Thursday, January 22, 2015

Evanston: a composition; an(other) interview; a medal


        Last year Brian Cockburn, a composer, wrote asking if he could set some of my poems to music.  Naturally I gave him permission.
        The first, ‘Leaves of Men of Leaves’, was performed last month by the men’s chorus at James Madison University and a recording has just become available online.
        If you want the words, they can be found on the poems page.
        Some of you may recall a journal post headed, ‘The Thing I Can’t Do.’  Of course there are many, but the one I can’t that I most wish I could is be a musician; so hearing my words put to beautiful music is an unparalleled pleasure.
        I’ve downloaded the track and have it in iTunes.
  I look forward to playing it on GANNET in mid-ocean.  And, as I told Brian, if I am ever off Cape Horn again, it will be heard there, too.
        In time two more compositions based on “Die Alone Jean Gau” (first line) and “departure” will follow.

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        If you have not already had a surfeit, there is yet another Webb Chiles interview online.  This one at Limitless Pursuits.
        I don’t know that I have said anything new here, but it is well presented and I find my responses cogent.  I am pleased to be included on a site whose target audience is, I expect, slightly younger than I. 
        Interesting, to me at least, is that at the time of the interview last October, my rotator cuff was torn but I did not know it.
        I did not choose the 1979 photograph of me Tom Burrington used.   I told him he could take anything from this site he wished.  Sex sells.  And certainly I was sexier thirty years ago than I am now.
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        Me.  Me.  Me.  An orgy of self-promotion.  Reminiscent of Norman Mailer’s ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF.  I apologize.  Even though the full name of this site is self-portrait in the present sea this is wretched excess.  
        I’ll stop with the announcement that for our crossing the Pacific Ocean GANNET and I have been awarded the Ocean Cruising Club Jester Medal.   For non-sailors, the medal is named after a famous small sailboat not a court clown, though I may be that, too.