Emotionally Breaking...

I don't often watch movies because I don't feel a need for entertainment. Inside my head music flows nearly nonstop. Twisting through the music stories try to make their presence known, worming, wriggling, sailing, trying to beat the music in the path of escape...either a pen or the keyboard. Deep down I know I am damaged and unless you have ever had an emotional breakdown you won't be able to understand  the scars that creates.

Today I watched a movie at the recommendation of a hitch-hiker I recently gave a ride to when passing through Spokane. He rode with me for about an hour and before leaving he told me that he thought I should watch the movie "August Rush". We hadn't talked about movies but we had talked about music and he looked at my notebook of scores I carry. These are the scores that I wrote, that I play, that keep tumbling around trying to get out for others to hear. He said, "You really need to watch it!"

I forgot about it because I was busy with other things, but in the process of recovering from recent injuries I found my schedule has changed and I went to the library to find something to fill the gap. As I was leaving  my inner music directed me to the rack of DVDs and the first one I saw on the shelf was "August Rush".

I had no choice but to take it and go home to watch it. And then I returned it today, the same day I checked it out, because I don't think I can bear to watch it again.

The movie is FANTASTIC and if you have not yet seen it, you should get it. I am sure that many people failed to enjoy it, but I feel that more people felt part of the energy. I enjoyed it. I loved it and "love" is not a word I every use lightly. I was enthralled. I was mesmerized. And I was emotionally shattered.

I am not proud to admit that I had a mental breakdown ten years ago when my wife chose to run off. My children and I survived somehow and over the years I have recovered to where I wish there was somebody in my life again. I am an intellectual, and academic, a very strong minded person, and I did not believe in mental health issues - and yet, I collapsed.

Watching "August Rush" (2007) brought back so many thing of my life that tear at me and I was in tears. They were uncontrollable. I was sobbing. I could not breathe and my head hurt like a sledge hammer had struck me in the center of my forehead.

The boy, August Rush, (aka Evan Taylor) heard music everywhere and all the time. So do I. He was orphaned (erroneously). I was an orphaned as a child at age 4 (and then adopted) and again by my children a few years after I lost my wife and my life. He composes and conducts and so do I. And I could feel and hear his life.

The music and the portrayals within the film were exceedingly well done. The arrangements, the overall encompassing feel of the movie, and the deep, deep love that was being expressed, tore at my core - heart and soul. It was magical, expressive, and seared my heart as if a lance had been driven through me.

Life moves on and as time has passed so have on in my unique manner. Every day I know that I have music to write, music to play, words to write, life to express... August Rush did. I do. Many others also must express in many, many, forms of music and literature.

I hope that, I will rebound from this devastating release of pain much faster than I did before. Yet, if there is anything I can pass on from this experience the least would be that each of us needs to remember that there are people who must express with music, or art, or literature, or dance... They must in order to live, to stay alive, to grow.

I'm not afraid to tell you now, "I hear music. I see music. I feel music." I may never have a woman as part of my life again, and I both fear that and accept it because of who I am, but I am following the path presented to me that should be shared with a woman -- I am making music.

As my life moves on I hope that nobody ever has to feel the pain I have felt, and I wish that those who have felt worse find a soothing path in life.

I've been broken, I am damaged, and yet I am still whole. Music ... I hear it, I see it, and I feel it.

516 Title...

So here you are at my blog. PeriODDically... is just as it sounds; mostly periodic postings and often odd insights into being Daniel J Hay.

Many times I have postings ready to upload and then decide to dump them because they are either bragging about myself which I find I am prone to doing, or complaining about my health or life, which I can't stand doing but again find that I am prone to lapsing into.

This posting, however, is not going to flow in either vein. No bragging and no complaining.

Actually this posting is a request for assistance in naming the piece of music I just composed. You see, I've been getting a backlog of instrumental pieces with no name. This will make it difficult to include them in the annual subscription service I maintain and makes it look like an uncompleted list when I list the titles. The attached opus number just doesn't look completed without also having a title to go with it.

