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Nigel Morgan Nov 2012
She said, ‘You are funny, the way you set yourself up the moment we arrive. You look into every room to see if it’s suitable as a place to work. Is there a table? Where are the plugs? Is there a good chair at the right height? If there isn’t, are there cushions to make it so? You are funny.’
 
He countered this, but his excuse didn’t sound very convincing. He knew exactly what she meant, but it hurt him a little that she should think it ‘funny’. There’s nothing funny about trying to compose music, he thought. It’s not ‘radio in the head’ you know – this was a favourite expression he’d once heard an American composer use. You don’t just turn a switch and the music’s playing, waiting for you to write it down. You have to find it – though he believed it was usually there, somewhere, waiting to be found. But it’s elusive. You have to work hard to detect what might be there, there in the silence of your imagination.
 
Later over their first meal in this large cottage she said, ‘How do you stop hearing all those settings of the Mass that you must have heard or sung since childhood?’ She’d been rehearsing Verdi’s Requiem recently and was full of snippets of this stirring piece. He was a) writing a Mass to celebrate a cathedral’s reordering after a year as a building site, and b) he’d been a boy chorister and the form and order of the Mass was deeply engrained in his aural memory. He only had to hear the plainsong introduction Gloria in Excelsis Deo to be back in the Queen’s chapel singing Palestrina, or Byrd or Poulenc.
 
His ‘found’ corner was in the living room. The table wasn’t a table but a long cabinet she’d kindly covered with a tablecloth. You couldn’t get your feet under the thing, but with his little portable drawing board there was space to sit properly because the board jutted out beyond the cabinet’s top. It was the right length and its depth was OK, enough space for the board and, next to it, his laptop computer. On the floor beside his chair he placed a few of his reference scores and a box of necessary ‘bits’.
 
The room had two large sofas, an equally large television, some unexplainable and instantly dismissible items of decoration, a standard lamp, and a wood burning stove. The stove was wonderful, and on their second evening in the cottage, when clear skies and a stiff breeze promised a cold night, she’d lit it and, as the evening progressed, they basked in its warmth, she filling envelopes with her cards, he struggling with sleep over a book.
 
Despite and because this was a new, though temporary, location he had got up at 5.0am. This is a usual time for composers who need their daily fix of absolute quiet. And here, in this cottage set amidst autumn fields, within sight of a river estuary, under vast, panoramic uninterrupted skies, there was the distinct possibility of silence – all day. The double-glazing made doubly sure of that.
 
He had sat with a mug of tea at 5.10 and contemplated the silence, or rather what infiltrated the stillness of the cottage as sound. In the kitchen the clock ticked, the refrigerator seemed to need a period of machine noise once its door had been opened. At 6.0am the central heating fired up for a while. Outside, the small fruit trees in the garden moved vigorously in the wind, but he couldn’t hear either the wind or a rustle of leaves.  A car droned past on the nearby road. The clear sky began to lighten promising a fine day. This would certainly do for silence.
 
His thoughts returned to her question of the previous evening, and his answer. He was about to face up to his explanation. ‘I empty myself of all musical sound’, he’d said, ‘I imagine an empty space into which I might bring a single note, a long held drone of a note, a ‘d’ above middle ‘c’ on a chamber ***** (seeing it’s a Mass I’m writing).  Harrison Birtwistle always starts on an ‘e’. A ‘d’ to me seems older and kinder. An ‘e’ is too modern and progressive, slightly brash and noisy.’
 
He can see she is quizzical with this anecdotal stuff. Is he having me on? But no, he is not having her on. Such choices are important. Without them progress would be difficult when the thinking and planning has to stop and the composing has to begin. His notebook, sitting on his drawing board with some first sketches, plays testament to that. In this book glimpses of music appear in rhythmic abstracts, though rarely any pitches, and there are pages of written description. He likes to imagine what a new work is, and what it is not. This he writes down. Composer Paul Hindemith reckoned you had first to address the ‘conditions of performance’. That meant thinking about the performers, the location, above all the context. A Mass can be, for a composer, so many things. There were certainly requirements and constraints. The commission had to fulfil a number of criteria, some imposed by circumstance, some self-imposed by desire. All this goes into the melting ***, or rather the notebook. And after the notebook, he takes a large piece of A3 paper and clarifies this thinking and planning onto (if possible) a single sheet.
 
