"Among my friends in Los Angeles..."

Contact Carroll

February 29, 1998

Dear Carroll,

Many thanks, for your informative letter, for the thought provoking article by Pfaff, and most especially for the poems

I have not yet read all of them. For me it seems best to read just a few, read them carefully, and then speak them out loud. Rather than going through a poem, reacting to it, and then more or less saying, "There, I've read that", it seems only fair to the poet to digest the work, and then look at it from a somewhat analytical point of view, considering assonance, consonance, choice of words, yes, the rhythms, and any other features that would seem to aid in understanding the poem as itself, and its affect. -Parenthetically, vocal music takes me about three times as long to write as music for any other reasonably standard medium. Rhythm sketches, and noting climaxes, for example, come before any other considerations. Of course some aspects of accompaniment, atmosphere, musical style that will be congruent with the poet and the message, are sort of boiling up as dissection of the text is being done. But in the case of poetry the work comes first, and I believe in making the musical line not only expressive of the sense of the words but congruent with the natural speech rhythms. - Anyway, I see the poet reflected in your poems, and of the four I've read, spoken and parsed so far I can say that there is much in them that is touching, even moving in the case of Ismael Carbajal. More about that in a later letter, after I've had time to live with them awhile.

(Did you know that there is a rather successful lightweight boxer named Michael Carbajal? He has not been heard from as much lately as the superstar of the lighter weight class, Oscar de la Hoya, and hasn't exhibited the flair for self-promotion that seemed to characterize the career of the recently retired Hector "Macho" Gamacho, but until recently was one of the forces to be reckoned with.)

I think that you may yet lead me into an appreciation of Paul Klee, through your poetry. You did give me the sense that there must be more there than I was seeing when we were teaching "The Eye, the Ear and the I" (correct word order?). His remarkably direct and efficient essay certainly enkindles respect for his mind and sheds some light on his choices. It is most likely just a combination of personal tastes and my own ignorance that still leads me to marvel that at times he insists on a sort of even diffusion of interest in his canvasses rather than creating a singular principal point of focus. I can offer no explanation for why I can enjoy music that is brittle, non-sentimental and as deliberately lacking in the third dimension as Klee's more asperit works, and yet find the visual near-equivalent somewhat problematic. I do not believe that this is reflective of a general resistance to modern art, since there are quite a number of 20th Century artists whose works appeal, and they are not in all cases the most easily loved artists. (Rothko is not one of those whose works I can sincerely enjoy. The draughtsman in me keeps screaming, "But that's just really the same idea repeated again and again with variations in colors chosen. It's the sort of idea you use once, and then move on!") At least you have pointed the direction in reading Klee's pieces, with their symbology and deliberate rejection of much that might be considered atmospheric.

The subject and idea of revision is an interesting one. I probably told you that one of my teachers, Halsey Stevens, had the attitude that you should make your mistakes, recognize and learn from them, but move on to the next piece, and the other (teacher) believed in polishing until it was like a jewel. The danger in the first instance is that nothing one creates may feel like a finished product, while in the second case much of the original strength may be shorn away along with the rough edges. Gustav Holst once gave a student both the original and the revised versions of his "Choral Symphony", telling him in effect that he would either learn the wisdom of revising to make the music better, or would learn the vice and folly of revision. I suppose the real trick is to know what needs changing, and when to leave well enough alone. Sometimes I think about going back to youthful works, now that I'm no longer as attached to them flaws and all, and making them more sophisticated. But I'm not able to entirely recapture the me that I was when writing them, and I fear that I would end up writing a different composition based on some of the same materials without the authentic impulse of the original. No doubt it's better to revise as you do, when the poem is still proximate to the impulse that motivated it.

I am enclosing a tape containing THE GHOSTS OF THE BUFFALOES based on Lindsay's text, and some other of my vocal compositions as well. THE GHOSTS OF THE BUFFALOES was my farewell piece to the good folks of Kenosha, Wisconsin, where I had been composer in residence for two years on a Contemporary Music Project grant, and to the musical forces of the public schools for which I had been writing. For this I wanted a poem which would seem to have sprung from the soil, which had intrinsic drama and the kind of narrative content that is easily understood even in the face of competing instrumental forces, a work with extroverted and striking imagery, and a poem which had not been set before. For all but the last criterion Lindsay was the ideal poet for my purposes. But many of his strongest works have already been set by such as Charles Ives ("General William Booth Enters Into Heaven", and so forth), and my friend, Jack Jarrett, had already set "The Statue of Old Andy Jackson". Fortunately it seems that "The Ghosts of the buffaloes" had been overlooked, and after a lot of negotiating with Lindsay's widow through the MacMillan Company I was able to get permission to have one hundred copies of the vocal score reproduced and to have one performance. (That was 1968. By now most of Lindsay's work will have come into the Public Domain.)

Obviously these are amateur forces. But the combined choirs of the two high schools worked very hard on this music, which was not at all easy for them, and did quite a creditable job, while the orchestra's part has a lot of rough edges but certainly projects the spirit of the piece.

