(To listen to mp3 file, please click here – 9.7Mb) I based the composition upon a tonal row consisting of six diatonic notes, using familiar serial composition techniques which allow only strict variations of the tone row (direct, retrograde, inversion, and retrograde inversion). The composition was originally scored as a twelve-bar, twelve voice sketch in the Finale program, then exported via MIDI to Reason 2.5, where the various rowforms were cut, pasted and fed to synthesizers for arrangement and manipulation. The only instrumental exception to this scheme is that I allowed myself the luxury of importing a finger cymbal sample,…

The umbrella is open but the rain is not ready to fall. It shies and waits, waits until is already late to come. Spring is near and I feel shy of the sun. I kneel down by a flower patch and the dry sidewalk feels cold against my hands. I keep thinking of bees, buds and umbrellas, all in one thought. Flower memories slap my face like a blast of winter storm. I scroll down the images and my brain is smitten by the possibility of love within thought. Images come, go and change me slowly like spring opening its…

During Atlantis’ eighth invasion, When that island nation had exhausted Its supply of metal, the gardeners Left their greenhouses, went to the warriors And said, “We’ve made you coastal defenses— Blades six inches long, divided triply, Coarse-toothed, spine-edged, deep-rooted. They’ll tangle In the wrathful crab-men’s chitinous claws Rip the bellies from the Devil’s dolphins When they force their landings upon the beach.” “These are wooden weapons?” asked the warriors. “They are flowers,” came the gardeners’ reply. “How are they named? How were they created?” “We name them not at all, as is our style. Nor dare we share the secret…

Bury me again So that this time, I may die Maybe I’ll come back a tulip in your garden and you’ll pick me Or a drop of water finding its way to your spring from which you’ll drink I’ll grow back a weeping willow shading you when you’re blistering Or a morning glory wrapping myself around your lyrical dreams A sunray to your sighing flower on that dawn Or the rock that fills the gap preventing you from slipping Maybe I’ll be that star and realize away your solitary A child holding your hand to cross that stream I’ll come…

Through the constellation of a lily My eye wanders. No further than my garden For the universe. Just a moment, to look Down, see the heavens reflected in A flower. I find myself again.