Return to the Land Of Autumn

I love taking the train, especially in New England and most especially in Autumn.

I become a voyeur of Nature. The trees gently discard their leaves which fall to the ground with a silky whisper of promise and rich, evocative feelings.

Winter is coming. Bare of leafy constraints the outline of the land is there to take in and there is no denial of either fault or beauty - or the rich melding of both.

So as we race through the bunched suburbs North of Boston the trees alternatively crowd and release the train; a frayed gold curtain opens and closes.

Under every tree, along each curbside, around every building Nature has taken it's sable brush to outline each in gold.

In time, I know, this trim will vanish, covered in snow or digested into the soil as a painter does who covers a perfectly good oil painting in white in order to begin again, hoping for a better result.

Unlike I, who blanks a score that isn't working for a new start that has no gaurentee of success, Nature knows that what she does is perfect now - and that what she does next will be the same.

In my life I have no such gaurentee - so I try, very hard, to love the process of living, to bring myself to laugh, even when I am most misunderstood or face my greatest loss.

Even in my moment of death, when my leaves finally fall and leave the beauty or faults of my life bare - even then I hope I will laugh as well as mourn, feeling the full measure of joy and sorrow, the same way I struggle to feel them both now.

I love Autumn.




-- Post From My iPad

A Road I've travelled before

Traveling by train, from Portland to Washington.

I'm going to the Rally To Restore Sanity, tomorrow, in DC. There isplenty I could say about the politics of the moment and, at some point, I'll do just that

But, right at the moment, my mind is taken with the journey, watching the late Autumn trees of New England, seeing the show they've put on for a thousand, thousand years.

I love travelling by train, especially on this trip. Typing on my iPad, listening to Pandora radio on my iPhone (my Piazzola channel, which, for some joyous reason, is playing McCoy Tyner ...)

The Sun sets, the train is full, almost everyone heading to a Celtics game ocurring directly over the train station at the Boston Garden.

The landscape changes to an urban quilt, inlaid with trees, all new, all grown in the last hundred years. Few of the giants from a century or more are present, I am looking at the gentrification of the remains of a third Industrial Revolution.

Look with an inquisitive eye at the stonework of bridges and embankments .... you see where old paralell tracks lay when commuter trains carried the commercial lifeblood of Boston.

I suppose it still does, but these are fingertip capillaries compared to the femoral pulse of earlier days.

The light has changed. We are now running paralell to the Charles, making our approach to North Station. Rich, late afternoon light against the elevated highways of Boston.

Time for the next stage.

-- Post From My iPad

Location:Main St,Wilmington,United States

More Than I Deserve

Very often no good deed goes unpunished. This is a rule I've seen at work in all sorts of contexts - though, strangely, not at the Orchard.

With that said, I'm always kind of tickled when I'm proven a liar.

So now, at twilight at the end of a fairly busy day I'm pleased to be enjoying a glass of Chianti, courtesy of the owner of Enzo, the pizza/wine bar that is the scene of so many of the blog posts I've written over the last few months.

The Sun is just getting done with setting - people wander by on Congress Street in couples, stopping to look in and watch me as I look out.

Recursive observation.

I helped the owner with a new device today and am pleased to report that I figured out a fairly esoteric mail problem for him.

So it was interesting to stop by and chat about their continuing router problem. Hopefully I helped and the result, for good or ill, is that I got a piece of pizza, salad, San Pellegrino water and the Chianti for free.

Sometimes just being a part of the mix - as opposed to observing from my usual catalytic point of view - is a lot of fun and worth the effort it takes.

Sometimes.


-- Post From My iPad

Transition States and Activation Energy

I helped someone set up a blog today - it was really fun to see that person see their work - even only a few words and a blurry pic shot with the iSight camera on board the iMac.

Like several people I know I spend a lot of time as a catalyst, allowing events and actions to happen but not being changed myself.

Well, maybe not totally - you can't stand around happy people too long without having your soul expanded in some way.

Strangely, the opposite is not always true - hanging around sad people won't always shrink your spirit - our natural drive is to be happy in some way and we'll find a way to do it.

I think that's why there were survivors of the Jonestown Massacre.

There are times when my sadness gets to be so great that if I had a gun and thought I could stand the noise I'd blow my brains out. But since guns are generally a very noisy proposition and I don't have any brains anyway I usually just bull my way through to the other side.

Besides which catalysts are an important part of the world and fulfill themselves by being the cause but not being a part of.

I guess that's just how it is.


-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

It Takes a Lot of Brass

Celebratory mood - just watched, live online, the annnouncing of scores at the Drum Corps International World Championships, from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indiannapolis. My old corps, the Blue Devils of Concord, California won their 14th world title with a convinving score of 98.90.

So here I am at Boda, having a real drink (and some peanuts) to celebrate.

From far back in my school career, high school in the 70's, actually, drum corps has been one of my measures of excellence in the performing arts.

Not in terms of content - I love to listen to a good jazz quartet (or a tango one), a symphony, a string quartet playing one of the Bartoks, modern dance by Wideman or Graham - any creative endeavor that leaves the soulnjust a little (or a lot) bigger than before.

But drum corps?

Like Cirque du Soleil (my other exemplar) it uses sound and movement to connect with the audience at a gut level, a breatheless "Oh My GOD" evocation of surprise, emotion and joy.

My biggest moment came at the end of my finals performance in August of 1977 (there's a PBS closeup of me to prove it). We finished the last note of "Rocky" - this WAS 1977, after all - and my horn came down, my eyes snapped up to see almost 40,000 people jump up to applaud.