To find five poems that would make a good set of songs, and again, to find examples not previously set by others, I read the complete poems of Robert Burns, including the scatological and downright rude and ribald ones. Of the six or so performances the FIVE SONGS ON TEXTS BY ROBERT BURNS have received this is one of the better voiced.*

One of my friends assured me that I would be struck by lightning for setting these translations of poems by Baudelaire, especially the "Evoi", from his "Litany for Satan". I found the image of resting under the Tree of Knowledge, "which shall spread its branches like a temple, overhead" extraordinarily peaceful.
SIX EPIGRAMS would take ten times as long to analyze as to hear. These are decidedly Politiclly Incorrect, but one might blame Balzac, Rochefocault, etc.
If pressed, I would say that I probably would not choose to set these Baudelaire texts today. At the time that I wrote this set of three I was enamored of the idea of the Baudelaireian, Bohemian life, afflicted with the romanticism of the undergraduate variety. I was far too responsible, to studies, the work ethic, my performing activities, to be a Baudelaire, and though I may have on occasion introduced certain chaotic elements into my life, it was mostly a matter of dreaming and a mild form of rebellion, probably against my own conventional self. But listening to these songs from the vantage point of a 56 year old man, and judging them as one might judge the songs of any other 19-20 year old student, they have held up very well. The performance is pretty good too, the minor flaws notwithstanding.

Of other poets, I have set two short poems by Lewis Carroll for Jr. or Sr. High School Choir. ("As It Fell Upon a Day", and the original "Mock Turtle's Song", here quoted in its entirety.)

Beneath the waters of the sea
Are lobsters, thick as thick can be.
They love to dance with you and me,
My own, my gentle Salmon.

Salmon come up, salmon go down,
Salmon come twist your tail around.
Of all the fishes in the sea
There's none so good as salmon.

That is the text as I remember it, anyway.

You may find it a bit strange that I, basically a skeptic, would make two complete settings of the Ordinary of the Roman Mass, in Latin, one with large orchestra and the other a cappella. Neither of them has been performed. - One of my very favorite among Stravinsky's compositions is his Mass of 1948 for choir, soloists and ten wind instruments. It is both touching and austere, with elements as redolent of Byzantium as of Rome in the Gloria, a movement which can actually bring tears to my eyes. I cannot imagine a music more beautifully pure or more purely beautiful than the opening pages of this Gloria. One of my favorites among the works of Leos Janacek is his Glagolitic Mass, a work that is earthy and operatic, and brimming with vitality and feeling, when done in a spirited and committed way. In this, Janacek chose to set the ancient Glagolitic text, a language that is no longer used except possibly in certain Orthodox churches. (Unfortunately this argues against frequent performance, since language coaches versed in this dead language are not to be found just anywhere. No doubt the same types of considerations apply when it comes to performances of Ysaye's opera in the Walloon dialect.)
Information about other music on the tape momentarily, on a separate sheet.

It has been many years since I wrote any vocal music. Maybe it's time for me to consider vocal media again. We have a very fine soprano, Katherine Wright, at Berklee, who is entirely supportive of new music, and who has performed works by other faculty members most capably. This I'll think about, after I've finished the next three projects that I have in mind. I assure you that I'll keep your poetry in mind, and if it seems right for what I need to write, I will certainly seek your permission.

Thanks for telling me about Bogidar, Jasper and Nick. I'll confess that this is the first time I've heard of having a property settlement without a divorce, but I hope someday someone will come along and sweep A. off her feet. She might not be receptive to this, or allow it, and may never be presented with the opportunity to accept or reject such a White Knight. But such attention would make anyone feel a bit better, and after all, one can't profitably pine away for what can no longer be, forever. - I miss my old former colleague, and now 70 yrs. old you tell me. Maybe this young lady will help his Muse to sing, as he said of Noreen. Mainly I hope that he is happy, and fulfilled. At 70, being productive in the sense of writing and developing new ideas may not be what pleases him, but if he does have something more to contribute in the area of hermeneutics (sp.?) no doubt he will do what is necessary. - I'm so sorry to hear that Bogidar and Ilke are not yet ensconced in Monterey, and that his mother passed away. I knew nothing of this, so even though it may be more than just tardy I hope that it will still be thought appropriate to send him a sympathy card. I'll assume that they are living with Ilke's sister, since their house (next door) was sold. What a shame that Bogidar has to stay at LMU for yet another year. For so long he has been planning to retire, and each time that tunnel, assumed to be so short, has grown another mile. - And dear Nick. He sounds a bit lost in terms of colleagues, something like the final remaining member of a Last Man Club. Had I remained at LMU my own position might have been something like that, after Bogidar does actually retire. No doubt I should write to him and assure him that sports fishing abounds in New Hampshire, especially for those up for ice fishing. There are bob shacks still on the lakes right now, though if our benign weather persists, their owners will soon have to begin taking them in.
I'd better close now. This, undoubtedly the most egocentric letter that you have received in some years, has gone on long enough.

Hoping that you and our mutual friends are experiencing no difficulties because of the exceptional rainfall. We see such awful pictures of damage on the news, I remain,

Your friend,

P.S. Since literary works of art, paintings, sculptures, etc. have inspired music. I thought you might like a few examples of same in your library, including two works directly related to paintings by Paul Klee. Of course Mussorgsky's PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION and Rachmaninoff's ISLE OF THE DEAD would qualify, but those are for another tape at another time.

*There's a mildly amusing story in connection with the search for the right poems. Not aware that the first editions I had checked out were for only an hour each, and intended only for perusal within the library, I trekked them back to my apartment and kept them for the usual two weeks. When I returned them to Doheney Library they wanted me to pay them a tremendous fine, but I was a student, and had no money. Since it was obvious that I had not damaged them, they settled for a negotiated $20.

