I’ve seen a lot of articles about the joy and limitations of a new generation of toys built on one’s brain waves contolling some parameter in the game.

For the last two months, I have been blogging psychically, having a running post, for you, as I go through my life. It’s almost turning into The Truman Show. I’m hoping this new brain control stuff starts working, just think of the possibilities! But for bloggers, it could be a very handy tool. Meditating could become a tax deduction, or a source of income–depending on what you do with it.

Today at school we ordered 100 new chairs that can be used in lecture, with side desktops, and by choral singers. In that the desktops are in both left and right-handed orientation, I wondered what the breakdown of left-handers to right was. I found that 7 to 10% of humans are left-handed. We ordered ten left-handed desks.

Just so ya know.

Last week, I had an entire day at home to myself. No pressing school work, my various compositional projects are all waiting for someone else to provide me with various things before I can move forward: a perfect day to do NOTHING–maybe watch some movies, and kick around the house.

It turned out to be a warm day. I got it in my teeny brain that it might be a cool thing to spend the whole day naked. Yes, naked. We have a lot of privacy, and both our neighbors on our right and left are gay, so they wouldn’t care seeing my white butt walk by from time to time in the back yard. And over our backyard fence is Queen Latifah’s second house. I doubt she’s there now anyway, and even if she were, she prefers women.

I stripped.

Holy moly, I am the whitest guy around. I looked down at my body. My belly. My cock. My legs.

I went to a mirror and spent some time looking myself over. I was slouching. Fix that. As John Hall always says: “Lift and separate.” MUCH better. Clothes hide the fact that we slouch and pooch (stick out your belly). Daniel has pointed out several times that when I’m pontificating about something in a group, I stick out my belly. I stuck out my belly as far as I could to see how fat my belly could actually be. Eeeeuuuuwwww! Now, pull it in. Much better. My trainer, Teresina, insists that all our exercises be done with your belly in: abdominal muscles engaged, so that they GROW pulled in, rather than grow pooched out.

Enough mirror time, I walked into the bedroom and immediately put on a T-shirt. NO! The game is you must be naked all day. Off with the T-shirt.

I walked out into the living room. The dogs were sitting on the couch looking at me with a kind of “What’s going on with the no-clothes thing, Dad?”-look in their eyes. I laughed and decided to go do some laundry. I’m flashing back to that old German nudist magazine from the 1950s that I inherited from a friend who died of AIDS, with all the pictures of blonde Germans playing volleyball in the nude. Men, women, boys and girls, all happy and all nude. I chuckled as I walked down to the basement. I found a pair of shorts on the floor an immediately put them on. NO! Take them off. Sheesh, it’s hard trying to stay naked. My belly pooched again. Get that belly IN. I sorted the laundry, naked. It was kinda fun.

As I went through the day, I realized that when you are naked all the time, your skin is always cool. The sweat is always evaporating in real time, not through your clothes.

I stopped in front of a mirror again. You’re slouching. Get those shoulders back. Our clothes hide our posture. I looked at my little bush above my cock. Why did evolution put that there? What is it’s purpose other than preventing your penis from sticking to your body. So, I trimmed it. Hmm, Much better. Hell, men trim their faces everyday, why not down there as well?

Another inconvenient aspect of being naked all day, is that when you sit in certain chairs, those chairs were designed for people WITH clothes to sit on. So, sitting on my Aeron chair puts a grid pattern all over my butt. Many chairs don’t let your butt breathe, so you sweat. Not comfortable. The best solution seemed to be to put a towel down on the couch or chair and that worked well.

Cooking naked, especially sauteeing or frying brings up real issues. I broke down and wore a denim (so butch!) apron while I cooked. My front was protected. By around 8 pm, I got tired of the game and put on some warm fuzzy lounge wear. My skin felt so much more sensitive to those clothes having been naked all day.

I realize that it would take a lot of work to really get used to being naked, but I think I just might try. Our clothes hide so much (besides our private parts), and seeing poor posture and poor body habits is important to our health, and knowing what our bodies really look like.

There was something missing in my life: I realized it was TOUCH. No, not being touched, the electro-acoustic piece by Morton Subotnick from the 1970s.

I remember first moving to Boston in 1976 to attend the New England Conservatory of Music. First I lived in Malden, but that was SO boring, I eventually found a dive on Westland Ave for $75 a week. The day I moved in, a woman with her front teeth missing sitting on the steps next door, who I was later to learn was called “Blow Job,” asked me whether I wanted one for $5. My cheeks turned red and I said NO, but thank you for asking–being the polite midwestern boy my parents had raised me to be.

Several months later, I became engaged in late night music war with some dude who decided to play disco at full blast at two in the morning while he screamed at his woman. He was on a Donna Summer’s Greatest Hits thing. I decided I would try to come back at him with Pierrot Lunaire. It just didn’t have the power that a disco groove does. I came back with Subotnick’s TOUCH. It took a while to get going, but once it kicked in, it kicked ass! I was so proud and so cool, dueling with some pimp screaming at his–well, all of a sudden, the music turned down. I heard a very angry black woman tell of the dude playing the music. Whoa! I turned Morton down, and called it a draw.

I couldn’t find a YouTube clip for this music, so you should do your homework to see whether you can buy it. And if not, go here and download it yourself.

I sent my phone off to get a minor repair done and am without my cell for three days. [Like Gilligan's Island: A three hour tour!] Holy moly. I didn’t realize how addicted to that device I have become.

Impulse: Hmm, I need to call Mitchell about Saturday. Ugh. No luck, have to find a land line. Is there a phone booth around here??

Impulse: “Hey Roger, what is Elaine’s phone number.” “It’s, uh, hold on, I’ll get it. Rats. It’s all in my cell phone.”

