The first ecstatic/musical/lucid dream I remember happened when I was about 15 or 16. At that time, I was the principal bassoonist for the Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra, and my life was strung with a pattern of lessons, rehearsals, concerts, after-parties, and more rehearsals. It was a good life, a great orchestra, and our conductor [...]
I have never actually seen a ghost—at least, not the kind that leaves you shaking in your shoes, white as a sheet, with eyes as big as saucers in a face that looks permanently stricken. But yesterday I spent about 45 minutes watching someone who obviously had.
I thought I would try to learn something about [...]
When I was in grade school we learned all the old patriotic songs. The Star Spangled Banner of course (which came in handy during the 1970s Oakland A’s winning streak). But we also learned America the Beautiful, the Irving Berlin tune God Bless America, Woody Guthrie’s great This Land Is Your Land, and a whole raft of other stuff.
It’s one of those weird things, [...]
We had a lovely memorial yesterday for Susan with her mother and aunt, her young students, new and old friends all in attendance. As was fitting, there was a lot of music throughout the afternoon.
The problem with priestessing memorials is that afterwards you go through not only the familiar post-ritual letdown, but you are [...]
Back in the late 1980s when San Francisco Reclaiming’s Spiral Dance ritual was still held at the Women’s Building, the evening began with a chilling a capella performance by Susan Falkenrath. The room was dark and we were all seated on the floor facing the middle of the room. Susan walked into the center of [...]
Back in the early 90s I came across a really amusing article in an obscure little magazine. The article was by this guy who had always wondered what the lyrics were in Manfred Mann’s version of the Bruce Springsteen song Blinded By The Light. You know, the part where they sing “Blinded by the light/wrapped up like a…” or “revved up like a…” What the heck were they singing, anyway?
It was the author’s method of finding out what the lyrics were, in those pre-Google days, that made the article so amusing. He went to the Rainbow Cattle Co. bar in Guerneville one evening and, yelling to be heard over the blare of dance music, asked several of the patrons what they thought the lyrics were. The resulting mini-interviews were hilarious, and the best part is that he never did answer his own question.
My sisters and I were all subjected to a rigorous musical education as we grew up. We all took piano lessons from the age of five, and by the fourth or fifth grade we all had taken up a second instrument as well. Two of the sisters quit taking piano lessons by the ninth grade, the other two—my sister Sarah and I—continued through high school. Sarah and I both began college as music majors, and she went on to graduate with a BA, two MAs, and a PhD in music-related fields.
Okay, I’m sorry, this is it. For those of you who weren’t watching, and even for those who were, we have just witnessed the countdown clock begin to tick. That sound you hear is the imminent end of American Idol’s fifteen minutes of fame.
Back when Bowen and Lyra were about 5 and 3, I was a frustrated songwriter. I had several under my belt from years past, but not as many recent ones as I would have liked. There were two or three half-finished songs I was trying to pull together, and somehow I thought it was a failure on my part that I couldn’t find the time with two little kids to finish them. When I did take time from everything else to work on my songs I found I had nothing to say, or rather was too full of things I didn’t know how to say. Not understanding the cause or the cure, I called it writer’s block.
It happened again recently, that most rarefied of dreams: I am performing a beautiful new song spontaneously as I compose it. The dream wakes me up, and on waking I remember part of the haunting melody and lyrics, and am able to transcribe them.
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