A Big Pile Of Junk

22 Jan 2019 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2019, the processes II, Uncategorized, vaguely about music II Tags:

Wrote this immediately after seeing a documentary on the inscrutable, charismatic jazz pianist Lennie Tristano. It took less than an hour – (the poem not the documentary). I MUST have been inspired!
Arlene

A Big Pile of Junk 🎼🎹🎷🎸etc.

Tristano said, let thought come through
Your all ten fingers;
(Or whatever number you must use
To play the blues
Or any tune).
How high The Moon or Gershwin’s Soon…
Your thought a boon
If it’s spontaneous, impromptu.
Corwin says the same thing too.

Not filled with an emotive ardor
But the charter of the instinct
And the intuition.
Be as one.
Let musicianship
Take lead, and lead your music
To your still unripe;
No comic gimmick or alchemic hype.
Your hippest self will be your type,
Reveal all your inner hope and razzmatazz.
We’ll call it jazz
Because
That is what a true jazz is.

Tristano
Called his own piano
Nothing but ‘a pile of junk’
To be transformed by Monk
Or anyone whose inmost mind
Uses the utmost energy to find
That inner passion,
Do what’s bidden, always hidden
In the inner sanctum of the shrine
We’ll call your talent.

A Big Pile Of Junk 1.22.2019 Vaguely About Music II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Starting Out Of Time (Again)

17 Jan 2019 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2019, Uncategorized, vaguely about music II Tags:

        STARTING OUT OF TIME (AGAIN)
I must start out of tempo,
Sometimes getting lost.
But after hours and many tries
At thoughts and skills and inner ties,
An inner eye will clarify;
The thing is fostered, building up;
Lost gets tossed, then lost gets lost.
At seemingly no cost. Rubato
Takes up speed,
Which leads to something it itself
Can breed. Ideas appear.  Indeed,
Ideas cohere
In fullness and in form, informed
By sheer reflection; sheer and clear,
Like glass through which one sees, gets seen.

Jazz musicians have the key—
And those who master Zen.
I must start out of tempo,
Let the hand say when.

When I get lost, it can be years
Before I’m back on track.
But after years of lies and tries
The tempo builds up speed
As if and of itself, the seed
Of spontaneity has cracked,
Sprouting, spurting, spuming out
A finished, polished thing with clout.

Starting Out Of Time rewritten 1.27.2019 Vaguely About Music II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Sing Your Song All Wrong As Long As It Feels Right

21 Apr 2018 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2018, definitely didactic, our times our cultureII, vaguely about music II Tags:

Wrote this this morning after I’d seen a Swedish singing star interviewed with torn, torn jeans talking about how he came to be no longer nervous when performing.

Sing Your Song All Wrong As Long As It Feels Right

 (a prose poem  – meter but no rhyme – well, a little)

 

I used to be invisibly controlled by rules,

Sometimes blamed on pressures peer:

Perhaps I am still, will be ever.

Rules inhibit, yea, dear reader,

Leading art and your behavior.

Double whammy*, inspiration, guide and model

When you would most like to feel

Creative, and spontaneous,

Well pleased, extemporaneous.

 

Subtle, so immensely, so intensely so;

Astonishing how much one swallows,

Soaking up, believing garbage as god’s truths

So hard to scrap;

All those rules coming from the praxis of the earthliest of mouths.

 

What is it sought beyond all else?

It’s freedom, spontaneity,

Belief that what you’re doing

Is its own confession, own possession;

Valid as the others

Always followed and believed the best.

 

Now I’m older.

Times have altered.

Folk appear on television with torn jeans.

Fashions once thought awful – trends.

In the end,

The young will always be impacted by

‘The others’ they think templates,

Patterns, blueprints, guides.

I have seen the light.

Sing your song all wrong as long as it feels right.

 

Sing Your Song All Wrong 4.21.2018 Vaguely About Music II; Our Times, Our Culture II; I Is Always You Is We; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Corwin

whammy |ˈ(h)wamē|

noun ( pl. -mies) informal

an event with a powerful and unpleasant effect; a blow : the third whammy was the degradation of the financial system. See also double whammy .

