Changes

Life is change, so if one loves life I guess one must at least tolerate change.  Yet it seems natural to most of us to resist change, maintain the status quo, preserve the past, etc.  One of the significant challenges of life seems to be to avoid clinging to the past.  However, at times, one finds one must choose between the things (and sometimes people) they love and move toward one, leaving the other behind.  This can be a painful process, and it is difficult to know if one’s decision is the correct one – yet often I find that I am left with no choice but to choose.  Either I make the choice or the choice is made on my behalf by the same forces that brought the choice in the first place.

So I have left Eye On Life and I am no longer a poetry editor, only a poet.  So I continue to write my own poetry, but I no longer publish the work of others.  Now my judgments of others’ poetry are freed from the looming and often conflicting influences of such megaliths as free speech vs. my own tastes and values, the common good of the poetic community vs. the good of the magazine.

Eye On Life remains a good and worthwhile magazine.  I hope it will remain a place where good poetry is published as well as a place to read interesting and unique articles.

Most of my poetic energy nowadays is going into song lyrics and I am having a lot of fun with all that.  Generally I am posting works in progress on SoundCloud and more or less finished products on Bandcamp.  I hope you’ll listen to my offerings at either or both.

In the Door Hardware Genius world my role continues to evolve as I become more involved in training other door hardware geniuses and helping to define and streamline processes where I work.  In serving installers and hardware dealers I find that my depth of knowledge remains useful.  I remain grateful for that, and hope it remains so for years to come.

Dread of Winter

Everything is feeling the severity of what will surely be known here in New England as “the winter of 2015.” We had three (or four? I forget now) consecutive Mondays that featured at least a foot of new snow.   If one did not dread Mondays before, this winter has provided us with yet another reason to do so.  But because we New Englanders are stubborn and ornery, this very weather is one of the reasons we choose to live here.

The weather has put a dent in my rehearsal schedules.  In fact it looks like I will have attended only one rehearsal the entire month of February.   Luckily a gig at a private party with Unclaimed Freight mitigated an otherwise total loss in the live performance department.  I have made myself useful working on my own music to record in the studio sometime in the undefined future.

DHI published another article of mine in Doors and Hardware magazine this month:  “Butcher, Baker, Door Hardware Technician: It Can Take a Village to Fix a Door”, about the eclectic knowledge and cross-trade skills often needed to diagnose and treat today’s door and door hardware issues.   I’ll republish it sometime in March somewhere, I’ll let you know. 

Over at The Poetry Locksmith we continue to enjoy a variety of work by Donal Mahoney, and perennial contributors Carol Hamilton, Samuel Vargo, Christopher Hivner and others have returned with more of their fine work as well.  In addition we welcomed new poetry contributors Genevieve Barrons and Lana Bella.  Please stop by and read these intriguing poets.

Word has it we will soon be accepting works of short fiction as well as poetry.  I’ll let you know about that, too.

May your winter be filled with the Creative.

Winter Quiet

In the United States, whether you celebrate them or not, the cultural winter holidays tend to be a bit disruptive, yet the craziness of these holidays is juxtaposed with the deep and solemn quiet of winter as it exists in nature.   The cacophony of birdsong gives way to the quiet chirping of chickadees as most species fly south to warmer climes.  Snow blankets the land, muffling all sound.  Walking in the northern forest in the winter, one’s breath seems loud.

Like the migrating birds, many of the musicians with whom I make music become scarce this time of year because they travel or are otherwise busy.   Therefore it is a good opportunity for me to look simultaneously into the depths of my creative soul and my computer’s hard drive for creations put aside for just such a time as this.  Even as some of my usual creative outlets are suppressed I am having fun revisiting old ideas and discovering new ones.

One of the new ones is a tune called “Shorty” in honor of Trombone Shorty.

At Eye On Life meanwhile we continue to be blessed with a steady stream of new poetry, for example, we recently welcomed poet Robert Demaree into the ranks of our contributing poets;  in addition, we are looking forward to publishing more of Donal Mahoney’s work tomorrow, and sometime this week Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois will be returning to The Poetry Locksmith as well.   We are so fortunate to have so many remarkable poetic voices enrich our pages.

 

 

Lounge Lizard

 

At Eye On Life,  Rosa Farrington’s poem ” #ferguson” created a bit of a stir, attracting some comments.  While our poets attract a fair number of readers, few of the readers comment, so this was new and refreshing.  Over the Christmas holiday Donal Mahoney favored us with some very interesting poems as well, and what the hell I also threw one into the mix for good measure.

