City of Legends

Dutch tech-musical-wizard Ophidian has permitted me to not only feature his great piece "Pegasus", which features my reading of "the philosophy of dreams" but also includes his newest work "the violence of indifference", which includes my reading of my poem "from out of the city" in my latest "from out of the city" (coincidentally) podcast.

You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple’s iTunes Music Store or through the Feedburner feed (click here, dummy).  Give a listen and let me know what’s your take.

Thanks again to the great Ophidian!

Note to Avid Fan:  The book progresses.  My editor assures me it is proceeding well and will be amazing.  I trust her.

It is the return of the "From Out of the City" podcast.

Featuring a funked up, cathedral organ pure testosterone and tears fueled delivery of "The Sacraments" from "Apokalypsis".

Well, what the hell are you waiting for?  Here’s the link:

From Out of the City for January 1, 2011

This Friday night, at approximately midnight, as the new year turns on the East Coast of the United States and the people closest to me are, for the most part. elsewhere, the "From Out of the City" podcast returns with something remarkable, "The Sacraments" from the forthcoming book Apokalypsis, perfromed with my band.

I just listened to the revised music, now I have to go back into the studio and tweak my vocals, as I need more from my voice.  The integrity of the original take is amazing, so powerful that the Sunday Girl herself refuses to listen to it.  I need more.  I need incandescence.  I need a religious fervor worthy of a Joan of Arc or a Saint Stephen.  I need to dig deep and release it all.

And I will.  The next three days are very important.  They are a time of great turmoil and pain in my life, or survival and passion and the last romantic verb.  And I don’t want all of you who have waited the last couple of years for the return of the podcast to be disappointed.  I don’t want to be disappointed, not by myself (I am disappointed enough in others, you know).

I’ll post the link once the podcast is up and you shall see, you shall hear, did I take it all the way?  Did the afterburners kick in and the last wisps of fire really press things as far as they can go?

Let’s find out what I have left, shall we?

You asked for it, you got it.

The "From Out of the City" podcast will be returning at the stroke of midnight, December 31st, 2010…

featuring our most explosive set yet as the original Gods of Love reunite to back my madness on "White Sunday:  The Sacraments".

Anyone left alive in the studio after that recording, please turn the lights off as you leave…more info coming in the next two weeks.  And if your WikiLeaks, please clean up and spray some Febreze on the spot.

In addition to the fine 24/7 service provided by Live365 Internet Radio, I have begun the process of restoring Radio City of Legends to its former glory.

To listen to hours of poetry, discussion and interviews by and with myself, and such luminaries as Larry Jaffe, Dan Mctaggart and Nordette Adams, you can click on the Audio permalink, at the top of the page, or go to http://cityoflegends.com/radio-city-of-legends/.

Your choice. Enjoi.

Ever since the legendary Grace Hopper found a moth in her electronic relays and created the label of "bug" for anything that caused a glitch in computers, we’ve had the term to butcher, expand, contract and bastardize.

Today I fixed two "bugs" with the converted City of Legends.

The first corrected a problem that had evolved with the xml for the podcast, as available through Apple’s iTunes Music Store, so now it is all fine and good and you can subscribe here if you use iTunes.

The second was a problem, behind the scenes, with my oft-visited work "even Cinderella gets naked".  A very popular link with horny 14 year old boys, looking for sexually provocative cartoon characters (the poem isn’t about that…).

Candy, I’ll write up that humour piece we discussed and post it most likely tomorrow.  Love you and miss you.

I checked.  It had been more than 6 months since my last podcast of ‘from out of the city’.  I should be ashamed, but I am not.

But, to make it all up to you all, here’s the way to catch the second wave.

Just follow the link to Peacat on the right, and you will find a link to the newest podcast, just uploaded, where I spend the whole time discussing and reading from the new book As such…

Enjoi!

Okay, follow along as best you can and watch yourself on the chord changes…

Busy evening…

#1: This week’s show is UP. Check it out on Apple’s iTunes Music Store -or- visit The City of Legends Radio page.

#2: Visited B&N to see about the open microphone event. Tag unveiled his book and I got to meet Cheryl Denise, the completely charming poet/author of "I Saw God Dancing". I am going to book her into my podcast in the coming weeks…count on it. I read "Damascus III", "The Darker Angels" and "Cithara Song, strummed lightly as the sun leaps the horizon"…hey, Alisha, everyone loves that poem, you should be proud that you inspired it.

#3: Wrote some more works, but I won’t post any right now…busy getting wound up for the signing on Saturday, getting psychotic. No, really…don’t get in my face.

