Gypsyfiddler Ink: music & musings from my corner of the sky...: September 2005

Friday, September 30, 2005

Quote of the Day (9/30/05)

"Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music". - George Carlin

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Quote of the Day (9/28/05)

"Do not commit your poems to pages alone, sing them I pray you." --Virgil

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

the pencap

The pencap has taken on a shape

not found in nature,

and, as I write this, it writhes

in the clutches of my persistent

jaws.

I like the resistant yield of deformed

plastic between incisors

and bicuspids--

the pointy teeth and the grindy ones

--though I can never be sure

which is which.

I like the pencap's taste: slightly

sweet, but inherently void

of all nutritional value,

and, fortunately,

all calories.

The broken lid is rough

on my chapped lips

and damp with spit. I turn

it internally as I chew

to create different formations within

the everchanging caverns of my mouth

(not unlike those of my soul).

It seems I have taken the words that I

want to, need to

say--

the "i love you"s

the "screw you"s

the "screw me"s

the "this is who i truly am"s

(that I never dare to whisper let alone speak aloud)--

and chiseled them into a tiny tablet

of pop culture plastic

now taking shape between two rows

of undying bone that grind

themselves to sleep each

night and smile

their soul away each day.

The pencap is my martyr in the self-

ordained church of self-

judgment and fear.

I myself would like to hide in the mouth

of God

and be chewed up into

something beautiful

bearing

the words of omnipotent wisdom

on my god-bitten arms,

legs, stomach, face

and skin.

I could almost certainly give

myself over to the absent-minded

bite of the divine

(much like this pencap

has given itself up

mercifully to be the sounding

and bruising board for my

almost-unchewed life).

dear god,

take this unbroken

store-bought lid of a human being

and with your semiconscious

and absent minded musings,

mold me into something as

interesting as it is asymmetrical

and beautiful

(finally)

for once...

Or are you too busy--

too refined for such things?

And if I'm not good enough for even

the mouth of God,

where is there left for me to go?

Bite me, God.

Bite me....

climbing the stairs at midnight

I imagine rocketing up from earth:
an ascent into darkness.
Leaving behind, as I dream
and dare to do,
the inadequacies of the daylight
and the dirt.

I imagine the odd release
as gravity evacuates:
a most wearable lightness of being.
Watching my nerves, my hair
and my assumptions stand
on end over weightless end
while my ankles dangle
like apples on Eden's tree.

I imagine the sounds of soundlessness:
cosmic symphonies and cacophonic harmony.
The bleeding of music so purely complex,
it has turned back on itself
and decomposed.

I image and climb
the darkened staircase,
dreaming, as I dare to do,
in pictures
and rhythm
one step
step
step at a time.

Monday, September 26, 2005

Quote of the Day (9/26/05)

"Is it so bad to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Quote of the Day (9/25/05)

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
--Brendan Gill

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Hurricane

Life is water, bodies flowing.
Some are lazy rivers slowing
down to placid stagnancy
in currents far too calm to see.

The torrent, though, in which I dwell
is deep of soul and high of swell
and frightening to float within
awash with sorrow, flame, and sin.

A rushing flood of salted eyes
that no equations realize
save quenching thirst with pale desire--
you build each day the dam still higher.

Dare the raging waters yet
to strain the structure, dark and wet,
still certain-ish to not succumb
though barely solid, nearly numb.

You know someday the dam will break
but there is far too much at stake
to let walls breach without a fight.
No crying, now, to that good night.

For if the levee's felled at last
and futures drown in floods of past,
I fear the swells may not abate
or that their fall may be too late

To find me more than well-worn shell,
the heart and soul they "knew so well"
now drained of fire, life, and blood.
She could not, won't survive the flood.

Before the Storm

The air is pregnant,
sweaty and dank.
A million kilowatts of
lightning hover in
antebirthing chambers--
clouds, thick as musk
or music--
and wait to be born.