Actually, they were screaming their fool heads off.

... and that rush, that sense of pride and connection - or affect - was what I wanted my students to feel in my public school teaching - that kind of performance and drive.

Christ, no wonder I got fired.

So tonight is a strange night, a kind of musical-magical demarcator that marks the line between Summer and Autumn. A cool, moist wind is blowing down Congress Street. I feel the end of one adventure, the start of another, rebirth by means of a quiet death.

When I was Equipment Manager during the 80's this was the day I packed everything up, checked in uniforms and horns, flags and drums, secured and locked the truck for the last time, handed my keys over to Mike Moxley, our manager, and got dropped at the airport to fly East to Maine, while the busses, now full of just kids wanting to get home to work or college or just a soft bed and home-cooked food, they all headed West.

And so this strange magic returns to my life again thanks to a short broadcast on a website. I'm connected and I'm seperated and I'm a very, very proud and lucky person tonight.

Perhaps every night.



-- Post From My iPad

Location:State St,Portland,United States

Dancing With Lawrence the Eagle

Spent most of my afternoon at the Gray Animal Refuge Pow Wow - Honor the Animals.

Haven't been out to a pow wow in well over a year. My ribbon shirt and belt, which is most all the regalia I wear, were still on their hangers from the move to my current apartment, my dance staff still leaning on the wall behind the bathroom door.

The tech staff had a meeting at the Orchard today, mostly policy updates and best practices. I learned a lot. Oh, and donuts too.

So I headed up directly after, a 30-minute or so drive.

Unlike other pow wows I've been to this one did not let dancers in for free. It was being held in the animal park and so admission was controlled by the staff. I got the impression that a lot of events were held there and that we were just part of a continuing marketing stream rather than a unique happening.

I'll have to go back when it's just a park; I'm sure it's a really great facility - there just was not time to enjoy it for it's own merits.

There were three drums in the arbor, one local, another from Northern Maine and the third from out of state. I immediately started running into friends I'd not seen in a year and felt welcome immediately.

I never really learned fancy dancing when I was living back home - mostly I'm what's known as a men's straight dancer, tall with a dignified step, an elder by bearing, and now, by years.

Or so I thought - seems I was the only really middle-aged man in the Grand Entrance. All the others were much older.

So I wonder where all the young bucks were. Imteresting.

Our most interesting participant was the resident Bald Eagle, one Lawrence, by name.

I'd only seen pictures. Today I got a chance to see an eagle up close and very, VERY personal as I was standing in the entryway when he was brought in.

Instructions were specific. We stayed still and did not move, especially dancers with bustles and large feathered tops since those could be mistaken for small animals.

There have been incidents of dancers being mistaken for small animals and the bird, eagle-eyed though he was, had an aspect that made you think he was thinking how you would go with ketchup.

A very large bird, a top-of-the-food-chain raptor, a descendant of velociraptor, a killing machine who could perch on the end of my outstretched arm and easily, gracefully take my nose cleanly off my face in one lightening lunge.

For those sensitive to such things it was clear we were NOT at the top of the food chain.

For those not so sensitive, Lawrence was just something to photograph, a thing that was there to be observed and delighted over, respected even - but something not part of the immediate world.

Watching people watch the world, not as active participants but behind emotional glass, looking at it, snapping pics and then going on their way back to their own insulated pocket universe - it was maddening

I'm surprised at the vehemance of my reaction, but it's a very real thing.

For example, you should not take pics during the first three dances of a pow wow - the Grand Entrance, the Flag Song and the Veteran's Honor Song. These are considered real ceremonies and not just excuses to show off the singing talent of the local high school junior All-State soprano.

Still, today despite numerous announcements, there were still people taking pics as we went around. I had to walk up to the rope and tell them - we were past asking - to not take them.

I hate to admit how satisfying it was to do it. But it was satisfying.

Respect. Connection. Not nessecarily in that order.




-- Post From My iPad

Tango de Nuestro Adios

I have no words for "goodbye".

There is no way to admit

That you no longer will

Be part of me.

Just by you

Being you

I will be more myself.

Just to keep you

In my heart

When you're a continent away

Will shake the snowy globe

Of memory.

The old dance of magic,

Of joy,

And love,

Will call me to the music,

Spin my tired soul across the floor,

School me, once again,

In listening with my soul unfettered,

Free to sing and dance

The music others often hear better than I,

The lovely, graceful song of my own heart.

-- Post From My iPad

Just What the Doctor Ordered

Sitting in the sidewalk part of Boda, just down from my apartment, just across from the statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in the Square that bears his name.

An Italian cream soda ... Thai roasted peanuts ... all to the dulcet accompaniment of drunken lunatics in the park across the street at the very feet of Henry's statue.

I'm playing hooky from working on orchestrating the new tango. The piece makes a huge amount of sense, it has a drama and logic throughout that I've been looking for for a long time.

I'm very proud of it - though I suppose I should not be surprised that it's taking so much energy to accomplish.

Another cause for celebration is my arrival as a "triageur" (my word, I've no idea if it really exists in French) for small .mp3 music players at the Orchard. People book appointments and I'm starting to work with them to diagnose, replace or repair them. The music players, that is.

I thought I would hate it - turns out I very much underestimated the experience, and my capacity to understand and accomplish it. It's really a lot of fun.

