DanielSonenberg.com

Today was one of those painfully beautiful Maine fall days. Painful because the autumn is but a blink of an eye here, where all the colors and foliage and fauna (whatever the heck fauna is) radiate at their brightest before abandoning all hope and falling dead to the frozen dirt for six solid months of winter. In my maturity I’m reaching a place where I can almost truly enjoy days like these without constantly returning to what it is they signify. And they signify this: summer is gone. Somehow I let it get away from me, I couldn’t stop the clock from moving forward, the days from turning slippery and sliding away. It’s okay, it’s the here and now and I’m not totally averse to that. But I do have to confess that I’m one of those people who could probably lead a pretty full life without having, say, a job, or actual responsibilities in this world. Don’t get me wrong – papa loves his work, but he also loves days like today, spent at the shore, reading about Negro League baseball, feeling the mist of the waves and free play of my imaginings, and likes many of them strung together like a necklace. And the notion that it’s gonna get cold and wet and hard and that that’s gonna last a really, really long time, is, at this moment, something of a tough pill for me to chew.

But chew it I must, so get over it I should. (thanks Yoda)

I’m gearing up for a trip to Pittsburgh – a pilgrimage of sorts. The time has come to visit Josh Gibson’s grave, and see all the various sights that are, actually, no longer there to be seen. I’ll have to channel them. Spots like Greenlee Field, the first black-owned stadium, home of the Pittsburgh Crawfords and built by Gus Greenlee. That team burned so bright from 1932 to about 1936, but by 1938 Greenlee had money trouble, the team disbanded, and they tore that stadium right down. I think there’s a housing complex there now, but I’ll stand as close as I can get and just try to listen to the whispering winds or something. I’m not sure what one does on these sorts of pilgrimages, but I hope to find out. I’ll meet with Rob Ruck, authority on black sports in Pittsburgh and author of the excellent book Sandlot Seasons, and I’ll sneak to the University of Pittsburgh’s library and try to make photocopies of the Pittsburgh Courier, the nation’s biggest black newspaper back then. All this in an effort to really put the finishing touches on the Summer King libretto. I have some new found momentum these days, and also more people waiting for the darn thing to get writ. So that’s where my head is when I’m not bemoaning the loss of summer.

I also have some plans for this website, and this blog. My dream is to create an independent, stand-alone blog, something like argh-a-blog.com, and then massage this place into a slightly more sterile and professional storehouse for all my composerly propaganda, you know? But all this stuff takes so much time. So don’t hold your breath.

Sorry for absolutely no photos lately. But I confess it’s somewhat liberating.
Peace.

Been hopping back and forth a bunch between dear old Maine and the big city. Yesterday we did a recording session at City College - a place at which I used to study, and later teach. Turns out my recording engineer was a student of mine about 5 years (or 1500 students?) ago. After the latest round of Summer King performances I wanted to capture the quality that had been going out over P.A.'s, body mics and a fake piano in more hospitable acoustic environs. The recording - which I hastily edited today in time to submit to New York City Opera's VOX program - came out quite well. I'll post it up here one of these days.

Also, the guy who assailed me on his baseball blog - Paul Moro - turned out in the end to be a pretty decent chap. To do penance, he interviewed me (via email), and submitted some really intelligent questions. It's not every day I get interviewed by someone who actually knows something (quite a bit, actually) about Josh Gibson. The interview is up and looks great - you can read it here.

Apart from that, I’m just getting settled in here for another short autumn. School has started – I’m already behind on my grading – and I’m cherishing the prospect of an entire weekend without any plans. Oh I have scads to do all right, but tomorrow morning for the first time in what feels like months I’m gonna wake up when I feel like it, saunter out for a casual run, and then figure out what burning project is burning the brightest. Also may spend a little quality time with Judy Johnson.

I’m gearing up to have something pithy and meaningful to say in this space again. Just need to get some sleep first.

Hello friends - does anyone still check in at this blog? I'm checking in just to let you know I'm alive. I've been off traveling the world - including two marvelous weeks in Serbia. You can read a bit more about that here (as well as fill your jones for my inimitable blogging - and some from my South Oxford Six colleagues...)

So I had some very nice performances of my new string quartet over there, and also made some wonderful friends. I will be posting more about it on the South Oxford Speaks blog, so if you have a burning interest check there.

It's that time of year again - labor day, school starts, gotta dust off my book bag and remember my inversions etc. It's funny that I spend the whole academic year teaching music theory, and then spend all summer trying to forget it in order to write music. A little ying and yang for you, or somefin.

So I'm sitting up here at the kitchen table in my boxers, letting the sun roll over me and noticing through the autumn leaves shaking in the wind outside the very same window. Autumn here comes and goes real fast. I'm battening down the hatches for it, but before I know it we'll be sealing up the windows with that vacuum sealed saran wrap stuff, and lumbering into the old boots. Even, heaven help me, wearing socks again!

Anyways, will try to post some more, get up to speed and such. I have all sorts of ideas, but am generally bored with blogging about my day to day comings and goings. So I'll get topical, or something.

Meanwhile I've also updated the performance section, and hope to be posting some new audio very soon. Thanks for stopping by.