This is an article I posted as "Sex, Lies and MP3’s" on Author’s Den, earlier today, detailing my efforts in putting together my romantic and erotic poetry tracks for Valentine’s Day for my podcast show, From Out of the City.
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Okay, I admit to a certain perfectionistic streak in me, something I control by forcing myself into a single draft mode. I don’t allow myself to rewrite…what I hammer out is either a keeper or a junker. No turd polishing.

My resolve has been tested in general by my new podcast show, "From Out of the City", and in specific by this past week’s goal, to craft two tracks worth of audio programs…a romantic and an erotic one.

First problem, selecting the material. I ran a poll on my blog…got a few ideas. But, in the end, I wasn’t going to cop out and throw the selection process on anyone else. I had to make the choices.

Yeah, I had to pick a handful of works from amongst about 13,000. Good luck.

I sat down and picked two lists.

For Track A, the romantic works, I picked a selection of some of my best.

• *The Unicorns
• *Sacred Smile
• *Monument
• *Damascus, Movement III
• *The Patchwork Skirt of My Love
• *Tread Softly
• *Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion
• *We Owe Debt to Memory
• *A Kiss is an Act of Bravery
• *Soubrette

The "Unicorns", "Monument" and "Tread Softly" were easy calls. Some of my most enduring works, sweetly romantic, proven winners.

"A Kiss is an Act of Bravery" was a last minute addition. I’d forgotten the piece until recently brought back to my attention my the Selke, the young woman-muse who had inspired it in the first case. Her reading of it for a show a few weeks back reminded me that it was a good candidate for Valentine’s Day.

How could I not do "The Patchwork Skirt of My Love", "Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion" and "Sacred Smile"? All three were award-winning works in their own right and evoked such wonderful images. I have to admit the connections between the latter, "Damascus (Movement Three)" and my second marriage made it a challenge, but I was game.

"Soubrette"? I’ve always considered that one under-rated and it resonates with me.

Finally we get "We Owe Debt to Memory", which I think lays a solid framework for romanticism. I couldn’t say no to that one.

Now to the eros. Tougher call. My works, while often in the erotic vein, are not as explicit as some might expect. Indeed, Walt Whitman was as explicit as I. And he’s been gone for some time, you know.

The list I came up with was great…

• *A Summoned Fire (Pink Jade)
• *Warm Breath Stirs Soft Flesh (Pink Jade)
• *Touch (Pink Jade)
• *Possession
• *Wine
• *Tracery (Pink Jade)
• *Jasmine and Plumeria (Pink Jade)
• *Dare We Cross the Rubicon?
• *The Satyr’s Suit
• *How Would You Have Me Touch You?

I sat down, after I completed the readings and the music for the romantic track, and worked these. Rough. I was doing half "Pink Jade" works and a couple from my affair with the Mad Gypsy (eerie coincidence…having not spoken to her in a year, I got an email from her while working on the recordings. The empaths still vibrate.)

"The Satyr’s Suit" and "Dare We Cross the Rubicon", which I had written for Author’s Den, were easy calls. Likewise the two to the Gypsy, "Wine" and "Possession".

"How Would You Have Me Touch You"? A logical choice for a reading, as were a selection of the works from the "Pink Jade" series.

I finished the read and decided to experiment with using Ravel’s "Bolero" for the background music.

After three tries, I was furious with annoyance. I couldn’t get the balance.

I sat back and clicked on the files that the Selke had recorded for me, as background for some of the pieces. Just breathing, soft sighs, little sounds in the back of her throat. The sort of sounds that signify a woman’s contentment with lovemaking.

Effective.

I threw out a day’s work and started over.

First, some humour. Something unexpected, transitioning from real life to love life.

"Lust Bunnies". Perfect.

Then something light, but nonetheless erotic, a flirtation.

"Swerve(flirt)" Having established the need, we’re establishing the seduction.

Now, something transitional. Something with the presence to have us bring in the undeniably erotic vocalizations of my sweet tempered and most loyal muse.

"The Priest of Passion Serves the Sacrament". Excellent choice, erotic, achingly so. The lover as worshipper, bound by faith to love as much as possible, to bring pleasure on the altar of a woman’s body.

Okay, we’re there, we’re raising the room temperature…how far do we take this?

"Prescient Tense: Rose Petals" How sweet, erotica with some gentle romance. Soft core sweetness.

Le’s pull something from the "Pink Jade" works…something unexpected…

"Thin Skin (Pink Jade)" Curves and soft, warm skin. Touching and caressing.

