A NEW KIND OF AIR POETRY BOOK

A new kind of air is a my second collection of poetry. Unlike my first book Some Things Scattered Around, this book is thematically focused, with all the poems centered around an extreme health crisis experienced by my wife. The poems generally fall into two categories. The first simply documents our experiences together though this challenging season. This would include the poems, “Piano Lessons” (documenting me teaching lessons while worrying about my wife’s health) “MRI” (a poem about the growing fear as an M.R.I. was approaching) and “The King Of Fear (a poem about sleepless nights while wrestling with the fear of death). The second category of poems are a response to these situations, focusing on themes of hope, perspective, and resilience. This includes the poems “A New Kind Of Air” (a short and simple poem about the feeling of hope, even when situationally things have yet to improve), “The Moons Pull” (dealing with the idea of releasing control), and “A New Frame (a poem about recontextualizing the struggles of our life, and seeing them in a new light).

My goal with this book is that these poems are an encouragement to any one who feels like life is falling apart.

Here is the opening poem from the book.

Piano Lessons

I was afraid

To leave you here

To leave you on the couch

When it was time

And when I was away

My mind wasn’t there

And when I said “thumbs on c and f”

I was thinking of you

“Thumbs on c and f

And everything else

Will take care of itself

The thumb notes are the guide”

And the child played

Up and down the scale

Almost like a circle

Almost like my mind

Loop after loop

As if the child

Had been commissioned

For the soundtrack

Of my worry

A SCATTERING OF MUSIC THOUGHTS

-When jazz musicians get finished with their gig they get together to jam. When classical musicians get finished with their gig they go home.

-Classical music was born in the church because that is where music notation originated.

-Bach regularly had his music performed in a coffee shop and at home concerts.

-Classical music has never learned to balance the budget, and is only surviving because of donations from people who think classical music is “good for us”.

-What unifies almost all American music (jazz, rap, pop, rock country ect.) is a rhythmic feel where beats two and four are accented. For some reason classical music has completely avoided this idea.

-Spotify gets over 100,000 songs uploaded to it every day.

-The church is one of the few establishments that has clung to regular live music.

-The average age of a classical music fan is 55 and up.

-After Bach’s death, his scores were being used as paper to wrap up meat.

-Since 2000 most art has gone through a process of decentralization of power (the indie movement). Classical music has been almost completely untouched by this movement and is still regulated by contest, grants, committees, and commissions.

-Spotify pays artist .003 per a song stream.

-Most of my favorite music was improvised.

CREATIVE CONSTRAINTS

A lot of the challenge of writing my desires became a light which lifted me to the clouds was the very basic obstacle of having a sense of harmony and melody at the same time. This was extra challenging because most of the time each instrument is playing solo (only at the end of the piece do they both play) (typically a harmony is three notes plus a melody note (which makes four) which is not very practical for the string instruments). Whats super interesting to me, is figuring out solution to that problem, essentially became the piece it self, and dictated so many of the decisions that I made.

Here are some ways I over came that challenge

-just have harmonic movement with out the melody. Like Bachs prelude in C and a lot of Philip Glasses music. This is how the piece opens.

-Have melody with no harmony. I thought I would use this more than I did. It feels like an opportunity for the melody to be free with out the constraints of harmony, but often a melody can feel aimless with out that foundation. I used this approach for the beginning of the viola's section.

-Have a melody with super strong harmonic implications. This is what Bach does on a lot of his solo violin work and I used this approach through out the whole work. Its like being able to feel the harmony with out it actually being there.

-Harmony melody taking turns. When I used this I normally did some type of rolling chord at the begging of the measure and then moved on to melody material after that.

MY DESIRES BECAME A LIGHT WHICH LIFTED ME TO THE CLOUDS

My desires became a light and lifted me to the clouds, is my new piece written for violin and viola. Unlike other projects where I began with a concept, and then worked on music to match it, this project started with musical ideas, which quickly suggested their own meaning. Like a new kind of air (for solo piano) this project is also for extremely limited instrumentation with out any lyrics. This is due partly to practical constraints (its cheaper to preform) but also I took it on as a stretching compositional challenge. In both works I had to abandon a lot of my default compositional procedures, and in a way, reinvent my musical voice.

The two ideas that permeated my thinking while writing the piece were, all desires at their core are something good and holy, but often how we try to fulfill those desires (i.e. in the wrong way) is what causes destruction, and secondly, almost all (maybe all) of our desires at there root are relational. Even things that don’t look like relational desires, like making a lot of money, or releasing art, or taking over another country, is at their core, a desire for respect, or love, or praise, or honor, from other humans, thus relational.