Of course, right now we're talking about music players - later on this is going to graduate to people's phones, the high-tech flagships of the Orchard - and their contacts, calendars and other personal info. I've seen first-hand how people's carelessness and sheer bone-headed technological stupidity can cause so much trouble.

My God, this cream soda is scrummy!!

The peanuts rock too.

Today's biggest job was helping a person set up (one of several) business email accounts on an iPad - the bane of our explanatory careers, since private services are notoriously finicky - it took an hour, I had to try it on a house computer and, ultimately, my own iPad (with a manager's permission) ...

.... and damn me if I didn't get it to work!

I know it's a small thing, but so many of the things I try to do - lose weight, dance more effectively, write more passionately, live more constructively - all take so long to bear fruit.

It means a lot to bash at something full bore for an hour or more, at the drop of a hat, almost, and have it come out right.

So now I'll go home and sleep the sleep of the just.

Just grateful to be alive.


-- Post From My iPad

Location:Congress St,Portland,United States

Just off the boat

Another Saturday night on the water after another Saturday afternoon in the Orchard ...

... oh, and with a short nap and break in between.

I have several pices in my head, all crowding up for attention, crying "Pick me! Pick me!". The original plan for waking up from the nap was to start blocking out new music - well, actuall I would have been grateful just to get some rough thoughts down.

Strangely I couldn't hear any one thought clearly because they were all so be-damned noisy. I knew I could work them out in time - I was ennervated ( I love that word) from the heat.

(For rxample, it was 80° when I walked to the ferry terminal at 9:10 - it's 78º now, two hours later).

The night was clear on the water. The "moonlight cruise" goes from Portland to Long Island and thence to both sides of Great Diamond. The stars gave themselves up, slowly, teasingly, as my eyes grew used to the dark.

At Diamond Cove the last dinner/wedding party crowds - and I do mean crowds - took over the front of the boat, bringing their own bottles of wine and their own air of obnoxious alcoholic good cheer.

The vinous bonhomie forced me to the very stern of the bridge to watch the wake boil up from underfoot.

During this I was joined (at a discreet distance) by a woman armed with a practical backpack and a hoodie. After a few minutes of silent regard we struck up a coversation.

Turns out she used to be a middle school music teacher too. She'd left because she couldn't be the kind of music teacher - hell, musician - that she really was while working in public schools. Too many requests for Christmas concerts that were really sing-alongs.

We compared notes and authenticated each other's view of reality. It was nice.

How very strange to leave in one cloud of confusion and return with a sense of certainty about what one is really about.

Not so much a voyage of discovery as a voyage of confirmation.

How avante garde!


-- Post From My iPad

Strike!

MobileMe gallery is here.

Well. The last time I went bowling, a good decade.5 ago, I tore up my rotator cuff in my right shoulder and carried that tension for almost 10 years (or a decade.0).

Of course, dating a dedicated angry dancer goddess didn't help with the tension level either ....

Still, I do enjoy the watching the physics of the game - in much the same way I like to watch curling in the Olympics (which, of course, is the only time you ever see it).

Out at the Farmer's Market today. The morning started off rainy and I've been meaning to continue my practice of sleeping on my days off, sleeping whenever my body said "sleep, sleep NOW!"

.... and it might actually have played out that way had I not seen a small flyer on the cheese monger's shelf, a flyer advertising the opening of Bayside Bowl, Portland's latest venture into community building and seer-sucker shirts.

Noon was the advertised time. The Time/Temperature building sign read 12:02 when I locked my bike up - and the postman joined me in knocking on the door. No answer. Ben Franklin left on his rounds, I walked around to try the back of the building.

Nothing.

It was 12:12 before I thought to pull the door again, which opened and let me into the tomb-quiet interior.

If you look at the gallery (linked here) you can see it's a very open, expansive place, very much a part of the new approach such places take these days. It's being pegged as a major part of the recovery of the Bayside area - especially since Maine Health bailed out on their new headquarters building.

It's now slightly after 2:15 - in these two hours this place has suddenly started jumping. games are being played on 5 of the 12 lanes, there are a lot of suits in the band area (they had a small ceremony acknowledging the Alfond money that helped get it all started), good Afro=pop music is on the stereo.

For myself, my single game was fun. I scored .... some .... points and quit before my arm began to feel any strain. Got two strikes, two gutter balls - so I guess I can call this even.

It is taking a risk, putting such a high-profile enterprise into what is admittedly a sketchy part of the town. Chatting with a younger friend confirmed some of the issues: it's just slightly too far to drive to, walking (at least back to 645 Congress) at 1 in the morning might be even more risky (we did have one flat-out pedestrian assault-murder downtown in Monument Square a month or so ago, very shocking).

Still, it's good to have faith that things can evolve into new directions, even sketchy neighborhoods.

I'll have to come back (when I've slept more) and see what it's like - and I actually did fairly well while bowling.

Who knew?

Taking the Starlight Ferry

MobileMe gallery is here,

You can either have special, "perfect" nights once in a blue moon - some people, only once in a lifetime - or you can live your life so that almost every evening can be perfect, at least in some way.

I suppose it can be safely stated that having practically every night be some kind of perfect can devalue the experiences that make them perfect ... I disagree.

One can have a greater perspective that allows a clear distinction of the relative value of how precious certain things can be.

Some people, indeed, most of the folks I know, either through the Orchard or tango, seem to see things that way - like most everyone. This is one of the things that make me love my job and tango so very much.

Joy and wonder never seem to be taken for granted. I'm very lucky to have such friends and acquaintances.