• an evil or unlucky influence : I’ve come to put the whammy on them.

ORIGIN 1940s: from the noun wham + -y 1 ; associated from the 1950s with the comic strip Li’l Abner, in which the hillbilly Evil-Eye Fleagle could “shoot a whammy” (put a curse on somebody) by pointing a finger with one eye open, and a [double whammy] with both eyes open.

Finding Your Rhythm

29 Mar 2018 2 Comments

by arlenecorwin in 2018, circling round energy, nature of & in reality, vaguely about music II Tags:

         Finding Your Rhythm

 Your rhythm can have heat,

It can have speed.

Depending upon what you need

In the moment’s feat,

It’s very heartbeat.

 

Whatsoever gives you power,

Your bio-clock

May rock

That hour.

 

Power by the minutes is what counts.

It mounts by seconds as you play.

It plays,

And you should let it play

Since rhythm’s power never stays,

Permutating with each pulse.

 

Respect it, for it’s no one else –

The simplest sample of the minute’s you,

All you are and all you do,

Adapting, altering, amending,

Reconstructing and evolving

As you solve new pages,

Entering and leaving stages.

 

When I play or sing

Finding tempo’s rhythmic swing

Is key; door’s opening

To fundamentals: moving, sitting, cooking, eating…

Finding beat the core and more.

 

At the bottom your rhythm

Lies a measure of your pleasure,

An intrinsic part of it;

Pleasure in the heart of it.

 Finding Your Rhythm 3.28.2018 Vaguely About Music II; Circling Round Energy, Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Corwin

 

 

Jazz: I Heal

08 Jan 2018 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2018, vaguely about music II Tags:

A jazz musician myself, I feel this strongly.

         Jazz: I Heal

I am jazz. I heal the soul

Of player – and of listener.

I, spontaneous, create a whole

From themes, small tunes,

Two bars, small strains…

I add to brain’s complexity.

I give the ear holistically simplicity,

The hearer symbiosis.

 

I am jazz, a riff.

The opposite of stiff,

Flexibility personified,

I move without, within a chord.

I must be heard to be appreciated.

Played to be created.

I love to share my air

And air my song.

I can’t go wrong –

From Dixie, swing to bebop,

I change with the times that show up,

For, as jazz, I’m real,

And I heal.

Jazz: I Heal 1.8.2018 Vaguely About Music II; Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll Never Be A Virtuoso

28 Nov 2017 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2014, pure nakedness, the processes II, vaguely about music II Tags:

           I’ll Never Be A Virtuoso

(Notes from a Piano Playing/Singer/Poet)

I’ll never be a virtuoso.

Sure as I’m an expert on

My name, my palm – I know it.

So I ponder as I listen to

Michel Petrucciani on piano,

Joe Pass on guitar,

Wayne Shorter on the tenor –

Am I any less an artist sans finesse

If runs, uneven, coarse run out into the sand?

Of course not.

Never to become a virtuoso is my lot.

 

But I’ve a lot that’s going for me:

Tempos, energy,

Out-coming spontaneity,

Ongoing creativity, ingoing spirit,

And an awfully cheerful personality;

Gifts and graces I don’t even know about,

Waiting to come out – or out.

 

Noel Coward wrote: ‘the talent to amuse’….

Perhaps I use that talent,

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

 

My notes are high while not the highest,

Vocabulary not extensive,

Not the most imaginative;

IQ slightly more superior than Pooh’s:

Who cares?

(That’s not a question but an exclamation).

Never virtuoso, I shall be the one

Who wears her brain upon her sleeve,

Her heart her slave.

 

Somewhat below, above so-so,

I know I’ll never be a virtuoso.

I can live with that.

I’ll Never Be A Virtuoso 5.21.2014 Vaguely About Music II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin

Flawed

19 Nov 2017 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2017, a sense of the ridiculous II, vaguely about music II Tags:

It may be right to be ‘a little mad’.  

         Flawed

Listening to Thelonius Monk.

