Sound Clips for Walden

I have been doing a little web stuff this week – added a sample audio file to http://vladimiroffmusic.net The clip is on the About Walden page. Walden is a 20 minute musical composition by Maxim Vladimiroff for chorus, string orchestra and piano. The clip, which the composer prepared, contains a short bit from each of the six movements.

A Song by Markella Hatziano

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klpjjFf9fL8&w=560&h=349]
‪You can really tap your feet or dance all around to this one..... Well, I could. The words are very powerful and enhanced by the grim and very real pictures of violence done in the real world to real people in the name of god. Her words describe a joyful determination to be done with all this cruelty. The refrain says this:

"All I see around me are the casualties of god delusion
Everyone bamboozled with the certainties of god delusion
Why cant we have freedom from the cruelties of god delusion
Save us all from god delusion" - Markella Hatziano

Click through - and watch it on its own YouTube page where you can see the rest of the words (just click "show more" in the box under the video.)

Visit the song-writer's website: http://www.markella.com/‬
or  http://www.newageofreason.com/‬

A Peaceful New Year's Eve

Well, well

my first post of 2010!

And what an odd evening.

What did I do this evening?

Nothing. Slept through dinner.

Later, I solved a Sudoko puzzle.

At 11:30 walked the dog around the block.

The holiday lights were still up.

A few homes were having parties.

All quiet with a slight snow softly falling.

The old dog eager and playful.

We came around with a dusting

on our coats, at peace with the new year.

Came inside to make this post

then sleep some more.

Terrifying realities

It must be frightening to live in a world where you are positive there are no muffin cups and baking muffins in one of those things you love to do.... And in the store your hair-brained ditzy daughter says "but we have several boxes at home." And you say, "No, we don't have any, I know what I am doing! You can be sure of that!"  And you get home with the new box of muffin cups, and when you go to put it away, you open the cabinet door and lo -- there are three unopened boxes. That must scare a person right down to their slippers. Enough to push all four boxes behind the olive oil spray and close the cabinet door and never mention it again. At least until the next time you think there are none.

Christmas Prep: The Whirl, the Blur, the Pause, the STRESS!!

Here is a link to this column, posted as text on this blog a few years ago

Of Annual parties and dumpster relations

Today I am asking questions about friendship.  This is the season where a certain sort of party-giving person might give a party and invite their friends.

I have never been much of a party person. I have days when I can work a party room like an insurance salesman- charming even strangers, cajoling and connecting. Other days I sit in the corner nursing coffee or alcohol without saying anything unless directly spoken to....  I think this is a fairly common failing.

In advance of a party where I don't know anyone but the host,  or where I haven't seen or spoken with anyone there since last year's party - I work up a great deal of dread. Over the years in a changing life, one can accumulate annual parties where your only existing connection with the other party-goers  is a memory of a past connect that may be decades old. You don't know them anymore and they don't know you - but someone keeps inviting you for old times sake, or for the sake of a memory of friendship past.

But you can't recreate a friendship that has died with party small talk. There isn't time in a half a minute of conversation to catch someone up on the nuances of a year of your life or to understand their life in return  and when those un-communicated nuances pile up over decades between people - what you have is no longer a friend. What you have is an acquaintance.

Then there is the question of what is a friend. That's not as simple a question as the teenagers think it is. I am  not talking about having 2000 "friends" on YouTube or Facebook. That's a study in volume not nuance.

Then there are folks who use you as an emotional dumpster. For instance, if someone calls you up over 18 years only when they need to vent about their boyfriend, spouse or children misbehaving - is this a friendship?  If you call me up and invite me to watch you clean your house, (yes I actually have had two different women do this repeatedly), and a part of the conversation is the various fun things you have done with  other folks you know,  (usually couples you and your husband know) and you wonder why I don't call you - well enough said about that.  If you call me up indignant that I have not stopped by in ages - and you don't even know where I live, despite the fact I have invited you over....   well, I have philosophical enemies who know me much better than that and who are a lot more fun.

If you have never read my blog - if you don't even know I have a blog -- are you my friend? Since I am a writer, can you really know me?  I am a a charming performer, but when I am no longer on, I am really rather a recluse.

Then what kind of friend am I? I rarely call anyone. I am a recluse. I am, at this late age, no longer interested in talking about how I FEEL. I have learned its what you do that really counts. And what do I do? I forget people's birthdays, often fail to appear at parties, abruptly stop returning phone calls. Often I have my reasons. If you want to know why, ask.

I suspect I will spend my elder years in a tiny eldercare apartment, playing bingo in badly decorated dayroom with people who can't remember my name and I won't be able to remember theirs either.  And then friendship will be like skating - moving smoothly through a bingo game with a wry nod and a smile, living in the present moment, until tea or the next meal or bedtime.

I am not sure what I mean by any of this....

10 AM poetry reading not too early for Doris Henderson fans!

When I heard Doris Henderson was giving a reading from her new full length poetry book called "What Gets Lost," at the Danbury Library, I was excited. I am a big fan of poetry of the surreal, and poetry with a sense of humor and Doris hits the mark on both counts. When I heard it was a 10 AM reading on a Saturday, starting just as the library opened its doors,  I wondered if the usual suspects would manage to be up and out of the house that early on a Saturday. I made sure to arrive early and sat down with poet Bob Taylor in the front row, didn't look behind me until later.

At the end of this wonderful, energetic and funny reading -- the best I have ever heard Doris give -- I got up turned around and realized there were over thirty people in the room who had been pin quiet listening to her read. And they were not shy about buying a copy of her new book either. It's an oversized collection from Antrim House - an inch at the spine with a $19 price tag. Great cover art as well.  Click here to read the publisher's page on this book and some poetry excerpts

At the end, there were questions. Someone wondered where she got her ideas.  Doris mentioned that she kept a notebook where she wrote for at least ten minutes every day, sometimes much longer. The writing was a completely  unedited "free write" of whatever comes to mind.  She said that later, sometimes a long time later, she would go back and find in those writings, the start of a poem....    Hmmm might have to try that!