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)
_



_
With special thanks to Robert A. for his invaluable advice on recording.

                                          

Royalty-free music for professional licensing

direct link: Ink Ocean - version 2

You might not hear all the subtleties in this piece unless you're listening on headphones. But on speakers has a kind of spooky quality, well... as spooky my too sweet and too high voice can get :-).

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)

A version I am happier with - it's darker, and, with the whispering, intense, and perhaps gets to the feelings of the oil spill, and those kinds of pollutions in our lives, and love in the midst of that - in the world we've created, or something like that! Lots of levels in this piece, lots going on, hesitate to give any aspect dominance in a short description.

From Ocean Words

Where the poem began... which you can read here if you wish.



mixed media on canvas




                                          

direct link: Ink Ocean (version 1)

Ink Ocean (9:47min), a poem I've been working on since the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico earlier in the year, a darker, more troubled piece on love. Is it a good ending for my album of love poems? Not sure, though it is a love poem - loving amidst the pollution, with our wounds, whatever they may be. The reading was difficult since I live over a subway, and kept stopping the speaking every time a subway ran through because the muse beckoned the voice at rush hour this morning, O muse! Those sections were clipped out. I've been at my computer working on this recording for 12 hours I guess. May be too close to it to 'hear' it?

It's layered, of course, multiplicities seem what I like to do. You can read the words here if you like (though it looks more like a play of approaches and voices than a poem proper).

Spent days looking for music, too. I already had a small collection of 'possibilites' that I had collected through the year. Nothing was quite right. So I went searching at Jamendo. I found two tracks that each offered something substantial, and did something I had hoped never to have to do - I mixed them! Oh! I should give up these poetry performance pieces, or learn an instrument!

The tracks are a combination of that brilliant musician of experimental, midi, ruby texts that become sonic masterpieces, Alphacore's (Gabriel Garrod) side_project in his album Side Projects, and a new musician for me at Jamendo, Extra (Michael Erickson), and the beautiful track, The Quickest Vessel to a Distant Future, is from his album, Water Every Full Moon.

Three Mugshots:
            

Should I ever show the workings of my 'mad' mind? Ok, ok. I'm self-taught. From these mugshots you can get some idea why my poetry recordings take so long! Files get recorded and taken from here to there, and then there to here, and back again. Can you hear all those tracks in the final version? Who knows. But, like wearing beautiful lingerie, I know they're there.

Though with this last project - an album of poetry readings with the music of Jamendo musicians - has taken nearly a year, and with 11 tracks, it's only 33 minutes long!!

I may give up poetry recordings, and lingerie too.



mixed media on canvas

From Ocean Words

Where the poem began...


                                          

I don't expect anyone to actually like this, but it should read interestingly. My last cut on my upcoming poetry album. In process, still to be finished, recorded, and so on.

[When I write, I am a wreck. Wonder if this long piece written thru interspersed months will pull together? I read aloud; crawl into a ball; write with my shaking bones.]

Ink Ocean


In the burning ocean. Where plumes drag through the world's gloom. Swoop of feathers, 

tarred. Or metal wings of dispersants. Gloss the rocks. You can't know where we go at 

night. Or why the morning shines. Or the glimmer of gold before sunset. Relentless tidal 

cycles. Let me tear at the crests and troughs. Go in. GO IN. Shiver. Sin. Dark water, grey 

clouds. A rain of black in falls from the sky. Drips. Rips, slashes the wet heaving page. 

Heat of sandpaper on fire. Burn the slick, salt water on fire. Coral crevices to hide. 

Grottos like vowels. That invite. Come in, why don't you. Open. Open. Open. Arms 

reach up. Seeds rain down. Wash the foam. Pray forests. Burning despair of illusion. 

Fruit of veils to burn in. Salt washes open eyes. Deltas fog. They said GO IN.
.

In the night, I covered the words. Ink sheets. Sheets of the net of ink. Even I couldn't 

read them anymore. I forgot the words, or they forgot me. Or I had to make them up 

when you asked. They washed up from the black ocean, those words. Spun out of black 

thread with black foam on a wave darkly. Ocean of words lapping on the beach,
reckoning.
.

Love isn't a silky bliss mist, more like the suture we sew our wounds with. The bloodied 

scapula-feathers of angels.
.

Language summons us to speak.

Speaking cascades from depths
like wells of water overflowing.

Water eats away at order, rivers
erode their banks, deltas silt.

Our words silt in the paddies
of time, flooded with being.
.

...the ocean
tempests, salt
waves seep
from the rug
under my feet...
.
This strange sea birdsong on love.
.
Coded words. Words that conceal what they reveal, that hide their message in plain sight. 

Invisible essence of the world. We are seeing what is invisible. The falling butterflies. 

Our hands full of snow. Or white feathers in the heat. What do we hide behind? What 

can we not forget? The way we perceive the lives we live are our realities.
Don't make it up.

When I lift the lip, water drops of me, my desk, the paper.

                                    The salt burns.
.

We could be stars burning through the night
     or phosphorescent fish glowing without starlight in the deep.

I am a fisherman of words, dragging my nets through your oceans, trawling your schools 
of lexicons.
.

Love is the twine that binds our bones together.

Let the cold water fill our eyes until we swim in vision every night.

Oil swirls, coating.
.

Under sheets of sea in the frozen Atlantic we found each other.

     You came in me like a wave of love.

          My heart dances crill.

Whalesong of life.

     Salt falls from feathers under this pen writing its words on the dark side of the moon 
in the abandoned ocean beds.


Wet, heaving page.

     Ink sheets.


Love is an aorta. A pounding surf of consonants like blood cells in the syrum falling from
rising wings.


It's a clash of shell, bone, hunger, physics, troughs and crests, blinding moments, the 
sight of psychics.


     Into. The explosion of who we are.
               Our oily words. Crashing waters.
          Choking the river streams. Fish bulging, dying.
     We eat the world.

We go out each night and net the catch. Clean up the mess. Retain memories. Under
our gold skin, arms flap like wings of waves.
.

Let me flow over you while you drown me.

     ...in your love. in your love. in your love...
.


The dream of us opens.

I fold the ocean over my head. Spy on our dreams. Within dreams we liquify. We are gone 

at night. Wings of sand on fire. The lovers' grotto, held together with crab claws, filament 

of gold feather shafts. Gilded ink. Love wakes
you every day. Into
your
   body, body
      of words. 

Seeping, lines of tar on the sands. 
Crumple the paper of wind.


Find darkness; bring it in. IN.


          An opencast poem, working from the exposed surface.

          Taking images from what appears.
.

we anchor in the swells.

we are sky, sun, moon, stars, wet kisses of wind, sailing birds, flying fish, glittering ocean


                    we are nothing


we will wash away
drops in the ocean
without memory

nets of words
dissolving

 knowing 
this strange song of 
love loves
through us...

love loves
through us...

love loves
through us...