And so, to the task in hand. His objective, he had decided, is to focus on the whole rather than the particular. Don’t think about the Kyrie on its own, but consider how it lies with the Gloria. And so with the Sanctus & Benedictus. How do they connect to the Agnus Dei. He begins on the A3 sheet of plain paper ‘making a map of connections’. Kyrie to Gloria, Gloria to Credo and so on. Then what about Agnus Dei and the Gloria? Is there going to be any commonality – in rhythm, pace and tempo (we’ll leave melody and harmony for now)? Steady, he finds himself saying, aren’t we going back over old ground? His notebook has pages of attempts at rhythmizing the text. There are just so many ways to do this. Each rhythmic solution begets a different slant of meaning.
 
This is to be a congregational Mass, but one that has a role for a 4-part choir and ***** and a ‘jazz instrument’. Impatient to see notes on paper, he composes a new introduction to a Kyrie as a rhythmic sketch, then, experimentally, adds pitches. He scores it fully, just 10 bars or so, but it is barely finished before his critical inner voice says, ‘What’s this for? Do you all need this? This is showing off.’ So the filled-out sketch drops to the floor and he examines this element of ‘beginning’ the incipit.
 
He remembers how a meditation on that word inhabits the opening chapter of George Steiner’s great book Grammars of Creation. He sees in his mind’s eye the complex, colourful and ornate letter that begins the Lindesfarne Gospels. His beginnings for each movement, he decides, might be two chords, one overlaying the other: two ‘simple’ diatonic chords when sounded separately, but complex and with a measure of mystery when played together. The Mass is often described as a mystery. It is that ritual of a meal undertaken by a community of people who in the breaking of bread and wine wish to bring God’s presence amongst them. So it is a mystery. And so, he tells himself, his music will aim to hold something of mystery. It should not be a comment on that mystery, but be a mystery itself. It should not be homely and comfortable; it should be as minimal and sparing of musical commentary as possible.
 
When, as a teenager, he first began to set words to music he quickly experienced the need (it seemed) to fashion accompaniments that were commentaries on the text the voice was singing. These accompaniments did not underpin the words so much as add a commentary upon them. What lay beneath the words was his reaction, indeed imaginative extension of the words. He eschewed then both melisma and repetition. He sought an extreme independence between word and music, even though the word became the scenario of the music. Any musical setting was derived from the composition of the vocal line.  It was all about finding the ‘key’ to a song, what unlocked the door to the room of life it occupied. The music was the room where the poem’s utterance lived.
 
With a Mass you were in trouble for the outset. There was a poetry of sorts, but poetry that, in the countless versions of the vernacular, had lost (perhaps had never had) the resonance of the Latin. He thought suddenly of the supposed words of William Byrd, ‘He who sings prays twice’. Yes, such commonplace words are intercessional, but when sung become more than they are. But he knew he had to be careful here.
 
Why do we sing the words of the Mass he asks himself? Do we need to sing these words of the Mass? Are they the words that Christ spoke as he broke bread and poured wine to his friends and disciples at his last supper? The answer is no. Certainly these words of the Mass we usually sing surround the most intimate words of that final meal, words only the priest in Christ’s name may articulate.
 
Write out the words of the Mass that represent its collective worship and what do you have? Rather non-descript poetry? A kind of formula for collective incantation during worship? Can we read these words and not hear a surrounding music? He thinks for a moment of being asked to put new music to words of The Beatles. All you need is love. Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away. Oh bla dee oh bla da life goes on. Now, now this is silliness, his Critical Voice complains. And yet it’s not. When you compose a popular song the gap between some words scribbled on the back of an envelope and the hook of chords and melody developed in an accidental moment (that becomes a way of clothing such words) is often minimal. Apart, words and music seem like orphans in a storm. Together they are home and dry.
 
He realises, and not for the first time, that he is seeking a total musical solution to the whole of the setting of those words collectively given voice to by those participating in the Mass.
 
And so: to the task in hand. His objective: to focus on the whole rather than the particular.  Where had he heard that thought before? - when he had sat down at his drawing board an hour and half previously. He’d gone in a circle of thought, and with his sketch on the floor at his feet, nothing to show for all that effort.
 
Meanwhile the sun had risen. He could hear her moving about in the bathroom. He went to the kitchen and laid out what they would need to breakfast together. As he poured milk into a jug, primed the toaster, filled the kettle, the business of what might constitute a whole solution to this setting of the Mass followed him around the kitchen and breakfast room like a demanding child. He knew all about demanding children. How often had he come home from his studio to prepare breakfast and see small people to school? - more often than he cared to remember. And when he remembered he became sad that it was no more.  His children had so often provided a welcome buffer from sessions of intense thought and activity. He loved the walk to school, the first quarter of a mile through the park, a long avenue of chestnut trees. It was always the end of April and pink and white blossoms were appearing, or it was September and there were conkers everywhere. It was under these trees his daughter would skip and even his sons would hold hands with him; he would feel their warmth, their livingness.
 
