Last year Brian Cockburn, a composer, wrote asking if he could set some of my poems to music. Naturally I gave him permission.
The first, ‘Leaves of Men of Leaves’, was performed last month by the men’s chorus at James Madison University and a recording has just become available online.
If you want the words, they can be found on the poems page.
Some of you may recall a journal post headed, ‘The Thing I Can’t Do.’ Of course there are many, but the one I can’t that I most wish I could is be a musician; so hearing my words put to beautiful music is an unparalleled pleasure.
I’ve downloaded the track and have it in iTunes.
I look forward to playing it on GANNET in mid-ocean. And, as I told Brian, if I am ever off Cape Horn again, it will be heard there, too.
In time two more compositions based on “Die Alone Jean Gau” (first line) and “departure” will follow.
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If you have not already had a surfeit, there is yet another Webb Chiles interview online. This one at Limitless Pursuits.
I don’t know that I have said anything new here, but it is well presented and I find my responses cogent. I am pleased to be included on a site whose target audience is, I expect, slightly younger than I.
Interesting, to me at least, is that at the time of the interview last October, my rotator cuff was torn but I did not know it.
I did not choose the 1979 photograph of me Tom Burrington used. I told him he could take anything from this site he wished. Sex sells. And certainly I was sexier thirty years ago than I am now.
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Me. Me. Me. An orgy of self-promotion. Reminiscent of Norman Mailer’s ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF. I apologize. Even though the full name of this site is self-portrait in the present sea this is wretched excess.
I’ll stop with the announcement that for our crossing the Pacific Ocean GANNET and I have been awarded the Ocean Cruising Club Jester Medal. For non-sailors, the medal is named after a famous small sailboat not a court clown, though I may be that, too.