Which means, I think, that we all seem to have reservoirs of darksness within us, a counterweight of sadness that bouys up the reality of joy. There is nothing maudlin or depressive about this, it's just the way the universe works.

I'm writing this at the Wine Bar, having just got back from a quiet, lovely ferry trip out to Peaks Island. Fairly quiet on the way out we were joined for the return trip by what I think was a wedding party, boisterous, over- dressed and talkative.

I see the contrast between quiet and robust voices, darkness between the lights of the docks, the diesel smell of the boat engines and the rich velvet of the star- specked sky.

The night was perfect. If you play your cards right then every night can be something like this. I prefer to see things more this way than being "realistic" - if we really can choose our reality then I choose this one.
-- Post From My iPad

Where ever it is you go, there you are ...

One of my friends tells me I am "cursed with vision".

Not "visions".

Vision.

I have always - seemed to always - have faced the world as one of Pearl Buck's creative souls - "A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive" - do a search and look it up, if you're a new friend of mine I'll have inflicted it on you already ...

... anyway ...

... what this means, in the practical sense, is that any new idea comes to me in intense, dizzying clarity ... my intuition "sees" to the end of anything, whether a musical idea or a process for solving a problem.

This leads to one of the greastest professional dangers - and satisfactions - of my job at the Orchard.

Sometimes people come to me with problems during their training sessions, problems that I can see a solution and structure for, see it immediately.

My pride comes in setting my own process aside and focussing all my energy on helping my client find their own solution and structure - if I point out the dots then they can connect them in their own way.

Give someone a thought and they think for a minute - show them how to think and they'll never be stupid again.

Well, in theory, anyway.

So, for my own poor self, I have to accept where I am, going from there to the destination I see so clearly ...

.... Wherever that turns out to be, of course ...


-- Post From My iPad

Only Slightly Uphill

We're in the final stages of prep for the new communication device. I'm also in the process of finishing a new birthday tango. Once it's been presented I can't wait to post the recording.

The work I'm doing with Logic Pro is paying off. Instruments are becoming more balanced and the sound of the mix is more focussed.

So much so that I'm coming to realize just how badly - or, more accurately, how much more room for expression I left - I played in the parts.

Something like that.

There's a lot of drama in this piece - for the first time I think it has a real balance of drama, danceability and musicianship. It's a question of getting to a point where "what" I write is overshadowing "how" I write.

Which means, amongst other things, that there's a much greater chance that any false move will throw the damned thing off, rather like a fly landing on the end of a tightrope walker's pole - just enough to throw the whole thing into the drink.

The higher you reach the easier a small thing can mess you up.

Frankly, I love it.

-- Post From My iPad

Many waters cannot drown love

Fortunately there are still a lot of mysteries in my life - most of them concern the reasons for my own behaviour in situations that other adults navigate through like ducks on a pond.

From my own poor point of view most of them come from my innate limitations in seeing and understanding what is directly in front of my nose.

Case in point - we are really not supposed to use our personal tech on the floor of the Orchard unless specifically authorized to do so. I admit to being called out on it twice already so I promised the Store - by promising myself - that I would not do so again unless a real need arose...

... And that happened today.

A client asked for a trainer that either knew how to use sign language or had very clear handwriting - she was profoundly deaf and had very little intelligable speech.

But ye gods and little fishes did she have a wonderful smile in that grey-haired head.

I know, amongst many things I know I should know, that I should know how to sign. One of my colleagues - currently on vacation, of course - is also profoundly deaf; an interpeter is hired for him during storewide meetings and other functions.

But he wasn't there today and I was on my own.

Or, actually, I wasn't. It may be a truism but it really does take two to make a conversation and my client was willing to put up with my limitations in order to learn her computer.

Well, it takes two and one should have an iPad with Dragon Dictation loaded on it.

I was able to show her what to do by gesture, dictate the instructions into the iPad, email it to myself and then print it out so we could then write clarifications on it.

Strangely her handwriting was almost as bad as mine.

Still, we managed it. She learned the tasks she needed and, more importantly, learned why it worked the way it did, which meant she could then advance her work at home.

I suppose I tried to vocalize during the first ten minutes. After that, with the exception of doing the dictation I was silent for almost 40 minutes.

We parted with a warm handshake. I didn't use my voice until I got Back Of House.

Suddenly the intensity of concentration broke and tears came. Not in a choking flood, which is how I usually release intense emotion but in a quiet mistiness, a sense of overflowing feeling.

Now that I think of it I sometimes get the same feeling when dancing tango or when listening to a new piece of music I've written.

Connecting with people is important and, at least for me, is as natural a part of my life as swimming is for a fish - it's just a natural part of my environment ...

... except, of course, when it's not, and I am barely human.

But that is another tale for another evening.

-- Post From My iPad

no aumente el puente - baje el río

...and there we are, done with another birthday piece. I'm not quite ready to release it, it's not done yet.

The piano sketch seems to go over really well with people whose ears I trust - I just wonder if I have the skill to make it work when scored for our little orchestra.

Each member brings a rich, unique personality to the group, musically and personally. The group itself has a delightful sound. I'm just not sure that they are the right color for the piece.

This is rather a strange place in which to find myself - and I am looking for myself in the middle of all this.

You see, over the last couple of years I made it a point to put a sort of filter on my musical imagination, to try to hear sounds in my head as expressed by our little group. Suddenly, for whatever reason, that does not seem to be the case and it's very surprising.

So NOW what do I do?

