Sarasponda

Experts say how sound effects the brain. Dissonance annoys it. Concord sends it purring to the couch. Igor Stravinsky's 1913 debut of his Rite of Spring, a case in point. Anarchistic sonic structures plunged the hearers' brains into a vat of neural chaos, followed by rebellion in the park. Sirs' and madams' canes and elbows bloodied up the lawn.

Sound is more like touch than cool abstraction. Sound waves burrow into open ears, excite the neural pathways to the brain. Here ensues a politics of nature, conservative and liberal at odds. The brain abhors the new, stores wine in ancient skins, tames the shrew with slews of rules and regs.

The enemy of sameness is the muse. Her work implores the snoozy brain to reconsider fondness for the lounge. With stealthiness and cunning Venus mollifies the comfort seeking neurons which, relinquishing their guard, allow the unexpected birth of a new child.

Most of us are ravenous for quandry. This scares us if we've lived too long in sameness. Enter art, the zenith of cognition, the subtle blend of homeliness and dashing, the beautiful extravagance of focus, the tender recognition of the new.

Art. The gaudy stranger at the gate.

Ramses one

That's how it is. Everybody says they like creativity, but when the chips are down, it's three people.
-- Christopher Reynolds, musician-songwriter-teacher

Christopher is featured in today's Plain Dealer (circulation 356,286), an expansive piece about his creative work. As usual, a brush with Chris is a breath of authenticity. I remember meeting him 10+ years ago at a CD release party for a compilation we were on. Even then, his version of a small talk was something like 'what is the state of your soul?' -- garbed in cloth less static.

With Christopher we peer at truths through infrared lens until we see ourselves reflected back, vaingloriously weary, trumpeters of wisdom on the airless dune, but somehow not so lonely as before.

At 45 he's far too young to be so wise but age, like freedom, has no rule but honesty and neither one enjoys a backward slide. I told him once my favorite song of his replayed a childhood ride in a red truck with a favorite uncle -- or was it grandpa? I think I understand the joy I felt in that. It's like he says in the paper today, creation boils down to three, regardless of the madding crowd as Ramses II parades across the Nile:

Thou and I and wheels of expectation.

Touch-me-not reunion

Ideas swarm like bumblers.
Tiny gilded trumpets
glitter on the wind.
A dozen pair of human lights
strain their beams
into the lair of shiny ripe.
Michelangelo's unprecedented pleasure
finger perfect yearning
sprung to life.

Nuff said*

Leaving before we complete our mission would create a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East, a country with huge oil reserves that the terrorist network would be willing to use to extract economic pain from those of us who believe in freedom."
-- George Bush, at a GOP fundraiser in Lancaster, PA

*Mick left his extended comment list of why war in Iraq is wrong. Not sure if he's admonishing George Bush or this blogger, who posted the quote in disbelief ~ that a president who supposedly represents freedom can warp its meaning so completely. Regular readers of this blog read the 'Nuff said' in that context. The photo illustration of our oil addiction underlines this. Maybe I'll dispense with subtlety when it comes to the war in Iraq where the stakes are high and every vote against it counts. Thanks for posting your list, Mick.

Apparition

It's rude to rouse your lover in the street.
Better charm with virtue
lure the dazzled beast
into your ritual of blindness.
Some think we see the face behind the
politics of culture.
These would be the daftest of the batty.
I once assumed
the food of life is sight,
revelation steaming in a pot.
But ladles hung like rafters in my belly.
Stainless steel is useless.
From the fog
emerges madness
with a lantern in her hand.
Her eyes embolden you,
her chosen view.

Mr monday

Poor Carl -- there you are minding your own business = minding everybody else's -- and the web buttinskis exploit your exposé. Now you're the brunt of blogland. Says one blogboy of your report:

Honestly, it cheers me up every time I think about it, let alone watch it.

We've slumped to this, have we?

I'm working on a music video with a film artist. Music's what I know -- recording and live performance. So I'm asking old questions of new media. What gets left in, left out? Is everything artful in the right context? Can anything be compelling to the right audience? Composition, framing, texture, focus, perspective...

I watched 2 chinese students lipsync the BBoys. Saw the scientist dudes shoot off a couple hundred coke bottles. The bulldog riding a skateboard -- saw that too. Laughed. Admired. Here they get my last hurrah, there they go, into oblivion.

Is the measure of an art work the desire of humans to pay attention to it, stand in awe before it, wonder how another human could accomplish such a thing? Is the charm of non-art how superficially it grazes the skin of 7,942 bloggers for maybe 3.8 minutes?

I want to know what it feels like to step out of your footprint, turn to look, see it fill with strangers' sighs.

Portico

Have all the great songs already happened? Is today's songwriter mootly barking up a non-tree in a pantheon of lesser gods? We are a tribe of ubiquitous song. The digi-sphere loads us down with sound and should we listen for content... hmm...

Should we listen for content?

Maybe songs are evolving from containers of truth to parsecs of individuality with no pretensions of greatness. Hearers don't intend to be moved within so much as swept along on a trail of amorphous comet clusters, bathed in sonic light.

Visage

Sometimes truth yanks me skyward to its natural parapet from which I view my life unfolding as a gossamer veil on drifting sanded limbs of lush toned beauty. This, not the shuttered hurt of the flood plain, is my birthright, one I've yet to fully embrace. Once I do, there is to be no stopping me from knowing what I know.

The first brush of immortality tastes like hyacinth.