The water of five great lakes rushes from the tap. My mug of sand, algal metal, dark minnow streaks.
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A River
of Stones


                                          

direct link: Burning Brightly in the Night

Yes, the lady is tagged!!!!!!

:::laughing:::

I've re-done the soundtrack on this video. For inexplicable reason, I said 'billions' for the degrees of the sun's internal temperatures instead of 'millions' (in the readings I used). Trying to change a section of voice in a recording is nearly impossible - the timbre of voice, breath, emotion, you can never capture it twice.

So I spent 5 hours on Sunday re-recording and mixing. Then uploaded for 4 hours, only the upload to YouTube failed, for unknown reasons.

Then I went back into the recording, and wow, it was hours of more work trying to balance voice and music without distortion. The video was finally live on YouTube at 2am. What a long day!

The more I learn about sound production the less I realize I know. Back to the manual, I guess. (Apple's Final Cut Express manual, all 1200 pages of it, is the best - truly a good teacher).

I hope the final product - the video here - is watchable, listenable, and worth smiling over, and pondering over...

A few quick things - the swirling photons are tiny white seasonal lights and their motion is hand-held camera dancing. The figure was of me in Venus Enroute (one of the videos YouTube inexplicably froze for about 8 months after I embedded it at my SoundClick site and began allowing viewcounts only after I complained in a forum so the stats are entirely off).

Because I wanted that video darker, but the tunic to be bright satiny red I masked the figure in an oval matte to boost the red colour, and followed it frame by frame -in FinalCut Express you have to do this sort of thing manually- which took, if I recall, from about 9pm to 5am the next morning, about 8 hours, an intense labour.

You understand I simply couldn't go through such an exercise for this video, so I dropped that footage in here, then added a mirror filter to it (so there are a couple of figures, multiplicies, ahem, so to speak).

I've uploaded a music-only version to Facebook (it's public, so you can watch if you wish).

The fabulous music is by that very talented, brilliant young Spanish musician, José Travieso, 'El Juego de las Atracciones,' from, "A Retrospective: the early years."


©Brenda Clews, Dec 6, 2007

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The music-only cut that I uploaded to Facebook (the quality is okay, but Facebook has a ways to go to catch up with YouTube I'd say):


A few stills:







                                          

The ball in the faintly pink nail polish in which suspended red hearts lie looks like a Mayan Pok-A-Tok waiting to be hip-kicked.

-
A River
of Stones


                                          

the intense whispering of the winter rain

-
A River
of Stones

                                          

Royalty-free music for professional licensingNo idea how the Jamendo team got this moderated and published on New Year's Eve. That's dedication beyond the call of the tweet, drum, horn & keyboodle! I didn't expect to see it for a few days at least. I certainly hope the whole Jamendo crew has gone out celebrating! ::smiling:: Thanks, guys! :))

Ink Ocean: Brenda Clews, poetry, reading, mix;
music (mixed by me), Alphacore, 'side_project,' from "Side Project": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/33504, and Extra's, 'The Quickest Vessel to a Distant Future,' from "Water Every Full Moon": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/45140 (with permissions)


This is my second, and preferred, reading of my poem, Ink Ocean.

The poem began to arise in two drawings, one of which I have included in the album cover, and the writing from the other drawing (which I took a photograph of before covering it in ink and paint).

If you'd like to read the poem, it is included in a 26 page pdf of the text of the poems in a collector's edition of Starfire, where this poem forms the final piece.



click to see a larger image


                                          

Small Stone month:

"Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a small stone every day during the month of January.

What is a small stone?

A small stone is a polished moment of paying proper attention."

Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita.

I'm in. Are you?


                                          

Starlings, puffed in the cold, land here and over there,
arrayed black musical notes on the rhythms of wind in bare trees.

Then they dart, bullets from a Beethoven symphony,
speeding without collision through the wind-waving branches.


_




European Starling

- written while listening to the Köln Concert, La Scala and The Vienna Concert on a train, over and over, without beginning or end -


How would I describe Keith Jarrett's music as he plays his piano in these concerts?

A beauty of muted passion, rather than dramatic and sublime in a Kantian sense - what's bursting in Jarret held in minimalist reign.

Harmony that is off balance. Discordant harmony.

What we hear is not so much the struggle of a man to come into being, but a man making love to the muse who sings through his instrument. We witness effort, yes, in a delerium that encompasses us.

Trills and moments when the music misses a rail, backs up and continues on. Within a constancy of notes that don't go anywhere, become anything, that are unrelenting throughout.

Where the echo of the note is dampened. He knows the terrain, but he's never visited this musical spot before. He learns as he plays. As he plays, he intuits the next notes. Impromptu within a form.

Anyway, we know his music plays him, his whole body, everything, the concert hall, our ears.

We listen in a stillness to Jarrett, but it is the power of his body, its guttural aesthetic, that keeps us there.

We join him in his ecstasy, flying to his muscular, musical spirit. To his glottal harmonies.


                                          

Starfire, 11 poems I have recorded with music background, is a free download - Mp3s at a decent 195kbps. It's under a Creative Commons license that allows sharing, and, for the first time, derivative works, though not commercial use.

