“We walk in the shadows in giants,” I tell my friend Laila, before realizing that this isn’t the phrase. It’s ‘stand on the shoulders of giants,’ isn’t it? I don’t think they noticed. Either way, the accidental adaptation is a fitting one for what we’ve just witnessed—a multi-media spoken word event in which the two
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The Pierre Boulez Saal: Tracing a History
I walked into the Pierre Boulez Saal on a chilly Saturday night, I found my music class among the crowd and exclaimed to them, “Everything around here looks so new!” I’d just walked over from the U2 stop at Hausvogteiplatz and was surprised by the tall, modern buildings, smooth concrete, and shops that seemed to
Dancing on Stages, Dancing with Friends
My friends have long made fun of me for how I dance. I have long lanky arms that swing when I move. I have a strange habit of shifting my elbows in robotic motions to the rhythm of a song. My legs stay firm while my upper body moves. I look like some odd machination.
Music in Berlin
35 eager (vaccinated, tested) concertgoers snuggled into the cozy interior of FRAMED Berlin, a cultural salon and gallery in the Friedrichshain district. Berlin’s long summer was coming to a close and couples nestled in corners, wine in hand, and closed their eyes to focus on the sparkled sounds of Spanish guitar and a soaring voice
Her Hardest Hue to Hold
Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. -Robert Frost We decided it was the best place to study flamingos, but camping was
Why Did You Twist Me Up?
Was the Moon A witness Or an accomplice? I can’t tell But, Both times It was there Sleepless Swollen eye An overripe orange That I mistook For the sun Why did you twist me up? I ask the staring eye Who, Clutching every reply Doubts to confide Even a hiccup Hollow Pulp-less fruit With
I Sound Like It
Again, the phonograph replays the record. The very first motion of the driver’s ferrite, pointy reader-head clicked heavily on the periphery of the disk causing the first friction on the shellac surface and sounding like a glitchy fuzz, whose prosaic particles started moving, vibrating randomly in the space generating broken waves without any predictable order.
A Musical Poem – Translating Memories and Moments into Music
How would your life story sound as a melody? Based on a class session about songlines, a term which describes the Aboriginal Australian’s practice of finding one’s way in the land through music, I wrote an autobiographical poem with a special focus on Berlin that I guide with a variation of Yiruma’s “River Flows in