Greetings, One & All~

This month will be a skywatcher’s delight, with the Full Sturgeon Supermoon on August 1st and the Blue Supermoon on August 30th; indeed, a full day of monsoon storm clean-up here at Rancho Improvisoso today has necessitated an evening full moon A 440 session, so those of you in other hemispheres may awaken to yours tomorrow rather than ending your day with it today. It will be a month full of musical magic and mystery here as well. Round all that out with your Poem of the Month and a hand-picked portfolio of Photos of the Month and you’ve got a delightful August 2023 issue of your A 440 Newsletter awaiting you. Be well and be in touch!



image courtesy The Old Farmer’s Almanac, all rights reserved


New STC Single

It’s the first of the month, and you know what that means (aside from the arrival of your August A 440 Newsletter, of course): it’s the official release date for your new monthly STC single, this one entitled Slippin’. As always, you can access all manner of streaming and downloading options for all our energetic and energizing music via our website:

stcmusic.org




Canyon Cool

The epic heat of Summer ’23 calls for cool music to enjoy in the climate-controlled comfort of your own favorite listening environment, and there is nothing cooler in Willyworld that the thirty-seven albums I have out on Canyon Records. You can peruse a refreshing selection of timeless favorites (though by no means all of them!) at:

https://canyonrecords.com/page/1/?s=will+clipman&post_type=product





Trance Dance

With my most recent Heart Dance Records release, the EP Ubiquity by Evenfall (Sherry Finzer & Cass Anawaty, featuring Will Clipman) leading the way, HDR is rockin’ the airwaves thanks to Sherry’s latest satellite launch. You can sample, stream and download this transformational trance groove music and/or my two previous Heart Dance LP’s The Space Between Breaths by Sherry Finzer & Will Clipman, and Trialogue by Sherry Finzer, Darin Mahoney & Will Clipman via the handy dandy click-on links below:


https://www.heartdancerecords.com/post/evenfall-feat-william-clipman-ubiquity





https://www.heartdancerecords.com/post/sherry-finzer-will-clipman-the-space-between-breaths





https://www.heartdancerecords.com/post/sherry-finzer-darin-mahoney-will-clipman-trialogue






Sonic Architecture

Monday-Wednesday August 21-23, I’ll be laying down a sound foundation for a new project by virtuoso bassist, violinist, composer & sonic architect Rob Paulus at Saint Cecilia Studios with ace engineer Steven Lee Tracy at the board. This promises to be a most remarkable recording, so watch this space for updates as this aural edifice arises!



Bassmaster Rob in The Boom Boom Room



Bowshredder Rob in The Boom Boom Room



Unity Duo

August 27th is the last Sunday of the month, and you know what that means: yours truly will join alt-folk singer-songwriter, peace warrior and Unity in the Valley musical director Amber Norgaard at 10 AM for another sizzling summer morning of high-spirited musical service in Sahuarita AZ with the friendly and inclusive Unity community!






Wilde Spirals

It’s fascinating how things continue to spiral toward rendezvous and re-connection. Having played the world-renowned Musical Instrument Museum Theater last fall, the Wilde Boys most recently played the equally acoustically dynamic Kitt Recital Hall at the Northern Arizona University School of Music: turns out the two halls were designed by the same folks! The pristine sound, steeply-raked seating and intimate capacity ensures an impeccable listening and viewing experience for audiences at both venues, in both of which your peripatetic pan-global percussionist is most grateful to have performed as part of our on-going Spiral Rendezvous Tour.



MIM Stage



MIM Kit



Kitt Stage



Kitt Kit


Just over the horizon, our next appearance will be at the legendary Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe NM, where the architecture, acoustic design and overall aesthetic excellence have made it a sought-after venue for world-class artists worldwide.


preview and tickets at

https://lensic.org/events/nakai-trio/





Photos of the Month

Your humble narrator has been bitten by a particularly virulent shutterbug; with no pretensions to photographic professionalism, I find the more attention I pay the more I’m rewarded with small moments of big beauty. . . right in my own backyard, as they say. The challenge is selecting a manageable tip-of-the-iceberg sequence of images to share with you month-to-month!