A little bit about the structure of the piece. It is in three sections, part one is solo violin, part two is solo viola, and part three is violin and viola together. I thought of the first two sections as the expression of desire, and the striving and searching for its fulfillment. In both of the first two parts there is a section with a slow unadorned melody. You could call these sections the theme of desire. Both the violin and violas themes are interrelated to each other, almost like saying the same idea with different words. The thematic ideas from these two melodies come back again and again, creating a sense of unity across the piece. In the third part, both violin and viola are playing, but not simultaneously, as if they were dancing around each other. This builds to a climax where, for the first time, both instruments are playing together. This leads to a highly rhythmic section (I felt very happy and compositionally at home making this section) which is imbued with a sense of celebration. The piece concludes with a long section that continues to build and build till the end. Emotionally the sense of longing returns in this end section as the “characters” realize the ultimate fulfillment of their longing and desires can only be fulfilled in the spiritual world.

THE STORY BEHIND THE PIECES ON A NEW KIND OF AIR

To The Living-My jumping off point for this piece was the aira from the goldburg variations. This is my favorite of the goldburg pieces and also the simplest. What I borrowed from it is the way the left hand out lines the chords very slowly one note at a time. For me, to the living is about celebrating and appreciating life even when its hard. It almost feels like traveling in the future 100 years and every one you know is gone and your watching home videos, and all you can think is about how special your life was and how blind you were to its specialness.

A New Kind Of Air-One of the things I like about this piece is the process the melody goes though in constructing it self. It starts with an extremely simple idea and then travels though multiple cycles of of embellishment till the real melody has finally been constructed. This is a very Steve Reich idea, but approached from a different angle (i.e. not using his beats for rest thing). Later in the work there is a section that is an ambient wash of notes. I realized trying to notate something like this is just silly. Its super easy to play but hard to notate, so I didn’t. The piece concludes with a slow restatement of the theme.

The Hope Garden-The name for this piece came from an experience I had in the summer of 2023. Me and my wife were making a new flower bed in our back yard. Were were making it in the shady part of our yard where it would be easier for my wife to maintain it even in the middle of health issues. Even though we had yet to put a single plant in the bed, the feeling of joy and potential over our empty flower bed was palpable. The ending theme was a musical idea that kept popping up as I worked on different pieces and every time I would reject it, but it finally found a home at the end this one.

A Strange Liberty-I wanted this piece to feel like a hymn. The title is taken from a poem I wrote (The companion poetry book to a new kind of air is due out in 2025).

The Longest Night Of The Year- This is an obvious reference to the winter solstice. Which is a symbol of hope and things turning around, even though that particular night is the longest. Musically this piece has no sense of development but just keeps recycling the same idea with slight (almost imperceptible variations). This piece goes along with this poem.

A NEW KIND OF AIR

This is not the project I wanted to make. I didn’t want to make it so I put it off for a year.

Here is the story

Part 1- The last couple of years I have been self producing concerts and presenting works for string quartets with a vocalist (tribunal and eight billion/one). Unfortunately classical music is extremely expensive to produce. My pieces required 5 musicians being paid for 5 hours of rehearsal and performance time. This really adds up and at the end of the day this is a one shot thing, and its super hard to get people to events. I did the math for a recent concert and it cost 46.29 for every min. of preformed music. More and more this was feeling financially unsustainable.

Part 2- My wife has struggled with on going health issues over the last couple of years. It made me ask the question, what type of music would serve her in this season. How could she connect with music in a meaningful way in the midst of challenging circumstances. How can you make music (which is a stimulant) to help calm overstimulation.

Part 3- I have a piano related hand injury that has lasted 3 or 4 years. I can still play the piano but I have to be carefull how much I play and how hard I play. A solution to this very practical problem was to write piano music specially for me to play (I am a composer after all). Knowing my abilities as a player and what causes hand strain, I could make music that was perfectly suited to my situation.

I put all these pieces together, embracing the challenge of the limitations, and wrote the music for a new kind of air. I think I was hesitant about this project at first for several reasons. I’ve realized more and more rhythm is becoming my main organization force in my music. The gas in the tank (for me) that makes the whole thing go is the rhythm. With my string quartet projects I could have five lines of independent rhythm which is pretty much all I would want, but with this project I was limited to two hands (and maybe even more importantly one brain). It was almost like, how do I even make music that’s interesting if I don’t have this. Secondly I am much more of a composer than a piano player and on top of that I’m a piano player who is injured. This put I lot of limits on what the music could be.

