History: a Thing of the Past? vol. 17 1/2 (liner notes)...an art manifesto of me, and then, maybe my songs...stories that go with the songs; stories that sparked them...the writing of them was always the best part...they are incantations, spells; they invoke places, times, states of mind...they are friends, children, siblings---and I carry them with me...they are sculptures of my soul.

"To be honest, I do not await the listener's nod

Like a tree, I lose idea leaves for lovers to lie down on. I'm a story of experience with fantasy and gods; Yes, and maybe I'm another part of you to think upon."("Dynamic Highs", circa 1985)I was taught to be an artist, and then I was born to be an artist.

While still in the womb, I heard Dad play guitar to me, and I knew and still know the sound hole of the guitar as a portal between dimensions.Reading Dad's art history books as a kid, I was drawn to the works and characters from Dada and surrealism.  Studying French literature in college, 

I was compelled and haunted by the poems of Charles Baudelaire.

I knew I knew them, shared memories with them. Years later in Vienna I would recognize the miniature toy collection of Marcel Duchamp on display in a museum, and later still there would be a memory incident in a gazebo in Honfleur, Normandie, at what turned out to have been a summer home of Baudelaire. My songs could be daguerrotypes of dinosaur family picnics, 8mm home movies

of medieval minstrels, Impressionist portraits of familiar strangers and long-lost friends, discovered in a dream diary, a dyslexicon of anachronism crammed 

full of sketches and scrawlings; the barely legible memoir of a soul doctor reminiscing somewhere in the far, dark reaches of my heart. A life in love with words and chords--melodies briefly discerned from the roar of the maelstrom--the song of the sailor, projected, etched into the heavens  from the deck of a sinking ship, swirling forever into the foam.  

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