Astronaut’s Lament
Soundtrack for Apollo 11 50th anniversary festivities!
Filed under Music, New Birds of America
Ostrich Boy
Is this debauch how your story begins?
Flashback to your secret origin?
I first met Ostrich Boy in Earwax, a cafe, late of Wicker Park, Chicago, permanently closed per the internet. A 2011 post on Chicago Parent provides a glimpse into the past. Of course, I remember it differently: two panels, suggesting strange, transformational sequence. A few fragments of music related language come back to me again and again when songwriting. In this case, I think of the endearing and resonant fine print in the bottom right corner of the back of the jacket of Savvy Show Stoppers: “All songs based on the true life story of Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet except where hats are tipped!” Ostrich Boy is a person in the neighborhood you keep seeing and evolve stories about.
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Filed under Ceci N'Est Pas Un Arbre, Music, New Birds of America
Ceci N’Est Pas Un Arbre (EP)
Spring is here, and the birds are back. At first, their point appears simplistic, almost to the point of provocation: a giant sign that says “TREE” is not the tree itself!
Filed under Music
Hunter’s Moon
Soundtrack for getting out to see the Hunter’s Moon this weekend! Don’t miss it!
Filed under Uncategorized
Summer Sixteen (EP)
New release today! Just under the wire of the fall equinox, 12 minutes of the summer that was. Enjoy a complete listen, as you might give one side of a vinyl platter.
Filed under Uncategorized
To Live and Die and Haiku Blue Jays
Months after-the-fact A beanball for a bat flip
Hard slide, benches clear
39/162: Toronto 6 @ Rangers 7 W19-L20
#jaysseasoninhaiku
Labor Day passes, we enter a new season. Back to school, and summer feels over even with a few weeks to go before the solstice. In an election year, the homestretch for the campaigns, new significance to the polls, debates coming up. College football starting, pro football imminent.
But most important of all: pennant races! The dog days are behind us, the Fall Classic beckons. Meaningful baseball. And for the second year in a row after a loathsome drought, Toronto’s beloved Blue Jays are in the thick of things, defending division champions and a game up in the once unwinnable A.L. East.
And I enter my own homestretch with Josh, Edwing, Joey Bats, Tulo, Devo, J.A. “Wildcat” Happ, and the rest of the flock. 137 games played, 137 haiku written. It seems so long ago I told a literary minded pal, “Well, I’m trying to write a haiku for each game of the season this year.” “Baseball has always seemed to lend itself to poetry,” he replied. Yes, but never quite like this.
The idea came to me in the 2015 season after the big trades. Tulo, then Price, something special in the offing. A few haiku ensued, but it didn’t take. As the team stormed through spring training earlier this year, the impulse returned. A Facebook post on April 3rd, then tweets ever since.
After two wins on the road in Tampa, the Jays seemed poised for a hot start, maybe a wire-to-wire season. Then came 2016’s first taste of adversity.
New double play rule Bautista slide illegal
Tying run erased
3/162: Toronto 2 @ Rays 3 W2-L1
#jaysseasoninhaiku
True to the form, each game is marked with three lines of five syllables, then seven, then five again. With only a few exceptions, I’ve captured an impression of each game soon after its completion.
The approach has varied. At times, I’ve had the haiku’s tradition in mind, as well as its form, and have evoked a moment without concern for conveying any of the game’s narrative or outcome.
Tulo checks his grip
Fingers form a letter “C”
Touching all four seams
90/162: Detroit 3 @ Blue Jays 2 W50-L40
#jaysseasoninhaiku
I was struck by a broadcaster calling attention to Tulo taking the time to get the right grip on the ball while throwing on the run. But other poems are very much brief encapsulations of the play, as in the case of a pivotal comeback from a few weeks back.
Saved by rain delay
Down six runs before the storm
Win by six after
120/162: Toronto 12 @ Yankees 6 W68-L52
#jaysseasoninhaiku
With at least 25 regular season games to go, and the promise of many more, I’m going to be living and dying the Jays the next few weeks, and writing a lot more haiku. Come along for the ride in a poem a game via #jaysseasoninhaiku. Bandwagon fan? Get the story so far in only 2,329 syllables! And while you’re at it, why not try some Blue Jays haiku of your own!
Filed under Uncategorized