Do I leave it in pure digital form, maybe bring out the richness of the lines, give up trying to make it sound like real instruments and just let it fly?

Do I try to solve the inner voice issues and voicing challenges and prep it for our little group?

Or do I take both roads and create two versions? I'd like to present the thing, share it with our community - or at least those who care enough to listen - correction, who care enough about ME to listen?

No, not really - if I did this to really impress people I'd have given it up years ago. Far easier to make up a fake Nobel prize for Literature - and more effective.

Looks like two versions.

Damn.


-- Post From My iPad

Fuck 'em If They Can't Take A Joke

No point in trying to catch up with every event and feeling since my last post. A lot has happened.

A lot is always happening

Big event - the annual Old Port Festival. Last year I had to work, this year my strange little schedule made it possible to attend.

Our quarterly meeting and my willingness to help open the store kept me from being a part of the parade. I tended to slide in late anyway, pick a loose-fitting pair of trousers from the can and a beat-up drum then beat the daylights out of it infront of hundreds of people which seemed like thousands.

There was an al-fresco cafe set up in frnot of the Regency Hotel, the old Armory. I liked the burger, though the service was very slow.

A big crowd ... People everywhere you turned. Usually I can depend on my cloak of indifferent invisibility to observe people.

Sadly I also indulged in my annual bag of kettle corn, which meant I wasn't really thinking straight.

There was one booth by Bard coffee, crowned with a huge sign asking "what kind of person are you...good or bad? Take a simple quiz to find out".

I admit I wanted to ignore it and spend my energy watching the Top 40 stage and critiquing the performer but the ancient lure of a theological argument woke up brain synapses dormant since my undergrad days.

So I chatted up the two young men.

The questions?

1 - have you ever told a lie, no matter how small?

2 - what do you call someone who tells a lie?

3 - have you ever stolen something, no matter how small?

4 - what do you call someone who steals something?

So now that you have admitted to being a liar and a thief you are asked to consider what happens to such folks and if you are prepared to be judged.

Since I was under the influence of kettlecorn I admit I missed the obvious comeback: If I am a father whose child is starving and I steal a loaf of bread, saving my child and fully taking the fall, then what am I now?

It all comes down to context. The larger your ability to see the inter-connected picture then the more good you can do. I think pushing the limits of who and how we are makes us more useful, a greater blessing to the world.

And it hit me that this was the face of pure evil in the world.

This willingness, this need to have things be purely black abd white, the desire to have the entire world be reduced to one neck so it could be slit ... whether for theological reasons or to support an abusive relationship ... this denial of the fundamental inter-connectedness of us all, what an former girlfriend and I called the "right game" (which she played incomparably well) ...

... all of it is a source of blisteringly destructive action.

After I had said goodbye I walked by the Vietnamese American assiciation of Maine, doing a Dragon Dance in the street.

It was giggling, delerious fun.

People would run up to the front of the dragon, holding out food and jumping back as it snapped it up.

.... and it struck me, forcefully, in the middle of my dodging the dragon and trying not to trip over a child who was shrieking with delight, that if my very-earnest friends got their way than all of this would be wiped from the earth, as surely as the Taliban blew the statue of Bhuddha to flinders.

...I heard them in the voices answering me when I was working a phone bank for the Gay Marriage referendum.

...I heard them in the voice of a waitress refusing to serve me a slice of the apple pie on the shelf of a truckstop cafe in Montanna in the middle of a Blue Devils performance tour.

As Thomas Jefferson said "I have sworn upon the altar of Almighty God eternal vigilence against every form of tyranny over the mind of Man".

So now what do I do?

What CAN I do except try to be the best person I know how to be and try tolisten and love everyone around me .... Even the one who try to trap me in a web of questions.

I think it will take more than a web of pointless words to catch a truly honest dragon.


-- Post From My iPad

Creative afterglow

Well, I've finished another piece. A birthday piece for my friend Adira who is a talented and expressive dancer. This is the first independant piece (the score for Inuk does not count) that I've written in quite a while. Usually I have to take the needs of my local musicians into account. This seems a lot easier to think about and much harder to execute.

Adira seemed to like it a lot. I hope it gives her something to work with in terms of dancing.

Now there's another birthday coming up soon and I have to get organized to sit down and get to work.

Went for a long walk after taking Adira to dinner to listen to the piece (thank-you iPad). We had a lot of rain this afternoon, so I'm told. People would come into the Orchard from different locations in various levels of dampness.

Some had encountered no rain at all. Others were recounting tales of blistering, though short, downpours. We could track the storn cells on our computers but the day was so busy we kind of lost track.

As usual there were a dozen accurate stories. We just took them where they were.




-- Post From My iPad

Life In The Time Of 2/4

Danger. Sugar crash.

I'm diabetic and have to worry a lot about balancing my activities with my blood sugar. Most of the time It's too high, so having moments, like now , when I am shaky and unfocussed (well, more than usual) is a bit of a challenge.

I should leave int he typing werroes to show how inacurate I am until the sugars derom the pizza and glass of wine I've ordered kick in to smooth out my relationship wipth relaity. Someday I'm going to, under controlled conditions, ride this out tot the very edge og passing out, may e beyond it, just to see ehatit's like.

It's a funny weakness, a kimd of craving shakiness inmy physical core. My fingers tremble, I spill olive oil from my pizza on my nice white trousers (damn!).

I've started working on a mew birthday piece for another friend. It seems like a new style for me, more "song" than the usual sympgonic approach I take. I like it but am kind of stuck for a rwxt for my firend (who is a remarkable singer ) to use.

