Music and the Human Experience

It surprises me how often people never move past the music that they loved during high school. I'm sure that there is a certain comfort in hearing the same music that you were listening to during the formative moments in your teenage and young adult life. There is also the benefit of music allowing you to stir up and revisit memories from those times.

I recently tried listening to some of the music that I heard while in high school. I couldn't get far in any one song before I had to stop it.

My father regularly played jazz, ragtime, gospel, and classical music on the stereo when I was growing up. One of his favorite jazz albums was Dave Brubeck's Time Out. On one occasion, I remember walking into the den and finding my mother and father watching on TV a concert featuring Gary Burton on vibes. I had to sit down and watch it with them.

My reading reinforced this initial exposure to jazz. The excitement that Jack Kerouac found in jazz made me want to discover what jazz offered. While I never listened to George Shearing, one of the musicians described in On the Road, I went about discovering jazz in my own way. 

After I located those rock albums that contained jazz elements, my introduction to jazz began in earnest when I bought Miles Davis' Big Fun album. Within the next year or so, I found my own way to Gary Burton and his The New Quartet and Ring albums.

I don't think of my own introduction to and pursuit of jazz as being that special. I suppose it takes an early exposure to other kinds of music and an interest in pursuing one's own discoveries. 

Because there is so much music available, it is crippling, I think, to limit oneself to the music heard early in one's life. One purpose in life should be to discover more about such things as music, art, film, literature, etc., precisely those things that teach us about the human experience.

Two Poems in New Note Poetry

Two of my poems have been published in the spring issue of New Note Poetry, a relatively new online journal. My poems appear on pages 72 and 73. Use the following link.

After I dropped out of college as a sophomore, I worked at two different hospitals before I decided to continue my education in poetry. These two poems address that experience. It was Daniel Halpern's American Poetry Anthology that convinced me to return to college. I wasn't going to succeed as a poet without an education, I decided.

Some poems of mine attempt to capture a moment. Other poems explore experiences and, sometimes, make sense of those experiences. These two poems deal with experiences of mine at these two hospitals.

Alopecia

One good thing that might come from Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Academy Awards ceremony is the attention it brings to alopecia areata, the loss of hair in certain spots, and alopecia universalis, the loss of hair over one's entire body. The slapping incident, by the way, was preceded by a joke about Jada Smith's shaven head. Maybe once more people educate themselves about this autoimmune disease, that awareness will generate greater understanding and acceptance.

I have written two poems about alopecia, one of which will be published later this spring. There could be other poems worth writing if I choose to explore that part of my life.

I was five when I started losing the hair on my head. I remember it starting one night when my family was getting ready to eat. I rubbed my head and discovered that my hair covered my plate. Within a year, I was totally bald. I remained bald and had no hair anywhere else on my body for a couple of years. Although the hair on my head eventually grew back, it was never thick and didn't grow very fast. My arms and legs remained hairless.

I started losing the hair on my head again when I was 20 or 21. The process that time took longer because I wasn't totally bald until my thirties or forties. I had facial hair while earning my PhD, but the stress and sleep deprivation that accompanied earning a degree and caring for a baby eventually caused me to lose my mustache and part of my beard.

According to the Internet, one out of four thousand people has alopecia universalis. Alopecia areata is more common among females, I've discovered.

I wouldn't wish alopecia universalis on any kid. I'm happy that my condition wasn't passed on through my genes.

Meanderings

My traffic at this blog has increased recently for some reason, according to StatCounter. It isn't often that I get more than a handful of unique visitors and returning visitors. For the past two weeks, I have been getting five times as many unique visitors. I'm happy to get the traffic, but I am a little embarrassed at not having added much to this blog as of late. 

Noticeably absent this year, perhaps, is my annual list of jazz releases. I haven't been listening to as much music as I used to. I generally reserve those times in which I listen to music to driving and to working out. 

Most recently, I have been listening to Soren Bebe's Echoes, a 2019 release, when I am in the car. I have been enjoying  this album immensely, particularly such tracks as "Echoes, " "Winx," and "Homeward." I recommended this album earlier when I compiled my selections for the best of 2019. I have had to adjust the sound levels in the car so as to capture more of Kasper Tagel's bass.  

Previously when driving, I was listening to Daniel Herskedal's Harbour, a 2021 release. This album contains a trio composed of Eyolf Dale on piano, Helge Norbakken on drums, and Daniel Herskedal on bass tuba and trumpet. There is now more attention given to the tuba in comparison to Herskedal's previous albums, that is, Voyage (2019), The Roc (2017), and Slow Eastbound Train (2015). This current album rivals Slow Eastbound Train. One of the few albums that I bought in 2021, this album proves delightful because of its greater emphasis on the trio. Some of my favorite tracks are "Ice-Free," "Hunters Point Drydocks," "Arriving at Ellis Island," and the alliterative "Dancing Dhow Deckhands."

On one occasion recently, I was walking back to my car after having returned my shopping cart when a young guy stopped me to ask whether I could give him a ride. Foolishly, I agreed to give this guy a ride to the library, a fifteen minute trip. I learned during the ride that he had been kicked out of his parents" house for some reason and was trying to get a job, despite not having any identification, something that prevented him from getting hired at the grocery store where he had stopped me. During the trip, he asked me whether I could take him to a different city or let him stay with me. Once we learned that the library was closed and that the Salvation Army was closed, I offered to drop him off downtown so that he could hitch a ride to Kansas City. Along the way, he spotted a restaurant/bar and asked me to let him off there. All during this time, I was playing Daniel Herskedal's Harbour in the car although this guy didn't once mention the music. 

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My wife and I, as I have mentioned, have created a literary press named Choeofpleirn Press and have been releasing four literary journals per year.  Late last year, we started getting more art. Earlier, we were using my own photos to create breaks in the text, to separate a poem from story or a poem from nonfiction, for example, and to establish a parallel between the art and the succeeding work. I was getting tired of seeing my name in the Table of Contents. 

One element of working as a poetry editor that I hate is having to send out rejections. My own work has been getting rejected since the 1970's when I first started sending out my poems. I have gotten something like five rejections from Poetry and three rejections from American Poetry Review. When my wife and I were talking about The Georgia Review, a journal that gets a hundred thousand submissions annually, I was able to say that I have gotten a standard rejection from them. Despite these experiences, it is still difficult to reject the poetry of people submitting to Choeofpleirn Press. Our issue of Coneflower Cafe this time is the largest journal that we have put out and includes forty-three poems when some journals only include ten poems per issue. Rejection for me is probably hardest when I send out poems with the belief that getting one or more accepted is a sure thing, after having revised the poems extensively and after having researched the journal. The rejection stings a little harder on those occasions. Natalie Goldberg reminds her audience in Writing Down the Bones that the writing is far more important than getting one's work published. One has to believe in oneself and in one's work, no matter how tough it can be getting one's work read by others.