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Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary.

quote by Anton Rubinstein
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Edge to Edge (Post post modern poetry)

When I slept in the afternoon after going through the ordeal of riding a cab in the heat only my Donna Karan glasses less by one degree in darkness and covering all my eyes protected me from fainting I wore my shirt which was stinking from sweat when I threw myself on the bed escaping the eyes of the old widow in the other room the fan went off I concentrated to sleep even without and I did after intense fantasies remembering the movie “The Pianist” I had watched the last night and the inspired soldier who let the soul of the pianist survive and himself landed in the war prison camp because he wanted to contact that other foolish violinist who instead spat on him being German and he could not be saved by the pianist as the pianist did not know his name because when the German soldier was getting inspired by the music in ruins he forgot telling him his name we are all victims of romance the German soldier could have made a bargain the pianist was too hungry to know about him and terrified for what he had seen when I woke up I got hold of my guitar similarly inspired as the German soldier was I entered into a black shirt on whose collar is written ‘edge to edge’ with an emblem of an animal having one long horn I went to drink coffee before I took a bath when I picked my phone to make a call one dear number of mine with me since a decade I found that it was stolen by someone my dreams shattered suddenly in the wake of reality of the number from the pianist now I was in deep trouble I came out my appetite was no more I entered a bakery to buy myself a burger that was wrapped in polythene there was no place to sit the burger was put in oven some of the polythene melted into the sauce my fingers burned to open the ketchup sachet I came into the dark corner a dog was sleeping I preferred sharing my burger with a cat on small concrete steps the cat could not take diet coke pieces of chicken slipped down and she was eating I rubbed my hands on my shorts and thanked the cat for she was my friend on dinner

8/8/2009
PS: These are real events narration in what I call 'post post modern poetry' writing straight what you feel without giving it a form or even punctuation

poem by Sadiqullah Khan
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America Politica Historia, In Spontaneity

O this political air so heavy with the bells
and motors of a slow night, and no place to rest
but rain to walk—How it rings the Washington streets!
The umbrella’d congressmen; the rapping tires
of big black cars, the shoulders of lobbyists
caught under canopies and in doorways,
and it rains, it will not let up,
and meanwhile lame futurists weep into Spengler’s
prophecy, will the world be over before the races blend color?
All color must be one or let the world be done—
There’ll be a chance, we’ll all be orange!
I don’t want to be orange!
Nothing about God’s color to complain;
and there is a beauty in yellow, the old Lama
in his robe the color of Cathay;
in black a strong & vital beauty,
Thelonious Monk in his robe of Norman charcoal—
And if Western Civilization comes to an end
(though I doubt it, for the prophet has not
executed his prophecy) surely the Eastern child
will sit by a window, and wonder
the old statues, the ornamented doors;
the decorated banquet of the West—
Inflamed by futurists I too weep in rain at night
at the midnight of Western Civilization;
Dante’s step into Hell will never be forgotten by Hell;
the Gods’ adoption of Homer will never be forgotten by the Gods;
the books of France are on God’s bookshelf;
no civil war will take place on the fields of God;
and I don’t doubt the egg of the East its glory—
Yet it rains and the motors go
and continued when I slept by that wall in Washington
which separated the motors in the death-parlor
where Joe McCarthy lay, lean and stilled,
ten blocks from the Capitol—
I could never understand Uncle Sam
his red & white striped pants his funny whiskers his starry hat:
how surreal Yankee Doodle Dandy, goof!
American history has a way of making you feel
George Washington is still around, that is
when I think of Washington I do not think of Death—
Of all Presidents I have been under
Hoover is the most unreal
and FDR is the most President-looking
and Truman the most Jewish-looking
and Eisenhower the miscast of Time into Space—
Hoover is another America, Mr. 1930
and what must he be thinking now?
FDR was my youth, and how strange to still see
his wife around.

[...] Read more

poem by Gregory Corso
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Obsession

Obsession
The pianist Albert has got a job in Loulé last time
I saw him in Faro and fell over a pollard, he said
he was not my father. When he spotted me he ran
into a café, they let him run through the kitchen
into the back, a dead end; I waited for him there.
“If you don´t stop following me I will have to call
the police, I´M NOT YOUR FATHER.” To mollify
him I said: “ I know you are not, but I do admire
your piano playing. ”This pleased him and we had
a drink and he told me he came from Yugoslavia,
had wanted to be a concert pianist, but there was
no money, so he ended up as a café pianist… just
as my father I thought but said nothing… then he
had to leave for work, saw him walk out of my life
just as my father did, there was nothing I could do
to stop this man who refused to be my dad.

poem by Oskar Hansen
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Unheard Elegy of a Widow Pianist