But now, preparing breakfast, his Critical Voice was that demanding child and he realised when she appeared in the kitchen he spoke to her with a voice of an artist in conversation with his critics, not the voice of the man who had the previous night lost himself to joy in her dear embrace. And he was ashamed it was so.
 
How he loved her gentle manner as she negotiated his ‘coming too’ after those two hours of concentration and inner dialogue. Gradually, by the second cup of coffee he felt a right person, and the hours ahead did not seem too impossible.
 
When she’d gone off to her work, silence reasserted itself. He played his viola for half an hour, just scales and exercises and a few folk songs he was learning by heart. This gathering habit was, he would say if asked, to reassert his musicianship, the link between his body and making sound musically. That the viola seemed to resonate throughout his whole body gave him pleasure. He liked the ****** movement required to produce a flowing sequence of bow strokes. The trick at the end of this daily practice was to put the instrument in its case and move immediately to his desk. No pause to check email – that blight on a morning’s work. No pause to look at today’s list. Back to the work in hand: the Mass.
 
But instead his mind and intention seemed to slip sideways and almost unconsciously he found himself sketching (on the few remaining staves of a vocal experiment) what appeared to be a piano piece. The rhythmic flow of it seemed to dance across the page to be halted only when the few empty staves were filled. He knew this was one of those pieces that addressed the pianist, not the listener. He sat back in his chair and imagined a scenario of a pianist opening this music and after a few minutes’ reflection and reading through allowing her hands to move very slowly and silently a few millimetres over the keys.  Such imagining led him to hear possible harmonic simultaneities, dynamics and articulations, though he knew such things would probably be lost or reinvented on a second imagined ‘performance’. No matter. Now his make-believe pianist sounded the first bar out. It had a depth and a richness that surprised him – it was a fine piano. He was touched by its affect. He felt the possibilities of extending what he’d written. So he did. And for the next half an hour lived in the pastures of good continuation, those rich luxuriant meadows reached by a rickerty rackerty bridge and guarded by a troll who today was nowhere to be seen.
 
It was a curious piece. It came to a halt on an enigmatic, go-nowhere / go-anywhere chord after what seemed a short declamatory coda (he later added the marking deliberamente). Then, after a few minutes reflection he wrote a rising arpeggio, a broken chord in which the consonant elements gradually acquired a rising sequence of dissonance pitches until halted by a repetition. As he wrote this ending he realised that the repeated note, an ‘a’ flat, was a kind of fulcrum around which the whole of the music moved. It held an enigmatic presence in the harmony, being sometimes a g# sometimes an ‘a’ flat, and its function often different. It made the music take on a wistful quality.
 
At that point he thought of her little artists’ book series she had titled Tide Marks. Many of these were made of a concertina of folded pages revealing - as your eyes moved through its pages - something akin to the tide’s longitudinal mark. This centred on the page and spread away both upwards and downwards, just like those mirror images of coloured glass seen in a child’s kaleidoscope. No moment of view was ever quite the same, but there were commonalities born of the conditions of a certain day and time.  His ‘Tide Mark’ was just like that. He’d followed a mark made in his imagination from one point to another point a little distant. The musical working out also had a reflection mechanism: what started in one hand became mirrored in the other. He had unexpectedly supplied an ending, this arpegiated gesture of finality that wasn’t properly final but faded away. When he thought further about the role of the ending, he added a few more notes to the arpeggio, but notes that were not be sounded but ghosted, the player miming a press of the keys.
 
He looked at the clock. Nearly five o’clock. The afternoon had all but disappeared. Time had retreated into glorious silence . There had been three whole hours of it. How wonderful that was after months of battling with the incessant and draining turbulence of sound that was ever present in his city life. To be here in this quiet cottage he could now get thoroughly lost – in silence. Even when she was here he could be a few rooms apart, and find silence.
 
A week more of this, a fortnight even . . . but he knew he might only manage a few days before visitors arrived and his long day would be squeezed into the early morning hours and occasional uncertain periods when people were out and about.
 
When she returned, very soon now, she would make tea and cut cake, and they’d sit (like old people they wer
What stories could journals tell?
What we forget
is that they are not just repositories of words
but also of thoughts,
feelings,
emotions

They are places in and of themselves
Saving these emotions,
stashing them away
so they can be discovered
at a later time.

