Too funny

If you're curious about my magical hometown of Yankton, SD, you'll enjoy this list of "Great and Successful People" who call Yankton home!

Dios mio....

John Williams

Here is a great video interview with composer John Williams (film composer for Star Wars, Indiana Jones, ET, Superman, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, first 3 Harry Potters, SO many more - basically one of the most famous film composers of all time).

It would be such a beautiful and magical gift to have creative partnership with a director like Spielberg and musicians such as Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman (from the Memoirs of a Geisha score).

So beautiful.

Enjoy!
~m

Sound and Spirit - NPR

I LOVE this program, and I thought you might too!
~m

From the Sound and Spirit website:

"...the best program on public radio, bar none!..."
--Bill Moyers


What is Sound & Spirit?

Sound & Spirit is a weekly series of hour-long radio programs exploring the human spirit through music and ideas. Ellen Kushner hosts the show. It is produced by WGBH Radio Boston and distributed by Public Radio International.

Sound & Spirit weaves history, myth, and spiritual traditions together with music to take listeners on a journey around the world and through the ages. With subjects ranging from pilgrimage to family relationships, Shakers to Buddhists, and births to funerals, there is always something new to explore. "As long as there are human topics, there will be topics for our shows," says Ellen Kushner. "People from every culture and every generation have always marked their life experiences with rituals, stories and music."

You can listen to this week's program about Africa, and see a list of previous programs.

Week of February 19, 2006
Out of Africa: The Spirit of Mbira
A land of many sounds and cultures, Africa is the cradle of some of the world's most spirited and spiritual music. Beginning with the complex sound and meaning of the mbira ("thumb piano"), Ellen Kushner engages in a fascinating dialogue with Zimbabwean mbira player and religious leader Stella Chiweshe about her life, music and beliefs... We'll also hear from contemporary non-Africans whose music has been influenced by mbira, including the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Steve Tibbetts, and the Kronos Quartet

Addendum:
In describing one of the female mbira players, Ellen Kushner says, "she is simultaneously an emotional traditionalist and a breaker of rules."

Sound familiar? Hee hee.
~m

Oh the irony...

Hey all!

I'm in St. Louis at the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Annual Meeting until Monday.

I brought my keyboard along so I can keep composing. :)

Here's the quote from a Starbucks cup that gave me a surge of joy this afternoon while I was sitting in a presentation:

The Way I See It #76
The irony of commitment is that
it's deeply liberating - in work, in
play, in love. The act frees you
from the tyranny of your internal
critic, from the fear that likes to
dress itself up and parade around
as rational hesitation. To commit is
to remove your head as the barrier
to your life

--Anne Morriss
Starbucks customer from NYC. Self-described as an
"organization buiilding, restless American citizen,
optmist."

To being free!
~m

The Third Composition, Part II

Here's a link to the poem I set for the third composition. I'm using the title "so comes love."

Listen to it on myspace.

~m

Meet Oscar!

This is Oscar, my new composing buddy (courtesy of my sisters). Thanks chicas!!! :-D

~m

Third composition

Well, I've finished the third composition. It's based on a poem by e. e. cummings. I might write more about it later.

You can listen to the Finale version on myspace.

~m

Eric Whitacre update

Hey everyone!

Two friends and I travelled to Northwestern University to see the concert version of Paradise Lost: Opera Electronica by Eric Whitacre. It was sponsored by Northwestern's innovative American Musical Theatre Project, and you can read a full press release here.

It was unbelievable. As my friends can attest, I was flying high. I cannot wait until it makes it to Broadway!!

Eric also has had great success with his new album of choral works performed by the UK choir Polyphony entitled Cloudburst, which was released on Valentine's Day. The London Times review gave it five out of five stars calling it "extraordinarily beautiful."

I should receive my copy of the CD in a few days. :)

Ciao,
meg-a-leg

Rounding out the substance of the soul

Here begins my flurry of posts after a brief absence...

I stopped in the hall last week to copy this quote from Professor Scott Murphy's door.