A note to poetry submitters to Eye On Life:  please submit only works that have not been published elsewhere.  The first thing I do with a poetry submission is paste the first few lines into a Google search and see what comes up.  If the poem comes up on poetslovelygarden.com or whatever, I have to reject it.   This goes for your blog, too.  If it is already on your blog, readers really do not have a reason to read it at Eye On Life.  Okay, enough bitching.  On with the show – or is it one with the show? Hmmmm…

Musically I am continuing to compose and lyricize, and will venture back to the Lizard Lounge with a couple of musicians (to be finalized) from The Rubenoff Project.   Two songs in ten minutes and a chance at performing a third tune in the final round if chosen.  If you’re in the Harvard Square – Porter Square, Cambridge area on Monday, January 19^th at around 8:30 pm, please stop by and cheer (or boo).

My second favorite tune from the Lilypad was “You Locator.”  We’ll probably reprise that at the Lizard Lounge.

Cheers.

Fall Fading, Winter Rising

As the colors fade and the temperature begins its steady descent I feel content and grateful.  I have family, friends, work, music and poetry in my life, and I find that life holds ever new wonders for my amazement.

In poetry at Eye On Life, Donal Mahoney continues his long run of (nearly) weekly submissions and his canon at EOL has grown to be the longest of all our contributors.  Other repeat offenders, like J.K. Durick and Erren Geraud Kelly (just to name a couple) have made EOL more of a community of poets where readers can find both the familiar and the new.  We are blessed to have attracted these wonderful poets.

On the music front I continue to work to publicize the concerts I will be performing in with Too Klez For Comfort, Unclaimed Freight and my own brand new band, The Rubenoff Project.  With the Project I am learning new organizational skills and more about being a leader.  ‘Coincidentally’ (ha) my synagogue has been studying soul attributes through the Mussar tradition, and the section on humility was especially interesting.  I have long believed that one of my primary missions here has been to learn humility.  In the Mussar tradition, humility means taking up one’s rightful space:  no more, no less.  Thinking myself humble I have often taken up less than my rightful space, but now I learn – and this principle is reinforced when I play music with others – that taking up less space than one should is as bad as if not worse than taking more than one’s fair share.  Hmm.  Who woulda thunk?

Slouching Toward September

Submissions are up at The Poetry Locksmith, which is COOL. We are blessed that many new poets have found us at Eye On Life, enriching our pages with their work. I (and we) are grateful.  Please stop by and enjoy the voices of Nina Longfield, M. Drew Williams, Valentina Cano and many others.

As I mentioned I have started posting a little of my own work at The Poetry Locksmith, too.  For years I felt it was a conflict of interest, but since we changed the design of the whole site a couple of years ago, and because I do not place ads on other poets’ poems, I have had no place to put ads on the Poetry Unlocked pages. Now I can put ads on my own work and feel that I have not done anyone wrong by marring their work with advertising – only mine. At the same time it gives me a creative outlet. It’s a win-win situation.

Musically things are often quiet in the summer because band members are on vacation, but now things are beginning to flow again.  Gigs are scheduled for Unclaimed Freight and Too Klez for Comfort already, and I hope to schedule a performance of my own work soon. I will be sessioning with a brand new group of musicians at the end of August to see where we can go.  If good recordings result I will be sure to cue you in.

My latest and greatest music can always be found at Reverbnation, a site that offers promotion services for musicians and composers like me 🙂  I have a few tunes there for your listening pleasure.

In the Hardware Genius sector I published an article about electric strikes and another one about how to become an online hardware dealer.

That about sums up my creative activity for now.  Hope you all are having as much fun as I am.

Vacation

I neglected to mention that I will be mostly offline between July 15th and 28th, 2014, but I will doubtless have much to share upon my return.  Poetry submitted to Eye On Life in July will be considered for publication during the month of August.

I recently joined ReverbNation, having noticed that my talented friends Tracy Clark and Louise Van Aarson did so.  I notice that there are many ways to spend money at ReverbNation.  When I have more tunes I feel might be ready for public consumption perhaps I will avail myself of a few.

Thanks to all who stop by this far flung exit off the information superhighway.  I hope you are having a wonderful summer.  I did leave a little something for you to listen to called, “Tango with Danger.”  I hope you enjoy it.

