February Music

Wed, 3 Mar 2010 12:02:20 -0800

I made a new year’s resolution this year to write a new piece of music every month. Before I became a minister I worked in Human Resources with AIDS Project Los Angeles. And before that I was a composer. I was part of a composer’s writing/performing group called Lo Cal Composers Ensemble. We put on concerts of our own music several times a year in venues all around Los Angeles. I worked at a bookstore, too, to pay the bills. My undergraduate degree is in music composition from Cal Arts.
But I hadn’t been doing much composing in recent years and I realized that writing music was still an important part of my identity. So I made a resolution to make time for composing this year.
My January music was for solo piano. For February I had planned to write a piano/cello duet. But then I got inspired to write a song for tenor and piano. The text was written by a schizophrenic man who attends my Los Angeles church and sings in our choir. He had written a description of what’s going on in his world. It was so strange, and sad, and beautiful. Full of paranoia, but also tender. I set it to music.
If I can figure out how to post an mp3 here I’ll share it with you.

what’s beautiful?

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:16:00 -0800

If you search for "Beauty" in Google Images, what do you get?

Page after page of beautiful women.

On the 4th search page there's a sunset. On the 5th search page there's a polar bear. Other than that the only image that says "beauty" is beautiful women.

No beautiful trees. No beautiful mountains. No beautiful lakes or tropical islands. No beautiful images of the moon. No beautiful architecture. No beautiful paintings. No beautiful animals except that one polar bear. No beautiful babies or children. And no beautiful men.

What caught my soul today

February Music

what’s beautiful?