The season of visitors finds me well this year. Mike K, accompanied by Jen, spent two glorious days with us, including the 4th of July. Mike is one of my oldest friends. I met him when I auditioned for a play he was stage managing - the Importance of Being Ernest. I was 13 at the time, and Mike was maybe 15, and we became fast friends. Neither Mike nor I were seriously theatre people, but it was a good pretext for that important coming together. Mike opened up the world to me in its strangeness and glory - rescued me for the hopeless boredom and stifle of Great Neck normality. We played Moon Dust and listened to Ziggy Stardust, and through Mike I met a bevy of strange and wonderful people - musicians, poets, an odd little counter-culture right there in a hometown where only ostentatious wealth and crass materialism ever counted for anything. We were in a bunch of bands together, starting with the wonderfully named Daysleepers (the name's now been stolen by some other bunch of hacks), and also some bands apart - there were rivalries. We both wound up at Bard College, and we both became close with the recently departed Humske. So it was particularly good to see him up here - in light of recent events and all. We played and played, hit Two Lights, Fort Williams, Mackworth Island, all the haunted and beautiful spots within clawing distance. (Speaking of clawing, we cooked us up some lobsters as well). But mostly just reveled in each other's company. Somehow 7 years popped up since our last visit together, and before that another 5, so that we find ourselves gathering and reminiscing and also approaching middle age. Look at our bodies going to hell, our minds dimming slightly in the receding light - marching forward toward our lives' mid-afternoon. When your "from away" to the extent that I am, having someone at hand who was at the scene when you became you, well, it's hearty stuff.

And then on he went. Off to other visits and then back to his home base three thousand miles to the left. We'll see each other again in five or seven or eleven years, or maybe - I hope - sooner. But the true value of old friends grows increasingly clear to me with every passing afternoon.

Hello my friends. I know I've left it quiet here. Something about this time of year for a professor, or a student for that matter. And something about this particular year – this spring – even more so. Things really are winding up, but whether I, or any of us, will have the momentum to push through to the very end is still open to debate. The weather came and tried to sweep Maine to the dark ages. Trees were uprooted, power lost, hair has gone unwashed for near a week in some cases. And some people I see are just plain dizzy, not knowing whether they’re coming or going and happy about it just the same. I could fill this space with facts and figures about my many recent adventures in this world, but my back aches and I’m in too comfy a rocking chair for such exertion. I’m home and on power-save mode. It seems I’m stuck that way here.

Our eating has gone to hell. Meals are never prepared anymore. I hit Tim Horton’s twice a week on the way to school. I’m back on coffee. Even my running routine – generally the most sacred of rituals – is hanging on the precipice. I’m falling apart I tell you. Alex too. We come home from days out and about in the world and just fumble around the apartment, picking up objects and moving them uninterestedly from one room to the next, occasionally stopping to gaze in the refrigerator or out the window. Items of clothing – just about all mine – adorn most surfaces in our sprawling apartment. There are my running shoes, I notice with guilt. Papers everywhere – some look important.

Sometime in the future the sun will come out, winter in Maine will finally end, classes and rehearsals and concerts will all be over and thought – THOUGHT – will return. I remember it fondly.

It's often difficult to choose a category for these posts. My software makes me decide on one, which with my rambling sensibility doesn't always work out so well.

I'd like to start here: I am such a nerd. I'm playing fantasy baseball in a league comprised entirely of music theorists. It's hard to imagine what could be geekier - and I suppose I should take it as a point of pride that since the season began I've been firmly lodged in last place. My old friend Fred once told me "when you catch yourself playing fantasy baseball, that's the beginning of the end." He may have been right. In fantasy baseball you choose (or are given) a roster of players drawn from all the teams in the major leagues - it's your job to "manage" them. This involves setting the line-up, and also doing stuff like trading players, or grabbing them off the waiver wires. The joy of it is that you get to know players from throughout the leagues, and you stop being so your-team centric. I suppose I kind of needed this to get back into the flow of baseball. Somehow the last few seasons haven't excited me so much - it's so hard to care about the regular season these days, with the endless playoffs and the wonderful inequity that insures my team will almost always make the playoffs. Just a bit hard to care all that much - especially surrounded by all these humorless Red Sox fans. So now I'm making roster moves and juggling players I've never heard of. People like Geoff Jenkins, and Cory Patterson. My team can't hit its way out of a paper bag, so I've decided to go all Steinbrenner and I'm firing people left and right. Dropping players, making radical, panic decisions. It feels good. I'll let you know how things go.

In other news, I saw the Boston Symphony for the first time the other night. They played Bartok's second piano concerto, Ligeti's Atmospheres, Wagner's Lohengrin prelude, and Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. And it may well have been the best orchestra concert I've ever heard. Those folks are tight as a drum and play with passion - the likes of which I have to say I've never seen in all my New York trips to the symphony. It felt great to leave a classical concert buzzing with excitement. And even though we really went to hear the Bartok and the Ligeti, it was the Tchaikovsky that really stole the show. Sure - that was the "hit," what most people probably turned out for (programmed last, because orchestra organizers know that as soon as you program anything post-1900 on the second half of the program, you're asking for empty seats) - but it really cracked.

