Thinking On Your Feet Is 2013

23 Oct 2013 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2013, circling round yoga, definitely didactic, vaguely about music II Tags: , , , , , ,

Thinking On Your Feet Is

Gift, art, yoga;

Leading to a

Modus operandi,

Jazz,

Invention,

A defining fun.

Creation in a flash;

Living

In a now,

No deed is left undone,

Not one day gone,

Neglected or unloved.

Thinking fleetly on your feet,

Eliminates, eradicates:

Fear of fiasco,

Worry, stress, for not one

Thing can fail you;

Neither falling on your bottom

In the middle of your show

Or whatever else you’re doing.

Trivial and valuable –

It’s all significant,

While none of it means anything at all;

The usual

Illogicality.

Years of practicing

Improvisation

Mean that

Error’s never really wrong,

So

Practice,

Use life as an etude.

Make etude of every song.

Life plays.

Thinking On Your Feet 10.10.2013

Definitely Didactic; Vaguely About Music II; Circling Round Yoga;

Arlene Corwin

Getting Bored 2013

20 Jul 2013 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2013, definitely didactic, the processes II, vaguely about music II Tags: , , , , , , ,

Getting Bored

I get bored so easily.

When playing a tune

Nine hundred times,

I’ve just got to change it.

Improvising, that’s the name.

Who can do the same life in, life out?

We need to change – a good thing.

We are variety machines.

Change can be nuance –

Nothing big; subtle, slow in coming.

But, if you’ve got the talent and the ear

You hear: inventing, extemporizing,

Winging-it, ad-libbing ad libitum.

Creatively and on the spot

You feel you’ve got

To make up something new

To satisfy you, and

Oh, it quenches:

The worn replaced, its freshness

Making you  a happy fledgling; re-born.

Lose the fear!

It’s here you want to chase it.

Clinch the moment.

Let boredom take you to the next

Bewitching instance.

Getting Bored 7.20.2013

Vaguely About Music II; Definitely Didactic; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;

Arlene Corwin

All The Way From Sweden 2012

18 Apr 2013 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2012, swedish book, vaguely about music II Tags: , , , , ,

All The Way From Sweden

 

All the way from Sweden

I can’t help but natter on:

Poetry and

Jazz and

Being,

Flying there to meet you and present myself

Out of the question.

Sitting

In my white

Room eating

Home-baked buttered roll with cheese,

Drinking cups of tea

To please my knife

And spoon and cup,

Eat, drinking up

While writing –

This because I like to share,

Not being able to transport myself

To where

You are.

 

Jazz: the art of improvising;

Mindfulness – a Zen.

The song a mantra/koan,

A yogic thing one ought to do

While in the bath,

While on the road, in bed

Or looking through the window

At a cloud:

Everything and anything a jazz.

 

Life: the distance

Between seconds,

Record kept inside your cells

And held there

All the years of breath,

The is your wealth

In  action.

 

All The Way From Sweden 4.18.2012

Vaguely About Music II; Swedish Book;

Arlene Corwin

Rhapsodizing Confusion 2012

19 Aug 2012 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2012, vaguely about music II Tags: , , , , , ,

Rhapsodizing Confusion

 

He sits there rhapsodizing,

Music going

On and on,

Theme scarcely clear.

What he needs in an arrangement,

Inner order,

Something to hang on to,

An internal girder, welder, builder,

Candor, some reminder to bind

A to b to c to d and finally to z:

An end and means to send it,

End it.

 

Is it rhapsody, improvisation?

His seems like bewilderment and misperception

Fueled by laidback lack of fire

Fused by movement going nowhere.

He thinks he was Socrates,

Calls it jazz.

We drown in his repose.

I think if I were in his clothes

I’d agonize, I’d make some noise.

No, he keeps on and on,

Just playing, rhapsodizing

In confusion.

 

Rhapsodizing Confusion 8.14.2012

Vaguely About Music II;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

A Jazz Musician Poet 2008

17 Nov 2008 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2008, vaguely about music Tags: , , ,

    A Jazz Musician Poet

Hearing phrases, language read,

Seeing emails as a rhythm,

Alphabetic combinations that I cry from,

Are the bridges I feed on.

© A Jazz Musician Poet 9.9.2008

The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Vaguely About Music;

Arlene Corwin

To The Soul Not Yet Whole 1962

11 Nov 2008 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 1962, lessons to be learned, nature of & in reality, vaguely about music Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

       To The Soul Not Yet Whole

If swingin’s

All you’re bringin’

To music,

That’s not art,

But only part.

Or change your bit:

That isn’t it,

That’s only sham.

That is, if swingin’s

All you bring

To music.

Refrain:

Soul music may have heart,

Soul music may be smart;

Soul music may be art –

But not necessarily so.

