My Modpo ’13 last words (live webcast)

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ModPo, Susan Scheid

I work in rural community health, very poor, very disadvantaged, I work in a world where people have no voice whatsoever. And a lot of the folks who are in ModPo, in their own way, have had their voices taken away from them. And one of the things that ModPo has done for me personally, as well as for a lot of people I talk to in the forums, is to give them an opportunity to have their voices back. And that is more powerful than you could ever imagine, so I wanted to thank all of you for that.

(Thank you Susan Scheid for posting the transcription).

Don’t Want This Anymore

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Coursera, Don't Want This Anymore, music, song, Susan Scheid

Don’t Want This Anymore

An original song demo completed for the Songwriting course at Coursera.org.  All instruments (acoustic guitars, bass guitar) and vocals performed by me.

This wasn’t a serious effort to record this song; I merely wanted to get the idea down and complete the class assignment.  I thought the lyrics were weak when I wrote them last week- throwaway lyrics to meet the requirements of the class- and now they’ve come back to haunt me.  I do like the groove, though.  Maybe I’ll try to rewrite the lyrics.

I’m a better composer and musician than I am a lyricist or singer.  I’m OK with that.

And hey Susan!  No funny effects except for some reverb and panning.  This isn’t the one I mentioned earlier today, however.  I just wrote this.

Trees

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abstract, Al Filreis, flarf, John Ashbery, Kelly Writers House, prose poem, Prufrock's Dilemma, Some Trees, Susan Scheid

-for Susan

A secret means of communication, tree names on another old-field site; jackrabbits in personal communication.  Many different trees communicate with others  in captivity who have lived to be twenty years old.   Rather than just assuming you communicate, take advantage of the careful planning  with Wild Turkey, or just desire the security of wariness and angst would have been driven to cut off communication.  Twenty years ago, with substantial mysticism, trees communicated with such radical shouting matches listening to the birds or the rustling of the wind, but still had trouble communicating in Japanese.  Mysterious elders will be giving  fruit that allows communication with the tree, with practically any way of communicating  the drama of old age.

Single Helix

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Bernadette Mayer, joke, Maxwell J. McKee, music, poetry, Prufrock's Dilemma, Susan Scheid

– for Susan

The last space you walked down, Maxwell J McKee wasn’t at any recital of graduate play at Bard.  The last half of the concert opened without McKee’s Single Helix against wind quartet, “releasing,”  You erased at the space, “to the closing breath of violin worked at the center of your sight.” Single Helix hasn’t since given away McKee any ASCAP Morton Gould Old Performer Penalty or a Hudson Valley Chamber Music Square’s performance penalty.  You earlier saw the local finale of McKee’s anachronistic commission, Single Quintet without Wind. It wasn’t out of McKee’s conclusion to Single Quintet;  this you last forgot of a rare health outside performers unknown as “Ligeti’s Syndrome.”

Double Helix

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Bernadette Mayer, botanical, cocaine, joke, Maxwell J. McKee, poetry, prose poem, Prufrock's Dilemma, Sigmund Freud, Susan Scheid, The Interpretation of Dreams

– for Susan

The first time I ran across Maxwell J McKee was at a recital of student work at Bard.  But, lo and behold, I was reminded in the analysis that the man who interrupted out conversation was called Gardener and that I thought his wife looked blooming.  The first half of the concert closed with McKee’s Double Helix for string quartet, “captivating,” and even as I write these words I recall that one of my patients, who bore the charming name of Flora, was for a time the pivot of our discussion.  I wrote at the time, “from the opening breath of violin played at the edge of its sound.” There must have been the intermediate links, arising from the botanical group of ideas, which formed the bridge between the two experiences of that day, the indifferent and the stirring one.  Double Helix has since garnered McKee an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle’s composition prize.  A further set of connections was then established- those surrounding the idea of cocaine, which had every right to serve as a link between the figure of Dr. Konigstein and a botanical monograph which I had written; and these connections strengthened the fusion between the two groups of ideas so that it became possible for a portion of the one experience to serve as an illusion to the other one.

Concerto

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Bernadette Mayer, poetry, Susan Scheid

– for Susan

On YouTube, concerto-
double the movement
of the first link here,
how I know every way
to create it.

The music,
driven toward captivated,
from that point
deeply human
so you feel,
makes the music
with intimacy, revelry, awe, excitement.

The power before
experienced music,
classical appreciation-
deep, any person.

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boxing, double bass, flarf, Hector Berlioz, Lee County Community Orchestra, Les Troyens, music, poetry, prose poem, Susan Scheid, Symphonie Fantastique

– for Susan

Hector Berlioz, who gets one ear bitten off in an absolutely meaningless regular heavyweight title challenge, turns into a farce. Let’s hope the fight is a bit more up tempo. Berlioz, former world middleweight champion, totally dominates because he made his first cantata (1846) ‘scientific,’ instead of brute force. He beat former Canadian champion Gordon Wallace who was ranked 8th. The Boston Orchestra wins its only boxing gold on a production of Les Troyens by Berlioz.

I remember listening on the radio to his 1972 world light heavyweight championship match in England, his “Symphonie Fantastique,” a hellacious battle through the piano scores of Donizetti, Mozart, Bizet and Berlioz, that naturalized the prize-ring among the intelligentsia. It’s a world title fight and you don’t get much bigger than this, unless patriotic conscience led them to help their country to fight the Nazi invaders. Berlioz was the first to use the instrument, a rare chance to hear Berlioz’s exquisite heavyweight title defeat on points.