I wish more people cared about classical music. When I say "classical" I don't really mean classical, but I suppose "art music," or "concert music," or something. Living outside of New York City I'm gaining a new understanding of how low people's tolerance for and interest in challenging musical experiences is. People are far more willing to confront difficult books, or difficult art, than they are to grapple with tough music. I don't really know why this is - maybe because people have such emotional attachments to the music they love, the songs that make them feel nostalgic or comfortable or just outright happy. Me too - I love feeling that way, and there's a lot of music that takes me there. But I also want music that throws a wrench into my daily life - that spins my head, makes me feel strange, lost, worried and shaken. I want music to be sweet, but also harsh, mellifluous but also jarringly dissonant, angular, rhythmic, clangorous. There's room in my life for a LOT of different kinds of sound, and it frustrates me how closed so many people are - even people who are musical, people I respect. Here in Portland contemporary art music just isn't on anyone's radar. Some people actually titter a bit when I mention I'm a composer - the word sounds so pretentious, and they aren't aware such people exist. When I get my hair cut and mention that I'm a composer and a professor of music at the university, and also play in a band, it's only this last fact that garners any interest, or comprehension really. And I have friends, family members even, who ask me if I've played guitar lately, or written any songs, and what's going on with the band - the implication being "when are you going to quit this completely bizarre opera crap and come back to the real world. We always thought you were talented." We composers have been accepting responsibility for this general disconnect between art music and "the people," tending to blame it all on "the excesses of the 1960s" - a time that for art music was filled with total serialism and dissonance and that kind of stuff. But I'm tired of that logic. I blame everyone. You. Me. Short attention spans and laziness. Cripes I know I sound like a curmudgeon or an art snob or something here, but come on everybody do your part. Go listen to something that makes you work a bit. Extend yourself a bit - go someplace strange. And listen three times before you cast judgment. Hug a composer today, okay? Or send a whitefish. Something.

Today, while my oil was being changed and tires rotated, I walked the windy distance from Marginal Way to the heart of town, where kids were playing hacky sack and the sun was blinding and even a touch warm. Portland can really and truly be radiant - and it seems to happen round this time each year (check this blog's entries from, um, a year ago!) before the clouds and rain roll in for about sixty days during what is lovingly called "spring" here. And I am radiating too, after what has just been a fabulous month for me. The long March started February 25, with a Da Capo performance of my "Maybe They're a Mouse!" (which I couldn't attend, sadly), and has been filled with little and even large bits of my opera, performed in various formats, in various states. I had a huge, loving turnout for my recital back on March 9, and a nice full house at the Manhattan School on March 18. I've accrued all sorts of video footage, and I'll even get a touch more this weekend, when AOP presents freshly edited (read as CUT) scenes from the opera one more time. And during the very same weekend Washington Musica Viva will be performing my Six Small Pieces for Clarinet and Piano (alas, without me there...) I haven't been resting on my laurels, though. Oh no - it's spring break, and I've been nailed to my little chair writing Golden Smash Hits, a fanfare for the USM Wind Ensemble in celebration of the School of Music's 50th Anniversary. I'll get to conduct the premiere on April 27, in Merrill Auditorium no less (Portland's principal concert hall, for those of you out-of-towners) - and I'm actually about twenty seconds of music away from being done with it (on schedule, miraculously). I'll finish it tomorrow, because I must, and it's exciting and loud and difficult and sounds like me and I'm just happy as can be. And when I'm writing some dreary blog entry in mid-April, moaning about God knows whatall, remind me of this moment of early vernal bliss, these slivers of warm and toasty satisfaction, and have me put a sock in it, okay?

Friday is the one year anniversary of Argh-a-Blog and I'll do my darndest to touch base. But pat me on the back huh? Most blogs fold after three months, I've heard. Ach - let the self lovefest come to an end NOW!

Hello there. I still am not managing to keep up with the blog as much as I'd like - especially shameful with the one year anniversary of Argh-a-blog just around the corner (It's March 30, but I know you knew that!). I spent a goodly portion of this afternoon trying to get a performance of my song "Midwest Albas," (given brilliantly on my concert by Ellen Chickering, soprano, and Annie Antonacos, piano) up on YouTube. For some reason I couldn't get the audio synced, so I had it up for about half an hour, and then shut it down. That was going to be my blog post - so now I find myself soundless and imageless. And I promised you some opera clips - they're coming. The editing requires multitudes of time - I'm stealing from other projects to do it though, really I am. Soon, soon. Isn't it funny how I imagine a world of eager, loyal fans, sitting on pins and needles awaiting the next YouTube video of my disturbing modern music? Ah well. It's a chat for a different day (how thoroughly most people I know think what I do is, well, crazy). For now I've got John Cage on the brain (tomorrow's seminar topic), and the Summer King. At the suggestion of my generous and talented conductor, Steve Osgood, I'm going to make some draconian (to use his word) cuts to the score of Act 1. All the really cool instrumental bits are subject to the ax - no moment of brilliance is safe. Why? Because opera is about SINGING, I've finally figured out. You want to write instrument music? Write an overture. I suppose the path to a great opera is filled with such violence. I'll find a home for those little clippings, they won't spend an ungracious eternity on the cutting room floor forgotten - I swear it. But now I'm going to float to bed for 6 solid hours (that's "sleeping in," these days).

