Every year, NPR has a contest for people, independent musicians, to send in videos of themselves (or their bands) performing a piece of original music, with a desk nearby. It’s in the rules: there must be a desk. The winner gets flown to Washington, D.C., to perform in the studio and be broadcast all over the country. A friend sent me the link, so I made this video and entered.
Another friend saw the video and called me Mr. Rogers. Everybody is a comedian.
Created from a seven-and-a-half hour hi-res video made available by Channel NRK2, on the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. I felt it would be perfect for “winter blue,” from the album “the seasons [remixed/remastered].” Finally got around to doing the edits. Yes, very happy with it!
Watch full-screen with a good sound system!
From the NRK2 website: Friday November 27th, over 1,2 million Norwegians watched parts of «Bergensbanen» on NRK2. The longest documentary ever? At least the longest we have made, almost 7 1/2 hours, showing every minute of the scenic train ride between Bergen on the Norwegian west coast, crossing the mountains to the capital of Oslo.
Original download page: http://nrkbeta.no/bergensbanen
English: https://nrkbeta.no/2009/12/18/bergensbanen-eng/
2101 Franklin St.
Oakland, CA
May 13, 2016
NOTE new time: 8:00 p.m. sharp!
Rachel Efron, for whose work I cannot overstate my admiration, asked me to open for her this coming Friday, May 13, in downtown Oakland.
Rachel is songwriting chanteuse without peer: her songs are melodic, smart, haunting, perfectly crafted, hopelessly romantic. I fall in love with her every time I see her play. I am not alone.
Rachel Efton
The other person on the show, Mike Oliviero, hails from LA.
You can listen to and purchase (this is recommended!) the all-new remixed and remastered the seasons cd, an electronic/orchestral symphony for the new century at Bandcamp!
I’ve told the story before, but here it is again:
some years back, i was homeless in los angeles and I lucked out, briefly, when a friend offered me her apartment for a few weeks while she was traveling. my life had gone painfully awry. i was broke, living day to day, in a near-suicidal state of depression, no hope in sight.
so i did what i had done so many times before: i went down below to where the music is. whatever storms raged above the surface could not touch me down there. i can only assume other artists know of which i speak, or anyone who has perhaps submerged him/herself in meditation, or prayer, or focused labor, which, now that i think about it, comprise the sum total of my creative process. i had planned a four-song cycle, each about fifteen minutes long.
In the days that followed, these are the songs that flowed through, as i journeyed across a terrain of emotional devastation and spiritual desolation. as the pieces took shape, my spirit began to lift. it seemed as if i were channeling the music from someplace else, with the help of tiny deities, sprites and nymphs. the pieces defined a story, that of this very accidental journey, which had taken me out of my comfortable oakland home of ten years and plunged me into a world of uncertainty and
occasional danger.
some distance, now, from the original composing of the seasons i must say that my understanding of the dire situation in which i found myself and the subsequent resolution and release through the act of creation abides, stronger than ever. i rightly intuited, as i neared its completion, that the arc of the seasons followed campbell’s archetypal hero’s journey in a most wonderful way. i would ascribe the elements of the story thusly: summer of ‘68 ~ the call & crossing the threshold autumnal sun ~ the road of trials, meeting with the goddess
& diving into the abyss winter blue ~ death, rebirth, transformation & atonement the forever spring ~ the magic flight, the crossing of the
return threshold & freedom to live. may this music be an accompaniment to your own secret journey.