I had one by Garcia Lorca but it just does not fit.

Not sure if it's going to be a tango or not. It will work like one, hopefully danceable.

Now working on a bottle of San Pellegrino - I feel secure enough ( and my typing seems to have improved enough) so that I can worry about hydrating rather than passing out.

OK - one of my colleagues from the Orchard walked ina nd we're going to talk politics. More fun.



-- Post From My iPad

Seventy-Five degrees in the shade an hour into the full moon

Well, actually it's not a full moon but it might as well be, the streets are so active and mad.

This is the first really warm evening we've had this Spring. I don't know quite what to do. There is a new piece waiting on my computer, waiting for me to thin it out and restructure the second section ...

... no, strike that. There is a second section waiting to be written. As usual I've got too many ideas to work with, the road has too many forks, twists and turns in it.

In it's own way this not a bad state of affairs. It only becomes a problem when you think that any piece works best when the seams don't show - maybe on a nicely worn pair of silk stockings, but not much else.

It's a new kind of piece for me and a good challenge.

Maybe if I play my cards right I'll actually manage to meet it.


-- Post From My iPad

Not sure What To Call This

Tuesday - something of a Friday for any normal person, though I must admit I gave up any pretense of being a normal person some time ago.

So now I'll talk about roller derby.

Saturday was an expressive evening, starting with mayhem and finishing with Deering's Oaks and quiet contemplation.

... oh, and lasgana.

Maine Roller Derby has two teams - the Port Authority and the Calamity Janes, the latter being on the court Saturday. Its members are athletic, aggressive women of all sizes and conditions. I had one friend on the team last year, a person doing her psychiatric residency at McGeachy Hall at Maine Medical - she was a graceful tango dancer and a formidable blocker on the Janes.

I can draw a shaky line between this group and the burlesque revival in town. You have to accept them on their own terms, which is rather fun.

So here they were in their skates and temporary tats, the team giving a lot of promotional consideration to the Hallowed Ground Tattoo Parlor.

The Expo, home to the Portland Red Claws semi-pro basketball team, was filled with a raring, roaring crowd; families, yuppies, moon-eyed poets, everyone shouting, cheering and stomping for "their girls".

Come to think of it their were a lot of pre-teen girls watching and screeeeaaammming their heads off.

God, it was magnificent.

The game was flat-track roller derby, contested inside an oval marked in tape on the wooden Expo floor.

Each team had five blockers, one jammer wearing a star on her helmet. The two sets of blockers started as a pack, the jammers following two seconds later.

Jammers had to skate through the entire pack. The one who got through first controlled the jam, having to then lap the entire pack again. After that she got one point for each member of the opposing team she passed. Followed by a mass of eagle-eyed judges she kept passing until two minutes elapsed.

And that, sports fans, was that.

Blockers impede the opposing jammer, help their own. It can get a little hectic, it can get a little personal. Pretty much any kind of limited mayhem is tolerated, except anything that might cause a push in the back. There were a lot of falls, some spectacular, but none face-first into the floor, which could have been potentially deadly.

Medical support was standing by. Fortunately it wasn't needed.

A sin bin was against the wall. That WAS needed.

There was a wonderful energy in the joint. The team members all had amazing personas, bad-girl identities stolen in whole cloth from a 50's women's prison movie. They seemed to be letting their hair down by putting it up in their helmets.

Perhaps it was an act - guys can act badass and you believe them and they seem like jerks.

Women can pull it off, you just accept that their personalities can encompass both behaviors.

Or, maybe more accurately my view of women can allow it. No, on second thought I think I'd do better to give them full credit for it - I'm happy to stand and watch the whole thing, my jaw hanging slacker than the udder of a Guernsey cow.

... and then go walk in the park and look at the light.

Sue me.


-- Post From My iPad

I Walked Out Into the Deepening Twilight

I walked out into the deepening twilight, amazed at the Spring warmth. The buildings around me were tall boxes etched into a deep blue sky, as if wrapped in dark, rich velvet, gently lined with the faintest wash of fading rose.

The sidewalk was mine. Far ahead a panhandler was leaning against my apartment house, far enough past the door to pose no threat to my solitary presence. As always I was alone with my thoughts, wrapped in my own velvet cloak, woven of loneliness, satisfaction, curiosity and passion ...

**************************************

I walked out into the deepening twilight then stopped short - when did that new sandwich shop open? Look, there's a crowd of folks in shorts, looks like a damned running club, all loud voices and baseball caps.

I bet they've been feeding on grass for a year.

The shop windows pour light onto the street, its doors pour people.

Shouts of "woo!", "yo" and "cell me" - that bizarre little pinky/thumb waggy motion by the ear.

The crowd breaks up with the easy joviality born of common sweat and satisfaction of common achievement. I wonder why I don't run more, moving more briskly down the street away from the noise ...

**************************************

I walked out into the deepening twilight and had to dance. No idea where the music was coming from, if it was even really hitting my eardrums or was all mental.

Maybe if you leaned up against my skull really closely you could pick it up and join in ....

**************************************

I walked out into the deepening twilight, saw the sky, slowed my steps.

There is a little patio just before my apartment house; it's bound, chest high, by a fence of wrought-iron pickets, remarkable work.

I stopped to lean on it, to look at the sky, at the final act of the end of the day. In my head I knew there was music to be written, photos to upload, laundry to wash, studying to do.

