Greetings, One & All~
Time waits for no one, so there’s no time like the present to begin a new year of shared creativity. Wishing your and yours a peaceful and prosperous 2023 with this January issue of your A 440 Newsletter. Enjoy it all in joy!
Bright & Early
The new year’s music starts bright and early at 10 AM on Sunday January 1st: my first Unity Duo service of 2023 with singer/songwriter/guitarist/keyboardist and Unity in the Valley Musical Director Amber Norgaard; a second helping will be served up this month on Sunday January 29th. Watch this space for all our 2023 dates as they unfold!
VoyagePhoenix
The culture and lifestyle magazine VoyagePhoenix recently featured your humble narrator in its Inspiring Stories series: the interview and a generous photo spread can be enjoyed in the online edition at:
http://voyagephoenix.com/interview/check-out-will-clipmans-story/
Thanks to the 2,000+ folks who have engaged thus far with the Facebook post of this item by Shery Christopher, who graciously manages my Fb Artist Page for me. Full disclosure: I don’t do social media; so while I sincerely appreciate and thoroughly enjoy your enthusiastic and supportive comments, please email me for a personal reply!
photo courtesy Shery Christopher Photography
STC Singles
2023 will see the release of a series of singles by my newest musical collaboration: STC, featuring Chris Screven (guitars & midi instruments); Joe Townend (basses & flutes); and Will Clipman (drums & world percussion). Our uniquely original fusion of contemporary instrumental and world music styles will be available for downloading and streaming on CDBaby beginning with the February 1st drop of The Migration, followed by first-of-the-month drops of Where Did They Go? and Jupiter & Saturn, with an album’s worth of subsequent singles to follow. Watch this space for STC updates!
band photo and cover art courtesy Joe Townend Media
Poem of the Month
For Richard Shelton, 1933-2022: friend, mentor and poetic soul of the Sonoran Desert.
Words
When I have given up words
I will have become what I have to say.
~ Richard Shelton, Desert
You only demanded one thing of me:
to do what I do well as well as I could.
You were only as relentless with others
as you were with yourself. Maybe less.
You taught me that words are things
with texture and aroma, gravity and
an inner light, not mere abstractions
that substitute for things themselves.
You led me to love this sacred desert
more than I love the sound of my own
voice, though the word sacred would
have stuck in your craw like cholla
because when everything is sacred
nothing is, and because that which is
profane has earned its rightful place
in this thorny rock-strewn paradise.
We sat across from each other at both
the gleaming altars of academia and
the scarred discarded desktops inside
prison walls, and your demand never
wavered: pay attention, speak truth,
make every syllable count as if your
life depends on it. Sometimes it does.
Let beauty take care of itself because
it always does, and doesn’t need our
help, however much we long to give it.
© Will Clipman 2022
Photos of the Month
Shery Christopher was up and about early (as she is every day) on the first day of winter to witness the spectacular beauty of the winter solstice sunrise illuminating the rising crescent moon here at Rancho Improvisoso; moments later, one of our resident great horned owls hooted a greeting behind her and then flew right over her head from west to east to greet the solstice dawn. Enjoy!
Winter Solstice Sunrise with Crescent Moon, courtesy Shery Christopher Photography
A week later, in the midst of some welcome end-of-the-year winter rain, yours truly emerged from a recording session in The Boom Boom Room at precisely the moment when sunset ignited the western horizon, and snapped this bookend image to close out 2022 and begin 2023 in beauty. Enjoy!
Fire & Rain, ICU Imagery
~May the new year bring you peace and prosperity~
Adventure is found not in the what but in the how.
~Guillaume Henri
Will Clipman
poet ~ percussionist ~ maskmaker ~ storyteller ~ performing artist ~ educator
www.willclipman.com
williamclipman@aol.com
facebook.com/willclipman
https://www.youtube.com/@willclipman4187
520.591.0776