27-foot pythons

I write from scenic, swampy Orlando, Florida and the campus of the University of Central Florida, home of the Knights of Pegasus (seriously) and some bizarro 80-degree weather that has my body chemistry just all confused. Add to the mix a pleasant and musically intense hang with some bros from Austin days -- percussionists Thad Anderson and Owen Weaver, pianist Franklin Gross -- and you've got the recipe for a week all right all right.

We play George Crumb's Music for a Summer Evening tomorrow night, along with two group premieres: Thad's searing, kinetic rhythmic etude Five Messages and my own scenic, swampy Outer Channel, which is jointly dedicated to and inspired by drummer/composer/force-of-nature Paul Motian and sometime Orlandoian Jack Kerouac -- particularly the latter's "belief and technique for modern prose," which includes lovely and oblique directives like the following:

"Believe in the holy contour of life"
"Try never get drunk outside yr own house"
"Like Proust be an old teahead of time"

and of course,

"Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea"

I have some songs to share, soon -- the new Golconda collection, By these limits were they circumscribed and of them were they locus, is in the final mixing/mastering stages and awaiting cover art by stellar painter and VCCA friend Mary Laube.