"wang wei's 'bird call valley'"

'bird call valley'

A man at ease: flowers fall.
The night is tranquil, spring mountain empty.
Moonrise startles mountain birds
sometimes heard within the valley.



Mairi Graham-Shaw, after Wang Wei
translation © 2013

Image from Wiki Commons: ink on silk, attributed to Xia Gui, 13th century "Rapids in a Mountain Valley"

“View From Space”

What is better than space photography, astronauts & guitars? Space photography, astronauts & a harp guitar played by one of today’s top fingerstyle guitar players, Muriel Anderson!

The fact that the general public isn’t aware of Muriel Anderson is certainly not because of her guitar playing skills. A top instrumental performer, she is the first woman to win the National Fingerpicking Championship. But while her technical skills are first rate, she is not merely a skilled technician—she plays an impressive range of music reflecting broad musical tastes, & performs that music with deep musicality. Anderson’s scope is indeed impressive, ranging from old-time country to classical to pop, not to mention her beautiful original compositions. We can get a sense of this range when we discover that her early idol & mentor was Chet Atkins, but that she went on to study classical guitar with Christopher Parkening. & yes, in case you're wondering, Muriel Anderson plays 6-string guitars as well as harp models.

In addition, Anderson is the founder of the non-profit Music for Life Alliance, which brings musical instruction to kids in under-served communities; she also founded & hosts the All Star Guitar Night at the NAMM trade shows. She has issued 17 cd albums (not to mention several compilations, as well as seven dvds—both performance & instructional), including the 2013 release Nightlight Daylight. A particular favorite of mine is the 2003 New Classics for Guitar & Cello, on which she duets with cellist Julie Adams. All of her cds & dvds are available at her website (see link above) as is tab for her compositions in pdf form at a very reasonable $5.00 per song. So guitar players, if you have five bucks to spend & you want to perfect your pinch harmonics, you too can learn to play today’s selection!

Muriel Anderson has the following to say about “View From Space”:

Some years ago astronaut Susan Helms had picked up one of my Heartstrings recordings and told me that “it would be good music to watch the earth by.” It traveled with her 2.5 million miles on the space shuttle “Discovery.” With my harp guitar in my lap, I composed “View from Space” while watching the beautiful images that were taken from the space shuttle.

It’s a wonderful piece of music & a beautiful performance—enjoy!




Image of Muriel Anderson links to its source at harpguitars.net

“Because It’s There”

If there’s any truth to the many-worlds interpretation of multiple universes, where quantum uncertainty operates on the macroscopic scale by creating new worlds at any point of uncertainty, I have no doubt that in at least one multiverse I own a harp guitar. I’ve had an off-&-on obsession with the instrument for some years now, & these days it’s mostly “on” again. So I thought I’d run a short series this month on the harp guitar. It’s not a well known instrument, but there’s some wonderful music & musicians associated with it.

You see the harp guitar in the photo above; you can hear it in the video below. But what is it? We find the following definition on harpguitars.net:

•         A guitar, in any of its accepted forms, with any number of additional "floating" unstopped strings that can accommodate individual plucking.
•         The modern harp guitar must have at least one unfretted string lying off the main fretboard; these unfretted strings are played as an open string.
•         The word "harp" is a specific reference to the unstopped open strings, and is not specifically a reference to the tone, pitch range, volume, silhouette similarity, construction, floor-standing ability, nor any other alleged "harp-like" properties.

One issue with the guitar in terms of playing any sort of polyphony is the fact that in either standard tuning or even non-standard forms, you just simply run out of bass notes more quickly than you’d like. The harp guitar addresses this problem rather ingeniously by adding an unspecified number of unfretted bass strings on the second arm. These strings (usually referred to as “sub-basses”) can be tuned in a number of different ways, depending largely on what key the player is employing. The standard tuning for the guitar portion of the harp guitar is—surprise—standard guitar tuning of EADGBE, though altered tunings can be used for the guitar portion, just as they can be on your garden variety guitar.

Today’s video features a live performance of his original song “Because It’s There” by the late Michael Hedges, a phenomenal guitar player who was certainly one of the most notable fingerstyle players of recent memory. Hedges used an altered tuning for “Because It’s There”—the 6-string guitar is tuned EADEAD, while the sub-basses are tuned G, Bb, C, A, D. The composition makes extensive use of harmonics & tapping; the latter refers to a player producing notes with only his or her left hand, as Hedges does here allowing him to simultaneously play both the guitar & the harp portions. Hedges gives the background to the song during his introduction in the video. If you’d like to hear a second version of the song, there’s an excellent cover by another phenomenal guitarist, Kaki King (with a fun introduction) here on YouTube.

Next time around I’ll write about the harp guitar’s history & have more fun music—enjoy!



Photo is from Wiki Commons. A Dyer Style 8 harp guitar, circa 1915. The image is made available by Gregg Miner under the  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

February Photo

South Park Seafood Restaurant
SW Salmon & South Park
Portland, Oregon

"paper moon nocturne"

paper moon nocturne

white picket fence without belief attached, mere fact in this 
landscape with parked cars, three stars just past reach of
city lights between backlit clouds blowing north-south

so I asked you where the moon will come up—“above
the weeping cherry”—just now weeping without benefit of
blossoms in an evening fraught with gusts

as if weather were changing into something it’s not—camellia
buds clenched into green fists, bamboo on Mississippi Ave
green all winter, lissome, long-haired, green leaves

beyond belief, groaning bus at the light on Skidmore—me
walking into the future past that sushi place we ate ramen an-
other winter evening the fish tank brimming orange & blue, in-

tangible in yellow light—walking into: orange lights a-
long river's indigo current, streetlight’s glow above an alley
the moon assumes its place beyond