The grace of quiet, the flow of action; contemplation and participation - the balance seems to come more naturally these days. Perhaps I am getting the hang of living a life based not on how hurt or sad I am but on how well I fit into the world around me.

**************************************

Twilight is the moment celebrating light and dark moving in paralell, dancing together. You only really know something is balanced by watching it move, first one side then the other, giving and taking until the next change comes.

Now I have work to do.


-- Post From My iPad

The Best Bits of Fredrick Law Olmstead

Busy day.

Early to work, home to add cheese to the "chicken whatever" in the crockpot, off to roller derby (and THAT'S a whole post right there ...), visiting the W's and getting tossed a piece of homemade lasagna, then home to continue working on E's Pecha Kucha project ... finally came to some kind of "resolution" (which is very different from being "finished") ....

...and I guess I should not complain. I can remember times that were much less demanding and much more upsetting.

So here I am at Enzo on a Saturday night, which I swore I would avoid ... the best distraction can also serve as the best inspiration.

We are definitely in the arms of a charming stretch of Spring weather. The walk up from the Expo took through Deering Oaks - or Deering's Oaks, to use the traditional posessive, which no one does, except me, of course.

The light in the park, just after twilight, with rich clouds piled in the sky and people walking dogs - and each other - made for an easy change from the excitement and energy of the Roller Derby to the introspection of the evening.

At some point I'm going to start a new piece but I'm not sure what it's going to be like. It's time I began to move out of the strictures that writing for TML imposes ... and how that's going to work is somewhat beyond me.

I have always loved the light through early leaves. There is something magical and reachable about it, like a song I can just sense but not quite hear. Walking through the park, even one with a major street running through it, connects me with the parks and neighborhoods of my childhood, my late-night ramblings to the Rose Garden and its quiet, ethereal beauty.

The Hidden Garden.

Again, it's the space that exists in the transitions, going from place to place, time to time or season to season. An energy that grows from growth.

... or that comes from a glass and a half of wine.

So there. Perhaps Fredrick Law Olmstead had that in mind when he designed the park.

Whatever it is, it seems to work.

-- Post From My iPad

Your Pecha Kucha is Showing

...Or, "What Have I Gone And Done Now?!"

A twenty-first century still life - iPad, beer,candle and a slice of really good pizza. Ambulance roars by in one direction - fire engine in the other.

My friend E met me at Boda to share a pot of tea and talk about the upcoming Pecha Kucha, or "creative conversation" and her part in it.

You see our dear mutual friend Charles has arranged a showing of the documentary "Si Sos Brujo" at One Longfellow Square. The films tells the story of the recovery of knowledge of the great classical performance style of tango, rather like Preservation Hall gives the great old jazzers a place to share the classic old style of New Orleans Jazz.

Well, E is hosting the upcoming Pecha Kucha and since they had an open slot she filled it with what, in effect, will be a six minute commercial for the showing.

....and what, you ask, is my part in this? Well, my job is to mine both my collection of pics and the actual DVD of the movie to find evocative images that will help E tell both the story of our little tango community and flack for the flick.

At some point - and this is E's idea - I should do a presentation of my music, particularly the tango slide shows that I put together using Keynote. Personally I can't see how they would fit into the format these things usually follow - but it wouldn't be the first time I couldn't see an obvious path to personal expression.

Oh boy - another slice of pizza - cauliflower and mushroom. Wow - right out of the oven. Maybe adding some peppers will help cool it down.

Maybe not.

The presentation of the movie will end with a Skype video conversation with the head of the tango schoolin the film and his wife, who is the film maker, both in Buenos Aires.

And I have to tech it. This gets more and more entertaining every day.

So here we go again, being useful behind the scenes.


-- Post From My iPad

Two Kinds Of Light

I have to write about two kinds of light.

Two kinds of day. Two places to be.

The birthday tango is finally done. The parts are edited and links sent to the players. I like the piece and maybe it's a reflection of my own striking inadequacies as a dancer but I like it.

It's been said, by people whose opinions I've been entirely foolish to respect, that all my taste is in my mouth. It's a fair cop.

Still, if I have spend my life in a prison cell decorated entirely with wallpaper of my own device then at least it's a pattern I can live with.

Yesterday and today have been dramatic - both in themselves and between each other.

The Farmer's Market, walking along the bay, looking in the Old Port shops for a new shoulder bag - all were a study in the clarity and warmth of Spring in New England.

I spent the late afternoon at my friend EH's house. A couple years ago I helped Precocious Daughter #2 record a Father's Day greeting on my laptop, arranging it in GarageBand.

So answering a complex and puzzling phone message from this 8-year-old wonder led me over with my recording equipment. We set up in the front yard, top of the steps, where she recorded a new message for Mother's Day.

The brightness of the day - and the company - made it a very special time.

Also, that evening I got to see my friend Torrey's movie, "Fumble". More on that later but for now, it was really good.

Which leads us to today's strange day. Rain-splashed, I got in my car to head to work, for a day that was both basic and very full of interest and humor.


So getting out of work to the accompaniment of a bright burst of sunlight, much like yesterday's, was a joy.

Met a friend for sushi. In the hour it took to get to The King Of the Roll the sky cloaked itself in grey, trimmed in black; wind erupted to hurl leaves down the gutters.

The older gambrels across the street from my new digs were etched against the sky, lights in the windows glowing feeble and lonely.

I liked it.

I liked both of these days, they spoke to both sides of who I am.

Perfectly satisfied, fed and enthralled with either light and warmth or shadow and coolness - I am most engaged by the transition from one to the other.

