parlando

Proverbs of Hell

~ Frank Hudson ~ 1 Comment

We’ve talked enough (or too much) about William Blake. It’s time for some of Blake’s own words.

If you’ve read other early posts from this Parlando project, you know William Blake was a childhood hero of mine. As a young person I was attracted to the romantic, mystic Blake, the man who insisted on seeing the world his own way. As an adult, I grew to more admire the persistent Blake, the writer, artist, and printmaker who learned and redeveloped all the techniques he needed to continuously publish his work. This piece features yet another Blake, the social and political radical of the late 18th century.

There are many ways we can see the once singular figure of William Blake in our modern world. I’ve already compared him to the independent “indi” musicians who simply ignored the conventional entertainment world’s structure and gatekeepers, making their own forms of music, making their own venues and recordings, without waiting for permission–a natural thought for me who looks to musical arts—but specifically, Blake was combining words and art, so perhaps he was the first indi comic book creator?

If you want to see how Blake himself presented the work in which the “Proverbs of Hell” appeared, with his own words, lettering, drawings, printing and hand coloring see here.

Social and political radical? As an Englishman, Blake wrote this in a world in which one of England’s chief colonies (the USA) and its greatest historical enemy (France) had both undergone revolutions—revolutions that had instituted democratic republics, something unheard of in an age of monarchy. Tom Paine himself, was part of Blake’s social circle. And Blake was raised in a dissenting religion, as a Swedenborgian, a system of beliefs that fundamentally questioned official religious doctrine. By the time he wrote the “Proverbs of Hell”, he had begun to question if Swedenborg, the religious rebel, had been rebellious enough.

The resulting work has been memorized as the proverbs they are, but lines from it have also appeared as graffiti, bumper stickers and t-shirts. I have heard that one proverb, “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom” is engraved in gold letters on a wall in Donald Trump’s penthouse library. Oh my! That would be a long post in itself.

The music for this piece has a basic rock band core: drums, bass, guitar and piano; but then I’ve added a little orchestration: bassoon, flute, and some strings. The orchestration may first sound like a repeating loop, but it’s not, each repetition changes subtly as the timing and relative volume of each part vary.

To hear this reading of Proverbs of Hell, use the gadget that should appear below.


 

As August Empties

~ Frank Hudson ~ Leave a comment

In the prairie states of the US, we have come to the season of schools supplies and state fairs. All around the country, the weeks and days that students only lived during the summer now cannot escape becoming a countdown to the school-year.

It’s been decades since I’ve been pinched between the rollers of that calender, but August and September still hold some sense of a time to begin things before something ends or because something else is beginning. That’s one reason this project has been launched this month.

Nearly 50 years ago I met Dave Moore, the chief collaborator in this project, one September. 60 years ago, Frank Zappa met Don Van Vliet, who later performed as Captain Beefheart. 40 years ago, my late wife met the teacher Phil Dacey.

Across the country this fall, people are going to be meeting folks who will alter their lives. You may know or not know that as you meet them. Most likely you will be somewhere between knowing and not knowing—that’s the way our lives are—but what comes from those meetings depends on what you do.
“As August Empties” imagines that middle meeting, when two high school students made common cause over some old blues and R&B songs. Dave Moore plays the keyboard part.

I’ve always appreciated Don Van Vliet/Capt. Beefheart as an artist, but Frank Zappa became a model for me on how to be an artist after a brief meeting in 1970. I had other artists I emulated before that meeting, but I had not met them. For example, I admired William Blake for his visionary imagination and his stubbornness—but I did not yet know the full extent of his self-sufficiency. The William Blake I would have imagined in my youth would have been out there conversing with the angels he found waving in the boughs of trees. I didn’t yet know Blake the painstaking and inventive engraver, the man whose impoverished household none-the-less contained a printing press. Frank Zappa would have laughed himself silly thinking of anyone conversing with angel/trees, but Zappa and Blake honed the desire and skills to take the ideas they had and make them into things. Through a happy coincidence, Frank Zappa was able to be generous to me in showing a little of the making of things.

It’s a mistake to think that creative people are the people who come up with great ideas. No, creative people are the people who make things.

So hop into your Oldsmobile, cruise somewhere with an Internet connection, and then click on the gadget below to hear “As August Empties” coming out of your dashboard.

The Prairie

~ Frank Hudson ~ 1 Comment

Do you know the artists who influenced the artists who influenced you?

I live in a city now where many streets and public schools are named for 19th century New England literary worthies. My son’s grade school is Whittier for example. And a few blocks over is a street I ride on to get to one of my favorite breakfast places, Bryant Avenue.

I can’t say William Cullen Bryant ever registered much with me as a poet. He was never Longfellow famous. My city has not only a Longfellow school, but several other streets and institutions named after Hiawatha or characters in Longfellow’s once ubiquitous poem. My father, even in his later years, could recite large portions of Longfellow poems. But Bryant is left, like Whittier too, in a state where his name is barely remembered and his work is unknown.

