Greetings, One & All~
You may have thought the absence of your A 440 Newsletter on the first of the month was an April Fool’s prank. Not so!
The truth is, April 1st fell right smack in the midst of my Myths & Masks Artist-in-Residency at Cheyenne Traditional School: my daily regimen of rising at 4 AM to be out the door and on the road to Scottsdale by 6 AM, conducting workshops all day, commuting the 2+ hours back to Tucson, and having three hours of conscious time at home before hitting the hay at 8 PM to do it all over again simply didn’t permit me to get this one out on my customary deadline.
It’s all good, though–as is the news in your April A 440–no foolin’!
Myths & Masks
Speaking of my AiR at Cheyenne, that’s a great place to begin. The students have been writing some truly exceptional Mythic Persona poetry this year, and of course having a marvelous multi-disciplinary learning experience sculpting and painting their masks. We’ll wrap things up on Monday April 6th with our day of 3D embellishment.
As always, the professional partnership of the teachers and the generous support of the Cheyenne community have been the keys to our success–that, and the hard work and brilliant creativity of all these gifted young artists!
“The Fluency of Fire and Ice”
New Media
On Thursday April 9th at 1 PM EDT I’ll be interviewed on the Best Ever You show
by co-hosts Elizabeth Hamilton & Dr. Walter Jacobson. We’ll be discussing a wide range of topics spanning the realms of music, art, poetry, philosophy and spirituality–heck, we may even delve into relativity and quantum physics!
You can tune in live or retrieve the archive at
www.BlogTalkRadio.com/BestEverYou
Review
The trance-groove CD Worlds Within by Sol & Will recently received a glowing review on An Angel’s Kiss, a site devoted to music, culture and spirituality.
Give it a read at
Worlds Within Review
and as always you can order your copy of this dynamic vocal-and-drum duet at
http://www.willclipman.com/purchase_a_cd_or_dvd.php
On Stage
R. Carlos Nakai & Will Clipman will appear in concert at Sea of Glass Center for the Arts on Saturday April 18th at 7:30 PM, performing selections from their GRAMMY-Nominated Canyon Records album Awakening the Fire as well as never-before-heard improvisations.
Info & tickets at
http://theseaofglass.org/events/356/r-carlos-nakai-will-clipman
Awakening the Fire and other selected recordings (including Nakai’s newly-minted Platinum Record Special Edition of the classic Canyon Trilogy) will be available for purchase at the show, and of course you can always order your copy at
http://www.willclipman.com/purchase_a_cd_or_dvd.php
Preview
You won’t want to miss The Gathering, sponsored by the Renaissance of the North American Flute Foundation, in Flagstaff AZ on June 11-13. I’ll be there presenting a workshop called The Flute and the Drum Are One, playing drums and percussion with the new incarnation of the R. Carlos Nakai Quartet in a showcase performance on closing night, accompanying R. Carlos and other renowned world musicians in a two-hour pre-event meditation concert, performing as a special guest artist with Mark Holland, and throwing down with The Gathering All-Stars in the grand finale!
Info & registration at
and performance listings at
www.rnaff.org/performers
RCNQ & Will photos courtesy Shery Christopher Photography
Return of the Muse
So many of you expressed appreciation for last month’s Muse of Balance poem, I thought I’d be remiss in not sharing these shots of rock balancer Patty Whitley practicing her uncanny art:
This last shot is a whimsical montage called Watching Van Gogh she created to depict my departure from her home with the piano she and her husband Bert gave me–if you look closely in the background, you can see the X-ray image of the piano in the van!
Poem of the Month
T.S. Eliot wrote in the opening of The Waste Land:
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
I suppose that’s true in cold climates where winter’s comfortable slumber is achingly disturbed by the first awakenings of spring. Here in Sonora, April is a subtle riot of color and movement as the desert plants explode in blossom, the reptiles make their startled debuts, the birds build nests and hatch clutches of eggs, and the mammals scramble about gathering sustenance for their young. Your April Poem of the Month attempts to capture in verse the breathless dynamism of this seasonal cycle in the form of a stroll through the Sweetwater Wetlands Preserve near Tucson.
All That Is
yes it is
sweet
yes it is
wet
yes it preserves
sweetness and wetness
yes it is
a living breathing
endlessly reincarnating
yes
it does smell
rank and tangy
as if all the senses
were one
sensation
of life bubbling up through
and death percolating down into
this opaque integument
on which waterfowl forage
beside which turtles sun themselves
above which songbirds and dragonflies
sing and fly
into which all that says
yes
flows
and because of which
all that is
is
© Will Clipman, 2015; from Wilderness in the Marrow
Photo of the Month
And on the eve of first Full Moon following the Vernal Equinox, what better way to close your April A 440 than with an image of the partial eclipse setting over the Tucson Mountains, courtesy of Shery Christopher Photography & Dreamtime Arts. . . .
~Peace & Blessings, One & All~
None of us will ever finish
everything we’ve set out to accomplish;
do what can be done
and be content.
~Guillaume Henri
