theWheel

theOwl

I’d Love To Turn You On. Seems like a good compass direction to follow as we all move forward.

Does it wake you up?

Does it render you emotional?

Does it bring you to life?

Does it serve the interest of expanding JOY in the Universes?

Let us all taste LIFE – the cooks, the servers, and the guests.

» Read the rest of this entry «

theOwl

Listen to this song, performed in 1966 by the Kolo Quartet, the combo my dad played with through much of the 1960s in Detroit.

My father is playing bulgaria (the strummed string instrument you hear) and singing the harmony vocal. The lyric is about Bitola, a city in Macedonia (map).

Why share this particular song? » Read the rest of this entry «

theOwl

There I was, home alone minding my own business, working on music at the piano in the living room, when I heard a vigorous splashing sound from the bathroom. There is no good reason for splashes in an empty bathroom, so I walked over to investigate. The splashing sounded like nothing so much as what I might expect to hear if there were a small, frantically frightened, indeed panicking, squirrel in the toilet.

As I walked into the bathroom, a small dark wet bedraggled mammal jumped out of the toilet onto the bathroom floor. At first I thought it might be a rat – after all it was emerging from the toilet.

How Did He Get In There!!!? Did He Crawl Up From the Sewer???

But though the creature was wet and bedraggled and about the right size to be a rather large rat, it had long hair on it’s wet tail.

First estimate – a small squirrel – one of those impertinent little ones – had just climbed out of my toilet in a state of frantic disorientation. » Read the rest of this entry «

theOwl

OK. Let us start with an image of the Necker Cube.

I have been fascinated by these “things” for a long time. What I find most beautiful about Necker cubes is how they show us how we are constructing our universes. Two sentient beings can look at this two-dimensional figure and each simultaneously derive contradictory, yet equally plausible higher-dimensional experience from it. » Read the rest of this entry «

theOwl

Candy Apple Red ain’t what the adman said
But you’ll never know a better time
You’ll never know a better time than Candy Apple Red

Huh? That was me, writing about advertising at the age of twenty-one in 1979 (and singing about it in 1996). I was pretty skeptical then, and I remain skeptical now. However, I’ve come to wonder whether internet technologies have progressed to the point where a new form of mutually beneficial connectedness is now possible.

To take a poke at the biggest advertising model out there, I will note that I don’t like the way that “Ads by Google” from Google’s “AdSense” look and feel on a page. In my humble opinion, these ads usually seem to cheapen the impact of the hosting web page by diluting the page’s intentions.

(By the way, Google’s “AdWords” is an entirely different animal, intimately related to the function of Google’s search engine, coupling advertising links to search results.)

I would like to propose the possibility of a type of mutually beneficial “advertising” that does not look or feel like advertising. » Read the rest of this entry «

theOwl

I posit a metaphor:

I am a composer and a songwriter. The way I write music is first to recognize an idea that I perceive to be fertile, and then simply let that fertile idea take over my heart and mind.

I surrender to the idea. I give it the run of my heart and mind. I follow where it leads… » Read the rest of this entry «

theOwl

I’m wondering if any of you other composers out there have had the following experience.

It’s certainly taken me long enough, but I believe I’ve discovered a significant recurring pattern in my songwriting process. As this pattern is intimately connected to the gut-churning angst and seasick swirling despair I commonly experience during the writing process, perhaps I should attend to it.

For years I’ve noted that in the process of writing any non-trivial song I always, if the song is to be successfully finished, at some point find myself in a state of really horrible emotional swirlies… » Read the rest of this entry «

by theOwl

Last August 29th, I was at work driving a bus and thinking about my New Forest Qigong. I had never felt that I had adequately grokked “9 Shine”, an element in the Yin Fu Ching form, and I had the feeling that I had found an insight. When Stevie Wonder performs at the piano he often waves his head from side to side, clearly possessed by the music. On occasion, I have seen impersonators seize upon this mannerism to say “Stevie Wonder” clearer than words.

And Stevie shines. I was thinking that what Stevie does is 9 Shine. » Read the rest of this entry «

I need to understand this.

I have long contemplated and indeed have written a musical story about one Mildred Maloney (here acted by Helen Slayton-Hughes at the BMI Musical Theater Workshop in Manhattan), whose neighbors want her to share her beautiful poems with the world (The Ballad of Mrs. Maloney (Part 1) and who has a favorite number, 7.4… » Read the rest of this entry «

DNB

OK. I am a man and I’m married to a woman. Got married in Connecticut. Had to get a license. Really didn’t take time to think too much about the civil union part of the deal. Just one more of many many hoops I – we – had to jump through.

But lately I have found myself thinking about our recurring American “gay marriage” debate. » Read the rest of this entry «