Nicotine

More weird cabaret/ yet (pronounce the et in yet like cabaret)

Ugh. Love and death. Shocked? Haven’t you figured out yet that that’s what this is all about? Cigarettes, alcohol, more… Margery taught me to smoke. She taught me the rush, as it rushed, the silky smooth, the heat, the rush… she taught me more than that. If love is a toxin, it might be nicotine. It takes root inside you and hungers for itself, and to satisfy that hunger… well, we’ve all seen the commercials. But we do it anyway. But sometimes, a cigarette is just a cigarette.
Margery wore a suit, long after the days when a woman in a suit meant vaudeville. She wore them unironically, seriously - for she knew that a suit on a man looks smart, and she knew that she was as smart as any man, if not smarter.

weird dirge(slow death)

I set a timer and wrote this whole thing in twenty minutes
I love prolation canons
I want to do more
better ones

instruments with a hard attack manage to sound not awful on sibelius?

sleepynonsense–for piano

submission no.2 for today

it is called sleepynonsense partly because I've been up for 18 hours, and because it's forming a larger piece I want to give to some very dear and queer and sad and beautiful friends of mine, and they are known for often speaking in sleepy nonsense.

some silly piano midi

Sitting Rhythms

Fun with hanging metal (so metal)

Yesterday I made a sample library from this piece of metal. I recorded it being hit four times and transposed it to lots of pitches so it could be played on the keyboard. Thank you Toby for the company and for supplying your hair for it to hang off. Mine was too fine and snapped. #toofine

II cold rain

another haiku! this time for alto/tenor duet
it is coincidentally spontaneously raining as I upload this, obvs I am the weather queen

cold rain–we dance in
cold rain; and God strikes down with
killing flash in vain.

here's a crappy midi ft. clarinet and cor anglais

Little Lady

Today's is a bit of a Bolcom-esque cabaret song. The setting is so straight-forward, I didn't want to copy out the lyrics... also laziness? I'm going to try and record this today, but no promises

Also pls help with page 7 - In his hands were a knife, and a fist -or- In his hands was a knife, and a fist. I've psyched myself out of having any idea whatsoever

yindyamarra

it took me so long to find a poem in wiradjuri - this is an excerpt from a longer poem from a film still on the website of an art gallery in albury
I can't even tell you who wrote this or why, which is INFURIATING and problematic
but I needed something to workshop writing melodies in language for children to sing

(starting tomorrow, I'm gonna post two a day to make up for my week off)

Dosage

My character is taking a new path today. Does the phallic imagery have anything to do with it? Hmm clumsy foreshadowing

    Dosage, dosage, dosage. Amongst the many, many foods of phallic shape, carrots are the mildest. It takes the consumption of one million, four hundred seventeen thousand, eight hundred and fifteen average sized carrots to overdose on Vitamin A. Four hundred eighty bananas for potassium poisoning is a far more reasonable proposition, but the salt in hotdogs is toxic after eighty one. Salt, meat, fat, in human skin. Bananas have human hair, carrots a human nose. Without us, they're seed pods and gnarly roots. But hotdogs - it takes human ingenuity to create such a stupid, passive killer.

How 2 Kink

https://soundcloud.com/toby-graham-music/how-2-kink/s-M8I9t

Furby

A little weekend indulgence - score in C

Very tame experimentation with there being two tonics.

Prelude: Dosage

Distortion of Light

Listen here

The Meadow

This one took me a long long time... and not particularly pleasant work, given the melancholic psychological state it's supposed to depict. This is the second ending in my series so far, so like before, tomorrow will be something quite different.

Peter looked for me.

Everywhere I was, he followed, clinging moss on stony shore.

He sang so sweetly. His voice was flickering out.

Until one day his voice drew silent.

I turned around, he wasn't there.

My heart was filled with cruel happiness.

The tree grew old. The meadow drew colder. I stayed the same.

I went to my room and found a single rose on my bed. I crushed it.

Skydiving

Skydiving

how do I say this nicely?

how do I say this nicely?
i don’t want to be there when you go

i don’t want to be there when you go, i want to be somewhere the waves are high

and the wind is strong and the earth can swallow me, smiling

somewhere i can be with you, not your dying body?

when you went to hospital i took up skydiving

figured i could meet you half-way

and drag you back down

i hope you don’t miss me

coz i sure don’t miss your dying face

i hope you understand

its so hard not to die frowning

Listen here (there are several minutes of silence at the end which is why it looks odd):
https://soundcloud.com/toby-graham-music/how-do-you/s-VIepH

The Mirror

Some ideas that once again could all be fleshed out much more, and I would want them to be. I think I struggle with the completion thing and it's okay that my month of music submissions aren't complete pieces. The lazy artist within needs there to be a pulsating deadline, the heat of which is singing her eyebrows, for the ideas to be squeezed out enough to be a complete piece. I mean, there is midnight every day. But still. 

I imagine this would be a movement of about 4 minutes. There would be electronic accompaniment. Maybe I'll make some recordings for it tomorrow. Oh there are lyrics missing at the top of page 2. They should be fairly guessable... (lazy lazy)

Unto whatever face of things we turn 

The mirror, things of form and hue the same 

Respond.

- Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Poem IV

translated by William Ellery Leonard

Intermezzo: The Cup

This is a setup to use an old gospel magic trick, dyeing water and then making it clear again. Does anyone know any Soprano-magicians? Aside from Barbara Hannigan, who can hide her thumb tips wherever she wants

Plasticine Cathedral

Plasticine Cathedral 

Warm graffiti covers the walls

A plaque reads:

“Write your message here

It will be heard”

The purple crucifix 

That softest symbol

Your fingers knead it

Leave new dimples

The church whispers,

“Just ask.

Change me.

I might not have an answer

but you can carve your own out of my insides”

The purple crucifix

That softest symbol

your fingers need it

leave new dimples

bend it: any shape

ride it on the altar

people join you, hold you: hold them

or take it to a corner

enjoy it in the dark

This church is as soft as I am

Its walls pulse ‘welcome’

Come feel it

Climb it

Carve it

Love it

Today was a big of struggle.  Here is something musical that doesn't necessarily go with the poem:  

https://soundcloud.com/toby-graham-music/double-three-feelz-goood-beat-8032017-1016-pm/s-9VIZa