A piano, falling

I made this sound piece as a competition entry a little while ago. The competition said entries without sound effects, so I made a version like that. It didn’t get anywhere. I also made a mix with additional audio – which was what I really had in mind when I first saw the competition title (which I think is a great title!)

The full mix with additional audio is what I’m posting just now on Soundcloud and here. Text also below. Let me know what you think.

The picture is a CG image I made a bundle of years ago that seemed to fit – no performers or pianos were harmed in the making.

Thanks to: ERH at Freesound and huggy13ear at Freesound for piano and wind audio samples.

 

Fourth floor. My music still unsung.
Uncertain how I got here. I know
all falls begin when yawning gravity
blackjack twists our real potential.

Third floor. Know me. Know who I am.
Half my soul’s piano – so play me sol-la softly,
Softly, Softly like old tv policemen nee-naw zed-cars,
catchee monkeys all so black-and-white.

Second floor. Coming into Grace land, Brothers,
carpets, travel goods, and bedding material.
Getting closer, the world’s air rising, our throats
fear-parched, croak, are we really going down?

First floor. Time dilates when falling, one beat
sheds sixty easy, squeezes out all our years,
flowing slowly like silk on serpentine.
Pray for a shiny handle – pray for a ripcord to pull.

Ground floor. Wo-ho-hoh! They call it ground rush,
tell virgin parachutists, not to anticipate
when you’re about come in to land because
that’s how bones end up really screwed.

Bargain Basement! An unexpected coda,
plunging beer traps left by lorry-men, we’ll pay
just a pound now, we’ll pay the ferryman,
so play my forte strong now. Play, to make us brave.

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Now there is a wire

Now there is a wire

~~ So there is a wire now. ~~

Step back, rethink. ~~ Now there is a wire. ~~ Before, for thirty years, there were only posts. Posts with old tales of once-upon-a-fence. Like the empty posts in empty places, high lines in the hills, cast iron sentinels in Victorian picturesque, secure verticals of redundant limitation. Or eroded wooden posts, wind riven Giacometti men, weird signs or saviours, misty day markers, wires all unstrung, silent to the gale. But here now, a single wire, not even barbed, a margin for stock herded to pasture, one galvanised line, not a problem, stepped over with ease. Is it only because, white haired as I am, I still want to skip like an unruly child, that it rankles so, that now there is a wire?

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Morning post

hoarfrosted contours

time served by seasons

in another life

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Just

It’s intriguing how movement can turn one thing into another…

A sudden start
as the passing wind
of preceding cars
eddies squirrel shimmies
from an unseen discard,
and the label, darker
than a clear bottle,
squirms a small
mammal’s jig.

Fists clench wheel,
I’m ready to pedal hard,
hazard up-thumb mercy,
break and clutch and pray
for life. But, no.
Time split squints
and it’s empty dead,
just more trash,
more unkillable
plastic.

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Struck

Very pleased to have ‘Struck’ published at the Poetry Shed. 

This one was inspired by an object shown to me many years ago by the very knowledgable Sandy Edwards, who was curator of the Bell Pettigrew Natural History Museum at the time. Since then I have (amongst other things!) spent many years being fortunate enough to do ‘media odd jobs’ for researchers involved in studying the scope and meaning of sounds made by marine mammals. My knowledge of what they do is slight, but I continue to find what they discover remarkable and inspiring.

old post

windstream whittled

boundary lines surrendered

sculpture on the way

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Gallery

Something a little different – a gallery with an assortment of some of the images and montages that I’ve made to illustrate this blog over the past wee whiley …

The island of Macgyver

Chuck Wagon crossing The Great Scots Pine

Montage