This will not be a series of observations or a flowery description of some afternoon in the park. Instead I've opted to make this little entry a list of what I'm working on at the moment due to the fact that nothing has reached its final stage just yet.

There's a series of songs and musical pieces I've been putting together over the past six months that I'm preparing to record (actually record. Not the "about to record" with the distant look in my eye that means I want to but probably never will.) The track listing will be as follows:

1. Death Egg [Revised]

2. A Hug from Guillermo

3. The Saint Rides Again

4. His Name was James

5. Evergreens

6. Places You Go/Places You Stay

7. At the Beach with Adolphus

Aside from the above listed songs I have the desire to write a song for each and every one of my friends because what's nicer than having a song written for you, really? It's a long, arduous process because each quirk, every mannerism, and all the wonderful things about these people must be embodied by the chords used, the time signatures applied, and then the songs should take on the personality of the individual they're written for.

Is Ali a waltz or a folk song? Is David a ballad or a rollicking rhythm and soul song? Are they meant to be minor chords or soft humming over maracas and bongos? Is Canaan a jazz song just because he loves Billy Cobbam?

Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma

Take me home, country roads

interested in exploring all our respective creative homes - "creative home" not being definable as a literal place or even established style, but more as a sensation that can be felt in the work, that subtle awareness of firm footing as your pen hits the stride of a core creative beat or your picture perfectly projects your individual eye, the actual inner view that's shaping the outer world, into a single shot.

Mosquito Hawk

Caught a mosquito hawk in my shoe
Put her out on the front porch to fly at the moon
She'd achieved the bulbs over my bed over and over
and below I'd been cooped, ducking her flutter all day

Thought occurred to me
To wonder what she eats,
What she thinks about when she flies at big lights
Does she really eat bloodsuckers,
Or feel hearing or sight,
What's her calling, what purpose? what name?

She bounced off the top of my head a time or two,
Landed on the mirror, landed on the wall,
Alighted on the light fixture and the bedpost and my laundry
She clattered about in the leather of my loafer,
Rattling surprisingly raucous as I closed her in
Confined for a moment, dark for minutes
Battling the hide where I hid her
Then out in the night
in the wild I slid her

I caught a mosquito hawk
In my shoe
Put her out on the front porch to fly at the moon

Gabriel Ballard 2/14/2010

I have been told recently that my life and soul are full of holes that cannot be filled. As I step out from the Daniel's front door to meet a chilly January evening I catch sight of a smiling gentlemen in the room on the right with a wise, white beard tumbling from his chin down into his lap. His eyes are kind and reveal a peaceful, humble wisdom far beyond my understanding. Easing the door closed, I decide that my departure can be delayed for just a moment with this man.

He is deaf. I know that he has never heard the roar of a city highway or the melody of nighttime sounds beneath pine trees on a Summer evening. He has seen and smelled a world in ways unimaginable to me. What is it like to look out over an ocean not mingled with the sounds of gulls and crashing waves?