But the true beauty of these journals
lies within discovery itself

A droplet of water will fall
further
down a curved surface
taking a pale tan color
like its surroundings
It will fall off the surface
Onto the fibers of the page below
Leaving a darkened splotch

More droplets will follow
More tears will follow
As twenty years from now
A thirty-five year old woman rediscovers
the girl she once was.
Inspired by a single word within a Facebook chat. Thanks, Lacey.
Anna-Lynn Apr 2013
Sam
His name was Sam.

He looked so grown up as he walked away into the night. His under groomed shaggy summer struck hair glued down around his head from the warm pre-fall rain.
He wasn't the one I remembered, but rather the one I forgot. I couldn't help but shed a tear as he sashayed down the street, draped in his long and worn-out tailored coat.

I don't know how this was Sam.

It seemed wrong to just let him leave the way he did. But I think he lost his way. He'll come back when he rediscovers that lanky boy with an obsession for finding beauty in that which didn't exist.
He was the captain of the playground, the president of imagination.

I can't stop thinking about Sam.

I just sat in my car with my window down and my hair the way he always liked.
Somehow it wasn't enough, and somehow it was too much. He needed a reminder of who he used to be. But maybe this was part of growing up.

He was Sam. And I was his.

I kissed goodbye to the wind and hoped it reached him in time.
I lit my last cigarette and just waited.
All I ever did was wait, and it was pointless.
He'll never be back again.
Sam was a misguided free spirit.
Or maybe he had found himself.

His name was Sam.
And he was gone.
For good this time.
Shay Dec 2015
Sometimes, she'd run deep into the shadowed forest;
full of breathtaking scenery and abundant beauty so modest,
on cold stormy nights where the wind would wail,
the thunder would roar, the skies would cry and the trees would flail.

She'd throw herself into a pile of auburn fallen leaves so crispy,
looking up at the ripped sky; the darkness broken by lightning so wispy,
and she'd scream and shout and weep in time to the thunder and rain,
until her tears were no more and her soul was cleansed from all the pain,

because in that moment in the woods she and the world were on the same wavelength,
and she isn't as alone as she thought she once was - together with the storm she rediscovers her strength.
A million sparkling movements every second
We gaze openly from whence we came in -
quiet reverence
For whom the mind rediscovers is a true
lover , to abide in perpetuity captivated in shore song and ambergris , our souls one day returned to the awaiting sea* ..
Copyright November 2 , 2016 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
spacequeen Jan 2015
She
She dances alone because that’s what she’s used to.
But she doesn’t care.

Her eyes hold dreams she’s never told anyone.

And when the sides of her mouth curl…
A smile she’s kept hidden for so long starts to shine.

She keeps her thoughts to herself.
Bottled up and tossed in the endless sea that she calls her mind.

Sometimes she opens one.
And from there she rediscovers inspiration.

She holds onto photographs and ticket stubs.
Anything that means something to her.

She complains when she forgets to drink her hot tea.
But will still drink it anyway.

When the sun sets, she wakens.
She enjoys the silence of the night.

She’ll trust you with secrets.
She’ll trust you completely.

Until you give her a reason not to.
I tip figurative hat to the late Cathy Robertson, longtime (lifetime) Thomas Paine Unitarian Church member, who unwittingly and quite casually made mention of contra dancing, which inopportunely, inextricably, and inaccurately linkedin to The Contras who were various United States backed and funded right-wing rebel groups that were active from 1979 to 1990 in opposition to the Marxist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction Government in Nicaragua, which had come to power in 1979 following the Nicaraguan Revolution.

After a hiatus of scores of years,
I in tandem with the missus
returned to a venue
March 14th, 2024
which Thursday night dances
currently held at Commodore
John Barry Arts and Cultural Center
6815 Emlen Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19119
that not only served
as palliative per bashfulness,
but even remedied
yours truly resigned himself living social
as a Norwegian bachelor farmer.