This brilliant little hedgehog cactus, its lobes no bigger than a child’s fist, explodes with color from its shady nesting spot under an old creosote bush and behind a new cholla at the southwest corner of my studio.




It’s bufo time! Bufo Incilius Alvarius, commonly known as the Colorado River Toad, emerges from underground for only a month or so out of the year to mate; I rescued this one from our pool the morning after a recent monsoon downpour aroused it from its burrow.




These two roadrunners demonstrate the effectiveness of their camouflage against the backdrop of our ancient olive tree, given away only by the brilliant slash of orange, white and blue along their temples as they pause for a drink and peruse the hanging feeders overhead.




Let me pose for a close-up inside the walled yard!




I don’t think so. . . this is MY yard!




How Harris’s antelope squirrels can climb a cholla to pluck the nutritious buds without getting pin-cushioned by its needle-sharp, barbed and slightly toxic thorns remains a mystery: this one is fully extended upside down and headed to the den with its prize.




Don’t be alarmed: tarantulas look fierce but are actually quite shy and harmless unless antagonized; this beauty was our first of the season, driven–like the toad–from its burrow by a monsoon deluge and seeking refuge for the night on our warm dry patio under the ramada.




In the record-breaking heat we’ve had this summer, every living thing has been engaged in a constant effort to keep cool; this collared lizard, one of many who frequent our yard and grounds, stretched out for at least an hour along the crevice between the bottom of our fountain and the patio, where a cool moist downdraft was emanating from under the fountain’s circulating reservoir of water. I call this photo Fountain of Dreams.




Our resident collared lizard Redhead would never forgive me if I didn’t include a shot of her posing on her favorite brick beneath the greenhouse sink, patiently awaiting her breakfast of mealworms. Good morning, Redhead!




Ah, sunset: ours are routinely spectacular here in the Sonoran Desert on the western outskirts of The Old Pueblo; this one immediately preceded a torrential monsoon downpour and was taken neck-deep in the pool as the cold fat heavy drops began pelting me on the head, just before the sun broke below the cloud bank and just after. What I wouldn’t do to get you the perfect camera angle?!








Poem of the Month


Before the Sun Sets



Four ravens jawing in the dead grandfather tree

this morning remind me: I need to say goodbye

to The Old Man of Hoy,

The Old Man of Storr,

all standing stones

and circles of standing stones.



I need to kiss Byron Glacier one more time

before it’s gone, the frigid blue

barely liquid rivulet running between my feet

out of the miniature ice cave at its mammoth base.



I need to feel Pele’s heat beneath my feet again

as I cross the moonscape of Kiluaea Iki,

cooled just enough to let hikers back in

and me the first one

with this whole new world to myself,

emerging out of riotous primordial rainforest

into an obsidian black and charcoal gray lava field

to chance upon a single red ohi’a blossom

dead center in the caldera

as a rainstorm pours cloud over the lip of the crater

and the cycle of creation and destruction starts again.



I call in the great horned owl this evening:

it swoops down through darkening desert dusk

and lands on the standing waterbowl

outside the kitchen window for a pre-hunt drink;

harbinger, messenger, totem, myth–

but most of all itself being itself.



To read too much into it, or not to read–

that is the question; what to make

of the patterns in petroglyphs and galaxies,

if anything, beyond what they appear to be and are:

some other like mind making what meaning it can of it all,

leaving behind intelligible markings

to be wondered at, pondered, deciphered, decoded–

maybe even suddenly understood as the last light leaves.





© Will Clipman 2023








~May the fullness of two August moons illuminate your Way~








To become disillusioned, one must first have believed in an illusion.

~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