One pistol shot changed his life, but not how you think. Only 11, gun from Mama’s lover stuck in his shirt, celebrating New Years Eve shooting into the air, a poor man’s pleasure long before civic fireworks. Showing off for the other kids, your shot, of all the gleeful noise down the streets, your shot […]
Only once have I carried a rifle in public, for a 6th grade school play about the pioneers, my father’s World War II carbine an essential prop. After school, when I got into the way back of a neighbor’s station wagon, pointing that gun out the rear window, I already felt strange. Then she told […]
Finding out that Richard Blanco was speaking for free in Durham at the Carolina Theater, I was shocked. Shocked that I was so out of touch with such cultural events that I stumbled across it in the free Durham News that hits my driveway every week. And even more shocked that the theater was packed! […]
There is no Art, nor is there Life. No loss, no gain, no us, no them. All our categories and labels, divisions and distinctions, are merely linguistic – letters with no more meaning than the letter “I.”
What is it about these old Sufi poets that their magic continues even today? A conspiracy between a translator, a bookstore and poetry-loving friends blows a Tuesday evening dinner in Chapel Hill into the spirit realm. Bhavani is a friend who loves and creates poetry, so for her birthday, I went to a bookstore and […]
The vines are withering yet a few tomatoes miraculously ripen some each day. No birds or insects defile this fertile fading. Smaller and less robust than its summer siblings, each miniature offering packs homegrown flavor into an abbreviated form. In three bites only a memory.
Summer finally vanquished cool breeze of fall welcomed through the bedroom window a bit chilly all night under warm weather sheets. As the black lightens into gray, two distinct chirps awake me, sharing news of the coming sun. The short cheerful rhythms help disperse the darkness along with my fading slumber. “It’s a new day,” […]
Scene – After clearing spider webs away, a Human is sitting on a dock looking over a suburban lake, drone of Interstate traffic too far away to intrude. Warmth of the summer’s day is gradually dispersed by a Northerly breeze. Backstory – Two men I have made music with have, or are about to, breathe […]
Sitting alone in Preservation Hall such an unexpected gift. Echoes of jazz men past, and women like Sweet Emma, over 50 years of sweat and swing too many artists to name and the walls untouched, an unscrubbed shrine – stained pegboard, cracked floor boards, old tour posters, original paintings, the big bass drum illuminated from […]
What is a riff? Jazz swing distilled to an absolute coolness short repeatable ‘nuff said!