Poems for People

I found out recently I have to move again by this summer. Dammit.  I've had 18 roommates and lived in eleven houses since going to college.  I reckon I've met a lot of people.  Here are a few poems I've given as possibly unwelcome gifts.
  
1. a composition student at HSU
2. jack of all trades at NC State
3. My stepmother



Second sonnet for Justino:
Even for his love of the tritone, he
Just wants some peace. Must you ask
Questions about theory or some finale task
Impersonating impressionism when you can see
He’s editing an oboe sonata and is otherwise busy
Being an irreproachable paragon of compositional excellence. Alas,
Justino accomplishes the above and more. With his past
In consideration, it’s with remarkable grace, this industry.
The future for Justino is still not clear.
Choices of marriage and career, weighing the virtues of sorrow
And joy for how each contributes to his art.
Will he have as many children as Bach to hold dear
And bear such a legacy? Bury yourself in work and tomorrow
Perhaps breach the truly difficult subjects.




I imagine that when I’m eighty,
I will be more like Chris Cioffi:
 
So resigned to my competence that I will not need a filter.
(What I will say will always right, or by consensus quickly become so.)
I’ll be obstreperous with my sagacity,
so that it ricochets through every room
in every house in the neighborhood!
-(By necessity, lest the young ones forget I’m there.)

But Chris Cioffi, you are so far from old!
Flashing eyes; lithe! And fussy.
-If for once you wanted to fail, try being forgotten.




Sorayasus complicates the definition of true love.
"Fairly boring," she says, "and subtle."
and proceeds to clarify through demonstration,
as if the whole evening recovering forks from a toddler,
bookended by sticky hugs,
was unfolding to affirm her words, again, as true.

I don't feel deflated by an answer for my asking
but I've got to start remembering I can't handle her wisdom.

You grow up and go on and realize you don't have to be who or where you came from -
until three years later or so (a pattern)
when by my own less graceful means I figure out the same thing.
- that boisterously and in spite of myself, I am. 

Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hammer, with Frank Fairfield

Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer, with Frank Fairfield, Saturday March 17th at the Arcata Playhouse

I had known for weeks that I'd be going to this show, carried by the name of Frank Fairfield alone.  I went to some generic indie folk show at the Jambalaya about a year ago (maybe Arborea, with Justino.  Maybe What the Folk by Don.  Regardless, Indie Folk inclines itself to being generic.)  where Frank Fairfield had a brief set.  I didn't expect to hear anything worth mentioning that evening so I got fuzzy with beer and exhausted from good natured dancing, and so when Frank Fairfield hit the stage I was already sitting on the floor, so I didn't have anywhere to go when I was completely taken aback.  After set after set of flowy-garmeted hippies with acoustic guitars, on walks a straight man in a shirt buttoned to the adams apple, 1850s mustache, carrying a fiddle and a banjo along with the prerequisite guitar.  No smiles. No banter.  Frank Fairfield begins to play with the seriousness of a concert violinist, but with the repertoire of Pa Ingalls, and a hootin' and a'hollerin and stomping the stage to beat any one man band.

Frank Fairfield plays Rye Whiskey (Live on KEXP) ("Is it fair to say you just weren't made for these times, Frank?" "Is it? Oh, I don't know, I think everything's just as it should be.")

By tonight, Frank Fairfield has learned to laugh - just a muted chortle behind the mustache, but often and about every little thing.  (It's interesting timing, because a thought that's been percolating in my head about being an effective young person is that you must take yourself seriously, and also, for goodness sake, don't take yourself so seriously.)  It's hard to say if the Frank Fairfield we see onstage is conceit, or if there is some rare creature wandering the country and stepping onstage sometimes to let us in on his magical world.  I'm in favor of stage personas.  The holistic solo artist approach, in which the singer songwriter presents his or herself entirely (personality, distastes, provenance)  for your consideration, strikes me as quite desperate for approval.  And not of musical approval, but of the essence that "I need validation for my entire life. Please."
But if you're of the opinion that music is expressive, ie aims to illustrate some limited aspect of time and space, then letting the audience know about the artist's personal life isn't critical.  The stage presence certainly needs to stem from a place in his or her psychology, but what is presented onstage is deliberate and exaggerated so as to make a point. It isn't critical for me to know Frank Fairfield's personality, distastes, and provenance, but I'd like to think that him laughing a bit comes from the offstage Frank Fairfield, who commiserates with the onstage Frank Fairfield about how fast his cheap banjo loses tuning.