Coincidence of nomenclature aside, I would not have discovered “The Prairie”, this William Cullen Bryant poem, if not for an accident. Dave Moore, the musician and poet who often supplies keyboard parts, words, and is an alternative reading voice here, took a trip this summer to visit the large pre-Columbian mounds along the Mississippi river. He came back with tales and some writing about these remarkable large earthworks, some of which we have worked into musical pieces. Since I have not seen these great mounds, I had to search for words to borrow if I wanted to contribute. Bang! It turns out that Bryant had just what I needed, and it was very good stuff.

To explain these mysterious mounds, Bryant had to take on suppositions borrowed from some 19th century mythologies. Those mythologies are a complex subject, worthy of long post in themselves. In cutting his piece for length, I’ve excised most of that, leaving what I find is still vivid: what would these mounds have seemed like standing in the middle of unplowed frontier prairie, and what thoughts would have then flowed through this 19th Century New Englander as he beheld them?

Bryant is great at that. He channels a bit of Homer in his suppositions, mixed with a soaring American anthem. The strength of his writing here surprised me. Turns out, though I had forgotten and had not read Bryant; modern America’s great 19th century poetic grandfather Walt Whitman had read him, and he had picked up something.

Below is a gadget that should allow you to play The Prairie, taken from William Cullen Bryant’s poem about the great mounds

 

 

Phil Dacey and Trains

~ Frank Hudson ~ 2 Comments

I knew Minnesota poet Philip Dacey through my late wife, who was a writing student of his back in the 70s. I had the good fortune to hear him read his poetry several times, as he was an excellent performer of his work.

One indelible memory I have is Phil reading a poem in which Marlene Dietrich was mentioned, and rather imperceptibly he transformed into Marlene Dietrich, leaving the lectern and slowing reclining on a desk chair in the Blue Angel pose.

Sound hokey to you? Sound like some kind of Am-Dram over-reaching to make poetry more palatable? Nope. I was there, and it was riveting. Phil was so damn generous and genuine, and the actions so integrated into the open and honest poetry he wrote, that there was not a bit of disingenuousness about it. His being illuminated that poem.

Another Phil Dacey reading I’ll remember was a performance of several of his poems backed by a rock band his sons had formed. While that was not the origin of this Parlando project, it was one of the several threads that helped form this thing.

I was saddened to hear that Phil died last month. I suspect that Phil the performer of his poems now will only exist in our memories. Of course we can still read the poems ourselves, and we can be happy for that. Luckily for us, his poetry is full of his irreplaceable personality.

The story in this poem is more or less true. I was visiting his house with my wife, and he was talking with me as if I was some kind of peer as a writer, which was so welcome to me. I should have left the moment be, taken a good long pause to listen, or perhaps I should have just given him a big hug of thanks. Instead I just rattled on about things I sort of knew, an unfortunate personality trait I often inflict on others. Oh well.

You should see a player gadget below which will let you listen to my poem about that afternoon I talked over Phil and my current thoughts on trains.

 

 

This House Is 100 Years Old

~ Frank Hudson ~ 1 Comment

This one isn’t quite as old as yesterday’s post. American poet Dave Moore wrote this only a few years ago.

Americans have a history, but for most of us it’s not a long one. And Dave lives in Minnesota, which was only widely settled by Europeans less than 200 years ago. Even given this short history, people sometimes like to research the history of their homes, and to find out who the former owners and occupants were. I don’t know if Dave did this with his house, but he didn’t, he imagined it well.

I set this to short acoustic guitar tune, and I am again the reader of this piece. Although it may take a moment to load and appear, the player should appear just below this and allow you to hear it.

 

Cold Is the North Wind

~ Frank Hudson ~ Leave a comment

OK, when I say various  words with various music, what do I mean?

I mean no one style of music, no one source or one type of words, no one mood or emotion or thought. If the Parlando project succeeds I think it will succeed in large part because you won’t be able to predict what the next combination will be.

One example can’t show this, but we have to start with one. With a little luck, an audio player will appear just below here which will play “Cold Is the North Wind.”

I recorded this about a year ago. The words are a translation of a poem from the Book of Odes collected by Confucius in the Han dynasty. The poem itself may be from about the 8th century B.C. Maybe you’ve heard of something being “Old School”–almost nothing is more Old School that this!

A good text for anyone in love and missing their loved one on New Year’s Day in upper parts of the northern hemisphere.

I played all the musical parts except for the drums. The first lead instrument you hear in the arrangement is my attempt using a MIDI guitar controller to sound like the pipa, a traditional Chinese lute. Of course this isn’t traditional Chinese music, nor am I a scholar of such things, but you don’t need to study this, you only need to listen and enjoy.