Impulse: Text Larry and ask whether he has heard any good news. oops, I can’t. I’ll call instead. Uh, no I won’t: I have no idea what his telephone number is.

Impulse: “When are you guys going to San Diego?” “It’s the week of the uh, let me look it up. Crap. My calendar is in my cell phone. I’ll have to get back to you.”

Impulse: What’s the room number I need to go to for my 2 o’clock meeting? I’ll have to call Alix, er, no I won’t.

Impulse: Standing in line at the post office. “Oh my god. I have nothing to escape to. I actually have to LOOK at all these people standing there.

Impulse: Roger, embrace your inner Buddha. Embrace the principle of non-attachment. Like James said yesterday: Breathe in::Hold::Slowly let it out.

Chill dude.

At my last checkup, my doctor told me that I was deficient in vitamin D. He found it odd and perhaps suspicious that 75% of his patients were also D deficient–odd because we all live in southern California (the sun is a large source for vitamin D; sunscreen and clothes and staying inside block the absorption–go figure). So, he suggested I take a D supplement. The first time I did, it was like taking pain medication after being in terrible pain–well, maybe not quite that dramatic, but I could tell this vitamin really made me feel better. I WAS vitamin D deficient. I didn’t realize it until I got some.

This morning I awoke wondering “What’s missing?” After a hot bath I figured it out: music. Listening to music. Not just going to concerts, but actively listening to music at home while doing something.

As we age, people seem to listen to less music. I may be wrong, but it seems that way with people I know. And you know? I think music is essential for our emotional well-being just as vitamin D is. So as I got out of the tub, I decided to rip 20 CDs to have on my computer for easy access: Pop, film, classical, folk, jazz, and some jazz and pop divas. As I listened to this music, I felt a wide range of biochemical hot flashes, an endorphin rush, and good old goose bumps popping all over the place. THAT’s what was missing: listening to music.

I feel MUCH better.

(Have YOU been listening to enough music?)

[Photo: © 2010 Sara Q Blog: Photography for happy people]

I was surfing channels on TV the other day. I stopped on the Animal Planet:

“…and left in their cages for years at a time, treated more like a plant than the beautiful parrot that they are, the bird slowly goes INSANE.”

This image has haunted me lately, not just because I have two parrots, each in their own cage who remind me regularly that they MUST come out and play or they’ll get cranky [or worse: INSANE].

I’m afraid I have friends who have become cagebound. Their only social outlet appears to be Facebook. Maybe that old scifi movie–where people had devolved into brains in amniotic fluid attached to supercomputers–will be our future. Who will need these old bodies anyway? No more brushing teeth, combing hair, taking baths, touching someone, seeing someone, loving someone, annoying someone. No need for sports, dating, church, school. Skip all that and just use Facebook.

And in the future, we can just use Facebook VII to communicate everything: when to go to bathroom, tell your friends every point you make in every game, your joys, your neuroses, your messages, your life.

Oh, pardon me, gotta go, someone just posted something on Facebook, I HAVE to read it.

The Smiling Spider by Odilon Redon

The Smiling Spider for soprano, soprano sax, viola, cello, and piano (1983) mp3
Words and music: Roger Bourland (quotes from Charlie Chaplin)
Performers: Composers in Red Sneakers, Karen McVoy, soprano
Publisher: Yelton Rhodes Music
Download audio file (Smiling_Spider.mp3)

The story behind this piece is actually pretty funny. The Composers in Red Sneakers decided to offer their “Concert 8 and a half” anonymously. There was a perception that our faithful Boston Globe critic favored some of us over others. This would solve that.

At the time I was infatuated with the paintings of Odilon Redon, having composed an orchestral piece called “Scenes from Redon.” This was a painting that hadn’t found music yet.

Add to that, I had just watched [I think it was] Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights” and heard this catchy little tune that I couldn’t get out of my head. You’ll also hear a quick quote of “Do Not Foresake Me Oh My Darling.”

Add to that, I had just seen a documentary on TV discussing the mating habits of tarantulas, how the female can eat the male after the mating ritual if he’s not careful. This seemed dramatically pregnant and at least amusing.

Add to that, a friend’s pet tarantula had just died and I asked whether I could have the body. He said yes.

For the performance, I tied the spider to a roofless umbrella which the soprano holds while singing to the spider. The piece opens with the soprano skipping onto the stage with the umbrella inside a guitar case. She opens it, takes out the umbrella, and begins to sing her love song to the dangling arachnid.

There is an amusing little dance break where she dances and spins the umbrella with the spider hurling in circles. At the end, she can’t stop singing “Ta ta ta taaaa…” until the sax player (her boyfriend actually) goes up and tickles her in the armpit.

It shouldn’t have been too difficult for the Boston audience and critic to tell that this piece was by me: who else could be so silly? And I still got a good review.

Ta ta ta ta ta taaaa
Ta ta ta ta ta taaaa

Tarantula my beloved spider
On my shoulder in the moonlight tonight
When your leggies touch my hands I shiver
And I quiver when you whisper my name.

Now you might think it rather odd
To be in love with such a beast
But I really rather like him
And he smiles a lot at least
And if he asks to marry you
You can be sure that he’ll be true
As a husband a tarantula is really quite a feast!

Hand in hand by the edge of the sand
Nuptial bliss, I’ll devour thee with a kiss.
Leggies locked, cosmic kisses of death
Dancing spiders, a crazy kind of love!

With the subtitle of “The Most Bizarre Musical Number Ever Filmed” it got my attention. It’s really worth watching cuz it’s so bizarre! It just keeps going, getting stranger and stranger! Try to stick it out till the end.

I’ll have whatever SHE’S having.

This just in from the LA Times:

A Rhode Island school district has voted to fire all the teachers at an underperforming school.

Amazing!