His performance is as expertly executed as his demeanor, very rich nuggets of joy and pain of the old fashioned kind and of every tempo, contained within a neat set.  Six tunes, the procession as such: Fiddle, banjo, guitar.  Fiddle, banjo, guitar.  (I went with Madeline who told me what made it a fiddle was the pegs were on the back instead of the sides, and that he played it in his lap.)  I'm sorry, the only tune names I recall are "Bye, Bye, My Eva, Bye, Bye" and "Short Life of Trouble."  The intensity and volume was unobtrusive, so that by the time it got around to being loud you were good and ready.  His banter is short, his songs, wrenching and nostalgic, are 7-10 minutes but they are too short, his set is nearly an hour but it is too, too short.    Effectively, his set does everything right that the apparent headliners ignore.

Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer - Now I do believe they deserve their reputation as fine and harmonious indie folk musicians.  The trouble is they effort to sabotage their legacy with incongruous costumes (Anais looks fine as a gypsy and befits the tragedy of the songs she sings about maidens, being five months pregnant.  But Hamer - he's got a clean face, a bright red t-shirt, and skinny jeans, which neither suit him, the aura, or his duo) and greedy execution.  If you like the soothing timbre of male and female vocals singing a seven minute ballad, then you will love two hours worth.  You may applaud at the end of two hours and earn another seven minutes of these two story tellers, two hours and seven minutes of soprano and bass.  While Fairfield was playing mazurkas and odes and blues, the only tractable variety between songs of the headliners was in the lyrics.  The songs were neat contained within themselves, but failed to be cohesive toward any larger structure - how easy it would have been to remove about five or so.

Maybe what I dislike about this genre is that it over-relies on the voice as an instrument.  It IS an instrument, but an entire set or band that makes every other instrument the bland support for its vocals had better be interesting or risk monotony.  It's fine, some people are vocal people.  I should point out the very drunken audience, 'silent as mice' according to Anais, were totally digging the set and asked for the encore sincerely.  Another long story about the song and how so funny it relates to what happened while we were on tour and how we met.

Frank Fairfield is the musician's musician; Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer sing pretty songs and waste your time.  Apparently the world loves them.

things that piss me off on a saturday afternoon, after waking up at 5:30 am with desperado stuck in my head:

opinions
sober chit-chat
headline news
prolific bestselling authors
prosyletizers
accessorizers
sopranos
philosophy with no traction in reality
romantic comedies in english
boys who have crushes on me
people who tell me I am smart or nice or funny
the sound of people eating, breathing, or scratching
also the sounds of: air compressors, refrigerators, keys jangling, wrappers in a recital hall
questions with obvious answers
riding in cars
talking before seven am

shameless fan letter to gary versace

Dear Mr. Versace,

          I am writing to thank you for coming once again to Humboldt State University, most recently with Matt Wilson’s Arts and Crafts.  We all enjoy your versatile, inspired playing.  I laughed (accordion solo); I cried (carl sandburg bubble soliloquy). 

          Your presence in the workshops is also quite memorable. The Development of the Artist is a favorite subject among friends, and so we love the workshops.  There is a still an analogy you used from the John Abercrombie workshop floating around – about taking the subway through a series of changes, and taking the express train with common tones, or the train that makes local stops on each chord.  I’ve given up expecting a question to be actually answered, since the artist will prefer to philosophize instead, which I am prepared to accept as wisdom.  This time when you said people play music to stop the circling in their brains (which you actually indicated with your finger circling at your head), did you see how many people nodded YES?  My peers have much weighing heavy on their minds. 

        Through these workshops and seeing amazing musicians (Ahmad Jamal! Dave Binney! Dan Weiss! Alison Miller!) in close proximity, I’ve become convinced that the life of a jazz musician is the one for me.  I’m a piano performance major and I enjoy my classical repertoire, but I like the idea of collaborative expression better.  The direct teaching approach and embracing of personality also resonates with me greatly.  The three jazz piano nerds here are divided about how to educate themselves and start their careers.  Two pianists play charts with ensembles exclusively, learn Chick Corea and Bill Evans solos, and plan to graduate and look for guru pedagogues.  The other defers to the institution of classical technique entirely and says graduate school will teach him everything he needs to know about jazz. 

         I am torn between approaches.  I am like this woman: <http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/pullapart.asp>. (Snopes says ‘false’ - there is no such thing as ‘magic’.)  Do you think it is important to go to grad school for performance, or for jazz, or at all?    If the latter, do you take private students in New York City if I seek jazz guru pedagogue?  Please! I’m a great student. In the meantime, what sort of regimen do you recommend while I’m in the relative purgatory of my undergrad?  Ensemble playing? Writing charts? Memorizing fugues?  Etudes?  Blues scales?

         Fortunately I’ve got some time before I graduate in which to vacillate and learn scales.  I wrangled the spot on the Hammond in Dan Aldag’s improvisation class, and like you I am very fidgety on the bench when other people in the room are philosophizing at length. 

          Forgive me, this is my first fan letter.  If you put a more detailed bio on your website, you wouldn’t have to deal with them.  Please come back to Arcata, we love you and there are so many good people here.

Sincerely yours