My wild love went ridin
She rode all the day
She wrote to the devil
And asked him to pay
The devil was wiser
Its time to repent
He asked her to give back
The money she spent
My wild love went ridin
She rode to the sea
She gathered together
Some shells for her head
She rode and she rode on
She rode for a while
Then stopped for an evenin
And lay her head down
She rode on to christmas
She rode to the farm
She rode to japan
And re-entered a town
By this time the weather
Had changed one degree
She asked for the people
To let her go free
My wild love is crazy
She screams like a bird
She moans like a cat
When she wants to be heard
My wild love went ridin
She rode for an hour
She stopped and she rested
And then she rode on
Ride, cmon
“Shame” from FLASHPOINT/STONEWALL (1994)
Music: Roger Bourland
Lyrics: John Hall
Chorus: Gay Men’s Chorus of LA, Jon Bailey, director
Video: Kim Paulsen
Published by Yelton Rhodes Music/Los Angeles
Alex Theatre, Glendale CA: 1994
Shame
As a a boy I was hated and called names
for being something different.
I did not understand.
I recognized the difference but could not comprehend
what that difference was.
I felt shame.
Later, as a young man
with sprouting hair and spouting hormones
I understood the difference.
I understood the difference
but could not comprehend the hatred.
I felt shame.
Mighty and powerful institutions of this
planet professing peace and love for all
excluded me and my kind
for being different,
for being who we are.
This was beyond my comprehension.
I felt shame.
What they fear is only me,
a creature of small significance,
a true minority.
Yet with my brothers and sisters of difference,
I matter.
Now, as I ripen to maturity,
I have no use for shame
and will not wait for comprehension.
For love expressed is surely blest by deities
remembered and forgotten.
The echoes of those hated names
and fears for being different
now clarify my life;
and being who I am,
different from the most, feels worthy.
I feel strength,
I feel honor,
I feel love
and I feel no shame.
We have had to make some drastic cuts in our department related to the California budget crisis. The process is a painful one but necessary and interesting. To console myself, I think about patterns in nature, where when you cut off a branch, two grow back. Pruning is a pattern and is always good for the plant. The pruning is either done by natural causes, or by a wise gardener, or an administrator who has to make cuts to their budget.
Yesterday, four of us were wracking our brains over trying to find ways to cut. We spent 45 minutes and only cut $7000, then we found a forgotten expense that erased it. Then all of a sudden, bang, bang, bang, and we came up with excellent solutions that did the least amount of curricular damage. What I loved was the ‘bang bang’ part where all of a sudden, we all came up with the solution to our cuts in one minute.
I have a wall of LPs in my office. It’s not that I am one of those people who insist LPs are better and warmer, I just don’t see the point in replacing them with a CD unless it has a skip or is defective somehow.
I say this, but truth be told, my LP player has been disconnected for the past nine months. Well, with my recent house rearranging, I have the LP player, along with a cassette player/recorder, a VHS player, and a DAT player/recorder all hooked into my computer sound system so that I can digitize an LP, a videotape, or a cassette if I wish to. I’m finding that before I spend the time digitizing an LP, I check to see whether it has been digitized already. If I listen to the LP and decide I may listen to it a lot more I will likely buy the CD or the files.
I have many audio cassettes of my music, improvisations, and radio interviews. I am realizing that I had better get them ripped before they evaporate. I brought a reel to reel master of a concert of my solo instrumental music from the late 1970s in to our recording technician and was told that it was shredding and that it had to get baked. Oh dear.
I know that one of my most faithful commenters, Brad, is likely to be opinionated on the art and science of digitizing audio files. I’d love to post his advice on this issue.
I see that there is now the “Ion LP-Ripping Turntable” (see ad below) that goes directly into computers via USB. Hmm, tempting, but I’ll stick with my old turntable for a bit longer.
Over the next few months I will be phasing out my website — the fancy and beautiful site designed by Pete Connoly and Daniel Shiplacoff — and expanding my blog so that one can find the same information without having to go to the website. At this point, being alive, I prefer having a dynamic blog that has new content — ideally — daily as opposed to a static information repository. When I die, I hope that this blog will be that repository and not bookshelves and boxes of stuff. Data takes up so much less space.
I will be putting up many recordings of my music here. Visitors to the blog will be able to download the mp3s and build a small Roger Bourland music library in their mp3 repository. I am not charging for any of this music, and as I am not making money on this, nor are the performers you hear. For the most part, I leave the performers anonymous. It is there for your entertainment, and ideally to inspire people to commission me to write new music.
My photography will appear here from time to time, but for the moment I am putting it on Flickr.
No URLs will change so there is nothing you need to do as a reader or contributor. Thank you for reading my blog. RB
“Reel (Homage to Henry Cowell)” was composed by Lou Harrison, a pupil of Henry Cowell’s, here employs palm and arm clusters as a tip of the hat (homage) to his old friend Henry. The performer is unidentified, but I like his ponytail. I’m sure Henry and Lou would have too.
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