Therefore, if you will listen to the piece listed in the sidebar, (Opus 516), and then send me a comment for a name I would appreciate it. From the names submitted here and via private communication I will select a winning name and then add the submitting person's name in the dedication on the sheet music.

This piece is voiced in Oboe because I find that my composing software sounds best as Oboe voice, (or Cello or Bassoon). It is, however, suitable for most orchestral instruments.

Please note that if this posting is not at the top of my blog then it is likely the piece of music shown may no longer be Opus 516. You can always visit http://danielhay.podbean.com and look for the piece that will include 516 in the title regardless of how long after this posting you are visiting. Also be aware that only a small number of my pieces are uploaded to podbean.

To see which pieces of music I have had printed you can visit http://danielhay.magcloud.com and for information on subscribing to my annual sheet music service please visit http://bit.ly/g9muFh

Spirit of Amraah...

It wasn't her given name but Amraah used a chosen name. She was a unique individual of an indeterminate age. She was older than my 51 of the time, and yet not so old she couldn't take care of herself on her travels through life.

She drove a van that she called Bear, and I think she told me he was Red Bear. She lived in her van and had been living in a vehicle for 15 years or more. She traveled where she wanted and kept limited contact with the world by laptop. Amraah was on a spiritual trip and felt infused with the spirituality of life.

In the middle of a forest, on a seldom used road, she stopped to help me where my truck was stranded. Three other people from the area had driven right by me. Amraah, on the otherhand, was not from the area and was just out looking and searching and had chosen this road for a reason she could not explain. Yet, she stopped to help a man she didn't know, and who with long ratty looking hair, beard, old beat-up truck, and two dogs, probably didn't look to savory.

After trying to jump start the battery in the truck she offered to drive to town, 38 miles away, so that I could get a new battery. During the drive she didn't drown me with her spirituality but there was an aura about her that told me she was different than anybody I had known before.

Before we parted ways I told her I wanted to name one of my music compositions after her. I told her that it wouldn't necessarily be about her but that I liked naming music for people. In this case the music turned out to be about her and to explore some sense of her spirit.

She gave me her business card so that I could tell her about it. And then I lost it for ten months. Today I found it and sent her a copy of the music "Spirit of Amraah" so that she will know I kept my word. I wrote the music that very night after returning to the woods and my truck. It is a different piece and the computer generated recording does not do it full justice because the repeats are taken at different tempos, but I hope she will like it.

As of the date of this posting it is also in the side bar for anybody to listen too, although at some point that mp3 player podcast will be changed to another piece of my music. For now, I hope the spirit reaches Amraah, and that it entices you as well.

On The Road...

March 14th -- Unlike most blogs that make multiple entries per day, or one per day, my blog is less precisely timed. You might say that it is calendorically challenged. (I could have used "calendric" but "calendorically" seems to fit better.) This particular entry may be updated over the next several days or weeks as I progress across country from California where I can nearly touch Oregon, to Memphis, Tennessee which Google Maps tells me is a "1 day, 17 hr." drive. I hope to have the cameras ready to go during the trip, several of my Recorders, music scoring paper, and the laptop. I just may stop at any moment whether there is a railroad crossing or not.

--- There are a number of photographic projects I've deferred working on until I returned to a more populous area. I hope to finish planning them out so that when I've completed moving into my Memphis house I can get started on them again. Of course the music writing and practising, and the child lit. is like a faucet with no turn off valve. I've spent a year now in camping mode, more secluded then ever before, perhaps even lonelier than ever. I'm not sure if that stimulates or retards my music and writing. I guess time will ... In the mean time, you may want to bookmark this blog and watch it for periodic updates during the travel.


