The Moon is Mine (2020) collage by Maria L. Berg
Blogging A to Z
I am not doing a great job of bringing my musical terms into my poetry, but they are still fun words to explore. Maybe I’ll use them to write little micro-fictions instead. That could be fun.
I recently read that April is also International Guitar Month, started in 1987 to promote retail guitar sales. Though I am not in the market for a guitar, I did find this fun playlist from NPR Celebrate International Guitar Month With These Guitar Greats.
This got me thinking about MoPop (It used to be the Experience Music Project) in Seattle. I headed to there website, but they don’t have virtual tours, so then I looked around for who did have virtual tours and found some fun ones:
Joe Bonamassa’s Vintage Guitar Studio Tour (this one made me say Whoa)
The National Blues Museum (this is the kind of virtual tour I had hoped to find at MoPop)
The David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) Guitar Collection
Musical Instrument Museum (this one is a little tricky to navigate, but worth the effort)
And there are more. I found an intriguing international collection at musicandenglish-interactivelearning.
I may end up spending quarantine in the Liszt Academy. Yep. This is now my mind palace. It’s amazing.
I cannot figure out how a single person can be bored. There is so much to explore. My time is flying by. I could spend an entire day in only one of these museums. Except now I’m never leaving Liszt Academy, so that could be a problem. 😉
Today’s musical terms:
fermata – a musical symbol that indicates to hold/pause on a note, played as long as the performer/director wishes
forte – loud
Fine – end of the song, stop here
NaPoWriMo
Prompt: a poem based on a news article
I cannot believe that during this unprecedented time of pandemic, when people are suffering and dying, losing loved ones and family members; medical professionals are desperate for supplies and people are bartering with toilet paper; the president of the United States thought it would be appropriate to sign an Executive Order on Space Resources. That’s right, he wants to profit from space mining. That is what he’s thinking about.
Quote from the “fact sheet” :
“Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view space as a global commons.”
So he makes a Space Force then creates a reason for there to be wars for it to fight? What a horror show. Does he think The Emperor from Star Wars was the good guy? Or does he just like his looks?
I also happened upon an article showing that we can’t even manage the National Laboratory at the International Space Center: Report criticizes management of ISS National Laboratory. I’m sure we’ll get it all sorted out before the death star is fully functional.
PAD Challenge
Prompt: pick a piece of clothing, use it as your title
The poem
The Business Casual Space Suit
The man is on a mission
Talk about an ill-fitting suit
He has a moon to conquer
and another planet to loot
The man needs a taller tower
and his snake oils are now lunar
His wreckage is universal
powders promise to get you there sooner
The man without compassion
inspires every greedy crook
but they don’t break any laws
because in space he re-wrote the book
The man is on a mission
His suit feels bulky, flattens his hair
He can’t wait to bounce on the surface
and remove his helmet when he gets there.
Experience Writing 
Let’s hope he does remove that helmet… (k)
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I’m glad you enjoyed that interpretation of my poem. 😉
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I share your outrage re: this disgraceful executive order… You can’t make this up. Thank you for shedding a light.
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I had to double check the .gov link before I published because it felt so unreal.
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It’s ludicrous. How it became an official document is beyond me.
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I don’t get that either. A few days after the election, I still believed our government had checks and balances. Wow, do I feel foolish.
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It’s hard to shake off the sense of doom and gloom, but we must continue to hope–what other alternative do we have?
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I, luckily, am female and single, so I can eventually marry a blind person who loves my voice, or my words, in Sweden, France or maybe Spain (I still don’t speak Spanish well). – All of that was an entirely sarcastic laugh (except perhaps the blind person and the Spanish part). The internet is not great for that. (I find my humor is difficult on the internet, I hope this lands safely).
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I got it!😉My humor–mostly macabre, which I inherited from my fatalistic mother–doesn’t always land safely either. Spanish can improve!💜
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Thank you. My humor also tends to be dark. That’s why I like to write flash and short stories about monsters, I think.
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I love the collage! It makes you take second looks and notice all the little details.And the poem is so matter-of-fact and dry, it’s PERFECT.
Yes the Liszt Academy is AMAZING (musician/geek here, but it’s what I do for a living).
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I finally have a working record player and found three albums of Liszt in my collection. I plan to spend the rest of the day listening to Liszt while I explore the virtual academy.
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I went to put on an album and it says Josef Hofmann and Ignace Jan Paderewski play Lizst. Am I having a dyslexic day? Or am I confused about the Liszt Academy?
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No no, I think that’s perfectly correct! Franz Lizst is a composer – the Academy was named after him. 🙂 They’re playing his pieces!
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So is it a language/spelling difference?
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I think it is – I’ve seen both spellings, and the Hungarian one uses yours too. So it’s probably a language thing (I can read some Hungarian but only to sing with, I don’t know the actual linguistic/grammatical structures.)
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My short visit to Hungary was unforgettable, but I didn’t get a chance to explore the language. It never crossed my mind, before today, that composers I’ve studied or played would have had English-spelled names.
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If it helps, in Spain, Bosch is referred to as El Bosco 🙂 Even artists do, so why not musicians!
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Yeah, I saw that yesterday. I guess it feels different because I once thought I would be a classical pianist. It was a daily torture under some teachers. I wish I had known the difference. Even today, when I was sharing the joy of finding the Liszt academy with my mom, she said, “You know Liszt is very hard to play.” I like that we have that language, but why can’t I be happy to see the pianos and art nouveau glass?
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You most certainly CAN. I’m classically trained, but I’m not the best classical pianist at all, and I’ve given up trying to play anything but Bach because I have tiny hands, but I’ve learned to accompany my students and play anything they hand me – and it’s fulfilling in a different sort of way. You don’t have to be good at anything to enjoy it or love it for the sake of itself (something I am trying to learn still about my writing…)
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