Matthew Evans

And yet another experimental scene, but instead of describing a place, it describes a person.  Instead of creating a whole new character I just reused Sam from one of my previous posts The Visitor.

     Matthew Evans was not an ordinary boy.  In fact he was what some people would call peculiar.  But compared to the circumstances Sam had recently found himself in, nothing seemed strange anymore.  In fact to Sam, he seemed like a rather ordinary joe . . . at first.

     From across the busy intersection Sam could see that he was wearing a pair of old no-name shoes, a pair of blue jeans and a brown long sleeve shirt.  The crosswalk sign gave the signal and Sam began to walk. As he came closer he could see that on his right arm Matthew was wearing a watch, no, a stopwatch, and very similar to the one he was wearing.  In his left hand he carried a cell phone which he talked into.  It was hard to tell what he was saying over the noise of the traffic but noting the concerned look on his face it was obviously something important.  Matthew also had dark brown eyes, which never stayed in one place, and above them was a mop of slightly tousled brown hair.

     When Sam was halfway across the intersection Matthew spotted him.  Quickly he ended the conversation with whoever he was talking to and slipped the phone into his pocket.  By then Sam was just stepping onto the sidewalk.

     “Hello there . . .” he began.

     “No time for that,” Matthew interrupted.

     “Huh?”

     “Or that.  I’ll introduce myself later.  But first, I gotta get you out o’ here.

A Ship!

Another experimental paragraph, this time in first person.

     For the second time I knocked on the door to the captain’s cabin.

     “Captain Morris?”

     Silence.

     I grasped the door handle and, finding it unlocked, opened the door and scanned the room.

     No sign of him anywhere, then I spotted his officer’s coat hanging from the bedpost.  Strange, I thought.  He never leaves his cabin without his jacket.

     I walked over to the captain’s desk and admired his array of maps, charts, and various navigational instruments all organized and in their proper place.  Off to the side and seemingly out of place, like a flower amongst rocks, there was a little picture frame enclosing a portrait of his beloved wife Susan.  I picked up one of his many feather quill pens and stroked the soft barbs.

     Completely forgetting my purpose of being down in the captain’s cabin I put down the feather and strolled over to the mirror above his chest-o’-drawers.  I straightened my collar and donned his tricorn hat.  Looking in the mirror, I could imagine the days when I would eventually become a captain, with my own desk and room and . . . a whole ship with trusty sailors ready to do anything at my command.  I took a whiff of the fresh sea air coming in through the open window.  Oh yes, those would be the days.

     I walked back over to his desk, picked up his spyglass, and looked out the window.  Then I saw it: the ship of Bart Roberts.  I stared through the spyglass for a few moments before flinging the hat and spyglass on the desk then dashing through the doorway and up the stairs to the deck shouting “Pirates!  Man the guns!  Prepare for battle!”

A Visitor

A experimental paragraph I wrote describing an environment and a fictitious character's reaction to it.

     Sam opened his eyes, the ringing sound faded away as the last streaks of blue cleared from his vision.  He sat up, looked around, and found that he was in a forest.  A very ancient forest by the look; old gnarled trees with massive limbs reaching in all directions stood at regular intervals from each other.  He drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out for the smell of the forest was not, as one might expect, musty or rotten but fresh and energizing.  He stood, began to walk around, and smiled.  The sun shone down in great shafts between the branches of the trees, illuminating the thick oak leaves.  As he walked, all was quiet except for a slight breeze which rustled in the leaves overhead.  It was not an eerie quiet but a peaceful and yet surreal quiet.  This was no wonder to Sam of course, the places those strange doors led to always seemed so very real while at the same time carried a hint of replication, like a painting which looks realistic but at the same time is just a painting.  If only I knew it were real, he thought.  He walked over to one of the trees and brushed his hand against its rough bark.  He stood there for what seemed like only a few minutes, but could have been hours, when he was startled back to his senses by a beeping sound.  He looked down at the small digital stopwatch on his right arm which read 00:10 and counting.  “Time to go,” he said aloud, then returning to where he had lain before lay down and waited.  The stopwatch continued beeping with every second that passed, 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . 0 . . . .  Suddenly the trees, the light, the moss on the rocks all flickered blue and in a second, was gone.

My new blog.

Hey guys, check out my new music blog!


http://compositioncrescendo.blogspot.com/?zx=a7d313302e0b9def

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Cats vs. Dogs

“This here’s a hold-up! So put yer ‘ands on yer head and go sit in that chair over thar,” said the robber to the bank teller as he cocked his revolver. “Now you jest stay thar and don’t get any ideas about callin’ fer help.”


“Y-yes sum – I mean, sir, er . . .” stuttered the nervous teller as he stiffly moved over to the chair and sat down. I’m sure to get it good from old Smithers this time, he thought. These thieves always seem to know just the right times for a hold-up, what with the Sherriff out o’ town and all.

“Now, give me the key to the back room and keep a hand on yer head. Hurry now, Sherriff’s due back any minute.”

Using one hand, the teller reached for his belt and began removing an oversized ring with one brass key on it. After a bit of struggling he successfully removed the ring and began to hand it to the thief. “Here you are –

“Sshh! Did you hear a bark?” asked the robber.

Horatio!? Thought the teller. “I don’t –

“Aw, just gimme the key”

Just as the robber grabbed the key ring from the teller and began walking toward the back room, there was a quick shuffling outside the front doorway. The robber turned around quickly and was about to say something to the teller, but before he could get his words out found himself on the ground staring into the snarling face of a black Labrador. He instinctively reached for his gun, which was knocked from his hand during the tackle.