Someone got their signals crossed and sent me the gripe. I'm not done yet people!! It's not yet time for me to slow down. Ah whatever. Sometimes you just gotta yield when the good lord throws down the railroad gate, you know? So Alex is out at some big rock show at Space Gallery (where she now works as Exhibition Director), and I'm here, feeling just a touch sorry for myself and doing odd jobs. I spent most of today designing a poster in In-Design, a program with which I'm not even the slightest bit acquainted. It used to be that you could just figure out most computer programs, you know? Like Micrrosoft Word, just turn it on and fiddle around, and mostly figure out whatever it was you needed to do. But these big old grafix programs - they're deadly. I understand why people take whole courses, build whole careers on them even. I ended up with something halfway decent, albeit a bit busy, and called it a night. Sort of. I've had this weird wanderlust lately. On the web. Do you ever have those phases where you just start googling people from your way past? Oh, all the time? You too? Well okay then. I don't do it too often, but I can lose massive chunks of time and even money to it when the bug strikes. About a week ago, after years of endless spamming and pestering I finally succumbed and paid the $20 to join Classmates.com - the gold version or whatever it is. In a moment of weakness they had convinced me that everyone from the class of 1988 but yours truly was enjoying the full swinging benefits of gold club membership. And you might ask - why do I care? Why do I care about all those people who never really gave me the time of the day back in the decade of big hair. But somehow I have this melancholy fondness for that time, and for those quasi-friends and acquaintances, and even annoyances and arch-nemeses. When I went to my 10th reunion (ee gads, 9 years ago!) I thought the joy of it would come from the schadenfreude aspect - seeing whose lives had really gone all trainwreck and such. But instead I found within myself a genuine warmth for these people with whom I had - let's face it - more or less learned to walk with. Why just today, I found myself on the website of my old high school, scrolling through the photo archives and marveling at how distant and black and white all my old teachers looked, teachers whose names are no longer on the roster, and how small and insignificant even my worst enemies appeared. So yeah like a sucker I joined Classmates to discover that with one or two exceptions, I was the only one. Posted a photo and everything, like a giant dork, and now my photo sits, in near-isolation, as if suspended from a building in the town square - a monument to the only dork in town who had nothing better to do. Ah well, in my dorkdom, my sickness, in the whole mess of it there is solace for me still. There's the jangling of keys, the slamming of the door, my dear partner in crime arriving with ice cream for the sickie. I must have earned it somehow.

I hate choosing categories for my posts sometimes. Why do I only get to choose one? Darn this irksome software - I should join Word Press or Blog Spot like every other blogger in the west. Oh well. I'm off caffeine. I've quit, knowing full well that I'll start up again in two or three or ten months. I can live with that knowledge. I quit every so often to remind myself that I can - that it's in my power, and that no drug is the boss of me. But I also tend to quit – or aspire to tend to quit – during times of great stress. Ultimately caffeine, coffee in particular, does me no good at all. It knots up my stomach, makes me feel edgy, gives me headaches if I have two or three cups, and, I’m certain, lessens my productivity. The problem is, there’s nothing in the world that excites me more than a double maple latte (down at Arabica, one of the several great coffee places in Portland). The aroma of it, the taste, the environment it often accentuates, the whole ensemble just transports me in a way that is purely and deeply emotional. And decaf doesn’t have that same effect at all – it never tastes right. And not only that, it makes me generally feel just as lousy as the real stuff so why bother. From my own non-empirical, non-scientific survey of one, I’m convinced that caffeine is just a minor player when it comes to the toxicity of coffee. After all, there are so many folks around who are eager to spout out the fact (probably urban legend) that black tea has more caffeine than coffee. Maybe so, but it’s a cleaner, clearer, and alas, less sexy buzz it delivers. Anyway, I’m off coffee, and I’m eating grains for breakfast, soaking them, boiling them for 45 minutes, the whole production. The only thing wrong with my routine is that I’ve had insomnia – undoubtedly stress related, although I was convinced it stemmed from a failing heart (had all the tests in the book last week and turns out my ticker’s in tip top shape, but my brain is used up). So the doctor tells me we have to deal with the sleep issue and prescribes 10mg of Ambien. As I mentioned above, I really don’t like being beholden to any chemical, especially one that begs to be ingested ritually each night. My past experience with sleep medication was over-the-counter stuff, which always completely knocked me over and out, but left me with a whale of a hangover the next morning. The old run-over-by-a-truck effect. Reluctantly, to put an end to eight nights of insomnia, I tried the little white pill. And catastrophically discovered it to be a wonder drug. It doesn’t knock you out, just facilitates sleep. You sleep when you want to. And when you wake up, even if it’s only 6 hours later, you feel rested and whole. No side effects, just clean, pure, simple sleep in a little brown bottle. Of course, it’s very goodness and pureness and wholeness and all that has me convinced it’s lethal and disintegrating my organs. OR, it’s a pact with the devil – each swallow another payment of my immortal soul. But don’t worry about me. After only two pills Alex turned cop and this place wouldn’t be more tightly restricted if the FDA were calling the shots. Good to have the love of a local cop though, I’m telling you.

I'm only just checking in here, and just for a moment. The sun finds me wherever I roam, but truth be told it's been an awful lot of hours indoors these days, couped up behind a computer, preparing music, calling and emailing performers, arranging air travel for myself and others, preparing seminars, and living that devil-may-care dream for which you all admire me. Or whatever. I wonder if the me I imagine you perceive bares any resemblance to your actual perception, let alone the actual flesh and bone me that sits and puts in these occasional torrents that go I know not where. I'm having concerts, did I mention? On February 2, March 9, March 18, March 30, April 13, April 20, April 27, it's a different kind of time. But I'll try to keep the nonsense flowing as best I can.