Yes, that’s it! Now, let’s drop the bomb…

"Passion Sympoetique". All three movements: Seduction, Penetration, Sustain. I could hear the music, already, in my head.

Now to bring it to, pardon the phrase, a climax. I had written a piece lately that seemed to get many all hot and bothered. Good enough referral there.

"Feral With Desire".

I had barely finished the last words of that piece into the microphone when the loop browser on my Garage Band software was open and I was assembling the backing track. Guitars, pianos, harps, mandolins…and, The Selke’s backing vocals, beginning after the first two works, and ending the entire recording with a final, sated sigh.

I felt like Keith Emerson. He told a story of having taken Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s recording of Alberto Ginastera’s "Toccato and Fugue in D Minor" to the Swiss composer’s home to have him listen to it. As the final notes faded, the maestro began banging his cane on the floor screaming "Diabolo!"

The keyboard god was worried he’d offended the composer, who explain through his interpreter that quite the contrary, this was how he had heard it in his own mind when he composed it. He was marvelling at how the pomp rock trio had captured what no orchestra had managed to.

I know how he felt, the music came like magic. I mixed and adjusted, tweaked and adapted.

I listened to the final tracks. Then listened again. The listened again.

Then I reached for my upload button as I spoke the nunc dimittis.

I was done.

must have caffeine. give me your caffeine. urrrraghurgh

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…better.

stayed up way too late last night, working on the music and vocals for the Track B podcast…man, I have learned more in the last few days than I ever wanted to know about some things, but that’s what makes life interesting.

Not final, but here’s the current list of works being used in this track, now:

As I Slide Into You
Passion Sympoetique
feral with desire (nb - not to be confused with "feral with a side order of potato skins")
the priest of passion serves the sacrament (nb - so as to be accused once more of blasphemy)
lust bunnies
swerve (flirt)
Prescient Tense (Rose Petals)
Pink Jade: Thin Skin

This is by NO MEANS FINAL. As god of my own universe, I reserve the right to make changes up to and including the last possible second. Note: less "Pink Jade"…no "leopard"…and some light hearted erotica.

I am evaluating a small cluster of my works, so blatantly erotic as to be problematic…I’ll see if I want to "go there". Well, yeah, I want to "go there", but maybe not poetically.

uh oh, the wolverine’s loose again. Anyone got an aluminum baseball bat? Ideally with welded-on spikes?

Okay, here’s my other "brave and crazy" idea for the moment…

I want to do a show of FROM OUT OF THE CITY without my voice.

I want the intro, the readings amd everything to be done by other people from my life and history. My words, their voices…I want to get some of my totem muses to read works…whether about themselves of other muses. I want to get Jan Innes, who helped me to create "glass roses" to read it…I want Stephanie Fenter, who did the cover photo for "Love Gods…" to read either from it or about our mutual past love interest.

I want my ex, Jan, to read anything she wants (I try not to argue with her)…although I think anything about our kids would be great.

And if you think I’m masochistic enough to let E.J. do the booking, you’re nuts…he’d look up people I have no desire of knowing the fates of (he keeps trying to get me to read a blog he found that he swears is being written by the panther…and he calims to have found contact info on Alisha…I think he just wants me to kick his ass someday. Which, Quaker or not, I just might.)

I want to find people I haven’t heard from in years…and get them to commit to two minutes of air time. Then I edit it all together. That would be a hoot…

Of course, to engage my puckish sense of humour…here’s my dream list (I won’t get any of these, but we shall see…)

Alisha reading "cithara song, strummed lightly as the sun leaps the horizon" or "dram"
The Goldenheart reading "The Patchwork Skirt of My Love"
Psyche reading "Sons of Soft Sin" or "The Unicorns"
Jan (Valkyrie) reading "Phobos and Deimos" and "Peri at 16"
The Selke reading "the bravery implicit in a kiss"
Brigit reading "Eyes of Stained Glass and Fire" or "Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion"
Jan Innes reading "glass roses"
The Panther reading "Shadows in the Shade"
The Leopard reading "Chrysalis"
Larry Jaffe reading "City of Angels"
Dan McTaggart reading "Horizon"
The Mad Gypsy reading "copper"
Anastacia reading "Sex Cookies"
Claibourne Schley-Walsh reading "We Owe Debt to Memory"
Arachne to read "Arachne and Red Lace"
Pat Robinson to read "Penance"

I can think of several others I’d love to have read for it: Deborah Atherton, Dave McCoy, Tom Peters, Aldo Alvarez, Gaby…the list is nigh unto infinite…

ah, but it is a dream.