Guide to enclosed tapes
MUSIC INSPIRED BY WORKS OF ART

Normal Bias Dolby B

A1) PETER MAXWELL-DAVIES: Five Paul Klee Pictures
1. The Crusader 2. Stained Glass Window 3. Twittering Machine
4. Garden 5.Steps to Parnassus
Bogidar Avramov cond. LMU Orchestra

A2) GUNTHER SCHULLER: Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee
1. Antique Harmonies 2. Abstract Trio 3. Little Blue Devil
4. The Twittering Machine 5. Arab village 6. An Eerie Moment
7. Pastorale
Antal Dorati cond. The Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra

A3) OTTORINO RESPIGHI: Trittico Botticelliano
1. La Primavera 2. L'Adorazione del Magi (beg.)

B1) L'Adorazione del Magi (concl.) 3. La Nascita di Venere
Andrew Shenck cond. The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

B2) RESPIGHI: Church Windows
1. The Flight Into Egypt
2. Saint Michael the Archangel
3. The Matins of Saint Clare
4. Saint Gregory the Great
Jesus Lopez-Cobos cond. The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

B3) JEAN SIBELIUS: Lemminkainen's Homeward Journey, from "Four Legends from
The Kelevala"
Jukka-Pekka Saraste cond. The Finnish radio Symphony Orchestra

In Re: Respighi' Church Windows
1. The little band is pictured making its way into the Land of Pharoes
2. This stained glass window evidently pictures Michael doing battle with the Dragon
3. "Jesus Christ, her bridegroom, seeing her thus disconsolate, had her borne by Angels to Matins." Clare was too ill to leave her sickbed.)
4. The Pontiff is represented in all of his magnificence.

The composer has made extensive use of Roman (Gregorian) Chants in this, most evidently in the central portions of the first two movements, and in the fourth. I consider Respighi to have been a thoroughly original composer, in his treatment of materials, accompanying figures and in orchestration. Some have been unable to see past the pictorials qualities in his music, and/or have been too delicate to accept the aggressive qualities in some of his writing, calling it bombast. But every composer of music for Roman spectacle-type films has been indebted to Respighi for the models provided in his Roman trilogy (all composed before sound films), and today, when I think that we are safely past the era of music as mathematical demonstration (except, perhaps, for a few fireproof serialists/combinitorialists), his music may be considered in a more favorable light. The general listening public has never quarreled with his music, just critics who have thought he should have written music with less immediate appeal.

COMPOSITIONS BY LEROY W. SOUTHERS, JR.

A1) THE GHOSTS OF THE BUFFALOES - Cantata for Bass-Baritone, Large Chorus
Orchestra on a poem by Nicholas Vachel Lindsay
Margaret Hillis conduction the combined High School Choirs and Community
Orchestra of Kenosha, Wisconsin
The narrator awakens to find the artifacts of civilization gone, his house now a mud hut, and all as it was in the time of the "Indians". The ghosts of the Red Gods come charging toward the West, "A Red God show, A la la, A la la!" In the central portion the grasses mutter of massacres long past. Then come the ghosts of the buffaloes, "A la la!" "A scourge and amazement they swept to the West". At the end things are restored to what they have become, as a cricket softly sings, "Good night". (I played 1st oboe in the Kenosha Symphony.)

A2) THREE SONGS ON TEXTS BY BAUDELAIRE for Bass-Baritone and Woodwind Quintet Robert Hasty, soloist. Sharon Risch, flute; Judith Fessenden, oboe; Charles Veronda, clarinet; George Adams, bassoon; Susan Linder, horn

I. I Worship You II. Holy Pleasure III. Envoi from "The Litany for Satan"

A3) FIVE SONGS ON TEXTS BY ROBERT BURNS
Prelude I..The Deuk's Dang O'er My Daddie, O" II. The Cats Like Kitchen
III. As Down the Burn IV. O, Wert Thou in the Cold Blast
V. Blythe Hae I Been On Yon Hill Postlude.
Peggy Sears Keller, soprano; Brent MacMunn, piano

B1) SYMPHONY FOR CHAMBER ENSEMBLE (in three movements)
Southers conducting Ensemble of USC Students
The first movement is in a modified Sonata form, a motorically oriented piece
With Americana overtones. Movement two opens with a harp motto that acts like a
Bookend for each of the major sections. Initially the strings play a set of canons,
like an ancient chest of viols. Then come the woodwinds, like fairies and
Shakespeare's "mechanicals" in A Midsummer night's Dream. The two are then
literally combined, to produce what I experience as the lonliness of alienation, two
simultaneous but disconnected events. The final movement is a Prelude, double
Fugue and Postlude.
Instrumentation: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, percussion, harp
Violins I, violins II, violas, 'cellos and double bass

B2) SIX EPIGRAMS on French Witticisms
Robert Hasty, bass; June Lusk Nelson, piano

B3) THE TROLL - text by J.R.R, Tolkien
Orchestra and Chorus of Bradford High School, Kenosha, Wisconsin

B4) TWO SONGS ON TEXTS BY LEWIS CARROLL - As It Fell Upon A Day -
Mock Turtle's Song Lance Jr. High School Choir, Richard Dixon, conductor

B5) THREE FOLK SONGS - 1. GreenBriar Shore (Ontario) 2. The Beloved Kitten
(England) 3. Jenny Jenkens (USA)
Temer High School Choir, Kurt Chalgren conductor

Date unknown, but 1998

Dear Carroll,

Thank you for your letter, and for the several enclosures. There's a good deal here, and all of it deserves thoughtful consideration. This is an undated letter for precisely that reason. Thinking things over, reading and rereading your many poems, and sending along a few of my own thoughts will take a bit of time, and so this letter will have to be done a bit at a time, a kind of one-sided conversation in parcels.
When we last chatted by phone you were working on Americana: Bed fellows. Was it completed too late to be included in PEACOCKS AND POMEGRANATES, or did you think of it more or less as a "loner"? I will tell you my reactions to your autobiographical, and very personal poem later on. For now I'll think of it as a singularity, for though all of your work tends to be personal in tone, this in particular is a bit different in some way from the others, perhaps because it is historical, uses direct rhymes, and introduces us to several different people who have been in your life, instead of concentrating on one.