A.K. Barkley
© 2014

Image is from Wiki Commons: Bamboo Yards, Kyōbashi Bridge - Hirgoshige (from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo); published 1856-1859. Public domain

"that day"

that day


here in the last days
things are beautiful
we still know pain
but things are beautiful

pray that the end does not come on the Sabbath
because that day
i will be baking
sweet butter sugar smell
permeating heated household air
and cinnamon, and rum

and my lovers
will be making love
knowing each other's body
like i know the curves of the crucifix
the prayer in my mouth
the road to the city

she arches back
pushing closer
and i imagine her
as full
as the blue glass bowl
where red dye fruit
strong liquour
and dough
are coming together
into the bread of life

and my lovers
making love
will be coming together
and my children
frosting cookies
do not know
they have not taken the fruit
they do not know
the soundless sighs
the nails he digs into her skin
rendering red across her back
the spasm shaking of the earth
the labour pains of the world
the tight contractions of her around him

they do not know
all this will be washed away
long before they themselves
know lovers

but pray the end does not come
on the Sabbath.
that day,
i will be baking

Mairi Graham-Shaw
© 2013

Image from Wiki Commons:  
Sebastian Stoskppff: Nature morte aux fruits, fromage et pain (Still Life with fruit, cheese and bread) - mid 17th century

Public domain 

"BFF the series"

Happy February, friends!

Hey, how about this internet? There sure are lots of maddening things about it, right? But you know one thing I will always appreciate about the ‘net is the way it enables creative folk to network & support each other. I’d like to think that Robert Frost’s Banjo, in its own small way, has contributed to this—& so I’m really excited to let you all know about a project being developed by some close friends of mine!

So let me introduce Jen Ralston, my good pal & a creative dynamo—she has worked in Hollywood for the past 20 years as a sound editor on such successful shows as Treme & The Wire; she won a 2009 Emmy in “Outstanding Sound Editing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special” for her work on Generation Kill, & also won a Golden Reel Award for her sound editing on the same miniseries. In addition to her noteworthy & extensive television work, Jen has worked on a number of films, including such notables as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon & O Brother, Where Art Thou? Jen Ralston is also an accomplished writer & contributed the teleplay for the 2012 Treme episode “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say.” You can find her full resume here at IMDB. 

In conjunction with producer Leslie Valentino—whose list of credits include Sin City & two of the Pirates of the Caribbean films—& a host of talented folks (including a few musicians who have appeared on this blog), Jen Ralston is putting together a new webseries called BFF the series.  Now that we’re all acquainted, let’s have Jen tell us about the background to this series in her own words:

When widower Mike Brady married the (mysteriously single) Carol and redefined what family looked like for a generation of TV viewers, I was an only child being raised by a single parent in rural Pennsylvania. And while Ellen was coming out of the closet on her sitcom, I was proudly watching in a room full of already-out film school friends in New York City.

As invaluable as these examples of otherness were for me and many others, I have yet to see characters on television that accurately reflect the full range of diversity I experience in my everyday life. Sixteen years after Ellen’s famous “Puppy Episode,” there are many more gay protagonists, but most are shallow, sassy stereotypes. And transpeople are rarely represented as anything other than victims of violence or punchlines to tasteless jokes.

I have had to learn to empathize with, root for, and even love all kinds of characters who, on the surface, bore very little resemblance to me. In my experience, we all have more in common than not. Anyone can be a victim or a punchline. Or beautiful. Or even heroic. By telling stories that remind audiences of that, I hope to help fill this void.

Intrigued? I know I am, & I hope you are too. On the project’s Indiegogo page (use the link here or at the top of the blog’s sidebar) Jen goes on to underline that the success of BFF the series will be one way of demonstrating to the powers that be how many viewers want real stories about real people—characters that reflect the people who populate our everyday lives, not the stereotypes television has so often wheeled out a rotating collection of stock characters. It’s a great thing for the LGBT community & its allies; it's a great thing for tolerance & inclusion in a culture desperately in need of same. Just a while back I blogged a photo of Pete Seeger’s banjo with the motto “This machine surrounds hate & forces it to surrender”—I believe BFF the series has the potential to be the same kind of machine!  Here's how Jen encapsulates the storyline:

John and Alex just moved to SF from Pittsburgh. He's in publishing and she's in tech. When the series starts, they're engaged to be married but very quickly those plans change. Alex realizes she is gay. And John needs to move out and move on.

Alex soon discovers that there is more to being gay than coming out of the closet. Her "girl meets girl" quest is compounded by the maze of identity politics that is the SF queer community. Meanwhile, John ends up in an apartment share in the Mission with Hunter (a transman) and Lindsay (his lesbian-identified girlfriend).

As (straight) John and (straight-laced) Alex find equilibrium in their progressive new home, the humor in the show will come from the situations the characters find themselves in, rather than at the expense of the characters differences.

& hey, it’s the internet that makes this possible, not just in terms of facilitating the fund raising, but also in distributing the finished content—which will be free by the way—yay internet! But in reality it's the internet in conjunction with the amazing creativity of people like Jen Ralston, Leslie Valentino & their many friends, including the friends, virtual & otherwise, who lend a hand in any way they can to get this project off the ground! I feel privileged to be counted as one of them, & I encourage you to support this project in any way you can too. Spreading the word helps—you can “like” the project on Facebook, follow on Twitter @SomeOtherJen, blog about it, tweet about it, or just generally spread the word. & of course, if you’d like to join me in making a donation, I know that will be really appreciated too!

Check out the “teaser” trailer below—great fun! & as Jen says: “It’s about time”! 




All images link to their source at the BFF the series Facebook page