theWheel

theOwl

This week it is my happy duty to be directing actors in a scene from Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal. The scene in question, Scene I from ACT II, is between the rather late middle aged Sir Peter Teazle and his young wife Lady Teazle:

SIR PETER.  Lady Teazle, Lady Teazle, I’ll not bear it!

LADY TEAZLE.  Sir Peter, Sir Peter, you may bear it or not, as you please; but I ought to have my own way in everything, and what’s more, I will, too.  What! though I was educated in the country, I know very well that women of fashion in London are accountable to nobody after they are married.

So what to do with the actors?  » Read the rest of this entry «

theOwl

My song The Idiot and the Odyssey started off as just a title. This must have been 1989 or 1990 while I was living in Delaware. I knew it was a great title that unquestionably would generate a great song, but I had no idea of what to do with it.

Had I lots of Nashville style songwriting chops, perhaps I might have written some kind of clever story about failed love.

But I couldn’t go to that place in any voice that felt genuine to me. And so I sat on my great title. And waited. And waited some more. » Read the rest of this entry «

theOwl

I started writing The Ballad Of Penniless Nicholas in the mid 1980s – perhaps 1985 or so. The whole thing was actually Karen’s idea, initiated when she asked how I pronounced my middle name.

“Nicholas,” I told her.

She said “Penniless Nicholas – Penniless Nicholas had no common sense.”

» Read the rest of this entry «