The rumbling pangs
of electric anticipation,
are like beads of condensing
sweat that drip
unceremoniously down
overheated brows
and lower backs.
Streams of salt
now find themselves
dissolved and gravitationally
pulled toward the thirsty dust:
a ground itself longing
to explode upward
in flashing, white
and cathartic screams.

The heavy, question-
marked atmosphere
is muffled, saturated,
and expectant.
Eyes, legs, and skies
wide open and waiting:
waiting, greedily,
for the pouring
the bleeding
and the pounding
raindrops of release.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Quote of the day (9/17/05)

"I asked mom if I was a gifted child.... she said they certianly wouldn't have paid for me."
.
.
--by Anonymous
(found at http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/with/keyword/gifted/)

Thursday, September 15, 2005

an afternoon on the lake

The sun hangs boastfully above my left ear
and laughs as sister wind coddles
the watercolor surface into warm, wet moguls.

This boat like a horse--three legged perhaps,
with an uneven gait--and with it my hips bob
in scallops as the boat's broad chest
slaps the water in a chauvinistic counterpoint.
My fingers tickle the choppy mirror's face,
which, as we slow, begins to lick my palm
in a series of gentle kisses,
and white foam splatter-paints my arm.

(I wonder if it is possible to grow freckles and goosebumps all at once.)

And now, just over my right shoulder:
a rainbow in the spray,
chasing us doggedly, but gracefully
across the lake
in our wake like a guardian angel
playing with light.
And I somehow remember that once
they told me the rainbow is code
for some cosmic promise sealed in the wax
of the sun and the sea,

but for the life of me, here in the sun
while the wind in my hair blows me beautiful,
all I know is that whatever the promise was made,
for me it is only just now

being kept.

a glorious discovery

A glorious discovery:
the future is a malleable sun,
a light of every color
waiting, hushed, to be unwound.

There is no road
of predetermined destinations
as once I had feared;
the road waits to be created
by my every step.

Every day a choice,
every moment with its own destiny
contained therein,
every breath newborn.

I hold a box of watercolor crayons
in a white paper world,
and one cannot stand guilty
or color outside the lines
if such walls do not exist.

The happy ending I was promised
lives not in boxes long since signed and sealed,
but in eyes just beginning to open:
sleeping beauty eyes
just kissed by the prince of possibility.

Quote of the day (9/15/05)

How do I change?

If I feel depressed I will sing.
If I feel sad I will laugh.
If I feel ill I will double my labour.
If I feel fear I will plunge ahead.
If I fell inferior I will wear new garments.
If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice.
If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come.
If I feel incompetent I will think of past success.
If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals.
Today I will be the master of my emotions.

--Og Mandino, "The Greatest Salesman in the World"

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

The world is green...

The World is green: wet and new
and freshly showered.
sky: filmy soap grey
And smelling of spring.

The Earth is cool: soft and deep
like beds of black, frozen salt.
sky: marble-still
And all is quiet.

The Rain cries down: shimmers sheer
soluable jewels on the glass--
the blood or tears of diamonds--
sky: open and running
And all is new.

(written in '99)

Poem.....

I SING

I sing so that a vein to the universe may be opened
from my lips to the sky,
and to heaven with all its stars,
that my music would join with them in their celestial exaltation.

I sing to free the phenix from my soul,
for in the roaring flames of quiet:
ashen bells of truth.

My soul is my song
which I bare for you,
that you might glipmpse
my true essence
that no one ever sees
and fewer hear.

And then,
open and upborne to the cosmos,
I will join hands
in a ring around the world,
and with a million voices
we shall bleed our lives into an ocean of music
pouring forth love,
and endless,
endless harmony.

(written 1/26/03)

2 for 2 in Omaha...

Well, my successful musical theatre audition rate in this city is currently 100%. (2 out of 2, that is) I just found out that I will be playing Rhoda in a production of the musical "A New Brain" this fall. Great music, and lot of fun ensemble singing. I'm excited to keep performing. Stay tuned for further developments!