Technically I'm forbidden to post this photograph, which is of the mess my studio was before I spent 5 straight hours (tonight) cleaning. Alex drove down to Boston, though, to visit friends and museums, and by the time she sees this it'll be one or two posts down, so no worries - right? Her worry, I think, is that my students will happen upon it and discover that behind the calm, reasoned, and always elegant surface they perceive in yours truly lies an unholy maelstrom of chaos. I know better. Every time I go to a new place, move to a new town or hit an artist residency or make a new friend, anything, there's always this honeymoon period where I'm not universally known as a walking messy clutzy catastrophe. Strangely that honeymoon period tends to last hours, not days. Even without my doing anything violent or awkward or just plain stupid those around me seem to be able to suss out my ineptitude in the physical world. In class I always hear titters as I bump into the desk or trip over the piano stool, but interpret those titters as meant in the most gentle and supportive of ways. When it comes to teaching, through shear force of will I have managed to put in place several systems of organization that protect the efforts of my charges, but my personal affairs are an unruly kingdom. I so desperately wish I were organized, that I were the type of person that, when I take off an article of clothing, had a burning desire to fold it and stick it in a drawer rather than to throw it onto the floor, or when I opened a piece of mail knew to just which file or which shredding device to send it, but the mundane artifacts of this world bewilder me into a state of complete disfunction. I open the missives, stare at them, and then put them on the top of one of several developing mountains. My policy is to never throw anything away ever no matter what, so if something is missing, I know that if I dig long enough I'll find it. And then once every several months I have an absolute meltdown, generally between projects (finished one this morning, start the next tomorrow), and I just clean and clean and purge and sort until order reigns again. And then I maintain the order for about a week and the hellish stew of stuff, the static that undoubtedly corrupts my productivity and probably even shortens my life expectancy returns. I'm in the sane state now, but too wiped to take and post another picture, so you'll have to take my word for it.

But why do you care about me anyway? Are you still reading this? You weirdo. What could be more boring than reading about someone else's messy life. I apologize. It's just that I've been reading some other blogs and I notice that blogs generally tend to be, in one way or another, about the wondrous qualities of their authors. Mine probably is too, and that gives me pause. I really don't want to build myself up. I need for you to know that at the core I'm really pretty awful, okay? Once we have that understanding, I think we can move forward, and I can start writing again about herring or bagels or weird music and you can go back to reading it without knowing why.

Oh yeah, one more thing (because good things come to those who wait). I made a New Year's Resolution: Eat more lentils.

We have visitors for New Years. Here are Alex (duh) and, counterclockwise, Simon, Jeff (one of Argh-a-blog's most devoted readers) and Charlotte. Here we are at Tony's, which is famous for their Molasses donuts (glazed or un). You can see my glazed donut at the bottom of the image, but I'm off taking the shot with Mr. Moto. Seeing the pic, though, makes me think of the superhero comicbook series I've been procrastinating on for several years. It's called Chocolate Donut Man, and it's about a hero who's sort of short, chubby, stubbly, and always trailing a mess of chocolate donut crumbs, I suppose a mix between Pigpen (from Peanuts) and the Greatest American Hero. Alex has even done some preliminary artwork for it, but it hasn't yet gotten off the ground. So many projects.

Anyway, lots to say, but it's a deeply frazzling time of year. My fridge is stocked with herring from an even greater supplier than Zabar's. No time to really sing the multitude of praises they deserve, but here's a shout out to those brilliant herring men and women down at Russ and Daughters, on Houston Street near 1st Ave. They not only sell the city's best herring (cream, wine, mustard, or curry sauce!), but they also assemble it for you on the spot (cut up the herring, add the sauce of your choice, ask if you want onions), AND they sell my favorite Australian red licorice too, which I believe I blogged about at some point in the past.

Truth About Daisies has a big wonderful New Year's gig tonight, with scads of guest artists, so Al and I won't be able to partake in our usual December 31 ritual (get lots of decadent food and movies and stay IN), but a fun time will be had by all all the same. Hope you stay happy, and keep your resolutions!

Here I am all fashionable at a party - we went to two last night. Tis the season and all, and so I trotted out my faux matador dress shoes and my ultra designer jeans and my Target Tootsie Roll shirt (not pictured) and did the rounds alongside Alex, who was all vintage and orange tights. The designer jeans were a Barney's Outlet find - they were reduced from $220 to $37, and there were lots of pairs...I think because the brand, "Loomstate", had the bad idea of making the label this hideous all-white thing that just looks terrible with everything. We sliced that puppy off but quick. The shoes were an 8th street find from quite a few years ago, and they represent a real accomplishment for a bigfoot such as myself. Generally funky shoes are not an option, maybe because all the funky shoe artisans of the world have petite little footsies? I don't know. But when you're a size 14, you either order your shoes custom (something people have been encouraging me to do for years), or accept that in any store you enter you'll be choosing from about three available pairs, if any. In NYC I used to shop for shoes in a store called Rochester Big and Tall (I even wrote a poem about them once). The funny thing was, my feet have always been disproportionate. I mean to say that the rest of me is quite normal - and I hope you're not reading in all kinds of illicit subtext here. All I'm saying is that I'm a normal sized guy, large frame (tee shirt size = L), with ridiculous clown feet. So at Rochester B&T I would walk among the giants of the world, 6'9" basketball players and the like, who would just tower over me and give me odd glances from on high: "what are you doing here, tiny?" But I'd earn some respect by kicking my paws into the air, and then riding the down escalator to the shoe basement where I had a world of overpriced, oversized choices to choose from. You didn't tune in for profound today, did you? Because as you can see we're all out. It may have to do with this, the pile of music appreciation papers I've already graded. Only 20 more to go or so, and then 17 fugues, 10 music theory 3 compositions, finals in both music appre and theory, calculating and submitting grades (to this day a gut wrenching, soul wrecking experience). Can you blame me for steering what few sparks of brain matter I still have working towards material matters?