I appreciate the two articles you sent. The review of the book about Sir John Murray and madman Minor, and the work on the first Oxford Dictionary, is certainly intriguing. Of course it adds another to the list of books that I will want to read. I wish they had included the photograph of Minor that was mentioned in the review. While reading that piece I found myself wondering if modern psychiatry, therapy and such could have done more for the tormented Minor, with his paranoid delusions of being flown to Constantinople and forced to engage in unspeakable acts with young girls, etc. Could a bedrock of Victorian period values, and possibly religiously inspired guilt having to do with sinfulness of desires and thoughts alone, be revised in a kind of retrofitting of the psyche? I'd like to at least think that he could have been released from his self-loathing at least to the extent that he'd be spared the self-mutilation of cutting off his own penis. In any case it's obvious that Minor had a capacity for taking immense pains in his volunteer work on the Dictionary, and perhaps his near obsession with that project helped to grant him some sense of self-worth that for a time, at least, helped to offset his self-punishment. I'll just have to pick up this book, which may shed more light on all this with its greater detail. Have you sought out THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN?

I haven't heard any of the music by Thomas Ades. On my next trip to Tower Records I am going to look and see whether or not any CDs with his work have been imported yet. (So far as I know he has so far mainly been performed in England, and I'm sure that no domestic recordings of his music have yet been made.) Alex Ross's admirable powers of description are such that his reactions, and his more objective conning of the composer and his works, have the stamp of authenticity. My own reactions to the composer's statements, as reported by Ross, are such that I'll have to ignore or forget all about them when listening to Ade's music if I'm to enjoy it for what it is. The dismissal of Taverner (the modern composer having the same name as that worthy old composer of songs, madrigals and motets (1495-1545) I can accept. His dismissal of Minimalism in general I can accept; there is something of the musical sandbox about it, after all. But Ades' comments about Brahms' music and Mahler's music - well, he's taking on giants, and composers that I regard more than just highly, thus it will be more difficult to set those aside. God, how difficult it is for composers, especially when young, to admit of the validity of an aesthetic different from their own, or to admit the greatness of those accomplishments with which one, in a sense, has to compete. But this is nothing new. Tchaikovsky said of Brahms, "He erects beautiful pedestals to melodies that never appear". Brahmns called Bruckner's symphonies, "symphonic boa constrictors". Mahler called Brahms and Bruckner "a curious pair of second raters, one in the casting ladle too long, the other not long enough", when he was in the full throes of his early Wagner worship. (A number of these kinds of comments will be found in a volume called THE COMPOSER AS LISTENER, ed. By Irving Kolodin, pub. by Penguin I believe, now out of print In his LEXICON OF MUSICAL INVECTIVE, Nicholas Slonimsky confines himself more to the responses of critics to works like Mozart's last six string quartets("Too highly spiced to be palatable for any length of time", in the view of one contemporary critic.) I find that I have to set aside what one composer might say about another when listening to their works, otherwise Tchaikovsky would be unforgiveable. In a different way, for other reasons, Wagner has to be, if not exactly forgiven for his anti-Semitism, rudeness, downright unethical self-serving behaviors, etc., at least one has to set aside the composer's grave flaws as a human being in order to appreciate the originality and greatness of that which he achieved. Well, if Thomas Ades finds the music by Brahms no longer to his liking, and couches his current views in "this is what the music is" terms, instead of "this is what I currently feel about it" point of view, we'll just have to keep in mind that he's all caught up in his own productions, in which he must have a kind of absolute faith or end up a manic-depressive like Tchaikovsky, beset with fears, self-doubt, misgivings, the moment any composition is completed. That kind of self-blinding, which won't admit of any other point of view, at least for the moment, seems to be the hallmark of those who work with great intensity. (we mustn't be too hard on Tchaikovsky, since no one was harder on him than he himself. That he really didn't understand the nature of the symphony, as received and developed by Brahms, allowed him to write a different kind of symphony of his own devising. Though I would place Tchaikovsky's symphonies a tier or two beneath those by Brahms, they nevertheless have their own special niche, mainly because Pytor was a fine melodist and also had a strong sense of the dramatic. To my way of thinking Tchaikovsky's finest writing and greatest accomplishments are to be found in his music for ballets, gems without parallel among his contemporaries. Strangely from our present perspective, they were underappreciated in his own time, thus giving rise to spurious editions, hatchet jobs, and other assaults upon the music that were not undone until well into the 20th Century. It wasn't until the the 1950s that SWAN LAKE was restored to it original form, but I won't go on about this because it's irrelevant to present concerns.)