Quote of the Day (9/13) 05

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
--Noel Coward

Monday, September 12, 2005

Quote of the Day (9/12/05)

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.
--Virginia Woolf

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Quote of the Day (9/11/05)

If you strike out against convention with what is seen to be a new idea, you have to expect the catcalls and suspicions, because people enjoy the comfort zone of a status quo, and change is always seen as challenging.
--Linda McCartney, The Path of the Vegetarian

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Quote of the Day

"I've always liked the thought of meeting the great people of history. But then I think, what if it's like high school and none of the really cool dead people want to talk to me?"
--Niles Crane on death and the afterlife, 'Frasier'

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Before summer becomes an all-too-distant memory, I'd like to post a few pictures from my summer escapades as a music theatre actress (unprofessional and unpaid, of course!). I played Jen in the Andrew Lippa musical john & jen at the Shelterbelt Theatre in Omaha. john & jen musically chronicles the lives of a brother (John), his sister (Jen), and her son (also named John and played by the same actor--in our production it was the talented Christopher Violett), and the way all three are affected by their world and each other throughout their lives. The music is wonderful--and

wonderfully challenging, I might add--and we had the audience alternately both in stitches and in tears for the 4 weeks of the run. After what has been a performing hiatus of over 2 years, it was amazing to be back on stage again, especially with such a meaty, rewarding role, and a great bunch of people to work with. Big thanks to the Shelterbelt gang for letting me "play" with them all summer!

For more info and pictures, check out

http://www.shelterbelt.org

For starters, a few poems...

Welcome to my first ever blog entry! Check back often for poetry, song lyrics, pictures, and anything else I can think of, and don't be afraid to tell me what you think!

First, a few amanda originals...

Ireland

Wisps of souls hang in the air

like retreating clouds:

Memories and the mists of prayer linger

among carved crosses and crumbling stone.

This is the dust of which you spoke,

to which all shall return.

Alone, but yet surrounded,

I drift among the outstretched arms of weathered stone crosses,

and through graying arches of fallen Godhouses,

thresholds to some kind of eternity.

I hear the ache of memory,

long since egg-shelled in the crumbling

outerlayer of time and history,

like an angel, waiting cold in shapeless marble,

that only a master's hand

dares to release.

And, as I dream, the embryo of a prayer

also waits, locked inside

as if I, too, and I alone

am also made of crumbling stone.

Open Me

(this is one is a song I'll sing on a movie soundtrack someday...)

Open me, I am ready to be unleashed.

Harbor me, in your waters where waves won't reach.

Carry me over your great divide,

Spend a nighttime by my side.

All of my laces have come untied

the better for you, my dear, to see the hope in me.

So draw back the curtain...and open me.

Cover me, when the lightning is at its peak.

Channel me, when my lips are too weary to speak.

Guardian, lover, and enemy:

Angel and liberator be.

Two lonely pilgrims, one long journey--

A path of unanswered prayers and discovery.

In the moments of lightning...cover me.

And I will hold you...and be held by you.

And I will dream you...and be dreamed by you.

And I will need you...and be needed by you.

I will love you...and be loved by you.

Open me, from the shell I am locked within.

Cover me, when the sunlight is burning my skin.

Few will accomplish what many have tried:

standing alone till the nightmares subside.

For life's not worth living when love is denied,

So I will, reluctant, a lover and open be.

Until I haven't the courage...then you can cover me.

But now you draw back the curtain...and open me.

And now, one of my new discoveries from one of my favorite poets, Robert Frost...

INTO MY OWN

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,

So old and firm they scarecely show the breeze,

Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom,

But streched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day

Into their vastness I should steal away,

Fearless of ever finding open land,

Or highway where the slow whell pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e'er turn back,

Or those should not set forth upont my track

To overtake me, who should miss me here

And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew--

Only more sure of all I thought was true.

Well, I guess that's all for now. Thanks for visiting and come again soon!

A cyperspace place for music, poetry, drama, and anything else that my imagination and whimsy settle on! ................................... (note: all original text published on this site is the sole property of its author. Copyright 2005.)

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Gypsyfiddler Ink: music & musings from my corner of the sky...