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

Lines

The Cup

Like yesterday, 'Flowers' was written last night, and this one only now. This was a welcome reminder that it's bloody lovely to bask in some nice chords once in a while.

Peter came to meet me.

We walked in the meadow, fondly talked of youth.

With a light touch, he closed my eyes

and upon my waking, had filled a cup.

He waited, eyes on my lips.

His lips were roses, glistening.

He waited, took a sip.

He wondered what kept me from his cup.

I longed to drink, and

I thought he had become tired of waiting.

I raised it to my lips.

Before a drop could touch, he took it away.

He smiled and said:

“You’re not ready, Love.”

I smiled and knew too well

his drink was poison.

Flowers

Now I have flowers, every day and every night.

Orchids for Lorelei. Roses for Peter. Lillies for Margery.

I throw flowers upon my bed and, for only a night, invite them in.

And every day I take a walk in the meadow, I tear a few pretty heads to strew my bed.

Back Pain

I purposefully didn't follow the rhythms exactly. Also the fun compositional bit was in the robotisation :)

Listen here.

..getting an intense massage tomorrow

Lesson

For irony to die, an inexpressible lesson must be taken from his clutches.  

This lesson cannot die, so neither can I while I hold it.

Take it.  

I tried to teach this lesson.  I could not.

No one can teach this lesson.  It can only be learnt.

Feel its fine hairs: they have writing on them.  Read some:

“Experience is inescapably single

Like a musical piece in which background noises are acknowledged as a part”

“Nothing ever happens simultaneously to your experience”

“Experience is inescapably linear

Though our senses tell us otherwise”

“One thing happens after another

A thing can be so small”

One more hair.  The writing is big:

“Nothing else exists”

Listen here:  https://soundcloud.com/toby-graham-music/lesson/s-9J9qn

Lithium

Two today, because I completed my first submission last night.

This is maybe a good time to point out that none of this is autobiographical. 

'Newness feels good,' my mother said.

'The feeling of constancy, that's just as good, and that only comes after.'

Lithium feels good. And after, I want to kill myself.

Constancy, when does that appear, before or after?

She bade me sleep. In this room I could never sleep,

So she painted little flower-stars overhead.

I dream of them. They torment me.

And still my mother tells me to sleep.

The Tree

I'll see Peter today.

But Madge will be with him, I don't want to see her.

Her head, her eyes, her mouth - who told him sweet words of love beneath the tree.

And her ears - who heard him talk of growing up, and knew they'd halved a soul.

Irony arrives disguised and wants to drink from the Well, but we know him by the smell of crushed spiders. He must be stopped!

Irony arrives disguised and wants to drink from the Well, but we know him by the smell of crushed spiders.  He must be stopped!

I have consumed: desired and sated that desire

I have blocked out the cosmos then let it tear into my cracked-wide-open heart and let it burn the tumour from my brain and then blocked it out again

I exaggerate with the full expectation that you will believe me

I exaggerate with the full belief that what I say is true

I understand that people are good and that all things are vastly complex but will never try to trick you.

One two Crack! One Three Four Crack! Crack!

The eggs hatch

Hear here:  https://soundcloud.com/toby-graham-music/irony-arrives/s-l36Wp

'Performance'

Some ideas that could really use fleshing out.

Suggest your favourite pair of instruments to perform this? 

I would love oboe and violin in a really resonant space.

Recording of alice and alice singing this will surface here tonight or tomorrow.

ps. anyone know how to change the key of just one stave?

Prelude: The Tree

Catch some tästy sounds:

www.soundcloud.com/andrew_howes/prelude-the-tree

Courtesy of Lukas Stepp, who also did my translations last week (and gave me some v good & correct ideas)

        

Well of Hope

Well of Hope

Beautiful spiders laid their eggs in people’s hearts

Few would survive

I would be well for a moment

I would visit another planet and be well for a moment

Taste health and know I had been sick all along

Beautiful spider would creep into my heart and lay its eggs:

Relief like finding out you have got a brain tumour

you’re not just going crazy

One day my heart would crack open 

Crawling with babies

Listen here: https://soundcloud.com/toby-graham-music/well-of-hope/s-aEzjA