School is incessant. Essays pile up. Standardized tests becloud the horizon. My feet are unfailingly wet. Either my children have hydrokinesis and practice on my socks, or they are careless around water. Despite the times, Friday saw the release of Jasper Lee’s Mirror of Wind LP. Jasper’s most well-known music is on the score for … Continue reading That Time of Year You May In Me Behold
Last night, I was thinking about the blog and how I’ve ignored the blog. I sketched out something like the old monthly updates that Quinn and I used to do. He updated today after a long silence, so I took it as some synchronicity not to ignore. Reading I ordered The Horror Hall of Fame … Continue reading Just like the ones I used to know…
A friend of mine gave me the impossible challenge of picking the five “Greatest Love Songs.” He’s working on a lesson plan for his students and we’ve always had the practice of doing every activity we ask students to do. Of course, I didn’t quite follow directions and I came up with various criteria so … Continue reading Laughable. Unphotographable.
The idea for this came about when a quartet of musicians came together for a week of recording. Rather than simply firing away at each other all week, we started putting together ideas for structure. This was mine. Four musicians and four suits. With that, I only offer the following as general rules to be … Continue reading The Red and The Black: a card game for improvising musicians
For the last few years, I’ve found myself listening to Thai music around the New Year. I don’t know why and I just noticed it when was searching for something new to hear. I discovered Christopher Adler, who I intended to write about in this post. His music is influenced by American minimalism, which I … Continue reading Happy New Ears
You can read Quinn’s post here. Check out The Laboratory #4! Reading V. After finishing War and Peace, I felt I had enough time to finish another longish novel before school begins. While teaching, I read shorter novels because my reading is interrupted so much by work. So far, V. is what you expect from … Continue reading Catch the Spirit, Catch the Quinn
You can read Quinn’s post here. Reading War and Peace My big summer reading project. This is the third start as I’ve had to set it aside for teaching duties. I’m close to finishing (Book 11 of 15, plus two epilogues). Slowly I’ve been catching up on the great Russian literature I’ve missed. Epic, but … Continue reading Wherein I play catch-up to the Quinn again.
This is the catalog for episode three of The Laboratory, part of The Outrider Podcast. If you’re not sure what this is, start here. Episode 3 began with our discussion of our unique failures in handling the last prompt. Jason wrote a paragraph or so and I wrote over 2,100 words of a still unfinished … Continue reading Your story has to be about asking questions, not coming up with the right answer or There’s poop on the floor: Laboratory #3.
Read Quinn’s new post here. Reading White Egrets by Derek Walcott. Sometimes I read for surprise and difficulty. Sometimes I read for comfort. The voice and craft of this book put it in the latter category. Not that all the topics of the book were comforting: aging, losing gifts or talents, losing loved ones and … Continue reading Catching up with Quinn #3
Stephen McClurg 