You spoke of growing up on the edge of the desert that is to be found in eastern Washington, Idaho, parts of Montana, a desert quite different from those in which I spent the larger part of my earlier years. (In the maps from eras prior to the attaining of statehood by the Dakotas and those in the western realms, I find it mildly amusing that they are undifferentiated , with a vast area simply described as "The Great American Desert".) I may have mentioned that our initial move from North Dakota to Arizona was prompted by physicians telling my parents that I was going to die and would not be around to see my twelfth birthday; if I were to have any chance at all of survival I would have to be removed to a warmer climate, would have to be confined to bed, not allowed to walk or to have any form of excitement, not even the companionship of any peers, and-- well, you get the picture. (I have come to regard my years since the frustrating of medical expectations as gravy, a long and very welcome post script to the time in which I should have ceased to be.) My introduction to the desert around Tucson was confined to what I could see through the window as we were driving there, and then to what might be viewed from my bedroom in the trailer. Though I never did like the heat in that area, after the time during which I learned to walk again and could get around on my own motive power, I did come to appreciate the fauna of southern Arizona. We moved to Patagonia, a community about half an hour north of Nogales Arizona-Sonora in the Sonoita River valley. In the foothills, and actually in a fairly verdant area, the stark qualities of a lot of Arizona were mitigated. It was while living in Patagonia that I came to be fascinated by the "vinigarones" (whip scorpions), the three kinds of poisonous scorpions that flourish there, the huge tarantulas, the much-to-be-feared large orangey-yellow centipedes, the clicking rhinocerous beetles, the fuzzy Joshua ants, and the rest of the arthropodic creatures that live there. As boys some of us would capture June bugs, large greenishly iridescent beetles, and with no harm to the insects, would attach a thread to one of the stouter legs. They could be flown, much as one flies a wire controlled gasoline-engine powered model plane, and caused to loop, circle and dive in large arcs. (When the unfortunate bug was nearly played out he would be released and allowed to recuperate unmolested.)

About the time I was going into seventh grade we moved to the Mojave Desert, and like the rest of the kids from Newberry and surrounding environs, ultimately we were bussed to Barstow for Jr. High School and High School.

But interveningly we lived in Nipton for two years. That is a place less than a flyspeck on a map, with a population of about twelve, but with an elementary school in which my parents both taught, to which kids were bussed from miles around; some spent as much as two hours one way, with nothing to view but Joshua trees and creosote bushes. Our home was a converted railroad boxcar with attachment, a bedroom in which my folks slept. We generated our own electricity using a fuel oil powered Kohler engine with generator, and had our own water tank tower served by an electric pump. (There was constant drippage from the water tower, which I used to create a water system, with dams, tiny lakes, rivers, etc. The size to which this could be expanded was quite limited because the water would ultimately evaporate or be swallowed up by the sandy, claylike soil.) There was a small grave on the property, marked off by oil treated wooden pickets, with a wooden marker from which any lettering had long since weathered away, not far from the firepit in which we burned our trash. (The best information we could find was that this was the resting place for an unfortunate "Indian" child, who had died long before the school buildings had been erected.) In these stark and remote surroundings my brother and I were more or less compelled to develop our imaginations. The desert became a blank canvas on which I could paint my fantasies. With little in the way of noise, but for the "Was waa - Wa Waa" of the Union Pacific trains, the running Kohler engine, and the occasional jets from Edwards Air Base practicing their maneuvers overhead, I could practice listening to my records in my head, devise music much more complicated than my meager pianistic skills would have allowed me to realize, and create elaborate scenarios of other kinds involving the Molotov cocktails I made from the generator fuel, the carefully labeled cardboard box towns that I regularly burned down around the firepit, and my search for the substance that could be applied to book matches to cause them to burn down to the fingers the moment they were struck. (I thought that would be a capital practical joke, and spent nearly a year trying acrylic lacquers, airplane dopes, flammable cements of various kinds, even my homemade gunpowder, but finally conceded that I had failed. The results were always sticky to the touch, caused the matches to be suspiciously thick, or were too odiferous for any but the nose dead to be taken in.) During my eighth grade year I went to school in Las Vegas, where I could study oboe and be involved in musical activities, coming home to Nipton only on weekends. More about that some other time.

In retrospect it seems odd that we could so easily accept the regular above ground detonation of atomic bombs. It was embedded in our way of life at the time. The flash could be seen as far away as Nipton, and while there, my family would get up early to watch the whole horizon light up (Days and times of tests were announced in advance.) In Las Vegas they attained a greater immediacy. Crestwood Elementary School, in which I went to eighth grade, was sufficiently elevated that we could see the flats, about sixty five miles away, for the daytime shots. We weren't allowed to watch the very moment of detonation - we had to look away because we were told it would burn our retinas - but immediately after could watch that boiling, roiling mushroom cloud forming on a stalk that was constantly in motion itself. I tell you, Carroll, there is nothing that will get your attention quite like an atomic bomb, and I think in even the more jaded among us kids it produced a mixture of awe and fear. What if they should drop one of those on us? McCarthy had us convinced that there were spies in every block, and our concerns were very real. On radio dials the Conelrad emergency frequencies were marked off, there were buildings designated as fallout shelters with the familiar Atomic Energy Commission logo, and all the school kids were issued dogtags. I wore mine the whole year, thinking that my remains might be identified if there were an enemy sneak attack on Las Vegas. (That notion might seem preposterous now, but after all, there were atomic scientists living in Las Vegas, and as the very center of what would be seen as the decadence of Western democracies, that city would have to be expunged.) All this had attained the status of normal, to the extent that I never thought the time would come when I could no longer watch atomic bombs. We knew nothing of the problems this was causing for the sheep, cattle and people living in nearby Utah.