In a quadrille of his flimsy fingers
He lambently imposed tranquility
In between the brunt of his calloused soldiers
That the phalanges strangulated in a knot
And trudged and snapped and broke
With the heart of the widow pianist
Whistling his vapid tune from weaker towers

With the streets teeming of faceless strangers
He played the elude of his phantasmagoria
And groveled with a bleeding sonata
With shambling notes of empty words
That singed brusquely in a queue
Among their empty swollen ears
The schmaltz plea died with the violins

He sedated himself with the picture
Of familiar peoples crammed in a rotogravure
And the melancholy disembogued of verve
When the pictures pranced with deluded scherzos
And the listening thawed unto their toes
As he gnawed upon a drunken smile
The pianist's elegy strode a thousand mile

The widow pianist crooned to bargain
For an audience to the unfurling morsels
Of his slivered mind and its elegy
And ferry the silver euphonic melody
In a place divorced of harsh veracity,
Where triviality would be unwelcomed,
And benediction is in a saccharine orchestra.

poem by Norman Santos
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I've got a collection of songs that I've had, I keep adding to and they're all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I've done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect.

quote by Charlie Haden
Added by Lucian Velea
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Making Sense Of Sound

SENSE OF SOUND

In Plato’s time fools used to say
there are no rules for music that you play.
Being law-abiding when you write
a piece of music often won’t excite
the fools who will demand of you to break
its laws, while claiming that the word mistake
doe not apply to music. It is pleasure
that’s their bottom line, every measure
composed in any manner the composer
may wish. I do not want to be imposer
of any law that may inhibit your
ability to write, but I feel sure
that ultimately it is only fools
who break in music, as in life, all rules.

In music as in life there’s right and wrong,
and both of them, in order to last long,
must follow norms, as Plato once declared.
a view that by this poet now is shared,
while hoping antinomians are not friendless,
like Wagner making melody that’s endless.
Music is a stock that never should be shorted.
Like any lover that you may have courted,
it follows rules on which you should go long,
avoiding dissonances that sound wrong,
except for all the ones that are resolved
like problems that in life that have been solved.
Only by preventing disappearance
of rules can life-like music reach coherence.

Inspired by Plato, cited in “Making Sense of Sound, ” by James F. Penrose in the WSJ, January 27,2010, reviewing Ruth Katz’s “A Language of Its Own, ” describing a grammar of music that evolved over the centuries without any overt instruction, giving an internal coherence to music and allowing it to adapt to cultural and social change, with a shared understanding between musicians and audiences. Penrose writes;

“Through foolishness they deceived themselves into thinking that there was no right or wrong way in music, that it was to be judged good or bad by the pleasure that it gave.” With these words Plato complained about the “promiscuous cleverness and a spirit of law-breaking” that characterized the music of the time—the fourth century B.C. Even then, it seems, music had a form and structure that guided its composition and performance, for “law-abiding” musicians anyway…. Beethoven, in Mr. Katz’s view, never damaged the system of harmonic tonality and “integrated” form, for all his iconoclasm. But a succession of composers––including Schumann, Liszt and, above all, Wagner––chipped away at coherence by preparing unprepared and unresolved chords, chromatic alterations, and above all modulations into remote keys. With his “unendlische Melodie (infinite melody) and other devices, Wagner savaged traditional musical structures even as he created astonishingly beautiful music. The gulf between past and present widened as the 20th century progressed––but there were pockets of resistance, Ms. Katz observes. Debussy joined the moderns in rebelling against the constraints of harmonic tonality but found coherence in modal forms and in melodic tonality. Composers like Bartok, Ravel and Janacek, though also pushing the boundaries of traditional harmony, appealed to the ear by retaining crucial elements of traditional tonality… [Ms Katz] is hopeful that musical tradition can regain its footing, perhaps by recreating the “abstracting” process that allowed Wesstern music, despite its inability to describe what it does, to beguile and fascinate us for so long.

1/27/10

poem by Gershon Hepner
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When I was studying... there weren't any black concert pianists. My choices were intuitive, and I had the technique to do it. People have heard my music and heard the classic in it, so I have become known as a black classical pianist.

quote by Nina Simone
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I think tolerance is something everybody needs to be reminded of, especially in a reactionary political world. Well, actually, I should say, a reactionary political climate.

