Of--the mouth in the wood

The mouth in the wood by Loren Chasse
yet another instrument generously salvaged from a flea market by my father...

listening to orcas island

During the night, perhaps a dozen otters visited the deck of the cabin. We awoke hearing the sounds of their running and sliding across the wet wood, a few shrill squeaks, and the surf raking and tumbling stones. In faint light from moonlit clouds, we could see the silhouettes of the otters poised suspensefully on the low dune between the cabin and the beach.
Elsewhere that day, the singing of raindrops and mud along a footpath....

Cymbals spinning

Scenes from a performance at Portland's Bamboo Grove--featuring paintings of rocks, trees, leaves and natural forces by my friend Eugene Lee. Eugene asked me to make music using metal, yet I can't resist an opportunity to make another landscape of paper and sand.

summer boredom, part last: the Hoh River's mouth

Our steps stretch
from entire tree
to entire tree,
sent to sea,
tumbled
and bleached
by waves and beached
amid the clatter
of driftwood elbows and ribs, sloughed in deep beds,
all chatter
beneath feet.
At last, the tent pitched in this dark,
on hard-to-find sand.
Which acre of perfect round stones
most purrs and most clacks in the laps of the tide?
And of what ground should our fire be built on the sky?
Seeing none of this, really, until morning,
the ghosts of whole forests tumbled and bleached
at our backs on the heaps.

Seaward, an ominous solid
ticks and thrums
beneath the lunar blood-thorn
sinking,
dragging again
the day's light to sea.

summer bordeom pt 3: matanuska

I just spent a full day with my cousin traipsing around the Matanuska Glacier in Alaska. In the stillness between the waves of warm air, the glacier speaks in hisses, snaps, gurgles, drips and an occasional slam as if of a sheet of metal unfurls somewhere in the depths. Mesmerized by the details of this ice cosmos, oblivious for a time to my own physical situation within it, when I settle in my shoes again I wonder if the terrain has changed enough during my trance that the path to this ridge has already changed its shape enough that I will not be able to follow it back?

Here's how the day looked and sounded....
Listening to the Matanuska Glacier by Loren Chasse

Bertoia gong

In the spirit of 'summer boredom', sifting through boxes of stuff, I decided to begin archiving sounds from an overwhelming heap of mini discs. Here's the sound of one of Harry Bertoia's gongs (played with one hand while recording with the other) on display in downtown Allentown, PA. Bertoia gong by Loren Chasse

Unenao Raamat

Going through stacks of books today, I came across these old children's magazines printed on newsprint (the author of this one is called Seppel...the title means 'dream book'!).
I found them a few years ago in a used bookshop in Tartu, Estonia.
I remember my friend Hitoshi Kojo and I doing battle over them! Fortunately, after frenzied digging we found duplicates of some of them.

Again, I find myself asking: What music would accompany this world?