Several things surprised me as I worked on this project. I soon discovered hidden pockets in my head where different values were competing with each other. One value being making the best music I could, and the other value being I want to prove that I am good at playing the piano. This really surprised me, that unconsciously I could be making decisions that would be for value 2 and sacrificing value 1, when thats obviously a bad choice. Over and over for this project what served the piece was the simplest of solutions. For example, most of the pieces the left hand part is extremely pared down, often playing very slow half notes. To my logical mind this felt weak but to my listening self its what felt like served the piece the best. The whole project really felt like a practice in musical humility. The second thing I soon realized was all I really had to work with was melody. Which meant the melody had to be so pure and right. There was a lot of struggle getting this right, even though on the surface its not complicated. I recently heard a musican talk about the sweet spot, where the music is both simple and deep and that really sums up what I was going for.

As I evaluate the music now and listen though it, It feels like one huge deep breath. Its music that is introverted, slow to speak, delicate, venerable and extremely non exhibitionary. Its like a moment of pause where you are both remembering the things you should remember and forgetting those you should forget. It feels like music thats almost listening to you.

DUKE ELLINGTON VS. AARON COPLAND

I’ll just let you know now, Duke Ellington wins, and here is why

America was and continues to have an identity crisis when it comes to classical music. The tension is between mimicking European practices and creating something that is authentically American and different. For a long time most of Americas out put was the first option. Composers went to Europe for training (or we brought the European teacher over here) creating a steady stream of music that was essentially European in its DNA.

Enter Aaron Copland.

Our first world class composer, who is created with creating our first American sound in classical music.

The problem is Copland made his American sound the European way. The way any European could have if they had chosen his particular American topic.

step 1:Pick an American theme (in this case cowboys)

step 2: Go get a book of cowboy melodies

step 3: Insert them into your symphonic work.

Though I love Copland I feel like his music is a bit costume-y. It dosent feel like it is a music that bubbles out of the ground of our continent. Its like he created this mythic American sound which he, nor many Americans (especially the ones listening to his music) really had experienced.

Enter Duke Ellington.

Though not strictly classical it is symphonic, highly organized, and harmonically advanced. This sounds like us. This is music that could not have be written in any other place in the world. This is American finding its musical identity. Here are several of the things that sets his music apart, and gives it that American sheen. Firstly he did not receive a classical European education, secondly he created a completely novel blend of written and improvised music, Third he created a new orchestral sound with his heavy use of brass and brilliant orchestration, and lastly a new rhythmic feel of syncopation and propulsion which are simply irresistible.

Duke Ellington Suggested Listening

Masterworks

Live at Newport

Blues in Orbit

Mood Indigos

Aaron Copland Suggested Listening

Appalachian Spring

Short Symphony

El Salon Mexico

VIKINGUR OLAFSSON’S GOLDBERG VARATIONS

I’ve been listening to this almost non stop and wanted to share some thoughts.

-The first thing that struck me when I started to listen was the sound of the piano it self. I have been listening to Glenn Gould’s 1955 version for years which I would define (sound/recording wise) as extremely dry. There is no sound room or space in the the recording its almost as if the microphones are in the piano it self. This on the other hand has a much broader and open sound. Which gives every thing a little more sweetness.

-Secondly (again in contrast to 1955 GG) I found the delivery a bit more smooth and legato, Though I always liked Gleen Goulds delivery (dry and unromantic) I found this recording again, to be a little bit richer and sweeter keeping the notes more connected. If you listen closely though the recording you can hear Olafsson use a really short and sharp left hand delivery which I think is a nice touch and can help create a little more contrast between the melodic lines.

-Over all I found the tempos to be a bit more relaxed than what I was use to. Even looking at the running time of these two records Olafsson’s is close to twice as long (I’m not sure if difference in repeats makes any difference in this). To my surprise I found I liked his tempos better than Gould’s. A number of the pieces are not super long to begin with, and then if you take them at break neck speed that makes them even shorter. For me this can make some of the transition for piece to piece feel a little abrupt in Goulds version.

-Probably my biggest complaint about Olafsson’s recording is in the aria (which is my favorite piece). The piece is broken in to two sections an, A and a B, and both of these sections are repeated twice (so it looks like this: AABB). I find repeat going into the second B section to be super clunky.

EIGHT BILLION/ONE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

As I did for my work tribunal, in preparation in writing the lyrics for eight billion/one I created a list of questions on the topic and had participants send me there responses. Here is a sample of those interviews.

Define objective reality

-Something that is true, regardless if it is known or people even believe it is true. It lives Totally independent from interaction or observation and is not defined by any one or any thing else. 