quote by Bruce Davison
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Reactionism is not the same thing as conservatism. It’s far more potent a brew. Reactionary thought begins, usually, with acute despair at the present moment and a memory of a previous golden age. It then posits a moment in the past when everything went to hell and proposes to turn things back to what they once were. It is not simply a conservative preference for things as they are, with a few nudges back, but a passionate loathing of the status quo and a desire to return to the past in one emotionally cathartic revolt. If conservatives are pessimistic, reactionaries are apocalyptic. If conservatives value elites, reactionaries seethe with contempt for them. If conservatives believe in institutions, reactionaries want to blow them up. If conservatives tend to resist too radical a change, reactionaries want a revolution. Though it took some time to reveal itself, today’s Republican Party — from Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution to today’s Age of Trump — is not a conservative party. It is a reactionary party that is now at the peak of its political power.

quote by Andrew Sullivan
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The Sidewinder Sleep Tonight

This here is the place I will be staying.
There isn't a number. You can call the pay phone.
Let it ring a long, long, long, long time.
If I don't pick up, hang up, call back, let it ring some more.
If I don't pick up, pick up... The sidewinder sleeps, sleeps, sleeps in a coil
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
There are scratches all around the coin slot
like a heartbeat, baby trying to wake up,
but this machine can only swallow money.
You can't lay a patch by computer design.
It's just a lot of stupid, stupid signs.
Tell her,
tell her she can kiss my ass, then laugh and say that you were only kidding.
That way she'll know that it's really, really, really, really me.
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
Baby, instant soup doesn't really grab me.
Today I need something more sub-sub-sub-substantial.
A can of beans or blackeyed peas, some Nescafe and ice,
a candy bar, a falling star, or a reading of Doctor Seuss;
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
The cat in the hat came back, wrecked a lot of havoc on the way,
always had a smile and a reason to pretend.
But their world has flat backgrounds and little need to sleep but to dream.
The sidewinder sleeps on his back.
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
I can always sleep standing up. Call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
I can always sleep standing up. Call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. Call me when you try to wake her.
I can always sleep standing up. Call me when you try to wake her.
I can always sleep standing up. Call me when you try to wake her.
We've got to moogie, moogie, move on this one

song performed by REM
Added by Lucian Velea
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The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight

This here is the place I will be staying.
There isnt a number. you can call the pay phone.
Let it ring a long, long, long, long time.
If I dont pick up, hang up, call back, let it ring some more.
If I dont pick up, pick up... the sidewinder sleeps, sleeps, sleeps in a coil
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
There are scratches all around the coin slot
Like a heartbeat, baby trying to wake up,
But this machine can only swallow money.
You cant lay a patch by computer design.
Its just a lot of stupid, stupid signs.
Tell her,
Tell her she can kiss my ass, then laugh and say that you were only kidding.
That way shell know that its really, really, really, really me.
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
Baby, instant soup doesnt really grab me.
Today I need something more sub-sub-sub-substantial.
A can of beans or blackeyed peas, some nescafe and ice,
A candy bar, a falling star, or a reading of doctor seuss;
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
The cat in the hat came back, wrecked a lot of havoc on the way,
Always had a smile and a reason to pretend.
But their world has flat backgrounds and little need to sleep but to dream.
The sidewinder sleeps on his back.
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
I can always sleep standing up. call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
I can always sleep standing up. call me when you try to wake her.
Call me when you try to wake her up. call me when you try to wake her.
I can always sleep standing up. call me when you try to wake her.
I can always sleep standing up. call me when you try to wake her.
Weve got to moogie, moogie, move on this one.

song performed by REM
Added by Lucian Velea
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I was much more interested in the orchestra than the piano, but I did become fairly proficient as a pianist and my teachers felt I had talent and wanted me to become a good concert pianist and earn my living that way.

quote by Alan Hovhaness
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The Pianist

A young perplexing boy who found comfort in staying out of sight,
Had a behaviour that made him the target of cruelty and smite,
One day by chance he came upon a piano and came alight,
And quite soon gained respect since his music was able to excite,
Yet was not happy for he wanted to gain finesse overnight,
He would practice relentlessly, studying and playing hourly,
With time he gained the mastery, which he had lusted for dearly,
He would sleep his nights restlessly, without fail waking eagerly,
Since he was obsessed about playing his instrument flawlessly,
He came to be annoyed at how his playing was not always tight,
Maintaining the concentration required took all of his might,
He removed all his possessions in and around his line of sight,
Still it was not enough and so he removed everything outright,
Yet was not happy as his playing still had a margin of blight,
He removed light and played blindly, as a result played perfectly,
In time he eventually lost his grip on reality,
Numerous birds curiously came and formed an assembly,
One bird liked the music dearly and called on the king frequently,
The bird sang a melody, which the king found to be a delight,
The king complemented the bird and came to learn of its ghostwrite.
Then requested the pianist to enter into the limelight,
The pianist was promised riches should he accept the invite,
Yet he turned it down as he had developed a distaste for light.