March 24h -- Well that didn't work too well. My long slow drive across country turned into a race in front of snow storms and heavy rains. I am now in my home in Memphis and just this evening got the internet up and running with the new satellite dish on the roof.  The trip itself was a challenge. I got run off the road in New Mexico by a big dark green semi. If you see any, look for tan paint on the driver's bumper and let me know. I ended up in the median bouncing across rocks with my overloaded truck. Blew two tires and had to replace all four. I had no other damage and the rest of the trip was uneventful other than stormy weather.

--- Upon arrival I moved right in and began some of the repairs that still needed to be done. Papers are signed and the house is mine now (as long as I make the payments). I've meet some of my neighbors and shared some hardcore yard work with Barry across the street. He suffered gout and I had swollen joints from unloading. But we got the edging all done for both yards, and helped their landlady (also mine) move stuff. Benefits us all, so we did well.

--- Also had 750 emails to handle and only half were spam that the filters missed. I have several photography projects pending for which I had advertised via Craigslist. I had a slew of messages regarding them so those projects may be on the way soon. The studio space is not quite what I expected but I hope to make use of it so I don't have to rent a studio. It will work well for the recording of my music I plan, and the video recordings for YouTube.

--- My employee in the Phillipines has continued working while I was on the road so other projects are moving forward as well. All in all I guess the month turned out better than it started.

--- Just as I was preparing to move, and finishing helping my friends move a friend of theirs, a dear friend proposed. I am sorry to say that I have had to turn down the offer simple. As some of the stress evaporates from the move process, and the projects get under control again, perhaps I will be able to consider her offer with the illumination that considers the welfare of both of us and not just my own selfish reasons. I have, for ten years, been a single person, but I truly enjoyed being part of a family. Life will wait on me and we shall see what happens.

Final -- Since this did not turn into a daily journal of my 2500 mile trip this is the last entry for this blog title. My dogs are snoozing on the floor in comfort. They have had all week to stretch out in any corner, on all the furniture, and even convinced me to put a step-up to the very tall bed for them to get up there to sleep as well. They have checked out the woods, the yard, the neighbors' yards and have decided that this is home. At least, as long as the food dish and water dish are filled and they can give me directions to make their life pleasant, then they are happy with where we are at. For those of you whom have read this, you will see that it is different from my standard blog posts, but it was a major change in an old life that is springing forward with a new spark. If you enjoyed this I hope you will still read my other blog entries. If you didn't like this one, then you most certainly need to read the others because they are different.

Lady Grey...

My favorite Internet haunts are overflowing with inane comments on what is happening at the Oscars. Like most programs on television, I figure if I wanted to know what was happening I'd turn on a television. The fact that I don't own one anymore is a moot point, I could easily buy one or just visit somebody who already has it on (or never turned off).

Instead of growing irritated at the flow of messages that I can't filter out without turning off the people I normally enjoy reading, I'm sitting here drinking a huge mug of Lady Grey tea and listening to the "Taking Tea With Lady Grey" trio that I wrote a short time ago. I am both writing at projects and composing another piece of music in snippets at a time.

As Lady Grey comes to a close I click on replay, click on the tab for the score, contemplate a few notes, click on the blog screen and enter a few letters, then back to the score, the blog, the score, the blog, and eventually to a moment of pause and bliss. Those moments are when I sip tea and consider the mood that the music just provided.

Listening to one piece of music while writing another one is a challenge. The first challenge is to make sure I don't mimic the aural sounds with the new written sounds. I don't want a clone of Lady Grey. I found her to be both tasty as tea, and delicious as music but do not need to create a copy of her. She is there for my enjoyment as desired.

Just a moment, click, click, click, click, the process had to be started over. When I tire of the same music I'll simple click on the mp3 player and have it randomly play through all of my music. Music from solo to an eighteen voice brass ensemble. Trumpets, trombones, timpani, to piano, strings, woodwinds and brasswinds. And because I play Recorder many of the pieces are computer-voiced as Recorder.

It makes for a pleasant time without the repetitive voice and commercials on television. It lets me do what I want to do while I plan for a move across country to a house with space for my studio. And it lets me still enjoy the onslaught of Internet activity - I just bypass the parts I don't wish to view.