Look people, I'm trying to run a family oriented blog here (well, sorta kinda), so I can't actually embed the video that has me doubling over with laughter. It's deeply offensive in every possible way, but I can't resist A Charlie Brown Kwanza all the same. So go to You Tube and find it - and then tell me I'm twisted and all that, I can take it. It's apropos, perched as we are on the threshold of the greatest of holidays, the festival of lights. Unfortunately the "War on Christmas" hasn't gotten anywhere near Portland, Maine, and the phrase "happy holidays," which I'll admit is neutered and bland, is nowhere to be heard. I appreciate the Merry Christmas sentiments that come my way so often as expressions of good will, but my darker nature has me busting a sweat working up an appropriately snide response all the same. Until such enlightenment finds me though, I'll have to satisfy myself by echoing the fake Charlie Brown's aching lament: "Could anybody help a brother out and lay down the low on the true meaning of Kwanzaa?" Fake Linus's answer I'll let you discover for yourself, but his monologue begins: "And there were three kings: Martin Luther, Don, and Rodney..." And with that a shout out to all the wandering ethnics, off in corners of the country celebrating their minority holidays, faces full of latkes or raising glasses at karumu, while the main strand of American society greases their chimneys and makes out under the mistletoe. Any way you find it, let's toast the season.

And so the weekend wound down with some calm domestic adventures. As you can see, I've learned to use Flickr (a product of necessity: I'm stretched to the gills on this particular host, so why not post some pics on someone else's dime?) Alex got the cooking bug today and made cookies, but also this unbelievable cous cous dish from the world's best cookbook, The Political Palate. It's the first "Feminist Vegetarian Cookbook" put out by the Bloodroot Collective, a group of women who run what may be my favorite restaurant in the world down in Bridgeport, Connecticut. But even if you don't consider yourself a feminist vegetarian (as I most certainly do), there are still unending delights to be found within these pages. All the recipes make enough food for about 17 people too, so clear out your freezer. We went coat shopping too, and Al made cookies, and we ate out several times, even saw a movie ("Stranger than Fiction" - it was absolutely delightful) and had mostly a calm time of it all. But now the threat of the week and what comes next, whatever that is, looms heavily. One deadline yields to the next, one sigh of relief reconfigures as an intake of breath for serenity and strength. It's the holiday season and let's be absolutely frank this just knocks everybody on their asses. Cleans out wallets, nets stressful joy or joyful stress. Something. And betwixt and between I promise to be a better worker. To rediscover discipline - the discipline that got worn down by the pounding grind of another semester in a life spent in school. I am ready to resolve - and if I need to tap those inner reservoirs of human warmth and mirth and all that egg noggy goodstuff, I need look no further than that little glass of wine, topped with a tupperware lid, that has sat on our kitchen table for the better part of a week. "What? I'm saving it for later," my unequaled partner in crime proclaimed to me some time yesterday. Could it possibly work?, we both ultimately began to wonder. But when the chips were down tonight, and Alex's amazing Bloodroot meal perched on the table, Battlestar Galactica ablazing in the background, neither of us had the gustatory fortitude to learn the answer. So we moved the glass, lid intact, to the edge of the kitchen sink where it remains to this very moment.

I'm sorry I haven't written. I really do feel bad about it. And there keeps being stuff to write about too. For instance, Alex and I joined the gym. Well - she joined the gym, and then discovered that every one of the exercise machines has a TV with 100 stations attached to it. Well she comes home and gives me this information and I set about doing the math. Membership at the gym costs $10 a month ($29.99 membership fee) and cable television costs $40. So I did it. I joined the gym only for television. And I got there just in time, about five minutes before Battlestar Galactica started. I like to exercise, to be sure, but I prefer to do it outside, especially seeing as I live in one of the more beautiful places around (see picture, courtesy of Mr. Moto). Anyway I had a real funny picture of Alex I was going to post in this space, but she argued against it, and so I just sort of sat on my heels. Yes, I've been playing a bit more scrabble. Today I unsuccessfully tried to play the words "oaty" "ee" (as in the letter E) and "oo" (as in "oo! I stubbed my toe."). All three were challenged and then disallowed. Oh well. What else? Oh, remember that book proposal I was yammering on about over the summer. Well I submitted it today - finito. Long time coming too. Anyway, I better sign off before I get even more boring. Just this little note to say I haven't forgotten about you, all my wonderful and dear friends out in blogoland, waiting anxiously each day for my next string of wisdom pearls. It outright kills me that you might think I've forsaken you.

I've stolen a moment to think back on my lovely visit with family and friends last week in NYC. Here's the newest family member, Sylvie, who is close to turning one and a half. I guess maybe because I don't yet have kids of my own, I've never subscribed to that whole age-by-months thing. You know, I suppose she's really 17 months old or something, but those kind of numbers just confuse me. We get on fine, anyway. I'm back in the Maine October swing of things now, which is to say exhausted. We've reached that point, Alex and I. There's no food in the house except for various incarnations of starch. There's no time or energy to shop, nor to cook, and there's no money either (we just paid a thousand bucks for a car repair. A whole thousand, and even a little more, in case you think I'm rounding up). There are projects and deadlines and grading and prepping and baseball playoffs populated by strange, but at times endearing teams (Go Tigers, I think). There are performances - a great USM production of Equus last night, and a recital by USM faculty pianist Laura Kargul tonight. And band practices and gigs and running when there's maybe a moment, and lots of music to write but no concentrated time for it, and applications for every odd thing. And email correspondence and recommendation letters. This is life, right? Just going and going and not really reflecting or evaluating...just going and hoping that somehow you're carving a bit of an honorable trail. I'm off to bed I guess. At least this weekend we're both home. We might even see a movie despite everything.

