City of Legends

My poem "the philosophy of dreams" has taken on a life of its own, gradually, and now I have been the latest to open a can of something closer to worms than whup-ass over it.

Earlier this year the poem got some attention when it was revealed that a reading of mine of the piece had been sampled by Euro electronica wizard Ophidian.  After hearing what he did with it for his piece "Phoenix" I totally approve of what he did with it and it is cool and righteous to realize how many thousands of chemically altered young people have heard my voice booming out at them at raves across the continent.

Very cool.  Very righteous.

Now I find myself accused of a retcon (retroactive continuity, a phrase that emerged out of the comics industry for when you rewrite the backstory of a character or event without regards for inconsistencies that emerge).  It seems some people latched onto the muse breakdown I offered up for loveaddict and noticed that despite the fact the poem in question "the philosophy of dreams" appearing in the book, Brigit (aka the Crimson Panther) is not listed in the muse breakdown list.  There is a muse named "Crimson", but it was correctly surmised that she is not the majestic Titian-haired goddess christened Brigit.

The truth is, after time and tempest has passed, I had decided that, in reality, "the philosophy of dreams" was more in the "Abstra" column than the "Brigit" column, and identified it so in the new volume.  That simple.  Okay, not that simple, as it took a helluvalot of soul-searching to come to that. 

I stand by my decision and will continue to evaluate the source and force of my works as I deem proper and accurate and true to the spirit of my work.  Believe me, many elements of my life would play easier if I could delude myself and rewrite my histories, but that is not in my nature or my passions.

I will fill in everyone on the second part of this entry’s title later…special thanks to Mark Petrulo for that tale.

The first part of the title involves an email I got just today from a reader in the Netherlands (no, not the Nether Regions or the Nefarious Zone) who had encountered a musical composition last Spring in the Netherlands and had opportunity to meet the performer and asked him about some lyrics he particularly enjoyed. 

He was told they were lines from a poem, but the performer (whose name I do not know yet) declined to name the poet.  The reader (whom I will identify as "Marcel" as that is how they identified themself) set out to track down the source, eventually finding out from a third party that it was from a poem of mine.  Unfortunately, no one seemed to be sure which poem (hey, over 18,000 poems in my catalog, it gets complicated).  So, Marcel wrote to me asking me to identify the lyric.

The piece I was given is actually two different sections from my poem "the philosophy of dreams", which you can read at the Amomancer site:  http://amomancer.blogspot.com/2007/05/philosophy-of-dreams.html and for which archive.org keeps a recording of my reading it in a virtual beatnik cafe.

So, there tis, the mystery lyrics in Netherlands are solved.  I have asked Marcel to tell me the name of the artist and where I might find an audio of the performance.  I will keep you informed…

Now, about the red Tae Kwan Do t-shirt…