So all is fine in the world when taking your tea with Lady Grey...

Watching Fish And Patient Turtle...

When I first moved from Nebraska to New Jersey I felt somewhat out of place. We had moved from a town of 25,000 to a church camp and conference center with a neighboring town of 167 people and twelve thousand cows. I might be slightly off on the count of the cows since I didn't meet all of them, but Johnsonburg dairies sent seven or eight semi-trailers of milk to NYC every day. I am positive that it took more udders than it did people.

The camp was over 400 acres in size and I spent a great deal of time wandering the woods, investigating the swamps, the creeks, the springs, and the lake. I learned a great deal of nature and introduced myself to wild food harvesting. Once a year I would visit a spring-fed creek and collect a few mussels that the raccoons had not gathered. I cooked them in a broth I made from watercress and one small stewed fish. Ummmm... delicious.

I found I didn't enjoy catching and eating fish as much as I enjoyed watching them. I thought of myself as a budding musician then. I'm still budding all these years later and no longer have my handmade 12-string guitar because I gave it to my son-in-law. But my first summer at the camp I had a wonderful Yamaha acoustic and then later I had my Maton 12-string.

I learned to modulate sounds and how sound waves traveled through the air, wood, and water. The camp had floating swimming cribs and floating docks. Many evenings I would sit on the docks and play my guitar and sing, and watch the fish. The sunfish would gather around me first and fan out like steel filings attracted to a magnet. Behind them the bass would form and sometimes a few bullhead would gather below the sunfish. A large snapping turtle would cling to the outer edges of the floating swimming cribs and not move.

They weren't just immersed in the water, they were engrossed in the sounds. The fish in our lake preferred the minor keys and modes. If my chord patterns stayed in the major group too long the bass would slowly back away and vanish. The turtle would start looking around and the sunfish just disappeared. I learned to toy with my finned audience and could make them move as if choreographed ballet. At times I felt as if playing for the fish healed my soul from the hurts of adolescence.

Being a child of the camp director made "belonging" difficult. I belonged there but all the visitors were off-limits. It was difficult to stay aloof from the people there but I had a few friends and I had the fish. I am sure that none of the fish remembered my discussions with them, but perhaps that snapping turtle would remember. The turtle was still there, or seemed to be the same one, when I revisted the camp fifteen years later.

My father released the caretaker and their family moved away. I was heart-broken and shared my anger and disappointment with my congregation of gathered fish. I told them and the turtle of my sadness for the caretaker's daughter had captured my heart. She smiled and my world was lighted. She touched me and my soul melted. She taught me the majestic beauty of a horse and how to ride. And it was the turtle clinging to the wooden slats of the swimming cribs that heard it all. I entertained the fish with my music and their slow dance cured my riven heart.

I wonder if that turtle remembers the beautiful blond I fell in love with in a later summer and then surprisingly met again when I switched schools. My best friend David and I got to play ping-pong with her and her friend. She never new how much I wanted to talk to her more, but the turtle did. In the new school she knew me but just didn't know what I had felt for her.

Did the fish remember my anguish at breaking up with a high school sweetheart one year, then actually having her arrive at the camp with her parents and sister? Probably not, but the turtle would recall how excited I was then and the love songs I wrote for her even though she preferred Peter Frampton. And my circle of fish, with fins waving as they slowly drew in closer to my guitar and lamenting voice, drew closer still when tears coursed my cheeks when again my Martianette severed our ties. No longer to be her Preppie, but the turtle patiently listened to my pain.

One night under the stars a new throb in my heart sat with me and talked for hours into the early dawn. Under the shining stars and glorious moon she shared my heart with the ballet of fish and my good friend the snapping turtle. We sang together and they danced. We held hands while we talked and the fish drew in close as if they too wanted to be so close as we. But age and time drew us apart as well and the fish gathered near to sooth my soul once again. The turtle floated in the water and watched me and listened patiently.

