Thursday, March 08, 2007

Poetry, music, memories...



I love my I pod. Years ago I always had a tape deck with ear plugs attached to my body, no matter where or what hour of the day... Sound pouring into my ears feeding my mind, heart and body. Now this delicate thing called I POD is my newest love. I have over 1500 pieces of music on this little white playing card!

Today I listened to 5 of the Beethoven Symphonies. That is one hell of a lot of music! Like major overload, but not for me nor my musical heart, especially when one is walking or laying down...

Chopin is often given the crown of being the "THE POET OF THE PIANO". I do relate poetry to music. Both use the same elements of sound, harmony, timber, rhythm and color to paint emotions and pictures in the invisible. I think of the Grand Tetons when I hear
Beethoven. Therefore I am sharing a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay about Beethoven. Actually two of her poems. One is regarding my love for Beethoven another is for lost loves and memories of loves...

ON HEARING A SYMPHONY OF BEETHOVEN

Sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease!
Reject me not into the world again.
With you alone is excellence and peace,
Mankind made plausible, his purpose plain.
Enchanted in your air benign and shrewd,
With limbs a - sprawl and empty faces, pale,
The spiteful and the stingy and the rude
Sleep like the scullions in the fairy - tale.
This moment is the best the world can give:
The tranquil blossom on the tortured stem.
Reject me not, sweet sounds; oh, let me live,
Till Doom espy my towers and scatter them,
A city spell - bound under the aging sun.
Music my rampart, and my only one.

WHAT LIPS MY LIPS HAVE KISSED

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know it's boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

BTW a story will be written about the new recording. For nearly 7 years! What a story. I begin recording a week from today
IF I can keep focused. I have been given an angel for an engineer. This will be amazing in the fact of simply the journey getting my original music into a studio setting!

I think I will listen to Keith Jarrett's The Koln Concert as I drift off into dream land. I have loved this man's piano since I was 20 years old.

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