So, for now I will stop and wait to see what I'm given to work with next.


-- Post From My iPad

Circles Surrounding the Square

Having a cup of coffee at Mousse, on the Square. It's warm, what my British friends would cal "deliciously warm" - call it "upper 60's".

The Farmer's Market has returned to the Square - it started up again on May Day down in the Oaks; today is the first Wednesday for it.

Mostly flowers and small bags of green spices. No real food yet, most is trucked in, but at least there's a start.

Sitting here - they only got the outside chairs deployed just now, I think it's a little too cool in the shade, but I'd be willing to take the chance - I can watch people come out of buildings, out of the parking garage, come by, stop, look at the assembled vendors then smile - secretly or all over the Square.

Ladies in floppy hats, men in khaki pants and blue shirts. A day nursery goes by, all the children linked by a long rope full of looped handholds. People look at the blooming hangers of fuschia and red flowers ( don't ask ME what the damned things are called - if it has colors it's a flower ...) and drink in the colors like water to people parched in the desert.

Cinco de Mayo - don't even get me started on that.

So it's a nice day out. Sometimes just looking at it - accompanied by a cup of strong coffee - is enough.


-- Post From My iPad

Location:Monument Square,Portland,United States

My Town Has A Library That Changes Color

It has been a long, involved, not really average day.

I should be editing my birthday tango, gearing up for the next piece. I wish I could write about all the extraordinary people I work with - it's not really professional, and, frankly, there are just too damned many of them.

Even the people I see every day seem to blossom on occasion: they tell a joke or answer a question - I have a lot of questions - or just have an interesting way of peeling an orange.

So here, at the end, I'm finishing up this post, having walked back from Bard Coffee, stopping at Enzo to chat and generally enjoying a world full of interesting people.


So there is the redone façade of the Portland Library, glowing bright in Monument square. Very lovely, very dramatic and aliteral beacon of literacy in the center of the town.



-- Post From My iPad

Not All Places Are In Pieces

My first dessert of the season in Monument Square, at David's.

I think my waiter - who called me "dear" when I was signing in - is disappointed that I'm not ordering a more expansive dinner - but I'm on rather a budget (who's not, these days?) so coffee and a dessert it is.

Almost 7:30 and still almost 70º out. People are out and about in the Square. Some folks, with a guitar, are grouped on the Monument base, a pretty girl in a flowered dress sits pensively, on the side.

The cheesecake is rich, lemon-laced. The kind of dessert that seems light in flavor and texture - but can overwhelm your mouth if the wrong sized bite is taken.

The sunset paints the sides of the buildings. The white stucco of the library glows, a leftover coal of the day's fire.

I have a tango to edit - the birthday piece. It's ready to go, I've left it fallow for a few days, not even listened to the test performance file. It's rather like this cheesecake: too much of a bite will confuse you.

So I should go to see my Shakespeare friends - instead I'm off to Geno's to watch a really bad movie and listen to people make fun of it.

The cracker that cleanses the palate of my brain from the table of rich dishes that was "Inuk and the Sun".


Goodness. THERE'S a thought!


-- Post From My iPad

The One Who Can Be Many Places At Once

....which for those of you with a particularly genre-centric mindset is another term for the Kwisatz Haderach.

Hope I cleared THAT up.

Writing from above the Market House - using the two-fingered technique that seems to work best for me.

It is dramatically different than the last time I was here - then Monument square was draped in snowy blankets - now it's bright, sunny, almost warm (if you ignore the sea breeze).




Last week I drove to Wells to visit an Indian store on route One. It's been there for what seems like generations,filled with that strange, evocative air that old stores full of strange objects can generate.

I was buying gifts - mostly $1 arrowheads and other trinkets - for the Inook cast. The day was bright, sunny, somewhat cool. On the way down I noticed a railroad viaduct over a stream, on the right while southbound.

Made a note which I acted on by stopping to walk along the railroad track on my way back north.

Not sure which rail line it is - don't know of a passenger line (the only one being the Downeaster - and that runs through Old Orchard) in the area.




Still, I've been a sucker for trains and trainyards since childhood - blame my Uncle Louis Benge, who was a brakeman on the old Midland Valley line back home. It was fun to walk up to the big steel bridge, then along a right-of-way that had obviously once been a two-bed line and now only served one line, accompanied by snowmobiles.

The actual stone-arched viaduct was almost invisible from the tracks. I had to spot it by looking at the stream. My first thought was to film it from the safety of the tracks (assuming no trains came blasting through).

Looking at it closer - the flinty ballast of the trails, the thick granite chips that supported the built-up right-of-way - made me decide to gingerly pick my way down the slope to the stream.




It was a rewarding risk.

I suppose that now, a week later, the sprouting greenery, the soggy runoff plain it covered, all would be closer to an impassable mess, full of trippings and feet plunging into mud, ankle deep.

But a week ago we were just that much closer to the slumber of Winter and the growth had not awakened enough to impede me - much.

The water was moderately deep, moderately swift. There were trees fallen, either by weight of snow or movement of earth, into the water.

Don't get me wrong. I'm very glad the days are warmer and I need to work on my tan as much as anyone else - well, kinda anyway ....




But I do miss the way you see the bones of the land when they're laid bare by Winter. There's an austere beauty to it that is appealing. That and the anticipation of change.

So I got out safely, unscratched, one brand-new sneaker not so branded anymore. There are all sorts of little urban faux wildernesses all around here and I love them.


-- Post From My iPad