Bent Pin - my lit E-zine closes - but archive of past pages is online

Photo by Richard Nethercott:

My lit magazine online, Bent Pin, formerly Bent Pin Quarterly, has closed.  The problem is computer-related. Either software degradation or upgraded OS 10.6.2 incompatibilities with iWeb 08 or perhaps  hard drive sector  corruption or SOMETHING, caused the files that contained the editable nugget of Bent Pin on my computer to transform into a chaotic mess, missing page titles, running text down the side of the page, disappearing text or text boxes, missing titles or authors of works, missing artwork.... The back-up was in the same condition, BUT the previously published ezine pages on my iDisk are okay!  I don't know why this happened.  The problem in iWeb is, all my sites are in the program and I cannot find a way to update one site without the others. I have no desire to upload this confused mess and obliterate the archive of beautiful pages which still exists online.

I guess I could swat my head against the wall a few times. I could curse and swear, eat a gallon of vanilla, drink rum, or throw things, maybe just wallow.But I am not going to do any of those things.

 the archive is at:  ______

UPDATE Aug 22, 2011 The archive and index are both moving - visit http://bentpinquarterly.blogspot.com

The photo (taken over a decade ago by a friend, Richard Nethercott ) of me looking through a sculpture in the Aldrich Museum's outdoor garden, sums it up well.  Right now I am trapped behind big impenetrable artifice of technology that is not working right at this time.

-- Mar Walker

Emptiness and effort - the ambition thing...

On the subject of ambition, I prefer to take a bit of a sideways view of things.  That is to approach via two seemingly incompatible but related ideas.

The first is emptiness -- desireless, nonjudgmental equilibrium, the one point which is the same as  expansive diffusion, nothingness. The simple contentment of sweeping or weeding or sitting or breathing, walking. Attentive, mindful awareness without judgement. This is not a religious statement or a new age statement. Just a way of thinking about being.

The other idea is effort that is expressing a deep unrelenting need to tweak and refine, which requires judgment and differentiation, to improve something, a painting, a bit of writing, a line of music, to bring it into alignment with an ideal, either internal or external.

What made me think about this is, the other day, I was sitting in a coffee shop and happened to be talking with the daughter of friend, a quiet girl in her late twenties. She was knitting, and seemed very content to be doing so.

"Everyone tells me how I really need to focus right now, to figure out how to earn a living, to make progress now on something, that I am at the age where that is what I should be doing," she said adding that she just wanted to be, and to be knitting.

Tell them you are a Buddhist and are into nothingness, I said without thinking at all.

Now, I have to backtrack because contentment is good for contentment, but perhaps it's not that good for achievement. This is a concept that is not in favor right now in the age of instant soup.

You can meditate everyday on being a musician or a writer,, and you might be feeling very contented about your affirmation. But if you don't actually sing, or write or whatever it is you hope to do - then you are not that thing at all, no matter how content you feel about it. A quote I like is "Affirmation without discipline is the beginning of delusion." (from Jim Rohn as quoted by Tony Robbins on Twitter). To be really good at something does not involve a magic incantation. There is in fact, no such thing as magic.  To be really good at something requires effort and intelligent self-evaluation over a fairly long period of time. Another word for that is discipline.

Yet contentment in the moment is a valuable thing. I think there is a place for both emptiness and effort  in a balanced life.  There is a quote I like, that I think speaks to the relation of these two things, and thought I am not a Christian, and am not a theist, that quote is from a bible verse. (Ancient literature and mythology generally contain some truth, but is is human truth...) The quote is "Having done all, stand."   So here is where contentment and effort meet.  Do the work, prepare - while being in the moment, standing still.

-- Mar Walker

.Read a poem on the same topic: http://mmw113.blogspot.com/2009/11/poem-wannamakers-rising-from-inverse.html

Robert Honeysucker, Danbury Concert Chorus & Strings, composer Maxim Vladimiroff shine in world premiere of 'Walden'

This time lapse picture shows composer Maxim Vladimiroff adjusting his music, as members of the Danbury Concert Chorus find their places for the second half of last night's concert. It was a world premiere of Vladimiroff's  new work Walden, the Poetry of Nature for baritone soloist, chorus, string orchestra and piano. The work was commissioned by the Danbury Music Center and its music director Richard Price.

A teaching conductor is a wonderful thing and Danbury has one in Price, who understands that people enjoy music more when they know something about it and know what to listen for as the music plays. With a new or unfamiliar work in concert  -- how does this happen?  His solution is simple: play it twice, with a little commentary illustrated by musical examples, wedged in-between.

That was how Walden was presented last night at St. James Episcopal in Danbury, and it's well worth hearing many many times. It may well be a true masterwork of this composer.  It's the kind of composition where the sound is so beautiful - the sonorities alone can tear up the eyes and transport.  The baritone soloist was the extraordinary Robert Honeysucker, the chorus was the Danbury Concert Chorus, the strings sections were from the Danbury Symphony Chamber Players, the pianist was the composer himself.  During the first performance, Honeysucker read the text before each of the six movements of the work - (Spring, The Motions of a Sail, Nymphea Odorata, Autumnal Colors, Leaves and What Beauty!)