Enough autobiographizing. Your mentioning the Idaho desert, and your appreciation of the nature-elements found there sparked these few reminiscences of my own early desert experiences. To this I will only add that in the mountains of northern Arizona, where I spent one summer week, and in the vast, lonely expanses of the Mojave in which I would sometimes hike, I came the nearest to what you might call an apprehension of some other power "out there". To me, this has only come quite outside the presence of others. There's value in the shared experience, of course, but in this confrontation or perception the naked self, alone, feeling or sensing in some way whatever force exists as itself - indifferent, aloof, but possessing great majesty and power - this, I have only found when alone. Is this God? I admit, I don't know. Richard Strauss wisely retitled his "Eine Alpinesinfonie", which he was originally going to call "The Antichrist", by which he meant the forces of nature, untouched by the humanizing influence of Jesus. If that which I have occasionally experienced is reflective in any way of God, or a god (Pan? The diablero's spirit of the desert?), it is a remote Jehovah, a chilling but strangely exalting current into which the self could be drawn and utterly lost.
And now I must cease, and draw this parcel to a close, to get back to revising a sonata for oboe and piano, a trifle perhaps, but possibly one having some qualities that might be thought to have a little beauty.

When I was very young I had many nightmares. They signaled themselves by being in black and white; my ordinary dreams were in color, to which I attached little significance, assuming that everyone dreamed that way. Death, the stalker, could take many forms, the most frightening of which was a vague, formless black thing, that would suddenly rush out and envelop me. Once I dreamed that I saw my own body in an open grave, decaying, with remnants of flesh and clothing still attached. But my still-awake after-dark fears were more of the mummies that I thought were out to get me. I had seen the dessicated examples of Pimas and other native Americans, naturally preserved men in the museum associated with the university in Tucson, and they seemed harmless enough. No, it was the linen wrapped Egyptian variety, come back to life like the implacable example played by Boris Karloff, that were the real danger. What a mummy from Egypt might be doing in that corner of Arizona was never a serious consideration, and of course, parents, the disbelieving, could never understand what danger the arisen from the dead presented to us smaller folk. Once I saw the white head of such a mummy peering in the trailer window above where I slept. The next day it was found that a white chicken had chosen the outer sill as a place to roost for the night. At the time I had no idea that the brain was removed prior to mummification, and that mummies of that type are filled with resinous petroleum derivatives. Had I but known that, I would simply have armed myself with a tire iron and some matches. A brainless mummy could have been soundly thwacked about the knees until he fell down, and then set ablaze.

When she was young my daughter Jill's nemesis was a scurrilous creature of a man named "Mr. Hive", probably a corruption of "Mr. Hyde", who could barely be seen lurking behind bushes in the dark, and would cause the ferns to scrape against her bedroom window. She also had an imaginary playmate named "Rasty Curtain" (derived from the athletic "Rusty Draper"?), and she would make jokes about him. (At two years old, "Rasty Curtain eats a ca ca. Ha, ha, ha.") If Erik had any fears he never shared them with me. He was not without his own unique view of the world. Once, when playing "Twenty Questions" (sometimes called, "Animal, vegetable, mineral"), he confounded us all by being a walking sword, and he assured me that a burning flashlight could be quite dangerous.

All the above is apropos of nearly nothing, of course, a recording of errant thoughts of being young, provoked by your mentioning your boyhood in or near Wendell.
My thoughts about your town are colored by Mel Davidson's descriptions. Was there in fact a lady there who lived in an antique threshing machine? Did you know Mel at all during that period in your life? My impression is that your paths did not really cross in Idaho. I know that I've asked you about this before, but I don't have a clear recollection of your complete answer. Chalk up this small lacuna to early senility.

Carroll, like you I'm gradually being beset by the problems of past the middle of middle age. My prostate is still reasonably pliable for a man of 67 years (The damnable thing about it is that I'm only 57), but it can be dreadfully sore and cause lower backaches, the result of a chronic prostatitus that can never be 100% cured. (that's not too remarkable when you consider that my immune system is such that as a kid I had mumps twice and chicken pox three times, believe it or not.) A urologist I had in Los Angeles, Dr. McCleary Glazier (who could forget a name like that?) said that nature did us no favors when she located the prostate in such a way that it surrounds the urethra. His pithy comment was, "We spend our first forty years trying to make women and the last forty years trying to make water".

Only a few months ago I thought I might have M.S., or some other problem of that kind. Walking even a few blocks was getting to be such a problem, with muscle fatigue and my legs damned near giving out. A few tests showed that I was severely anemic, and I had to immediately begin taking an easily assimilated form of iron. That has helped some, and I think the rest has to be done by more exercise. (Taking iron too long can produce deleterious effects. Fortunately my platelets and such are gradually coming closer to what they should number.)

Anyway, in summary, we all knew from observing our elders that the "Golden Years" have plenty of rust attached, but are better than the alternative. - I find time compression more disturbing than almost any other single effect of being in the AARP years. You'll remember as a kid how long even a single day extended, and how it was infinitely long from one Christmas to the next. Now it all goes so quickly - well, I hardly need to describe to you that which you yourself experience, no doubt.

