Monday Music: Aerial Boundaries

When my wife and I had been dating for about three months, I bought her the 1984 Windham Hill Sampler. To this day, it is one of my favorite recordings. I am sure one of the reasons for my fondness toward it is that we listened to it during those early days of courtship, but it is also full of great music. One of my favorite tracks on that album is “Aerial Boundaries,” by the late Michael Hedges. Hedges was a true genius at his craft. His first two albums, Breakfast in the Fields, and Aerial Boundaries were ground-breaking events in acoustic guitar music. Hedges used various alternate tunings for his songs, and a number of techniques including slap harmonics to achieve his unique style.

Here is Michael Hedges' Aerial Boundaries:

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Spamming Some Laughs

This is a funny one from the “I am not making this up” department. The Spam filter on my email is pretty good about weeding out those unwanted Viagra solicitations. This week when I checked my spam summary I had to laugh at these two. 

The Abbey of the Arts is “an online global monastery without walls offering retreats, classes, books, and resources to nurture contemplative practice and creative expression.”  Writers’ Digest is a magazine offering tips and advice on writing from the experts. See if you can figure out why these two email entries were blocked by my spam filter:

From The Abbey of the Arts:  “Infinitely Enlarge Your Life + New option for Women on the Threshold!”

From Writer’s Digest: “4 Ways to Improve Plot/Climax in Your Writing”

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Gore Vidal, 1925 - 2012

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

The world lost another great writer this week. Gore Vidal died Tuesday at the age of 86. He was a versatile and prolific writer, not without controversy, who enjoyed being a public figure. The New York Times has an article well worth reading which you can find here.

Two novels of his that I especially enjoyed reading were were Burr (which gave a slightly different take on our founding fathers in early American history) and Creation (which was a fascinating tale set in the middle of the wondrous Axial Age and revealed some of the roots of our current philosophies, both West and East). Both of these books made quite an impression on me and the stories he told therein have stayed with me for a long time. 

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Writers' Digest has a tribute "Remembering Gore Vidal: 10 Quotes on Writing" which you can read here.

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