City of Legends

Okay, after what seems like almost a constant 24 hours in the studio (I promised mania, didn’t I?) I am relaxing by listening to music, right now Rod Stewart’s "Every Picture Tells a Story" (Damn you, Huerta/Jazz/Nightblooming, whatever your name is…).

I can confirm two completed tracks for the CD "blister"…"The Goad" and "into the grey".  We are working on others, including a rather rambunctious gospel-flavoured throwdown, but that’s all I will say right now.  I will say no more.

Ah, you know me better than that?  True.

Unlike the rather overwrought "Evangelist" and earnest "Truth", we’re going for something with a little more sense of fun with "blister".  And I think we are achieving it.

Hey, fellow poets, don’t forget Guerrilla Poetry Day on July 5th.

By Monday morning, January 26, 2009, the new CD, TRUTH, will be out, as well as all tracks off of it available through www.williamfdevault.com for those of you too cheap (or wrecked by the economy) to buy it.

The picture is by and of my friend and muse, Ukrainian artist and photographer Mariya Andriychuk, who contributed so much to the development of this CD, and I am eternally grateful.  The CD is dedicated to her for her influence and help.

Dropped my darling daughter, Peri, and her husband (future Academy Award winning actor/director Brian Harris, you heard it here first) at Dulles Airport at 6 this morning.  So tired I feel like I have been tied to the ground.

Good, that gets me going.

We (my ex and I) gave them airfare in to see the Inaugural, for Christmas.  They are tired but pleased to have tasted a part of history, to have been "in the moment" as it unfurled.

This weekend face me like a firing squad, although largely sanctioned by myself through my various commitments.  I have to finish working on Elric’s door (bought him a new bedroom door for Christmas), get the damn tracks out to the web from TRUTH, finish prep for my trip and get some work done a couple of other creative projects.

I plan to sleep the sleep of the dead tonight, to shake off the weariness, then attack it all at once tomorrow morning.  Anticipate either Armageddon or the full set of tracks from TRUTH to be available at the Listening Room at www.williamfdevault.com sometime tomorrow.

Stopping only for a soda run, to play with the hyperactive Great Pyrenees that shares my bedroom, and to fill out the interview question answers for WhoHub, I have made massive strides towards the finish line of the new CD (TRUTH).

Vampyr came out very nice, with a rich darkness that layers well on the romantic and erotic subtext.

Faith Healer is needing a slight tweak, but I walked away from it when I lost the forest for the trees, and am finishing up "…Fields of Arbol".

I also found a nugget that I had bumped from a previous CD to add to the mix.

Don’t be surprised if I open the doors for a few selected readers tomorrow on all tracks, as a preview…or maybe all of you, just for fun.

I am awaiting Mariya’s approval on the cover.  It is, after all, her face and body and photographic artistry.  It’s nice her skills and talents complement mine.

As you all well know, this is subject to random change. What can I say? I am mercurial, fickle and given to flights of ADD and….ooooh, shiny! Where was I? Ah, yes, the tracks.

(They’re Shooting Monks in) Burma: Protest piece about the violence in Myanmar.

TRUTH: You’ve heard it here. A slam against the geopolitical.

Panther on the Beach: The villanelle that seems to have a life of its own.

Zoloti Vorota: Literally "Golden Gate", a long form built around several poems inspired by the photography of my friend and muse, Mariya Andriychuk.

Vampyr: An erotic piece inspired by Liza Lorraine.

Laying in the Fields of Arbol: A long compilation of many works in the recent collection of works inspired by my beautiful and creative friends.

Faith Healer: The musical and poetic fusion that draws the venom from the wounds.

Yes, you are counting only 7 tracks, that may be all. I might add something more, but both Zoloti Vorota and Laying in the Fields of Arbol are long form, multi-poem compositions.

I have a half dozen tracks I am working on right now for my CD TRUTH, and think, maybe, I have stumbled and fallen into sunshine in my search for the showstopper number.

It is the recitation and musical adaptation of the poem "faith healer", which you can read over at the Amomancer blog by clocking on the title.

The poem has a complex history and weaves romanticism, eroticism and mysticism into a single piece, predicating the notion that intimacy can be a powerful healing force (which explains why I am, over the last few years, slowly falling apart. Ha!). It takes elements of my life and experience stretching back decades, and even contemporary (my history with women who are survivors of abuse plays into my sense of affection as an healing agent).