But you experience a perfect continuity with your youth. I can only congratulate you. Yes, I suppose I feel a continuity of a kind, but in most ways my life feels like a Swiss cheese. By my reckoning I have moved twenty three times in my life, fourteen as an adult. These were not all major moves, but there was enough in the way of dislocation and relocation as a youth that no place feels truly like "home". You may as well say that I've been married three times, since I loved with B for nine years, and those breaking of bonds, those traumas to the emotional system, by themselves leave a sense of holes in my life. In one area only can I chart my past to my present in a more or less straight line, and that is of course in my vocation, my avocation, my hobby, my obsession, my most things. I decided to make my life in music when I was in the fourth grade, and I have never desired to do other than that, and though I have had odd corners of temporary employment, I've never been fundamentally anything other than a musician. My interests have been wider than that, of course, and my need to "make things" can take other forms as well. But fortunately for me, and something I never even thought about when I started studying violin and so on, music is something I'll be occupied with my whole life and still not know half of it all, which means its interest cannot be exhausted.

Your description of Jasper is remarkably efficient, and yet says so much. I have imagined him to be almost precisely as you have limned him, not because I know him nearly as well as you (I do not) but because I sense and believe that I understand, and have in many ways shared, the fundaments of his own experiences in important areas, as he is right now. It's unnecessary to dwell on these. It would do us both a lot of good if he'd come for a visit.

This, the second long parcel, has to be closed now (it's after 3:00AM), and I haven't even gotten to your poems yet. You'll have to forgive me for being florid.

Next morning -
I will relate to you something that is probably as common as "liver spots" and warts, and yet is meaningfully experienced only as an individual. You will immediately know what relates to Jasper, as I understand him, and what does not.
No, I'm not having an affair. It's too draining, too productive of guilt, and in the end only leaves me feeling saddened and wondering where my left brain hemisphere was at the time; I gave up doing that after my first marriage. I'm sure that many of us would like to have our own Monica Lewinskys (Lewinskies? Spelling of plural?) but in our smaller ways we're too likely to end up feeling humiliated, like Bill Clinton, with our weaknesses, desires, fantasies, embarrassingly exposed, if not to the world at least to our little world. And if not "caught" I've still been aware that in some way I've hurt myself and two other people. But still, she's as "cute as a bug", and for some reason we like each other, and are able to talk with each other without putting up barriers. How I long to kiss that mouth, and feel that little body, and feel once again, in me, that youthful excitement in the becoming. And it would be insane of me to do anything about all that, not only because she's 21 and I'm 57, but because after that first heady experience, and that feeling of being wanted, for which I imagine many of us long, so much of it would probably evaporate or be killed by my being who and what I am. I would be judgmental, my analytical ways would overwhelm her intuitive way of being, and I would grow increasingly decrepit as she went on experiencing the many years she has left to enjoy being young. I tell myself that the good thing about all of this is that it indicates I still have the capacity to feel in that way, that I'm not all "burned out" inside. In some way but with no sense of triumph about it, or feeling great for not doing the "wrong" thing, the comfort of a stable and more appropriate relationship with C, and continuation of our time together, whatever its limitations (and no relationship is without those, I know), is right. But damn. There's no solace to be had in a way, because we can't be young again, and being with someone who is young isn't going to change that.

You know that Monica went to Washington with an eye to promoting something with the President. Yes, I actually have read the Starr Report, and have been a news junkie through the whole of it, and yes, I think Bill is a brilliant man but incredibly stupid about his private life. I consider myself informed about this. When I see one of the video clips that they keep showing again and again, ad nauseum, the one in which Monica is wearing a dark Basque cap/hat and giving him a hug in the greeting line, I can see in her face that she adored him, she loved him, and I can understand why he couldn't resist that. ( But he should have.) The most remarkable thing in the Starr report, other than the cigar and on which dates the President ejaculated, etc., was Clinton's remark that the idea he might have groped Kathleen Wiley was ridiculous because her breasts were too small. What a guy!!
End of revelations and sermons.

This oboe sonata that I am revising (recomposing would be a better term for I'm not even referring to the original that's in my head anyway), is a damnable problem in some ways. The piano has to contribute so much, and yet it has got to be kept out of the way of the solo instrument. There's a good reason why there are so few successful pieces for this combination. The oboe simply becomes cloying very quickly. It has neither the range of the violin in pitch compass or the range of tone qualities that instrument can produce. And unless an oboist has really worked on the 'forte' end, and has an appreciation for a more aggressive style of playing than is ordinarily associated with the instrument, even my piece is going to fall flat in certain of in certain of its passages. ( I say "even my piece" not out of an overweening self-centric feeling of superiority but because of being an oboist myself I know the instrument better than most who have written for it.) Sometimes I wonder if what I am writing is actually a piece for which there is no appropriate medium, though I'm tailoring it for this one. (Parenthetically, I note that Brahms sometimes had difficulties of this kind. There were two versions of the piece in F Minor, one for string quartet with an extra 'cello, one for two pianos, neither of them satisfactory, before he hit on the combination of string quartet plus piano. Among the many of Brahms' chamber works that I love, that F Minor Piano quintet remains my favorite. I wish to Hell that Sony would rerelease that admirably "ballsy" recording of it that Leon Fleisher made with the Juilliard String quartet. It was appropriately tender in the right places, but without overdone sentimentality, and in the assertive passages would "knock your socks off", possibly taking along some other articles of clothing as well. Brahms was a composer in which, in each of his mature works, every note is in its right place, every bit of the cabinetry is polished, and every one of the difficult challenges he has posed for himself has been ingeneously answered. It is only because he is in his twenties that an excuse could be made for Ades' comments.) Anyway, I must get back to that labor right now, before the more mechanical chores of schoolwork are taken up. (Six courses, with five different preparations. I'm fatigued just thinking about it.) My Baroque oboe building friend, with his doctorate in wildlife management, wants to perform it, and even if he weren't interested, the piece would haunt me for needing to be made right, just for itself. So a temporary adieu once again, dear Carroll.