However, I have been asked a few times about the text of the poems. Some kind listeners have voiced the wish to read the poems along with the recordings. Those poems are in this archive blog, and you certainly may run a search for each one.

Yesterday I quickly put together (with 18 quick revisions) a .pdf with all the poems, comments, paintings and photographs, and it was 26 pages!

No way I'm going to blog anything that long. Hosting the .pdf at my Google sites site for poetry recordings won't work in the long run, either, due to space considerations.

So I offered it in Jamendo's 'Virtual Shop.' This seemed the best way. I get to offer high quality flac files of all the poems, and the 26 page document containing the text of the poems, and the artwork and photos that accompanied each poem when I first shared them with you.

Of the 5 €, I get 2.6 € before the cost of currency exchange and other bank fees. I might make a buck, if that.

So it's not about making money.

What really sold me on offering the text of the poems this way was that, tiny as it is, Jamendo gets a percentage, 2.4 € (the larger the sum you charge, the smaller their percentage, btw).

Jamendo runs no ads on their site. Their revenue comes through licensing fees, royalty payments, percentages from the virtual stores, etc.

How much of a relief is it to visit a site without ads?! They are the largest free music site in the world. The community of musicians and reviewers is a beautiful one, and I spend countless pleasurable hours there each month. They nearly folded early in the year, but a financial backer appeared at the last moment.

I love Jamendo! ♥

I could offer the text of the poems some other way, certainly, but why ignore the company who enables me and many others to share our music, our recordings?


click for larger size if you'd like to 'see' the
page without actually going to the site

direct link: Starfire (33 min)

Happy Solstice! 

It last happened 372 years ago - a rare confluence: a lunar eclipse and winter solstice. In the night (at 3:18am EST), a total lunar eclipse, the full moon passing through the darkest shadow of the earth (and at 6:40am EST), winter solstice, when the northern hemisphere's axial tilt is furthest from the sun, the longest night and darkest day of the year.

The astronomy of the day is worth pondering on.

For the last two years, I have released a poetry album at solstice.

This is so I can offer a little Solstice gift to you (free to download, or listen, as you wish).

To commemorate light in the beautiful loving darkness.
Wishing you joy, love, health, success, wealth.

warm regards,
Brenda

Starfire (33 min)

This album began with the first track, 'Disappearing,' which I wrote in a hammock in the hot, sultry summer. I recorded it a few times, just for fun. Then layered the readings, added music and became intrigued.

Thus began an odyssey of readings, recordings. All tracks, except one, are with music of Jamendo musicians, to whom I am so grateful.

If you wish, you can download any tracks or the whole album.

Mostly I'd like you to enjoy, and to be inspired.

An album of love poetry.

___________________

Disappearing: Brenda Clews, poetry, voice and mix; Matt Samolis, music, a section from: "Trio for Flute, Cymbals, and Glass": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/49419 (with permission)

What Would I Write If I Could Write: for J.P. Brenda Clews, poetry, voice, mix; music, Roger Stephane, 'Lointain,' from his album, "Picasso": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/62258 (with permission)

Drumbeat: Brenda Clews, poetry, voice, mix; music, Chriss Onac, track "TRANSE" from his album, TRIBAL: http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/23954 (with permission)

Glint: Soundtrack for my videopoem, Glint, which is also a videopoem at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D3vTpxfFuU Backgound music is "Madrox, in my head," by Arena of Electronic Music, a Creative Commons license: http://www.jamendo.com/track/477297 (with permission from his band administrator)

Hieroglyphic of Purple Lotuses: Brenda Clews, poetry, voice, mix; music, Ka eN, "Oriental Dreams": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/42617 (with permission)

Starfire in the Night: Brenda Clews, poetry, voice, mix; music, Frank Harper's 'Moon's Eve,' from "Fingerstyle - Set 1": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/62508 (with permission)

What Is Underground Is What Holds Us: Brenda Clews, poetry, voice, mix; music, LaiYouttitham's song, "Alone," from his site: http://www.laizmusic.com/mp3-download.php (with permission)

Salt of the Sea: Brenda Clews, poetry, voice, mix; music, Livio Amato's, 'Dream Opening,' from his album, "Sensitivity": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/62537 (with permission)

My Body Is A Word: for I.B. Brenda Clews, poetry, voice, mix; music, Lena Selyanina's piano solo, 'Summer Morning,' from "Snowstorm Romance": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/73627 (with permission)

Veils To Clothe Venus: Brenda Clews, poetry, reading, mix; music, Buz Hendricks, music: http://www.somewhereoffjazzstreet.com/ (with permission - a section of a track he created for the Venus Suite of Poems - a track at Jamendo).

Ink Ocean: Brenda Clews, poetry, reading, mix; music (mixed by me), Alphacore, 'side_project,' from "Side Project": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/33504, and Extra's, 'The Quickest Vessel to a Distant Future,' from "Water Every Full Moon": http://www.jamendo.com/en/album/45140 (with permissions)
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With special thanks to Robert A. for his invaluable advice on recording.