"Every normal man - that is, every uncivilized or civilized human being not of defective mentality, moral sense, etc. - has, in some degree, creative insight (an unpopular statement) and an interest, desire, and ability to express it (another unpopular statement). There are many, too many, who think they have none of it, and stop with the thought or before the thought. There are a few who think (and encourage others to think) that they and they only have this insight, interest, etc...and that (as a kind of collateral security) they and they only know how to give true expression to it. But in every human soul there is a ray of celestial beauty (Plotinus admits that), and a spark of genius (nobody admits that).

If this is so, and if one of the greatest sources of strength - one of the greatest joys and deepest pleasures of men - is giving rein to it in some way, why should not everyone instead of a few, be encouraged, and feel justified in encouraging everyone including himself to make this a part of everyone's life and his life - a value that will supplement the other values and help round out the substance of the soul?"

(I think the quote was by Charles Ives, but I couldn't tell from the paper on Murphy's door.)

I LOVE this quote! Now let's all live it!

~meg

It's alive!

Well, sorta. :)

Go on over to my myspace page to listen to Finale versions of my first two compositions. Make sure and read the myspace blog post about what a Finale version really is and what it isn't. Oh yeah, I finished a second composition. It's called Sea Violet, and it's based on poem by H.D..

Enjoy!
Megs

Some soul from Saul

Tonight I had the honor of listening to a live poetry reading and Q&A by Saul Williams. His words are arrows straight from his heart to yours that explode upon impact.

Here is an excerpt from a book of his poetry called , said the shotgun to the head:

where is that voice from nowhere
to remind us
that the holy ground
we walk on
purified by native blood
has rooted trees
whose fallen leaves
now color code
a sacred list of demands?

Here's another passage I liked:

tithes and offerings
made to the father
have kept buddha laughing
he knows that dharmic needs
are karmic deeds undone

a love supreme
summoned from dreams
fuses now
with the hereafter
as spirit to flesh
is melded by the sun

, said the shotgun... opens with a quote by Paul Robeson saying:

The man who accepts Western values absolutely, finds his creative faculties becoming so warped and stunted that he is almost completely dependent on external satisfactions, and the moment he becomes frustrated in his search for these, he begins to develop neurotic symptoms, to feel that life is not worth living, and, in chronic cases, to take his own life.

Saul then begins by saying, "Have you ever been kissed by God?...Here is a simpler question: Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life. A kiss that confirms that the universe is aligned, that the world's greatest resource is love, and maybe even that God is a woman...This book is the result of a kiss..."

I'll leave you with one more passage.
Good night and sweetest of dreams,
~meg

i am forced
to disassemble
my being
to fit into your monitor

i hand you my spirit
as i walk through
customs

i am to be reassembled
after that final check point

sorcery of self:
a phrase i coined
and now surrender to you

it's as if i've swallowed
an interior decorator

i like my heart where it is


i cannot make
your past disappear

only rabbits, my love,
only rabbits

depleted memory banks
have grounded our emotional economy

we have been forced
to create a new currency

one that will truly allow us
to love our neighbors
for reasons beyond guilt and pity

i have offered myself
to the inkwell of the wordsmith
that i might be shaped
into new terms of being

The secret

"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity."

Louis Pasteur
French microbiologist and chemist
(1822-1895)

Enter so swiftly into the work

"The painter (any artist whatever) should not become conscious of his insights - without taking the way round through his mental processes, his advances, enigmatic even to himself, must enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognize them at the moment of their transition. For him, alas, who watches for them, observes, delays them, for him they change like the fine gold in the fairy tale which can no longer remain gold because some detail went wrong."
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Never fear, I have been entering swiftly into the work. I will resurface and report when the work is done. :)

Toodles,
~m

Enlarging the sphere of freedom

I went to Borders and came across these quotes in a book of paintings by Wolf Kann. Enjoy!
~m


"The practice of art should have an effect not only on the public, but even more importantly, on the artist himself, by enlarging his sphere of freedom. Once this is understood and becomes a profound part of artistic practice, the problem of being a mere manufacturer of expensive objects disappears; pictures are justifiable because they are steps in their maker's artistic development. Each picture is valuable only insofar as it contributes to this development, because it enables the artist to go on in a freer, larger way to his next picture."


"While one is working, it is helpful not to be all that smart."

Trust

"The work will tell you what to do."

Estonian proverb

all the help I can get :)

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
Woodrow Wilson