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
Category: Arts & Letters
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?
Squeaking of clams
all a matter of adaptability, persistence, and resources, of creating right-sized parts, a turn, the way stars turn into snowflakes even in the Home Depot parking lot when a gull rises with a cookie positioned first as a propeller and then as a platter to be released shattering on the pavement the same way they drop shells onto rocks for feasting or at Squirrel’s office, a colleague takes fortune cookies and adds the words, “in bed” and she claims they all come true then, still, if he had a fortune, he’d build the soil to raise his ground taller than the neighbors, yes, that, or to reshape its wetness into sunken gardens vining with secrets, yet either way, imagine the scene from his mattress as geese fly past or in the ceiling, where mice still sound like rainfall
Where is she now?
I’ve been thinking of a fellow poet and prolific blogger who wrote the most erotic explosions ever, in Spanish, no less, audaciously revealing them to an appreciative public, how could we not cheer her on in her romantic conquests, surrender, and ethereal heights, no matter any awareness such ecstasy cannot linger forever.
Such boldness reflected the heat of passion, one few have truly known, even briefly, and often as a delusion, however irrelevant. Yes, I was among the many who saluted that, perhaps with the wisdom of old age.
But she’s gone and I can’t even connect to her blog site, wish her well, say muchas muchas gracias at the least, perhaps speedy recovery.
Qué lástima, I’d shed a tear for her if I were only able. Even one of gratitude.
My fond, best wishes, all the same. Life itself is an eternal mystery.
Turning the focus on his own mess
When I was revising two earlier novels into what became Pit-a-Pat High Jinks, I did wonder about a parallel volume from the point of view of his lovers. What a cad or sweetheart or lost soul or whatever they saw him as. Yeah, dump it all on.
You know, the self-centered hippie dude, Peace Love & all.
Well, there was a hot volume of erotica, Naked Came the Stranger, where each chapter was secretly written by a different person or party who then hid behind a character who got the author credit and posed for the interviews. The various writers didn’t even see the other material until the book came out, not that it ultimately mattered. She did have every color of eye you could imagine.
On this end, I’d welcome submissions for my own project, if only I had space to tackle it, but time is drizzling out, along with the original impulse.
I mean, the hippie chicks in his life weren’t the only ones screwed up, OK? Let’s be honest. Facing the music could be amusing and healing for all.
How I came up with the tags for the ebook edition
Don’t know about you, but I do find tags very helpful in searching for ebooks.
Well, they’re also very helpful in finding fellow bloggers. In fact, if you’re not using them, let me urge you to do so. I’ll even give some free advice, if you’re interested.
Part of the trick, of course, is in choosing ones that will connect with folks on the other end. When I was setting up Quaking Dover for release through Smashwords, the tags I had intended led to some others I thought would pitch the book far more widely and effectively, and, to my surprise, more accurately.
Here are the ten I went with:
Faith, Families, New England, Strong Women, Colonial, Quaker, Peace Movement, Spiritual Walk, Community Life.
The book’s already charted as Non-Fiction/History/American, so there was no point in duplicating those.
Do any of those appeal to you?
Check out my new book, Quaking Dover, available in your choice of ebook platforms at Smashwords.com.
In the end, turtles
wash and wax the narrative, the car to turn to clearly but a break’s essential : all matters of revision, too : interplay of Caribbean poverty and Philadelphia do-gooders comes to mind now : also find reissued later in the day a heavy grocery supply-run to counter any desire to dine out (the big threat to me budget) also potted greenery to make this shell my candy camp all summer
Jnana's Red Barn 