Dearest Evita, inevitably

the home trip was shorter than any desire worth pursuit followed by a week strip-mined between Wheeling and Zanesville where the alphabet winds down and begins again in Ashland or Barnesville, maybe in another language still here I’m settling down as a monk in my scriptorium or as a bootlegger distilling silos of citations and trophies or as a bachelor milking his own antiquity to that point where you no longer know if you’re any good or not, you’re just pushing what you have to your best abilities . not everyone comes back

Precocious precious Elise

back to drive across mountains and plains how well I remember unanticipated letters in my post box before phone calls from a colleague fed up with working in a field of little growth but with no desire to return to the daily buzzard “from what I’ve seen, for what’s demanded, our managers are far under-compensated” within major cities parallel to something I’ve been preaching the last thirty years amen hope you find welcome me too wishing upon that star

Zap, zap squared

whatever abundance before the eye rests under that spirit of being guided through the wall after waiting through dry periods when you’ve voiced those personal, esoteric why must it be myself or the other when feeling a drawing away to that which I alone happen to sense when working and nodded without anticipating any fulfillment except in so many conjectures now absolutely engaged in the hand of accomplishment you definitely pursue now so romantic exciting perhaps with some overlap perhaps you too understand

Quoting from a master of secret teachings

here you perceive it’s not within my nature to offer any spoken contention in the row of bricks other craftsmen would so often enwrap in false modesty if you can tolerate canned soup or a vulcanized cheese omelet, well, then you’ll also observe how turning together after so many years  maybe occupied with survival in the rarified air the conundrum by God becomes devotion

Chuckles, anyway

knock, knock, in the name of the law in the Name of Jesus let us pray together naming and claiming in either case not quite the letter but the spirit of authority bet your life beginning as a child traversing the expanse of your own moniker with some Divine confrontation and wonder, as they’d say, Warmly with the chattering monkeys

Whatayasay Dusty

of heaven and earth and so right at the moment this righteousness struck a relationship without a tinge of merely imagined fragrance closer and more real, the daily repetition overflows into a sink of unwashed dishes of confusing lion and the lamb of dilemmas, paradoxes, even tedious crosscurrents the Adversary complicates a profusion of weeds just doesn’t ring clear the first time around oh, my poor memory, in callous fingers clutching whatever

Lovely and Corky

not exactly anywhere dutiful in all my difficulty gearing up for minor chores regular folks seem to enjoy defining their lives thereby at least scrubbing their ass break back to poverty, Dharma! would be scouring the bathtub one morning or a manuscript or adding oil to the leaky BMW such a thrill put aside long enough it evaporates two months overdue or just punctuates existence, the vacuum of rooms of the mind or the plate and so if one makes other things wait, yes, the grass grows or leaves fall in all that running as in down some sewer of household drain, so how would you handle a valet or fulltime maid

Reassessing ‘Porgy and Bess’ as an opera

Let’s just say it grows in my estimation every time I hear or see the Metropolitan Opera’s production.

There’s so much packed into its 3¼ hours that the full story can seem unwieldy and overwhelming, but I’m thinking maybe it actually needs to be longer, have more air to allow digestion, with a dinner intermission and perhaps jazz dance/combo interludes inserted at key points in the narrative.

Porgy is not simply the best American opera to date, contrary to the Vienna dismissal of it as a “folk” opera, but, yes, I’d now place it among the top ten ever, in a global view. The grander the reach, the more likelihood of imperfections. Guess where I am on that spectrum?

Quite simply, has any other produced so many hit tunes, especially as jazz standards? Composer George Gershwin held Georges Bizet as an idol, yet has anyone else spawned so many classic offerings from a single stage work? Not even Bizet, nor anyone else I can think of. Just a single hot tune would be considered success. And his have proved incredibly flexible and addictive.

Gershwin had already had a string of Broadway stage successes, but he wasn’t resting on his laurels. No, he agonized over this work and his previously stifled artistic visions. Make that ambitions.

Has anyone else so successfully addressed the realities of drug addiction or prostitution?

Courtesan, as in La Traviata, seems downright respectable in comparison. Bess is raw.

Does anybody else agree Eric Owens and Angel Blue deserve Tonys and Oscars for their performances?