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

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.

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.