A Blessing for Epiphany

On this day
as we celebrate the dawn,
as we remember the gifts,
as we worship the bright morning star,
may the True Light that gives life to the world
shine on us, and in us, and through us
to dispel the darkness
and to bring us joy. 

Into the Unknown - Download the EP

Yesterday I posted the short song Into the Unknown - a song I created in Ableton Live 8,  with a unique instrument I put together from a couple of free sources.  And now, my friends, you can download a 4 song EP- each played on this unique and somewhat bizarre instrument.

And I hope you will download these songs. (At a mere four dollars, it's not too expensive...)  I hope that you will download the music, not just because I want you to enjoy the music I've created, but also because the money raised in this venture goes to support The Salvation Army in Newton, Iowa.

There are things we cannot know,
places we cannot go,
but still we persist;
into the unknown.

What I’m Reading: Paul is Undead

My wife gave me the book Paul is Dead: The British Zombie Invasion by Alan Goldsher as a Christmas gift.  She knows I like to read. She knows that I like Zombies and she knows that I like the Beatles.  It should have been the perfect gift, right?  It certainly seemed that way to me.  I mean, what could be better than an oral history of the zombified Beatles? 

But then I actually began to read to book

My initial enthusiasm quickly wore off because the book was tedious to read; all of the characters speak in the same voice.  They all sound the same – Paul, George, Ringo, John, George Martin, Brian Epstein…. Everyone in the book speaks in the same way, with the same idioms, with the same vocabulary, with the same cadences.  Everyone, that is, except Mick Jagger – who sounds like a character from a bad swords and sorcery movie.  The oral history format of this novel needed a diverse range of characters that Goldsher was unable to deliver.

Paul is Undead also fails as a book about the Beatles as Zombies (except Ringo, a seventh level ninja)  in that they’re not zombies.  Not in either the Haitian Voodoo or the George Romero sense.  They ‘re brain eating, undead creatures of some variety.  But not Zombies.

And they’re not convincingly the Beatles either…

Sadly this book is a low level knock off of Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (inserting zombies and ninjas into a favorite and familiar classic) and Max Brooks’ World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (the oral history format). 

There’s plenty of madcap violence and destruction, there are cameo appearances by Rock-n-Roll greats like Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, and Bob Dylan – all of which are intended to be humorous.  But they’re mostly not.  I chuckled a few times as I read, but not often.

It was a great gift from my wife, but disappointing.

Into the Unknown

There are things we cannot know,
places we cannot go,
but still we persist,
into the unknown.




I created this piece in Ableton Live 8.
I used the Dronos plugin and Blackbird instrument

Hooray for the Obstructionists

Hooray for the obstructionists!
Hurrah for the stubborn;
and Hip Hip Huzzah! once more
for blockade headed officials
who firmly declare that,
“we shall not be moved.”

They are like petrified forests
planted by empty riverbeds.
Long may they be remembered
and what they refused to do
be ever before us.