“Whew!” exclaimed the teller kicking the gun further away from the thief. “You came just in time Horatio, good boy!” He leaned down and took the keys from the petrified thief.



Consider the previous excerpt from a short story. Does it make you want to get a dog? If not, at least you appreciate the existence of the Labrador in the story. Now, say I was to change a few things in the story, replace the dog with a cat. It just wouldn’t work, would it? Granted, I like cats, but dogs – in my opinion – are better.

Cats are smart and warm and fuzzy. Not all dogs are fuzzy or necessarily cuddly, but they are very smart. Cats look cute and can be quite funny at times. Not all dogs may look cute or have funny antics, but those are the ones who are the mountain man’s hunting partner or the fireman’s most reliable rescue dog. Both of these creatures can be trained to be good indoor or outdoor pets. Now, with these similarities it may look as if the Cat and the Dog are on equal par. Not so, I say.

Dogs are usually friendly; cats can be friendly, but most carry a sort of “hostile” propriety. Both indoor and outdoor dogs can be trained to go outside and do their “business” in a designated spot. Cats can do the same but are harder to train. Even though cats clean themselves by licking and dogs usually don’t, cats sometime or another will have to get rid of what they cleaned themselves of; hence, hairballs on your carpet. Dogs come in a variety of shapes and sizes, so you have a wide selection to pick from when choosing one. There are larger versions of cats, but, let’s just they aren’t very cuddly.

By now, I think you get my point. I really like dogs. Yes, there some breeds of dogs I do not like, such as the ones who have been bred and bred to be smaller and smaller (and smaller . . . you might as well get a hamster) or to have more and more of a squished face. Most of those toy dogs are ugly and yappy. I tend to like the more robust and larger hounds, ready to wallop bad guys, go for a hunt, or just sit out on the porch and watch the sun go down.

Which do you like better?

Richard Strauss

     This is the fourth (but not final) draft of a short bioagraphy about Richard Strauss I wrote recently, thought you would enjoy it.
    
     Richard Strauss was born in Munich Bavarian, 1864. He was a composer of the late Romantic and early Modern eras. He primarily wrote Operas, Tone Poems, and Leider. In fact, his tone poem An Alpine Symphony was the first music released commercially on a compact disc by Deutsche Grammaphon in 1983.
     In his early years he had a conservative musical upbringing from his father Franz Strauss, the respected first horn in the Meiningen Court Orchestra. Richard started piano at age five (later to go on to violin at eight) and took his first steps in composition at age 6, beginning with Schneiderpolka (Tailor’s Polka), notated by his father. He also attended several Operas early his in life where he was enraptured as much by the orchestra as the scenes on stage. Later, he studied violin with his second cousin and leader of the court orchestra, Benno Walter.
     Although he started writing music at a young age, it was not until 1875 that he took composition lessons with Hofkapellmeister Freidrich Wilhelm Mayer to whom he dedicated his first orchestral work, a Serenade in G major. Compositions around this time were naturally conservative. In 1882 he began two terms at Munich University, studying philosophy, aesthetics, and art history, but not music. However, three years later he became assistant conductor to Hanz Bülow at the Meiningen Court Orchestra, succeeding him as principal conductor later in the year. During this time he met violinist and composer Alexander Ritter who strongly influenced Strauss’s compositions. He encouraged him to abandon the conservative style of writing and to start writing tone poems, which he did. His first one being, Macbeth.
     In addition to this newly found interest he wrote his first opera, Guntram, which was a failure along with his second attempt, Feuersnot, which he wrote six years later, was also a failure. In 1894 he conducted a premiere of Guntram with Pauline de Ahna as Freihild, the Heroine. He had met the Ahna Family on a vacation outside Munich, in 1887, he was giving singing lesson to the eldest Ahna daughter Pauline whom he married in September of 1894. Three years later they had a son, which they named Franz.
     Around the turn of the century he became Kapellmeister of the Court Opera. He also helped found the guild for the promotion of new music Genossenshaft Deutscher Tonsetzer, the first steps in copyright protection for composers, as well as putting music to playwright Oscar Wilde’s, Salome.
     Six months before the greatly successful premiere of Salome, his father died in Dresden at 83 years of age. Just five years later, the same year he finished Der Rosenkavalier (The Knight of the Rose), his mother Josepha died, aged 73. Soon after their deaths he began working on one of his most famous tone poems mentioned earlier, Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony).
     Looking at a timeline of his life during World War I it would seem that he was hardly affected by it. He even accepted the position as co-director of the Vienna State Opera with Franz Schalk. However, World War II was a different matter. Before the war in 1933, without his consultation, he was appointed president of Reichmusikkammer.  Three years later he was forced to resign because of collaboration with Jewish writer Stefan Zweig. He was also an official of the Third Reich, yet he used this position to protect his daughter-in-law, Alice, who was also Jewish. It would seem he was apolitical. However, from his work Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) he apparently embraced the socialistic ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche.
     At the End of the War, he met John de Lancie, Oboist for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and an American soldier. De Lancie suggested the idea of writing an Oboe Concerto, which Strauss completed before moving to Switzerland with Pauline.
     Following his 85th birthday celebration he conducted an orchestra for the last time. After several heart attacks and six weeks of illness, he died peacefully at Garmisch on the 8th of September, 1949. Six months later his wife, Pauline, died.