-Absolute truth

-expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations

-Truths that supercede people's perceptions of them

Define subjective reality

  -A way that they world is view through your particular perspective. Because we all have our own 

Unique lives we see the same things and experience the same things with drastically different reactions. 

Subjective reality leaves the plain of truth and right and wrong and enters the dominion of opinions, taste 

and perspectives

-An individual or group’s experience of reality.

-A state of existence that is at the mercy of personal perception and experience

-I would guess that's everything relating to opinions, feelings and everything we can't prove which is everything

Please list things that you believe fall in each of these categories? 

Objective: God, Morals, human worth, love temperature, measurement, laws of nature, Harms, needs, concretely observable truths, the experience of emotions

-God and his character setting the moral "way" of the universe

Subjective: art, the flavor of food, being drawn or repelled by certain personalities, at times the application of a moral truth, hot/cold, short/tall, high/low, clean/dirty

-my experience of almost every aspect of the world around me, relationships, emotions, preferences, opinions

-Can really list anything in objective as I can't prove anything. I could list my belief and the things I trust to be objective but in all honesty it could all be fake. 

-Everything would fall into subjective. But I think these are honestly very unhelpful definitions and terms really

-Language, personal preferences, cultural judgements, the truth claims made by emotions"

What is an area (or areas) of your life where you feel confused wither it is objective or subjective reality?

How we individually live out “truth” or even the clarity on what truth is. The moral line whether or not theirs a right way to live when

Its not written out or clearly immoral. 

-Beauty

-I’m coming to understand that many aspects of my childhood faith, and the faith of much of American Christianity is cultural rather than Biblical. I am trying to separate the two and it can be challenging

-I don't know if I feel confused about whether things are subjective or objective reality very much

-Religion

Are you open to the possibility that ultimately there is no objective reality, Please explain?

-I do not think I am open to this possibility (does that make me close minded?) I don’t think the world would be the

Way it is with out objective reality. If all that is left is subjective all we are left with is every ones option which is the 

Same as saying there is no truth, and that feels the same as no meaning. Firstly I don’t think the beings in that world 

Could have a capabilities to discover there own meaninglessness, and if they did even care. I find in the human heart,

We all ache for meaning and truth. I think that hunger exists because we have all experiences glimps of things that 

Were transcendet. Also if you actually applied and lived out the idea of no objective reality, I believe every thing would 

Totally fall apart. You could not longer teach your children not to do something or how to share, the court system would

Become irrelevant and the distinction between sane and insane would have to go away.

-Actually what is presently "observed" by human on earth in time and referred to as reality are but shadows of what is real and "objective", and those realities may themselves be shadows of what might be even more real. For what we know as human will need to be totally transformed from a shadow land to have a presence in the real

-I’m open to it but it would probably make me feel like nothing is worthwhile/significant. You'd have to question the credibility of humans' ability to reason, and of our five senses, and that would make nothing make sense anymore. Also, what would that mean, on a practical level? It's hard to imagine

-I would say no, because that would be a postmodern view of the world meaning truth, is what you make it, and I reject that view. I believe that there is objective truth certainly through the lens of God’s word through Scripture

What is something in your life you know is subjective reality, but it is still hard to believe, act, interpret like it is?

-For me the area of aesthetics I find very hard to remember is not objective. This includes interior design, visual art, and music. 

I find my self judging other people like there is an objective truth and they are on the wrong side. I know what is true I know what 

Is good and they do not and they are blind for it. I know this is wrong but it is really hard for me to stop.

-The love that someone has for me

-Anything that I strongly prefer in my pursuit of the "best" could fall into this category

-I don't think there are any. I've been thinking about this since childhood and I'm pretty at peace about it

Do you believe an objective reality could be  possible in a world that is only material (not spiritual) please explain?

No I do not. I feel like for objective truth to be possible there has to be something over all the exist, there has to be something

That is beyond the limits of perspective (you could call it a super perspective) that can really see something for what it truly is. 

So ultamitly what is objective reality is what this something (the thing that is over creation) how it views it, is its true reality

-I can’t even imagine an “only material” world! I guess there would be no humans and no imagination so there would probably ONLY be objective reality in such a world

-No. The nature of objective reality is contingent upon a spiritual state. I don't believe something strictly material is capable of being unchanging and independent of all other things

-Ehhhh I think the world is designed to always have a way in which you can say things aren't true and it's better that way

-I think that would make it more likely to exist. The material world is harder to play definition games with, and it's more objectively verifiable because all beings have it in common. The spiritual world, because we understand it so poorly, can often end up in definition games, which are subjective because language is subjective. AKA: "My negative circumstances are the work of demons." That claim can be understood to be objectively true or false only if you clearly define the term "demons." OR, if the circumstance was objectively the speaker's fault, the claim could still subjectively be true for one person, who simply defines "demons" as "the personification of the spiritual consequences of sin," while being subjectively false for another person, who defines "demons" in a hyper-specific way.