If this keeps up, this letter will soon be the length of MOBY DICK.
I want to tell you about something remarkable which has happened in my basement. In addition to storage and such, this huge basement is where I have my sound system set up, my CDs and 'lp's, etc., and it's where I work (it's where I am typing this letter right now). I am sometimes visited by minor forms of wildlife, such as very small, delicate, orange salamanders, which are easily plucked up to be returned to the out of doors; they'd starve to death here. A certain number of insects get in, such as the ladybugs, which I generally either leave unmolested, or take out doors as well. Most unusual is a colony of daddy longlegs-type spiders, which spin very ratty looking webs. Until they're a nuisance I usually leave these cobs alone, imagining that they are doing me no harm, and may eat something which could other wise sting me. A couple of months ago I began to notice that some of them were missing legs, but thought little of it, supposing that a couple might have met with a mishap. More recently I began to see that fewer and fewer of them have the regulation eight walking legs. Either there is a type of spider previously unknown to me, or, as I believe is the case, somehow there has been a mutation, so that now by far the larger number have only six legs. It does their gait no good; there is something about the way they walk when on the level that resembles the pigeon's neck when walking . Undoubtedly it's a recessive characteristic with no survival advantages, so I imagine this trait will remain isolated to my basement friends. But what an amazing thing. I am compelled to wonder what set of circumstances brought this about. An arachnid transformed into something more insectile.

What an interesting cast of characters you have in Americana: Bed Fellows. Your older brother, and Ollie sharing the bed with Tony and Aulie. Aloysius (a name seldom heard these days), the deaf-mute Art, and the rest of these who seem both half-familiar and yet remarkable in their own ways. You must elaborate on how poor Ollie met his fate at twenty three. Was he actually blasting something in the basement, or were the detonation caps improperly stored, or what? (Dynamite is very stable, requiring a great percussive force to be discharged.) And snuff chewing, "Idaho tough cowboy" Uncle Harold, who could forget him? Well, I won't go on like this, but I can readily understand why you would wish to assemble your sleeping mates together like this. Eccentric they may be, but not the practice of sharing a bed. "Bundling" is nearly as old as our race, and some of my little brown skinned friends in Patagonia slept three to a bed for essentially the same reasons that you had to share yours.

Though yours is obviously not part of a wartime project, there must have been a similar motivation behind your Reverence for Non-Heroes and Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man".

Would that your view expressed in The Present Moment were shared by contemporary students. Even at the college level I think some among them live in a perpetual present, ahistorical - even to an extent in the personal realm, and not making coherent wholes of their worlds or the worlds around them. It's true that history, and present experience, are interpretations, filtered with some elements highlighted, others slipped into nothingness. But even to understand that one has to have a coherent beingness out of which to step, an implication found in your poem.
Communications. What an interesting idea to draw your general, cultural histories into the personal realm of your relationship in a love poem.

Columbines I am still thinking about as a possible "song", a determination to be made after I've finished other in-process projects. Its imagery is of a kind which can fit with, and be enhanced by, music, without straining its flavor just as itself. This sturdy work can stand up to such treatment, and I find this especially attractive as a piece in tune with the spirit of our century. I can at least pretend that I'm a believer when it comes to the "hidden Holy One".

Sol and May Belle. Isn't it often the case that a person with a severe handicap, and everything about which to complain and despair, puts others with only minor complaints to shame for surmounting the problems, having an optimistic attitude, and finding what they need instead of grousing. Keller had her Sullivan, Sol has her May Belle, in the best kind of necessary interdependence.

But I must say, you know and have known your share of tragic people. Noah, Sol, Ollie, and so many others. Do you take on the world's grief, Carroll, in a kind of endless and sincere empathy?(It's a fair, and real question.) I have to put the pictures of famine-starved children out of mind, the boxcars upon boxcars of holocaust victims in a separate place, little Kim Phuc burned by napalm screaming down that highway in Viet Nam has to remain in her era, the trembling children after the Japanese bombing of Nanking have to be filed away as historical documents in the mind, in order for me to enjoy eating dinner, and to catch that swift, humorous edge in life. The alternative, for me, would be to feel that the whole of life is a huge tragedy, barely kept at bay in the personal realm. I can only take it on at times. Otherwise my life would be an endless lamentation. I don't ignore the shattering of lives by unannounced shelling of the marketplaces in Kosovo. I can only look at it a little at a time, or risk losing my own life in the suffering of others. Perhaps you compartmentalize a bit as well, or have something like the real empathy which naturally has to be withheld at times to protect one's own sanity. (I have talked with my nurse-friend Caroline Grierson about this. When she was associated with the coronary Intensive Care Unit at Good Sam they expected to lose about 80% of their patients, as part of the "nature of the beast". So much death witnessed first-hand among those they did their best to help, and so many grieving, sobbing families - a kind of detachment was necessary to stave off, for awhile, the inevitable "burn out".) I saw my friend Mike Anderson die a nightmare ridden death, tormented by what he had done, and had seen done, in Viet Nam. He had always been "a tough guy", liked commanding tanks in the summer exercises at Fort Knox, stayed on in the reserves with the fervor of an Orange County patriot. Reactivated, he was like the unbending stick that finally breaks in the wind, when it would have served him better to have been a flexible reed.
I must cease now, and will write more later. But this will be sent before all commentary on the poems is completed. Otherwise you'd receive a ream of paper, too much to be borne even by the best and most tolerant of friends.

More later. Won't get mailed otherwise.

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