While all of the performers got hearty applause after the work was first heard - when the composer was brought up, the whole audience cheered, whistled, and stood up almost as a body.  Vladimiroff, an unassuming and personable soul, who has worked for three different churches in the area over the last decade and taught herds of children besides, has a lot of appreciative fans, including his mother (Tattiana?) and father, (Sergei Vladimiroff, a concert pianist)  his wife Leisa and two sons, Damien and Luca who were all in attendance to cheer him too.

But then it was time to learn a little something about the piece - Richard Price reminded us of his philosophy and brought Vladimiroff up to talk a bit about Walden.   As he mentioned each concept Price lead the chorus in an example from the work.

After a very animated intermission, the house fell silent to hear Walden played as a piece, without any reading of the text between movements. And here the arc of the work could be taken in.  And somehow in this last performance, Honeysucker was carried away with the work and delivered something marvelous and transcendent. The chorus too, having already performed it well  - had lost their nervousness and let go with truly solid gorgeous performance, as did chorus member Patricia Scharr who had a short section of solo notes. Everything was just right.

Three other wonderful choral works graced the program - Choose Something Like a Star by Randall Thompson, Shenandoah arranged by Donald Erb and Swansea Town by Gustav Holst.  It was a great night, and played to a packed house. People were standing in the back, and close parking was hard to come by. Thanks to all who contributed. It was a wonderful show.

Want to commission a Vladimiroff original or arrange piano lessons: http://VladimiroffMusic.net

-- Mar Walker

Books: The Adderall Diaries, Stephen Elliott in Bethel, CT

Friday the 13th, 2009.
   Stephen Elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries, is reserved, a compact man with interesting tattoos and a slightly tenorish voice - a man easy to picture as a masochist. He read his clean, brisk prose last night in puffy suburban Bethel CT (at Molten Java at 102  Greenwood), with a quiet voice as  even as the surface of his narrative.
questions:

   He read three sections in all, fairly conservative sections of the book, and took questions after each. The audience seemed very interested in the memory aspect of "memoir."  Elliott said his some of it was taken from writing done as journalling at the time the events were occurring, so the details were not drawn from distant memory nor imagined after the fact,  but were written down fresh from the experience itself. He said he'd done of lot of editing and that the writing in its present form was many steps away from the first writing.
   The audience also asked how difficult it was to do the the kind of extensive self-revelation that The Adderall Diaries contain. Elliott said that getting used to revealing your secrets was a gradual thing, and that he'd previously written several novels where he used material from his life. He compared the process  to a transvestite's coming out. First, Elliott said, the man puts on a dress when he's home alone. Then, after a while, he puts it on and wears it out for a quick trip to the store.  A few months latter, he's out dancing in it, and can hardly remember when just putting it on was a big deal.

odd fly buzzes in the ointment:

     Elliott's  reading was interrupted in the middle by the owner of the neighboring bookstore (at 104 Greenwood Ave). (The bookstore folks own the building where the coffeehouse and the bookstore are located.) She'd been sitting in the back, waiting for him to mention books for sale.
   She interrupted to announce officiously that there would be no book sales, as Molten Java's lease had a non-competition clause with the bookstore.  Of course Molten wasn't selling the books, the author was.  For her part, she had no copies of his book to sell in her store.  So it seems her only object was to thwart the income of one author selling directly to his public, and to piss off people who had formerly been her customers.
    After a final section of prose was read, the company left the coffeeshop and went to the pizza parlor across the street where we ordered pizza, and drinks, talked and many of us bought a book directly from the author. Art will out, landlords notwithstanding.

-- Mar Walker

POEM: Intensive care (from Inverse Origami, 1998)

Intensive Care

It's you, there, under the sickish lights
the mint walls, the turquoise bedpans.
Strangers with syringes interrupt
your feverish sleep.
your pale familiar face and matted hair,
your tubes and tethers.
Come home. Just come home.

---

 

from Inverse Origami - the art of unfolding
--- Mar (Mistryel) Walker, © 1998
Puzzled Dragon Press

Bent Pin: The familiar discomfort - Foster Trecost & MarkMcGuire-Schwartz

The familiar unhappiness is often more comfortable for human beings than making a difficult extended change.  This week we have one humorous poem about a couple aware of their own peculiarities, and a bit of flash fiction where the narrator is seemingly unaware of his own slightly sadistic pleasure in the discomfort of those around him. The works are Thoughts At The Table by Foster Trecost and Heartless by Mark McGuire-Schwartz.

The incomplete Bent Pin Archive can now be found at http://benpinquarterly.blogspot.com   Unfortunately this page is not online as yet.

-- MM Walker

What art can reveal

Writing prompt: If you joined the circus, what act would you most want to perform?

If I joined the circus I would certainly not want  to be the fire-eater. I already have enough heart-burn for two or three people.  The trapeze is too far off the ground, the fat-lady and the bearded lady are both unjustly reviled by many. The face painters have to listen to bratty kids , the knife thrower can never get enough insurance and the bareback riders wear little tutus that ride up their behinds.  Putting your head inside the lion's mouth is fool-hardy at any age.

If I could join the circus today, I would be the snake charmer. So many things are hidden, uncoiling their motives only when poised to strike. Like a skillful snake charmer, I would use a little music, a metaphor or two, a little color maybe, to coax a smooth, indifferent reptile out into the light so  its true nature can be examined.

-- Mar Walker