musical confessions

TRUE STORY. My audition for high school show choir was so disastrous that later in the semester when Bobby Gillette had to drop out, the director of the choir invited me to take Bobby’s spot, but only on the condition that I lip-sync instead of sing. I would merely be a place filler, in other words, a means of preserving the symmetry of the choreography. Under no circumstances could I actually produce any noises with my mouth. Of course I said yes. The cummerbunds were red, and so were the bow-ties. The music was Andrew Lloyd Webber. And there was a very symmetric starburst at the finale of the medley thanks to my pair of jazz hands.

golden age of catahoula, part 1

THE SHOT: A wide shot of the levee road on a sunny blue summer day. An old pickup truck enters the frame and winds down the levee road, leaving a cloud of dust behind it. It turns onto Highway 96 by Red’s Levee Bar and heads toward the Catahoula bridge.

improv

I PLAY MY BRAIN like a jazz trumpet.

                   I’m thinking of you, Juanita Juanita.

     I’m thinking of you, Geronimo Creek.

history of catahoula school

THE CATAHOULA LAKE SCHOOL opened at its present site on September 19, 1936. Hugh Daspit, as principal, along with five other teachers taught grades one through seven. The six room structure was of cement blocks but without modern conveniences.

contain

THE SKULL contains the brain, but it doesn’t contain the mind. We walk around thinking our minds are in our heads, but the mind is only an inner space of the body metaphorically. Eyeballs aren’t peepholes brains peek through. Movies aren’t projected in some cinema between our ears. It’s pitch black inside there every second of every day. Even in full sun, our brains are always dark. Our heads are light-tight, even when our eyes are open.

the golden age of catahoula, part 2

the suchness of humans

I FOUND HIM near the nurse’s station in his wheelchair, receiving a cup of pills in his hands. His right leg, badly mangled in the accident, had been screwed and pinned back together and wrapped up in a soft cast. He couldn’t bend it at the knee, so when I wheeled him around and down the hallway to his room in the locked unit, I was mindful of the large sweep his outstretched right leg made as we rounded the corners.