Life as a high school wallflower served me
analogous as The Idler Wheel Is Wiser
Than the Driver  of the *****
and Whipping Cords
Will Serve You
More Than Ropes Will Ever Do
without any budding female friendships
until lo… a gent tulle mandate
from my late mother uprooted me
from mein kampf

familiar bedrock level road terrain
(analogous regarding how
a duck takes to water -
meaning I identified said aerobic
rather cardiovascular workout
as an inherent quick study),
which venue offered a groundswell
of interpersonal opportunities
(preferably with persons of female gender)
to blossom forth

into golden sterling resplendent rod
of natural equipoise
(this an unbiased opinion) and balance
with freestyle élan begetting
improvisational swinging motions
unchained from the moors of formality
and lit figurative Saint Elmo’s
Sesame Street fiery dance
allowing, enabling and providing
this shy awkward self

during his young (emerging) adulthood
to cast away four ever
thy self embroidered handsome
straight as an arrow
naturally high as a kite young guy
buzzing like a yellow jacket,
thus liberating spontaneity
that je ne sais quoi joie vivre
clamoring headlong toward venus
from healthy pistol packing

overflowing bin laden
well nigh testosterone
erupting male member
toward opposite gender,
whereby bravado donned as key
to *** field of whet dreams
fostering initial albeit late blooming
roll in the hay hormonally
rooted rutting squeal.

Back in the day,
(when genders binary)
with nary a care
in the webbed wide world
I ate, breathed and lived
for contra dancing
experiencing social anxiety
and profusely sweaty palms
every mile of the way
(twenty door to door dash)

from (at that time)
324 Level Road
to then designated site
at Summit Presbyterian Church
6757 Greene Street,
Philadelphia, PA 19119,
where love's labor lost
found yours truly
engaged in pitched losing battles
introducing yours truly

(even after expiating my carnal sins)
to romantic liabilities incurred
while displaying comedy of errors,
when risking a overtures to ask
an attractive woman to be my partner
not only for one dance,
but also to explore the parameters
of fun two people can experience
while wearing clothes.
dSteine Feb 2017
even father time could not measure
nor mother darkness swallow
my desire to meet the dawn
where i might find you again,

because with you;
sun rediscovers the secret kiss of light
winds birth a caress
of gentleness thought forgotten
stars and moon light embrace
with the warmth of the first fire

i open my eyes
to breathe your name.
Aslam M Jul 2023
In the vast expanse of the universe, where celestial wonders abound, our story takes us to a distant star system, where the principles of Star Trek hold sway. On board the USS Enterprise, the renowned starship commanded by Captain James T. Kirk, an extraordinary adventure unfurls, intersecting with the profound metaphor of the two legs.

As the Enterprise hurtles through the cosmos, its crew encounters a peculiar phenomenon. A spatial anomaly envelops the ship, disrupting its navigation systems and leaving the crew perplexed. In the midst of this cosmic turmoil, the reliable duo of Mr. Spock and Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy find themselves metaphorically representing the two legs of our tale.

Spock, with his logical and measured approach, personifies the left leg. Analytical and precise, he seeks to navigate the path ahead with unwavering determination. Meanwhile, Dr. McCoy embodies the right leg, exuding passion and emotion. He yearns to forge ahead with urgency, believing that swift action is the key to overcoming any obstacle.

As the spatial anomaly intensifies, tensions rise among the crew. Spock's cool-headedness clashes with McCoy's fiery temperament, resulting in a debate that reverberates through the corridors of the starship. Kirk, the wise captain, recognizes the significance of their symbiotic relationship. He understands that without the harmonious coordination of their actions, their journey through the spatial anomaly may be doomed.

Enter the enigmatic alien entity known as Q, who thrives on testing the limits of the crew's resolve. Seizing this moment of discord, Q manipulates the anomaly, amplifying its effects and distorting reality itself. The crew, caught in this maelstrom, begins to lose faith in their ability to conquer the obstacle before them.

However, it is during their darkest hour that the crew unearths the true meaning of their metaphorical legs. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, realizing the folly of their divided perspectives, come together in a profound moment of unity. They understand that the strength of their journey lies not in ******* or compromise, but in synergy.

With newfound purpose, the crew devises a plan to harmonize their efforts, fusing Spock's calculated strategies with McCoy's passionate resolve. As they synchronize their actions, the spatial anomaly begins to yield, unraveling before them like a cosmic tapestry rewoven.

In this triumph of collaboration, the crew rediscovers the essence of the Star Trek ethos—the power of unity, diversity, and the boundless potential that lies in embracing both logic and emotion.

The story of the two legs, as exemplified by Spock and McCoy, becomes an enduring tale aboard the USS Enterprise. It serves as a reminder to future generations of Starfleet officers, as they embark on their own voyages, that cooperation and understanding are the true pillars of exploration.

And so, dear reader, this epic Star Trek odyssey, woven with the threads of metaphor and science fiction, reminds us that in the tapestry of life, it is the dance between opposing forces that truly propels us forward, both in the reaches of the cosmos and within the depths of our own souls.

— The End —