He Will, He Will Rock You

Day 181...and a bunch of people are or want to be reading Bang! The Complete History of the Universe, co-authored by Brian May, of the rock band Queen, and/or A Village Lost and Found, May's latest book, about early 3D photography. Among those people are Chris and Kim, who heard a recent NPR story about May, and Bob, who posted a link on Facebook. Ah, how I love NPR, Wikipedia, and Facebook. Ah, how I love people who tell me about cool stuff to read.

A Village Lost and Found, co-authored with Elena Vidal, is subtitled An Annotated Tour of the 1850s series of stereo photographs "Scenes in Our Village" by T. R. Williams. It reproduces some wonderful photography and explains stereoscopy, a method of side-by-side viewing that produces 3D effects. It is similar to the stereopticon that delighted Emily Dickinson, and showed her places she'd never been! The book comes with a contemporary viewing device.

The earlier book, Bang!, co-authored with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott, came out in 2006, and is indeed about the Big Bang theory of the universe. May studied astrophysics, and the NPR story explains how the "stomp stomp clap" effect in the recording of "We Will Rock You" was due to May's knowledge of sound waves. It got into the song at first by way of calculation, of a different sort, and inspiration at live performances, and then had to be recreated for the recording. (Read or listen to the NPR stories, linked above, to find out more! Or here.)

Now go stand outside under the starry night. It will rock you.

Living on the Earth

A fellow blogger here, Julie Kistler, featured my forthcoming poetry chapbook, Living on the Earth (Finishing Line Press, 2010), on her new blog, Follow Spot, which will cover local arts events and more! Here is the link to that:

http://afollowspot.blogspot.com/2010/01/living-on-earth.html

The book is in that crucial advance sales period, when early sales help determine print run and keep publication on schedule. You can order here:

http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm

where my current book, Broken Sonnets, is also still available to order easily in this way! That is very nice of Finishing Line to have the 2 books side by side with both International and PayPal ordering buttons!

I am tickled to have 3 "slim volumes of verse," as they say, sort of out there in the world. (The other is Selected Roles, a chapbook of theatre and persona poems based on my years as a professional actor, and it's available at Babbitt's Books.)

http://www.babbittsbooks.com/

I was listening to Piano Jazz on WGLT last night, our local NPR affiliate, about practicing music. People who get really good at what they do are practicing all the time, playing all the time, or, in Michael Jordan's case, playing basketball in the driveway all the time. Some of us are writing all the time, various forms, various ways. I write or revise a poem almost every day for great stretches of time (with some natural interruptions or periods of rest), so this is comforting and encouraging. If I keep doing this--daily, joyful, diligent practice--maybe I will be one of those people!

I am still reading and re-reading The Barbaric Heart by Curtis White. I really like it. The narrative voice in this one is still passionate and funny but not as curmudgeonly as in The Middle Mind. He's just as much a social critic, primarily of the groups of which he is a member, thus practicing what he preaches about self-examination and self-criticism, but there's a stronger sense in this one of compassion, wide and deep.

White gives voice to an impulse I felt way, way back in college (Kenyon College!), reading political philosophy for the first time, to raze everything. Not literally blow anything up, of course, just go back to the start, the heart of it all, the place in mind that allows for clarity of vision, courage, etc. First, see clearly, and then find the path.