(Give him a try –

If you haven’t already)

I myself am sunk

In heaven.

(or is it ‘raised’)

Anything for a rhyme

Anytime.)

Ouch!

Anyway, there’s genius

In being flawed:

In honesty, in bravery –

Wrong notes,

Strong, short, long notes;

Flatted fifths, half-tones the chord;

Finger placement – absurd.

Who can be bored!

Who cares?

He dares.

Stares into space,

Jumps up and down,

No smile, no frown –

He plays his junk,

Always a Monk – Thelonius..

And so I sit in pillowed bed,

Caffeinated (to my toes and head),

Cogitating.

Letting, simply letting…

Waiting, writing

With an honesty and spunk (see Monk, sunk, junk)

Flawed to the gills.

Hmm, sills, bills, chills, kills…hmm.

 Flawed 11.19.2017

A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Vaguely About Music II;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gifted But Out Of Tune

08 Oct 2017 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2017, circling round aging, pure nakedness, vaguely about music II Tags:

 

Doctor: “What can you expect?

You’re eighty-two! Accept it!

Vocal cords, no longer tighten.

Yours will never close again.”

 

Goodness knows, boy, do I know it!

Unpredictable, quixotic.

Coming, going, throwing

Intonation out the window.

 

Eighty-two, all soon to be

An eighty- three.

Must Corwin flee because of age?

Flee the stage because of age?

Damn, no!

Today, tomorrow,

She says no to going!

 

Sings her heart out – when she can.

Songs fantastic; jazzy, cool,

Breaking rule harmonic

For the music and the fun of it.

But voice, alas, hard to control,

Its life so unconnected to the whole.

 

Bitch pitch, stich with crooked seam;

Bad, sad, how she sorely wants to scream.

She doesn’t.   Giving out the gifts from heaven,

Hearing flaws – now a given.

Focusing

on now and only…

Singing, playing joyfully;

Doing when and how,

She crowns the gig and takes a bow.

Gifted But Out Of Tune 10.7.2017

Vaguely About Music II; Pure Nakedness; Circling Round Aging;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

OnceI Write ‘Em

13 Sep 2017 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2017, a sense of the ridiculous II, the processes II, vaguely about music II Tags:

 

Once I write ‘em,

I don’t read ‘em.

If you’ve had a feast,

You don’t go back to feast again –

At least not feast selfsame.

Eaten’s eaten,

Drunk is drunk.

The yester- feast a kind of bunk

When looked at and reflected.

Looked at un-corrected.

 

Nothing’s wrong

With bettering that song,

Polishing and honing,

Yes, fine-tuning.

 

Last night’s feast had too much salt.

You won’t do that again,

Fix the fault

But write some more.

More’s the door

To consummation.

Less salt to improved digestion.

 

Break the silence, the taboos.

Make the ‘boo boos’.

Keep on going

In the imperceptibility of growing.

Cook the feast.

Release the moment’s best

And once you write ‘em,

Leave ‘em.

Once I Write ‘Em 9.13.2017

A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Vaguely About Music II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking Meditative II;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

 

A World Full Of Beautiful Songs

25 Aug 2017 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2017, nature of & in reality, vaguely about music II Tags:

There is a world full of beautiful songs

Out there;

Each more sweetly silencing

And bringing forth

More tears than t’other.

Myrrh

Mellifluous as fragrant honey.

Money cannot make or buy it:

Songs so lyrical you cry at

Hearing.

 

The child, sensitive and innocent

Of harmonies and reading notes

Looks back on songs she learned by rote,

With warmth and ardor.

Learned by heart,

They weren’t hard to memorize.

Their beauty struck a chord

The size of don’t-know-what.

 

Sweet song or hot,

A taste for this, a taste for that;

It’s music that gave solace,

Reassurance, dancing feet.

World full of song and beat,

Time complete.

 

There is a world of euphony

And melody

To sing about.

 

A World Full Of Beautiful Songs 8.25.2017

Vaguely About Music II; Nature Of & In Reality;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

,

Previous Older Entries

%d bloggers like this: