your damn machine
It said
Leave a message, sorry we missed you.
Our son’s gone off to chase his dream.

And I can’t tell you where I’ve been

[B]
Each morning I wake hungry
But nothing’s left to do
Too late to say I’m sorry
Too late for missing you

[Chorus]
I tried to call from San Francisco,
I got caught in your damn machine
It said
Leave a message, sorry we missed you.
Our son’s gone off to chase his dream.

And I can’t tell you where I’ve been

[C—Waltz time]
I dreamed I danced with my mother,
A song from another day.
We held each other tight
Her smile made the music play.
I dreamed I walked with my father.
We talked along the way
By the time we got home
We had nothing left to say.

[A]
Too many miles between us
I’ve done things you cannot know
Nothing stays the way it was
I’d talk longer but I’ve got to go

[Chorus]
I tried to call from San Francisco,
I got caught in your damn machine
It said
Leave a message, sorry we missed you.
Our son’s gone off to chase his dream.

Why can’t I tell you where I’ve been?

[B]
Sometimes I hear the music echo
And turn to greet a friend
Nothing but my shadow
And paper in the wind
Nothing but my shadow
And paper in the wind

© copyright 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

Piano Bar Blues

(1)
I'm just a man
like anyone else. I can
command
respect when I place
myself at the keyboard, face
bathed in blue light.
I do alright.

Not like Mary.
Fell in love with a fairy
used to come in all the time.
His name was Harry.
He'd sit here at the piano making eyes
at all the guys.
Mary never got wise.

(2)
You know
one thing I know
is you
can’t kiss away the blues.

Not the real blues.

Not the hollow note
deep in your throat
kind of blues
that wake you in the middle of the night
because the silence gets so loud
you can hear starlight
fall.

(3)
It's a job.
last week some slob
laid fifty bucks beside me.
Forget what you see,
he said. I'm not here.
My wife wouldn't understand.
All I did was hold her hand,
not like I planned
it or anything. So I fanned
his fantasy for a while,
played My Funny Valentine and with style
closed my eyes tight.
I said, I don't see nobody tonight.

They go away.
Next day
my wife,
who's best friends with his old lady May,
asks how'd it go.
Real slow,
I say.
Didn't see a soul I know.

(4)
I tell people who come in all the time
you can’t kiss away the blues,
not those lonely in a crowd blues.
Those caged bird
wicker domed
watching from a swinging perch
blues.

The kind that weigh
you down even when the door is open
because you get so hungry
not even love
can fill you up.

(5)
You know when I saw you two come in
I felt sick
like I was watching someone commit
sin.
A no win
situation,
like when you begin
a set
and get
an undeniable urge to piss.

Maybe I shouldn't say this.
After all I see a lot of dirt.
I’ve watched a lot of men chase a skirt.
Jesus, I don't mean that.
It's just when you've sat
where I've sat,

you get tired
of watching friends choose
the place you gotta be to play the blues.

(6)
No,
There’s no way.
You can try,
but you’re gonna loose
because there’s no way
you can kiss away
those blues.

Originally published in A Matter of Mind, Foothills Publishing, 2004.
© copyright 2004, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved.

Random Friday and The Disciple

1) Things haven't settled down yet, but I have been able to venture out into Blogland with a little more frequency over the last few days. Gee, there's a lot of posts to catch up with.

2) I'm still being held hostage by a cute puppy. Saturdays when S is home, I volunteer to run the most mundane errands while she watches the dog. It just feels good to be out of the house and on my own. I did take her for her first real walk today. I've been walking her back and forth in the driveway and letting her sit at the end of the driveway to watch the cars go by. Everybody waves at us. One of us must be really really cute. But the vet told us not to put her down on the ground where other dogs were until after she built up her immunity from her second shot. She got her second shot a week ago, and the vet said we could walk her on a public sidewalk a week later. The walk wasn't as exciting or interesting as the walks Cloudia takes in Hawaii (And if you haven't read her book ALOHA, Where You Like Go? yet, you should). We just walked down to the street sign we can see from our driveway and back. But there can be beauty in mundane as I've been discovering on Saturdays. And I'll tell you, she was one happy puppy.

THE DISCIPLE
When we lived in Massachusetts, Friday was my piano lesson day. It was a couple hours for me to put aside all the editing and boring contract writing I do and do something for me. I took lessons from the owner of the music school I went to, and after the second lesson, I understood chords like I had never understood them before. I even sat down one Sunday and started writing out all the chords in order for each major and minor scale. I was liberated. But I still couldn't play. Nevertheless, I knew that Dave, my teacher was good for me.

The lessons were never just simply learn this because that's the next thing in the book. In fact we didn't have "a book." He asked me what I wanted to learn. I told him. And he found things to help me learn it. It was very organic, and music was a good thing. After I had been taking from him for a while, I walked in for my lesson one day and said, "Look, I don't want to keep going the way we're going. I wrote a song and it's like the first song in this blues opera I want to write about John the Baptist, and I'd like to use this lesson time to work on the opera."

He said, "Okay, play the song."

I did. He got interested and took out his guitar to play along with me, and after telling me about what surprised him in the score and that he liked it he said, "Okay. If you want to work on composition, that's what we'll do." That's when The Disciple was born. (Actually, it had been born a few nights earlier when, after having drunk a little too much bourbon, I sat down at the piano and began improvising what I thought was sacred music but then decided it worked a hell of a lot better if I made it bluesy. But that's another post.)

So I caught The Disciple fire, and with Dave's mentoring, I became possessed. I had at least one new song a week, or the core of a new song, or a revision of one I had already written based on his response. I'd bring in what I did, try to play it for him, and then he'd play it and say, "was this what you were hearing?" 95 % of the time, it was.

I never was more convinced I was going to complete a work than I was this one. I basically finished the first act, began working on songs for the second act, completed the overview of act 2 and act 3, and listed the missing songs in act 1. Then we (S and I) moved to Atlanta. There is no Dave (that I've found) in Atlanta, and the work ground to a halt. I try to get back to it, but without Dave, I'm not sure what I've written was exactly what I was hearing. Plus, I have no one to tell me why it wasn't when it wasn't or why what I heard wasn't as good as what I could have heard. I've tried to jump start the process. To no avail. Then, the other day, Rene reminded me it was a worthwhile, or at least an interesting, project. Maybe the collective energy of the blogosphere, maybe some specific people on the blog, will become my Dave.

When I break down and buy better composition software so that it plays what I hear, I'll post the actual songs on the blog. In the meantime, keeping with the theme of random Friday, here are some random things about/from the disciple:

A PARTIAL LIST OF CHARACTERS
Nate: The title character. A disciple of John
John: A tall lanky itinerant preacher
Jesus: A former disciple of John who rises to prominence as a charismatic TV evangelist
Peter: Another disciple of John
Herod: A county sheriff in Alabama
Herodias: Herod's second wife, also his niece
Salome: Herodias's 16-year-old daughter by her first husband, Herod's brother
Several deputies, including the executioner
Several high ranking state officials
Chorus: at variable times other disciples, camp followers who come to hear John preach or who follow Jesus, artisans and craftsmen, ordinary citizens, children who seem to be constantly around Jesus

LYRICS TO EVERY BUTTERFLY (SECOND SONG IN ACT 2--SERMON ON THE MOUNT--SINGER--JESUS AND CHORUS)

Every butterfly that you see
Knows that it's where
It needs to be
Birds that fly
Never ask why
They have wings
Just see all the flowers
Think how many colors
Each season brings
You don't need a why for everything

You don't need to know
Any more than
Day will always follow night
You won't always know when
You'll get it right
Just listen and you'll hear
That song that lives
Somewhere inside
Ev'ry one's got a song
That can't be denied
You don't need a why for everything

Hawk and robin
Sparrow crow and wren
All gliding through the sky
Watch them riding
On the early morning wind
They don't ask
How they know
They don't wonder why
You don't need a why for everything.

© copyright 2007, 2009 the Grandpa at The Word Mechanic Blog.
All rights reserved

There's more, but this is Random Friday

Enjoy

Her name is Rachael Chatoor. Her Web site is here. Her blog is rachaelpachelwasmyname. Both are well worth a visit.

She calls this first video a rough draft of an original song that's about to be released on a compilation CD from Stupid Cancer. You can here the final arrangement by clicking on the widget in the sidebar.


On her blog she says she doesn't think of herself as a recording artist. I predict that's going to change.

Hearing the music

Early in November, S and I went to the Atlanta Symphony to see and hear Joshua Bell perform the Barber violin concerto. We enjoyed it immensely. It wasn't the first time we'd seen him, and it's always been money well spent. We also have a number of his CDs. Again, money well spent.

A couple of years ago, Bell gave a performance in a different venue. The performance was actually part of a social experiment being done for an article in the Washington Post Magazine. One day during rush hour, Bell walked into a Washington DC Metro stop, took out his violin and began to play.

Having lived in Boston for so many years, I've enjoyed a lot of good street performers and heard a lot of good music in the subway stations, especially around Harvard Square. But it's hard to get an audience to just stay there and listen. How many people do you suppose stopped for Joshua Bell? It makes me wonder who I've passed by and what great performances I've missed. Maybe I'll try to stop and listen to the music a little more often.

The video is by John W. Poole.

I didn't have anything to give you, so I stole this

This is Enya. The language is Irish. I found the video at Sukipoet's site. I could not not share it with you. Enjoy.

Too good not to share

I got the link for this from The Itsy Bitsy Monkey. It's just too good to not share.



The Mom Song from Northland Video on Vimeo.

Wow! I didn't know this until last night.

I learned this from my post I stole from You Tube last night. There is an episode of Magnum PI that combined Sharon Stone, Bladerunner, and the second Borne movie. See for yourself.

Got a moment?

If you haven't done so already, you really ought to treat yourself and and take the time to read Bee's post (of Bee Drunken) on the Chronophage.

And while we're talking about time, I often wonder where people need to be so urgently after a movie ends. If the movie's been good, I like hearing the finale while I read the credits. It makes the experience last. Here's the credits for Bladerunner.

Saturday is fun day

You've got to go to Phils Phun and watch Brian and Katie's Wedding Dance.

Then when you come back check out the spotlight post. It's over there ---> (on the right). It's a new feature on The Word Mechanic.

This is just fun

It's also an example of great editing. Enjoy.