(Feb 23)
Collective Euphonia, Lenfest Center, WLU, Jan 2023. L-R: Corey Crider, Julia Goudimova, Amy Scurria, Sandra Adans Krueger, SMW, William McCorkle, Asherah Capellaro, Anna Billias
January ended beautifully with our most recent Collective Euphonia (CE) outing. It's complicated: Songs and Scenes on Relationships exceeded even our own high expectations. Here is our preview.
It was great to get "the band" back together again. As ever, we had a blast bringing another eclectic and unexpected mosaic of songs and scenes to our audience.
(Mellon Chansonnier, c. 6'x5', 15th c.)
Below are drafts of a few poems I've been working on in the meantime. I'm teaching post-tonal music theory this term, so I'm experimenting with using some of those musical forms like serialism as ordering techniques. We'll see how they sound :)
Boulez Cento
resonant sonorities, abrupt
gestures intense suppleness
dialectic fixity scintillating
arpeggios, resonances and
toccatas.
swans held
flightless. frozen lake repercussions.
dialogue between rule and concentricity
labyrinth play of reflections, Ariadne
one and many real-time
sound transformations, themselves arpeggiated
gradually change perspective
horizontal,
vertical again
didactic chords appropriate
psychological cemetery, periodicity
blithely concealing ironed-
out paradoxical etudes.
Caspar David Friedrich, Self Portrait, c. 1812
handsome face edifice
drawn footstep face
Furious eyes
artisanal pure
cadaver illusion
horseshoe echoed
wild dream
head child
tip dead
sea knife
granite hangman
solitude pendulum
(after Rodin, National Art Museum, Bucharest, Romania, Feb. 2021)
Autoritratto (an abecedarian)
Abased. Belligerent. Caustic. Distraught.
Embarrassed. Fagged. Gutless. Hindered.
Irksome. Jacked. Kept. Malicious.
Numb. Obstinate. Pissed. Queer.
Ravaged. Scattered. Tempered. Used.
Vain. Weak. Xanaxed. Yodeling.
Zero.
(Joan Eardley, Catterline in Winter)
How to ignore exercise equipment
First visualize your perfect
shape and second encircle
it with affirmation. Next
run around your room your
space your corner run round and
round your head as if you
were herding steer.
If the siren lure of the
Peloton enchants you,
exorcise the equipment
as you flex your neo-
cortex. Be sure to burn
special offer evidence
your capacious lung
capacity bellowing the dumbbell
box with huff-puff
air until you’ve killed it
like you did this workout.
(Northwest River Park, Chesapeake, VA)
Some of the other ideas currently in sketch form are a tele-script reality drama called "The Khatia Show," featuring the fabulous & controversial celebrity pianist Khatia Buniatishvili and her entourage:
"Meet classical music's Kardashian: featuring live performances & back-stage access. When will she dump Legolas? Now streaming, the worldwide phenomenon, the first season of The Khatia Show!"
Another (script? libretto?) will feature mythic adventurers like Odysseus, Dante, Athena, Circe, Eshu, Isis & co. encountering an artistic entourage with the likes of Virginia Wolfe, Ethyl Smyth, Whitman, Tom Stoppard, etc. Witty cultural banter, romantic comedy & sexual farce, time-travel and fantasy...
Stay tuned. Or feel free to drop a suggestion my way. I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas!