ps. 46

Psalm 46
God the Refuge of His People.
For the choir director. A Psalm of the sons of Korah, set to Alamoth. A Song.
1 God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though (E)the earth should change
And though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea;
3 Though its waters roar and foam,
Though the mountains quake at its swelling pride. Selah.

mount messiaen

"For me," wrote Messiaen, "it is here that music lives: music that is free, anonymous, improvised for pleasure, to greet the rising sun, to charm one's mate, to tell all the world that this branch and this meadow belong to you, to put an end to all disputes, bickering and rivalry, to work off the excessive energy born of love and joie de vivre, to articulate time and space and join with your neighbors in constructing rich and improvised counterpoint, to solace your fatigue and to say farewell to another portion of life as the evening falls."
I wanna make art from the same heart as birdsong, too.

radio

Changing the radio, surfing the channels, is like having access to a representative sampling of the wide and strange vista of late 20th-and-early-21st-century popular culture - the country western lament, the political discussions, the throb of "urban" basslines and 808 kicks, a sampling of rock subcultures - classic, oldies, corporate alternative, as well as late-night rambles, consumerist come-ons, saccharine, nostalgia for an age that never was, and then in but one or two solitary stations, classical radio as a lone voice of pre-modern high art faltering in a vast sea of sound.

resting your head

Eden, how we miss you

a short play

The setting is February 19th, 2009. PIP is at work with some free time and types the following:

PIP: Today I was reading about Velikovsky, Carl Sagan's (factually) flawed counterarguments against him at a 1970s era conference, Phyletic Gradualism vs. Punctuated Equilibrium, and Heuretics as a way of "generatively reading texts".
NEGA-PIP: That's very interesting. Do you feel you are learning a lot?
PIP: In ways yes, though I get nervous as to whether this knowledge is rife with errors, gained as it is mainly through Wikipedia. But I enjoy learning.
NEGA-PIP: Have you not heard that the autodidact has a fool for a teacher?
PIP: Yes, but I have also heard Basho's precept "not to follow in the footsteps of the masters, but to seek what they sought".
READER (off-stage voice): You are displaying a perhaps unhealthy and certainly aesthetically undesirable amount of self-awareness and reflexivity which plagues postmodern thought and literature. You must be careful not to let this paralyze you, creatively, personally or spiritually.
PIP: Wow, that's true.

NEGA-PIP of course represents the acutely aware and critical, oftentimes destructive, "voice of critique" within my own head.

heart of man

My heart can sing when I pause to remember
A heartache here is but a stepping stone
Along a trail that’s winding always upward,
This troubled world is not my final home.

This weary world with all its toil and struggle
May take its toll of misery and strife;
The soul of man is like a waiting falcon;
When it’s released it’s destined for the skies.

But until then my heart will go on singing,
Until then with joy I’ll carry on.
Until the day my eyes behold the city,
Until the day God calls me home.

- until then [hymn]

p.s. valentine's day was rad.