Disdain:

Swing, man, hard and loud,

But man, you’re clinging to a cloud.

Call horn x,

Call music y,

Call yourself small letter i.

Remember son,

You modern soul,

The abstraction,

Means, the goal –

The three in one

Is solely you.

Practice one or all of these,

For art is born of one-in-threes.

Love will do,

And horn will do,

And absoluting you will do

Too.

©To The Soul Not Yet Whole (on hearing a record by Charlie Mingus) 1962

Vaguely About Music;

Arlene Corwin

 

The Trick Is To Stay Fresh 1994

11 Nov 2008 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 1994, definitely didactic, lessons to be learned, life, vaguely about music Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

           The Trick Is To Stay Fresh

I heard a band four decades old.

“Good God, I thought, what a good band!”

How do they do it? Forty years?

What do they think night after night

When each man steps up to the stand –

Night after night his horn in hand,

Old licks, clichés

Takes his solos even on the days

His wife is sick?

And still they’re slick and stick it out

Night after night, year after year,

Internal tensions always there.

It must be like a factory job,

To entertain the drinking mob.

Or maybe not.

Maybe jobs have been a ball,

A chance to leave four walls,

Create, maintain a freshness,

Make some music on the spot,

Feelings tapped, without pretence;

Spontaneous, and proud of what

The dents he’s chalked up on his horn

All signify.

Perhaps, instead of blasé scorn

He manages to like the crowd –

The drunks, the dancers raw and loud.

Maybe the leader has charisma –

Makes each guy feel that he’s good;

Shows respect for solos

Drummer, sax or trumpet blows;

Drumming, blasting, bellowing.

By hook or crook, the trick’s eternal:

Keep the kernel of renewal growing,

Tapped and showing;

Ever crowing.

The trick is to stay fresh.

©The Trick Is To Stay Fresh 94.11.30

Vaguely About Music;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

The Songbird 1997

11 Nov 2008 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 1997, lessons to be learned, vaguely about music Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

       The Songbird

I heard a singer and was moved,

Which proves not much.

We’re touched by mediocrity,

The second-rate,

The bait of glamour.

Hers was honesty,

Simplicity dug deep in skill.

Talent and ability.

Oh, so good, voice many-hued.

Interpretation, even the

Pronunciation, woven in

The loveliness.

A jazz parfait: a marmalade,

Jade luminesence

Honesty, simplicity,

Substance in each nicety;

Who wouldn’t want to sing so well,

That those who heard would feel compelled

To tell the world what you exude

Though under-known and undervalued?

(such a gift might give me hubris where, too satisfied,

I’d have to watch for sins of pride.)

For now, there’s happiness-near-bliss,

Aesthetic saturation

Having heard this songbird sing.*

©

The Songbird 97.10.4Special People, Special Occasions; Vaguely About Music;

Arlene Corwin

* Sue Raney

 

 

The Only Lady Bass Player I Know 1995

11 Nov 2008 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in vaguely about music Tags: , , , , , , ,

     The Only Jazz Bass Playing Lady I Know

Why would a lady start playing the bass?

Take on an instrument weighing a ton?

It can’t be much fun to transport;

Schlep a four-stringéd buddy

And bow for good measure?

What pleasure from plucking four beats,

The occasional solo and jazz waltz for treats?

Feminine creature,

Petite and demure,

Training, her muscles, sustaining technique– not leery

Of playing for bleary-eyed, tone-deaf, demandingly dreary

Old guys and young punks.

If I were that lady I’d play something else:

The flute or the conch or the singing chipmunks.

(I remember them well.)

Yet let’s toast the bass,

The chalice of callus,

The lady who carries the bass loaded case,

Who has broken the caste of the plucking male race.

©The Only Lady Jazz Bass Playing Lady I Know 95.1.8

A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Circling Round Woman; Vaguely About Music;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

 

 

The Courage To Say This Is The Way My Soul Sounds 2006

11 Nov 2008 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2006, lessons to be learned, vaguely about music Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Courage To Say This Is The Way My Soul Sounds

Now you start,

Discarding all neurosis

Grounded in the fears of failure,

Certain in your heart

“I am creating as I speak”

Avrah kedabra!” – Aramaic.

I will lose the seven deadly sins

Or use the seven deadly sins,

Converting them to sharp discernment,

Wit and wisdom, common sense,

Clear thinking and refinement.

And singing out, and when you pen,

And when the music of your days marooned

Is opened,

These will spring from courage that says

This, my prize, my non-disguise,

My jazz, my phrase – these are the ways

In which my soul sounds

And has sounded in its silence

Since its cause.

©The Courage To Say This Is The Way My Soul Sounds 06.7.28

I Is Always You Is We; Vaguely About Music; Definitely Didactic;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

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