And so I've learned patience of my own. I have no fins to steer my course. I have no shell to protect me. But I've known drawn hearts, twinned souls, and merged minds. My fish are gone and my turtle too, but those beautiful girls grew up to be beautiful women and fill me with wonder every time I see them in the distance or hear of their dances through life. The didn't know the inner me, but my fish did. They may not remember our fleeting pasts, but my turtle did and may still. And I remember.

So it is to fish and turtles, and all nature, that I turn for soul soothing. And it is with great interest that I learn about more wildlife, and I am always reminded of past love when I see nature at work. The mermaids of my youth weren't fictional. They were and are unique persons and I still sing to watching fish and talk to patient turtles.

The Blog Path...

When I canceled my Anon Blogs and began this one I didn't think I would update it more than once every blue moon. I hadn't updated the blog on MySpace in at least three blue moons so why would this be any different. I don't really enjoy writing odd-bits on either it or Facebook. And just now I think I realized that the clutter bothers me, the screen noise irritates me, and I feel like I'm being watched very closely.

A Blair classmate, Les Oakes, did remind me that I am indeed being watched. So off I went to my new blogspot and began entries. Now I find that it is only my own words in front of me while my fingers dance around the keyboard. I have no interruptions to trains of thought other than the music roiling between my ears.

I had a blog on Word Press under a name I don't want to reuse. I tried to rename it but they don't allow changing the account name that matches to your email address. They told me to go into the old account and change the email address and after it is verified then I could open a new blog account with my email address. Yep! Only problem is that I only have one email address and I'm not going to bother to get a new one just to fake out their computer. In fact, they should not be telling us how to fake them in the first place. Duh!

So I just stay here and explore thoughts and polish words so that they shine as bright as the lights I envision. I struggle daily, hourly, with music pounding in my head clashing with stories trying to get out. Sometimes I
 succeed in calming them by getting one of the works into the computer where it quietly awaits the interest of a publisher. And even though I thought I wouldn't be writing much in the blog doing so seems to act like a pressure valve venting explosively with steam. Surprisingly, instead of loosing the thoughts and forms it feels like what is formulating is doing so with more precision.

This funneling has provided me with some peace of mind as well. In just the short life of this blog, and of the twitter stream, I've made more progress on other works besides my childrens stories and my music composition. In fact, when I figured out how to set up both the blog and the twitter posts on the same page I actually felt like an accomplished web author. Of course, partial success could be rewarded with publisher contracts, but that is still to come.

Those of you who find me on MySpace or FaceBook get the twitter stream automatically. In fact, you may never get to the blog page here. I am not writing either for you. I am writing them for myself only. I narrate to an invisible audience, I know, and I see some of them float in and then float out far quicker than a reading should allow. (Seeing them floating means they are not so invisible.)

At least here I can reaffirm to myself that I am. I am a composer. I am a writer. I am a photographer. And when those lives don't seem full enough I enjoy pulling tiny bits of gold from large piles of rubble.

To Tell a Tale of Three Trios...

The last three trios, in reverse order, Op 477 Romance Turmoil, Op 472 Taking Tea With Lady Grey, and Op 470 Shasta Snow Light. While picking pieces for the Cello music collection I realized I probably have a collection of trio. Problem is they aren't all the same trio configuration.

Regardless of the instrument configurations I went through the list this early a.m. and find the second piece I wrote and the last piece I have written are trio works. The first, Two Flutes and a Cello I wrote at Blair
Academy and there it had its only performance thanks to Louise Ewing and Donald Blocker on flute and myself on cello.

I seem to have migrated to more Oboe and Cello groupings because I play Recorders and the Finale Allegro voicing for Recorder is poor - but the Oboe is great. The Cello voicing is great, but the Viola isn't. Its a shame since 477 is for Oboe, Viola and Cello.

Oh well, some day I'll have the extra cash to upgrade the software, (and then the hardware, and then the brain surgery too).