Alex ambled back eventually from the metropolis. Her flight was delayed, I guess, by the same gusty winds and sheets of pissing rain that washed away a Yankee game, and then eventually found their way up north and soaked us proper. Her US Air flight 3188 landed, and exhausted but happy with each other's company we drove off to the Downtown Lounge, which is open till 1 (as late as any place stays welcoming around here). There we saw the great politician Ben Meiklejohn, my one time student, who now finds himself polling ahead as the Green party candidate for state legislature. He'll be our rep if he wins, so we enjoyed his company as he railed against the tyranny of the majority and the inherent nonsensicality of the two-party system. Alex, who has shows and classes and daunting responsibilities all piling up drank cosmos, one for each of my whiskeys, as we giddily stared out at wet and vacant Portland. The old State Theater, now a studio building, where old Bobby Dylan used to play (he was friends with the owner, the locals tell me), glistened, its art deco lettering a shout-out to faded glory. It was an Indian summer night, balmy and breezy before the rains came in, and we reveled in our irresponsibility, but eventually you just know we had to come home. And here we are, our jet-lag-inspired cracks of dawn a memory, caught once again in our cycle of late nights and early but not early enough mornings, of never fitting it all in, of breakfast from a bag and a paper cup and punched bonus cards at Hilltop Coffee even though Phil has left for San Francisco. Here we are in our little happy flat up on the hill, desperately clinging to these simple fleeting hours before the dawn.

Am I the only one? Don't you also cringe when you hear politicians speak of "good-paying jobs?" The latest example that comes to mind is Ned Lamont, who just gave Joe Lieberman a deserved bonk on the head (I'll stay out of whether Lamont's qualified for the senate and all that juicy stuff). But John Kerry also used the phrase all the time in '04. It's so obviously wrong that I think it can't be an unintentional mistake. More of a populist, pandering kind of move (in the George Bush tradition)? (I know I don't need to tell you that it's "well-paying," not "good-paying." "Good, paying" might be possible - but I don't thing it's ever meant that way, and I've not seen it transcribed that way either). For the record, and you read it here first, I am against good-paying jobs. Any friend of good-paying jobs ain't a friend of mine. Me won't vote for anybody like that.

Oh my life's a simple thing. Lost my cash card and my cell phone died. So I'm cut off, really. Alex feeds me and gives me a few stray bills when she's got em, and we plan ahead for her days in the downtown studio she's borrowing this summer. I do my running in the morning, even when it's this hot, and then I come home and I'm drinking coffee with abandon. I'm always in a state of almost quitting, or just having quit, and for me a lot is one big cup a day, but the thing is I've finally learned how to make the stuff properly. It starts with the pictured farberware coffee percolator (my grandmother - Omi - turned me on to this - it's the only way to get really hot coffee, she says, but however good my java will never hold a candle to hers), and just a bit too much freshly ground coffee (like I think about 6 spoons for 4.5 cups of water...). And then nuke the soymilk in this big cat mug, pour the hot coffee in, and then a touch of maple syrup. Then out to the back porch with this big Timothy Leary biography I'm reading (what a charlatan). Breakfast a little too late out there, then stumble back in and write opera. It's all so 19th century except I spend the whole rest of the day in a dark room in front of a computer, cranking out my fifteen seconds. In the evenings we shop or cook, or forget to plan and go out and buy pad thai or salmon choo chee, or even both, and then go to the supermarket where they've raised the price of city of Portland Garbage Bags to $7.50, and come home to our lovely sweltering pad and maybe listen to Henry Cowell or some vintage King Crimson for the first time in a long time ("Fallen Angel") and then write in the blog. Even if there's nothing to say - because the huddled masses deserve their fix, they do.

Here we are by the falls. Yes I know it's old news, but doesn't the photo just warm your heart? These are two people with a lot of driving ahead of them. And a lot behind them too. But there's not too much more to say about that. I suppose there may be some parallel between engaging in such a long trek and composing an opera. I mean, I love those drives where, because the distance is just so ridiculous, you stop clicking off the miles and just float along, rubber on pavement, zen-like and accepting. Each little mile, no matter how expertly conquered, is a wee nothing in the scheme of things. Hundreds preceded it, and hundreds will follow in its wake. That's the opera too - especially for a slow and temperamental composer such as myself. Each day I pound away at my various tools and instruments, keyboards, computer, voice, ears, speakers. Working things out, hearing and hearing, singing and shouting, assuming all the roles, old, young, soprano, tenor, baritone. Sweat and sweat and pounding and sleeping and eating and reading and walking and waiting and figuring. And a good day's yield is fifteen seconds. You write fifteen seconds a day for the rest of your life you'll find yourself with a lot of music. So maybe you could lend me a chunk or two? Oh don't worry, it'll fit right in. In the six minutes that open this exquisite mess I've got Debussy, and jazz, and gospel, and lots of noisy dissonant stuff, drum set, and never far off, the trusty old octatonic. I tell my students to stay focused, and to try to limit their materials and be economical, just like every old composition teacher has preached for the ages. But I'm a maximalist and a spaz in real life, and when this opera gets unsheathed I'll have to be one of those "do as I say not as I do" type of guys who can become a bore. But then I'm hoping the computer, the inner computer, is working it all out. There are thinkers and feelers when it comes to making stuff. I know a lot of people who can sit there and tell you the why and the what it means till they're blue in the tooth, and then there's me and the other dweller in that there photo above - people who work from a place of not knowing, and who don't seek to explain away every dangling participle (whatever one of those is), and who spend a lifetime coming up with lies to answer the question why this purple or that tritone, and what does it mean?