“The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien

 

Bubbles and Streamers

Motion is a lovely illusion, full of nuance and visual stimuli.  The orderly-seeming motion of water and the mysterious effects of moving air are certainly fascinating phenomena.  Motion only exists because of relative position.   The motion of an object can only measured by its changing relationship to some other object.   It must be traveling either away from or toward some other thing.  Both objects are either in the process of coming to be or ceasing to be.   The path of the moving object is always a curve because both the objects and their relative motion have separate relationships with the energy and motion of the expanding universe.

In the midst of all these unpredictable eddies and currents I write to you unsure of everything, including my own existence – or perhaps yours, or both.   One might ask, why?  But why might one ask?

During the month of June, The Poetry Locksmith feature at Eye On Life was blessed with a good crop of poetry submissions.   We posted poetry from perennial contributor Donal Mahoney, new poets J.K. Durick, Frank C. Praeger, Cynthia Vantresca, Maria Picone and others, and returning poets Michael Estabrook and Diane Webster.   Please stop by and read their fine work.  You can read some of my work there, too.

Things have quieted down musically, as they usually do in the summer when many of the musicians I play with are away.  I will also be away for a couple of weeks and away from my instrument as well, so when I return I can look forward to getting my chops back.  I did manage to get the last piece from our recording session up at Soundcloud if you would like to hear it.

I have been working on some new music and will keep you posted as to my progress.

I wrote a couple more articles about door hardware, too, if that is one of your vices 😉

Thanks once again for stopping by.

Ramping Up

I have been even busier than usual.  It has been fun.

Backtracking, the Too Klez For Comfort concert at St. Peter’s Church in Cambridge went exceedingly well and we were invited back next fall to play for dancing folk downstairs – a distinct promotion in my view.  We were complimented on commentary by members of the band on the history and circumstances of the music – truly high praise.  I look forward to playing there again.

Unclaimed Freight played at Copperfield’s in Boston’s famed Kenmore Square – upstairs this time, if you please – and were blessed by the presence of many familiar faces wishing us well.  I think we will be playing there again and I am glad to think so.  The sound guy there is really amazing.  I think this may be the first UC gig where I could actually hear myself and everyone else in the band, too.  Meredith – our female lead singer – made her first appearance since the birth of her child, now two months old, and we were very happy to welcome her back.

I am continuing to work on my own music as well and look forward to performing it at some venue in the Greater Boston area.  I’ll keep you posted.

At Eye On Life this week we have new poetry by Gil Hoy, Donal Mahoney and Rob Dyer, and I wrote a couple of poems as well, one called “Al Dente” and another called “Psalm.”

There is a bit of travel in my future, but more on that later.

 

 

Conscious of the Illusion (and other stuff, too)

First of all, please stop by and check out the winners of the last ever Eye On Life Poetry Contest.   There is some good stuff there.  Now on to “the illusion.”

The biggest shell game is time.   Einstein scratched the surface of the complexities of time, including its elasticity.   Planck gave us a clue about universal connective energy.  Yet if you visualize the immense busyness of our galaxy with its ubiquitous time-bending phenomena and dizzying eddies of matter and energy, realizing that it is just a small part of the universe as we know it, the idea of time as an absolute begins to seem absurd.

Given this inherent absurdity the effects of time become suspect; yet locked into our inexorable march from cradle to grave and subjected to rhythmically alternating light and darkness (day and night) we tend to passively watch as things (including people, i.e. us) wear, sag and age.  Flash a light in your face every five seconds for a couple of years and you’ll go crazy.  That’s why we all are.   Crazy, that is.

Speaking of crazy, I took my music into the studio with some friends and recorded four tunes.  You can hear them at my Soundcloud page.  They came out pretty well, I think.  I think “Crazy As Me” came out the best.   Also at Soundcloud are “More Salsa Please” and “No I Don’t Miss You.”

I have spoken with the band leader of Unclaimed Freight and we have agreed in principal to book a gig at The Lilypad in Cambridge next fall.  The idea is that I’ll do two sets and then they (and me) will do two sets.   I’ll keep you posted on all that.   I am writing new music for the occasion to play with my “old stuff”.  Ha.

Too Klez for Comfort will be performing at St. Peter’s Church at 838 Mass Ave, Central  Sq in Cambridge on May 27th, 7 PM.   Yesterday we performed at a private party at Biogen in Kendall Square, Cambridge.  All in all, the Cambridge thing is working out.

Unclaimed Freight will be performing at the second annual Techjam in Boston on June 12 at Boston City Hall Plaza.  Don’t worry, I’ll mention it again.