White insists
that every crook
splintered furl
bashful nook
shriveled curl
be seen.
Category Archives: art
January 17.20
You are right, dear reader: you have seen this little sighing bird before. In my last post.
He has been with me in a singular way. Allow me to take you back to the late 1940s, when I was in kindergarten and my mother was lobbying the highly-respected (read: tyrannical) piano teacher in our area, who didn’t take students before they could read. I was not consulted.
Mom won. I couldn’t read but I started lessons, and I spent the next several years in tearful plea to be allowed to quit. I hated my lessons and I hated practicing. Mom said I could quit after ten years. I remember the moment because one remembers when one’s blood runs cold.
At that ten-year mark everything changed because I had my first Liszt étude: Gnomenreigen. It was the beginning of my suspicion that Liszt had fifteen fingers. Two years later, my next Liszt étude: Un Sospiro, The Sigh. I played it well. Not brilliantly, but well.
I had two dreams as a pianist: to play the original Rhapsody in Blue and to play La Campanella, The Bells, another Liszt étude. I never accomplished the first. I could only approximate the second. Alas.
But I think about the eloquence of those études. A sigh. The bells. They are there in those magical acrobatics. And I marvel at the transcendent power of a grey image, a D flat, and, yes, a tyrannical piano teacher.
December 31.19
My new year’s wish for you
is handsomely portrayed
upon this rosy wall
in sprightly accolade:
may dancing pigs attend you,
adventures fill your cup,
may loved ones sit beside you
wherever you sip and sup,
may your plates be heaped with kindness,
your spirit taste no hurt,
may laughter season your days,
may there always be dessert.
.
Wishing you a very happy new year, dear reader,
with muse and chocolate ever near.
Thank you for all encouragement and enlightenment in 2019!
And special new year’s thanks also
to photographer S.W. Berg for this splendid wall!
December 8.19
The curtain may come down
on their soaring sounds,
their tearing, teasing
rhythms,
but the curtain also rises
on the future
they will be.
The baton
(magic wand),
the hands that sculpt sound
and send it into the world as music,
directors of the hormone-crazed,
prophets who see the good
and the hope —
God bless them, every one!
This was the final bow of my granddaughter’s high school Christmas program. It was wonderful, and one of the countless times I have given thanks for music teachers. What their ears have to go through! And what miracles are wrought! I am ever grateful to all teachers of all arts. STEM is good, but I think STEAM is better. I wish you the joy of music in your December, dear reader, whatever you are celebrating.
October 27.19
Speaking only for myself,
I’d suggest that this could be
today’s interpretation
of Lady Liberty,
the inscription at her feet
a contemporary take:
“Instead of huddled masses
a massive bad headache!”
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg.
And kudos to the unknown sculptor.
October 25.19
Sing a song of decadence,
a hymn to sweet excess,
paean to insouciance —
hail, oh, sticky mess!
Concupiscence so caramel’d,
so delicately plated,
inarguable its tenet:
self-restraint is over-rated.
With a tip of the hat (and maybe the scales)
to The Cake Bake Shop by Gwendolyn Rogers,
Broad Ripple, Indianapolis.
September 29.19
How thoughtful Nature
to warm our eyes
before the year’s
glacéed demise.
What awesome palette,
it must be told,
that blends tomato
with marigold.
As home décor,
though bright and merry,
by that same Nature,
alas,
temporary.