Oh whatever. This is a stock image, the camera is just dead, and the powers that be say we're too poor to afford another. So stock it is. The fireworks were fine. In Portland you crawl up to the prom, find your friends who've a tarp set up by the end of Quebec Street, and just lie down and look up, and the feurwerke explode directly above you and rumble your butt worse than James Brown. It goes on a little long, and the end-show, as famed Portlander Jessica Porter put it tonight, is like a ten-year-old's tantrum. Some in our midst were kinda traumatized, but that was nothing compared to the walk home - a perilous jaunt through a battlezone manned by home-firework Yahoos. We saw one serial fireworkist just walking along the street shooting off little explosions with nary a care for who or when or why, and a young mother came screaming from curbside, "my daughter's asleep here - she's terrified of fireworks." And burning embers shuttled toward us, and it was unclear which way to turn and we feared for our eyes and extremities, and then somehow we were home and I made too many too strong margaritas, not realizing that the huddled masses had lost their oomph and were crawling on towards gentle unconsciousness and Wednesday routine. But the whole point of this message is: here's a good recipe for gazpacho. 1) Have Alex make the gazpacho; 2) get some avocado, just on the precipice of ripeness; 3) have some cooked shrimp around, the same you used for a shrimp cocktail earlier in the evening, which had a kickass cocktail sauce fueled by the unexpected strength of Farmer's brand horseradish; 4) serve all of this stuff together with some too-strong margaritas and just let your party spin along like a top. And I made it through this whole bit without once referring back to i-pod shuffle mode, although I assure you it was always on my mind.

Hey - here's something REALLY cool. If you go click here, you can read the entire Action Comics #1. Somewhere in your travels you've probably heard tell of this one - it's the June 1938 comic book that introduced the Man of Steel, Supey himself. It's a high quality scan, and very enjoyable, and you'll feel like you can reach into your computer screen and pull out the genuine document. And too bad you can't, because if you had a first pressing, it'd be worth close to a cool mil. But what's really shocking is this: who is Superman's first big tackle? Lex Luthor? Bizarro? Doomsday? None of these. It's....a Washington lobbyist. I kid you not. And if the makers of the new movie, Superman Returns, would have borrowed that plot, their story would have been more interesting than the dull semi-plot they've imposed on their confection. Two nights ago, disappointed that the premiere was too late for my bedtime, I went out and rented Superman II, for old time's sake and to sort of get into the mood. And while it's a bit more campy than I remembered, it's also quite definitely the best superhero movie ever. Pure, unmitigated story. All scenes help develop the plot. Superman saves France from a nuclear bomb by flying it off the planet, and its ultimate explosion releases three diabolical Kryptonian criminals, Ursa, Non, and General Zod, who had been condemned to float around space forever in a two dimensional square mirror. While they make their way to earth to conquer, Clark Kent and Lois Lane go to Niagara Falls (just like we did) to investigate a honeymoon scam, and Lois figures out that Clark's the big guy. And their love just oozes out, so Supey goes and gives up his power and then the Kryptonians take over the world, and it all leads to a great, great denouement, if such a word can be used in this context. Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder are perfect for their roles. Brandon Routh and Kate Bosworth, in the new flick, can't really compete. They're too young, for starters, and they look young. Christopher Reeve just looked ageless, you know? Like a super hero. Even still, though, Bosworth and Routh have a game go of it, but the movie is ponderous, almost plotless, and rather a bore. Alex liked it, I think because it's kind of a chick flick. But I like chick flicks too. Ah well...I had my hopes up.

Wow - I left you with the anchovies for four whole days. Euphoria, no? I'm back. But I've got nothing much to say, at least nothing particularly ordered or purposeful. Alex and I have quit TV. The first step was admitting we had a problem. We don't have cable and don't get such great television reception, but our problem became the television show on DVD, and we consumed voraciously, working our way through Battlestar Galactica and Six Feet Under, while also watching fuzzy renderings of 24, and all those lookalike cop forensic shows...CSI, Without a Trace, who knows what. Three episodes into The Wire and Alex diagnosed that it had been some time since we had, say, read a book - and our sleep habits were deteriorating. So cold turkey we quit, with the single exception of 7pm TV news (either News Hour or 60 Minutes). And what has happened? A whole civilization has flourished in our midst. I'm reading the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for the first time, in preparation for the seminar I'll be teaching in a couple of weeks: Sounds of Change: the Counterpoint of Music and Meaning in the 1960s. You would think with a title like that we'd be turning folks away. Not so. Enrollment is low, and perhaps because until about a day ago the course was listed in the on-line catalogue as: Sounds of Change: Counterpoint. I mean what sort of class is that? Sounds kind of like a self-help book by Palestrina. Now that's all cleared up, and we've quit tv so our brains are expanding, and I'll be able to expostulate. We're also thinking of buying an Oddfellows Lodge. But that's for another time. Alex meanwhile is painting and scrounging around antique shops for architectural fragments. It rains every day, forever and ever, so we're both depressed. But if I'm really in need of a smile, there's always The Old Negro Space Program (which is at least tangentially related to the opera I'm writing).