But, in any case, we shall see if it finishes as well as it seems to be. I need to do some added voice on it and my throat is still putting up a fight.

I am nearing completion of the TRUTH CD and have not yet found that one piece that blows me away, not in the same manner that "Right Set of Lips" or "Wordslinger" do. Knowing me it will come to me out of nowhere and I won’t know it until I’m run over by it.

Despite the fact that my voice is still a bit gravelly from the flu, I’m getting by. The raggedness of my voice just makes for an interesting attitude to my readings and recitations as I lay down the tracks.

Since I am planning to use one of Mariya’s images for the cover, I am going to submit several mock-ups to her and let her pick. That will be interesting, as I have not ceded control to another person in any aspect of my creative life since Aubergine. Time to start trusting people again.

Perhaps I shall do a work based around the theme of trust…the higher you fly the harder you fall but you’re still better off than those who didn’t fly at all…? Trite but if I get intimate to the topic…

I had a nice talk with Liza last night, she always leaves me more intrigued than when the conversation began. I like complicated women, always have, makes me feel like I am having to work hard for what I find. I like the sense of accomplishment. She asked me to tell her a secret. I did. Some real quid pro quo.

I said I would, or might, share the titular track from my next CD, TRUTH, with you here.

So, here it  is.

TRUTH

And yes, I am working of several possible cover designs for the CD, featuring the photography of Mariya Andriychuk, if I can just get her to keep some clothes on long enough…or not.  Maybe it is time I really put out some naked reads.

I am, as I write this, listening to the final MP3 mixdown of TRUTH, the titular piece from the new CD.

Not bad. The voice is a little strident. The music is evocative of a late-60’s hashish parlour (don’t ask me how I know what that should sound like). I like the presence of the piece.

Here’s the lyric:

It’s swell here in Hell
while we waterboard Jesus because
he doesn’t think a rich man can make it to Heaven
by killing everyone who is just looking for some truth.

We know better, don’t we?
The envelope under the door says so
and we put on our spray-tan glow and go
tripping down the yellow brick road of priests’ skulls.

Manson was also sincere. I fear
we are using a bent yardstick for good
when we polish the brass for a gallon of gas
so we can look for truth on that road of priests’ skulls.

It’s a bloodbath and we just laugh
and debate celebutante taunts for tired old men
who don’t have to put it on the line for the divine
right to be wrong with other people’s blood on the pavement.

Just looking for the truth
that we don’t want to face. We’re in disgrace
for everything we claim as anecdotal proof
of God favouring us in our endeavors.

Sonic boom doom and the groom won’t make it back
from the black-tarred fields that concealed
desperate men who see no sin in sacrificing truth.
And your sons and daughters, fathers and mothers and brothers.

If our leaders really believed in the God
they invoke in mad mantras as a smokescreen
they would quake in fear as their end draws near,
not shed crocodile tears over their three-martini lunch.

The road to Hell is paved with the lies
of people who cannot even face themselves in the mirror
without a wall of self-deception to shield their fates,
sealed with kisses that are not worthy of s streetwalker.

Speak truth. Live it. And give it as legacy to our children.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll post the piece at the listening room at williamfdevault.com

Maybe. I’m going to go work on the cover…

(right now cleansing my musical palette by listening to…wait for it…wait for it…"Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed" by David Bowie. Admit it, you would have NEVER guessed that selection.)

A month or two ago I started laying up tracks from the new CD, TRUTH, on www.williamfdevault.com.  I’ve received some excellent feedback, but many have noticed that the actual CD and most of the tracks still seem in limbo.

Good catch, there.

After a bad cold mid-Autumn, followed by a brutal case of RSV that still has compromised my voice, I have not been able to finish the tracks.  It is painful and aggravating to be blocked when I want to get this thing done and out the door, but maybe this is nature’s way of telling me to slow down.  I should be able to go back in the studio soon and I go back in with a new confidence and a thermonuclear passion (I never did have the good sense to stay down when knocked down).

Maybe my upcoming trip to San Diego and Los Angeles is a Godsend (of course, the last time I went to LA…well, you all know the story…)

In any case, I haven’t forgotten or given up, and I think you’ll agree that perhaps my stepping back and tweaking a few of the tracks improved them (or not, you know what happens when I start second-guessing myself).  Besides, thanks to the delay, I have a much better selection of cover models besides myself.  Maybe someone Ukrainian?

I am just saying:  Be patient.  TRUTH will out.