poem by Christian Lacdael
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Ivory Keys

A pianist sat on his stool
The throng had hushed away
And when the violin had strummed
His fingers hovered in the air
And then began to play

A thousand pairs of eyelids
Bowed and fell into a trance
And ivory still echoing
The audience dozed gracefully
As thoughts broke into dance

The ecstasy on faces grew
To vivid, joyous smiles
And as the keys sped quicker now
The pianist grew fiercer
As he swiftly hit white tiles

The waterfall, as did his pace,
Transitioned to a brook
And as his climax had relaxed
So did his face become less tense
And fashioned a soft look

The artist painted final notes
To vibrate in the hall
And as he hit the final key
The faithful listeners awoke
And sadly that was all

There was not any mad applause
Nor cheerfulness, nor joy
And there was silence in the room
For there was no one to rejoice
Or shout happily, 'Oh Boy! '

And then somewhere a sob broke out
A cry it then became
And in the throng the rest had joined
Tearing in blissful unison
As all tears chimed the same

They all reflected happiness, not pain
As it so seemed
And all emotions grew to bliss
As the host's face became less grim
His lips now coyly beamed

The audience was much in awe
Of beauty that he made

[...] Read more

poem by Sasha Ioffine
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Proud Music Of The Storm

PROUD music of the storm!
Blast that careers so free, whistling across the prairies!
Strong hum of forest tree-tops! Wind of the mountains!
Personified dim shapes! you hidden orchestras!
You serenades of phantoms, with instruments alert,
Blending, with Nature's rhythmus, all the tongues of nations;
You chords left us by vast composers! you choruses!
You formless, free, religious dances! you from the Orient!
You undertone of rivers, roar of pouring cataracts;
You sounds from distant guns, with galloping cavalry! 10
Echoes of camps, with all the different bugle-calls!
Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me powerless,
Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber--Why have you seiz'd me?

Come forward, O my Soul, and let the rest retire;
Listen--lose not--it is toward thee they tend;
Parting the midnight, entering my slumber-chamber,
For thee they sing and dance, O Soul.

A festival song!
The duet of the bridegroom and the bride--a marriage-march,
With lips of love, and hearts of lovers, fill'd to the brim with
love; 20
The red-flush'd cheeks, and perfumes--the cortege swarming, full of
friendly faces, young and old,
To flutes' clear notes, and sounding harps' cantabile.

Now loud approaching drums!
Victoria! see'st thou in powder-smoke the banners torn but flying?
the rout of the baffled?
Hearest those shouts of a conquering army?

(Ah, Soul, the sobs of women--the wounded groaning in agony,
The hiss and crackle of flames--the blacken'd ruins--the embers of
cities,
The dirge and desolation of mankind.)

Now airs antique and medieval fill me!
I see and hear old harpers with their harps, at Welsh festivals: 30
I hear the minnesingers, singing their lays of love,
I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the feudal ages.

Now the great organ sounds,
Tremulous--while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth,
On which arising, rest, and leaping forth, depend,
All shapes of beauty, grace and strength--all hues we know,

[...] Read more

poem by Walt Whitman
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Call Me

Written by harry, moroder
Color me your color, baby
Color me your car
Color me your color, darling
I know who you are
Come up off your color chart
I know where youre coming from
Call me on the line
Call me, call me any anytime
Call me, my love, you can call me any day or night
Call me!
Cover me with kisses, baby
Cover me with love
Roll me in designer sheets
Ill never get enough
Emotions come, I dont know why
Cover up loves alibi
Call me on the line
Call me, call me any anytime
Call me oh my love
When youre ready we can share the wine
Call me
Ooh, he speaks the languages of love
Ooh, amore, chiamami (chiamami)
Oo, appelle-moi, mon cherie (appelle-moi)
Anytime, anyplace, anywhere, anyway!
Anytime, anyplace, anywhere, any day, anyway!
Call me my love
Call me, call me any anytime
Call me for a ride
Call me, call me for some overtime
Call me my love
Call me, call me in a sweet design
Call me, call me for your lovers lovers alibi
Call me on the line
Call me, call me any anytime
Call me
Oh, call me, ooh ooh ah
Call me my love
Call me, call me any anytime

song performed by Tiffany
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Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.

quote by Brian Greene
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Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful.

quote by David Del Tredici
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Composers dialogue - and obsessively, bitterly argue - with other composers, often over the span of several centuries.

quote by Brian Ferneyhough
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You want to do something, you want to have the bravery to do something original. And there will always be people who are like, the classicists who are like, 'No, but it's got to have this.' In life, there are people like that attached to every single thing that there is. These are the same people that are like, still playing vinyl.

quote by Peter Sarsgaard
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