What reinforces your current beliefs (experiences, ideas, etc) on the existence (or non existence) of the objective reality?

-My Christan faith reinforces my belief of an objective reality. Ultimity being a Christian means I believe in God, I believe

He see the truth and I recognize that I don’t. I just see a tiny fraction of reality from my perspective. So it makes sense to

Listen to the person who you believe has the answers when it becomes clear to you that you don’t and never will.

-Existence, experience, faith

-I am in a physical body and so things that are also physically observed easily feel like they would fall into objective reality. If we were living in something similar to the matrix then everything that we can physically see and touch would not exist and not be real objects, but I think they would still fall under objective reality to us, since to all of us we can see and feel them and would not be aware that it was not real

-The way you can't disprove very vague and ethereal theories that would suggest you are already in them

-I think, probably, at the core of my belief in objective reality is my belief that if a person is measurably harmed by someone's behavior, that person has an objective responsibility to cease, make right, and prevent that behavior, regardless of how that person perceives their harm.

-The beauty, variety, and intricacy of creation leads me to believe in the objective reality of a creator God.

-A Tesla car has thousands of parts that were designed by creators on purpose to work together for this thing (the car) to work. Humans are a million times more complicated and it is unfathomable to me that we aren’t designed by a Creator

Do you believe our five sense are experiencing objective or subjective reality, Please explain?

-Yes and no. I do believe the physical reality is real. When we touch the table we really are touching something that exist. But

I believe we can’t help superimpose over the objective reality our personal subjective reality. The other filter that we experience

Life through is the limitations of our senses. Other animals experience color sights sounds differently because there sense

Can be more devoloped. So that takes you back to the question who is right, If I see the flower as red and some one else 

(A person or animal) sees it as blue, who as the authority to judge between the two.

-Both. Life can only be experienced as one whole, which is too integrated to differentiate one type of reality from the other

-Yes, but we experience subjective feeling about reality. Clearly apples are eatable, that’s objective reality, but they may not taste delicious to everyone. A person may say “apples are not eatable” because that person hates the taste or texture, but that is not reality, it is the person’s opinion

-Subjective. Not everyone maybe feelings the same things or at the same level

-I guess on a technical level, they subjectively interpret an objective reality. Because theoretically, we all have acess to the same sensory data, but it seems unlikely to me that we all interpret it the same (eg. I have aphantasia, so I imagine I don't experience visual input as objectively as others do).

-Largely subjective though They can totally come into alignment with a piece of truth but not entirely

EIGHT BILLION/ONE

The other day I was listening to the news and they said “they were sharing there truth”. I know this is phase that has become a cliche recently, but I will still surprised in hearing it again. Firstly this is a erosion of language. It is using the world truth in a way that is not congruent with what the word means. Truth does not mean, perspective, opinions, or ones personal ideas. Truth is not something that can be owned, so there for it can’t be “yours”. Secondly this phrase has huge philosophical, moral, spiritual implications, if you logically follow its chain of thinking. Using the word truth in this new way very directly implies there is no truth in the “old” sense of the word. Because there is no over arching truth (the central idea of post modern philosophy) the only meaningful way to use this word is a replacement for the word perspective. Simply put there is no objective reality. If there is no objective reality all we have is 8 billion subjective realities.

This is the topic of my next composition entitled eight billion/one. It ask the questions, is there both a subjective and objective reality? If so how often do I confuse the two (thinking one is objective when it is really not). If there is a objective reality how do I find it? Can I trust my self to discover it? Can I find a person or source to show me the way?

THE ADVENT OF RECORDED MUSIC

It is strange how recorded music has forever altered our experience and relationship with music. We are saturated with it more than ever before and in equal and inverse proportions listening with less and less attention. If feels as if we have traded an in person conversation for a long distance phone call, that is going on all day, while we are trying to cook, clean, talk to other people, drive, work, ect.

For me it’s defiantly something I am thankful for as 98% of the music I have listened to and enjoy is recorded but it has its hidden curse. And the curse is this, when supply is plentiful it drives down the value, less value equals less attention, with less attention comes less hearing, till some point in the future we will no longer have the capacity to hear it any more.