Musical Oddities I by Kamposer*

Richard Wagner is said to be one of the most biographed (if one may coin the word) historical figures, alongside Napoleon.  His music has been exhaustively analyzed, as have his writings.  Yet there remains room for fresh approaches.  For instance, Richard Wagner: A Mystic in the Making, by Alan David Aberbach (1991, Longwood Academic).

A bookplate featuring a winged horse bestriding a rainbow beneath the crescent moon (a nighttime rainbow, no less) seems appropriate to the esoteric subject matter treated within.

According to the preface, "no study has tried to systematically explore the development and evolution of Wagner's religious, spiritual, and mystic ideas."  The two parts of the book are entitled "Self-Realization" and "God-realization."  The author touches on Wagner's remarks on Jewishness (inevitably), as well as his brushes with Sufism, Schopenhauer, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Meister Eckhart.

A skim through the volume (which your correspondent intends to read some day) suggests the thesis that, like Proust, Wagner came eventually to believe in salvation through Art.  This sort of mysticism may be well-tailored to the artist, but: what about the rest of us?  Happily there remains garden-variety mysticism, which is so to speak an open book-- and of course reading; though few can be famous composers, all may read about them.

Next up: Anton Bruckner:Wagnerian toady or symphonic genius?

*Kamposer is a composer manqué and musical correspondent (plus book photographer) for Pistil Books.

Pistil Penthouse Premiere Party

Pistil Books had our first literary and musical event in our upstairs space (the Airbnb apartment mentioned in the previous post) this week and it turned out to be really fun.  Our format was an hour of music, food, wine and mingling followed by three readers, then more music as the party wound up.  Since our space was limited, all the guests were invited and we had a full house at about twenty people.

Thanks go to Kamposer and Moss Willow for providing the music, and to Kat Humphrey, Russell Scheidelman, and Stacey Levine for their readings.

Russell reading "Aphoristic Alibis." (Photo by Patricia Spencer.)

Here is Russell's smart and funny piece:


APHORISTIC ALIBIS

Assonance and alliteration, applied and aggregated alphabetically, archly assist an alleged
amateur author aggrieved at assembling aphoristic alibis advertised as art.

But beware--bystanders bemoan being besieged by blatantly belabored buffooneries borrowing
bookish buzzwords.

Catcalls can commemorate curiously contrived consonant concatenations.

Dandified dilettantes derivatively declaiming dubious "Debbie Does Dallas" dialectics deservedly

Enlightening eloquence ever eludes excessively ejaculated elocution effects.

Fastidiously following frivolous formalities fans furtive fantasies favoring foot flight.

Gullible guests, gathered gleefully, go gagging.

Heroic holdovers hover haplessly, hardly hearing.

Ignominiously injured, I issue immediate instructions invalidating imminently insufferable
idiomatic iterations, initially irreversible in intent.

KAMIKAZE KITSCH KEEPS KICKING!

Let like-lettered lexicon listings long lapidate lingering listeners loudly!

Meanwhile, my maniacally monotonous method, marching mechanically, makes me mentally
map many minefields menacing my mission's mad momentum.

Namely: narrowing name numbers, not now noteworthy, nevertheless nestle noxiously nearby.

Oddball occupants of oncoming orthographic outposts offer odious options or otherwise
obliterate orally outlandish opportunities.

Panic pervades Portlandia's potentially poorest pen-pushing poseur ploddingly pickpocketing
Peter Piper's peck.

"Quit quavering!" quibblers quip--quixotically.

Russell resumes reading: "Rotgut rivers regularly rinsed Rapunzel's Rastafarian rope-like ribs."

Something sinister somehow spoiled Society's simpler speculations surrounding several
Spanish strangers spotted Sunday slyly selling Superman's so-called sacred Spandex, slightly

Totalitarian teetotallers torrentially taught transformative truths that tenacious tipplers typically

Uhura University's unearthly undergraduates ubiquitously underwent unnerving urges up until
unanimously using up uniquely unctuous underarm unguents utterly unlike Uranus's.

V veers victorious: vociferously validating Vaudevillian verbosity, voluminously vaunting
vainglorious vassals, voraciously vacuuming Valentino's vast vocabulary.

While Washington wondered warily whether war was what Warsaw wanted, wordsmiths worried
wearily whether words were worth Wordsworth's while.

Xerxes xeroxed "Xanadu".

You yawning yet?

Zulita's Zionism ziplocked Zorro's zipper.

The view from the balcony at sunset. (Photo by Patricia Spencer).