September slipped in, unannounced. I wrote several poems today, and updated FACEBOOK. Today I tap this entry in from my iPhone, which for me is a single digit process. This establishes my iPhone as a surrogate laptop.
The first days of September always serve to mask my presence in the world. Labor Day slips in as a lazy day. My birthday hides in the smoky haze of September. But I remember one year when the Shankmans caught onto it, throwing a surprise party and presenting me with a digital camera for use on the Internet. This led to the formation of a Trio composed of Julie Song and Sunmin Kim that led to our mutual adventures on each other’s birthdays.
The Birthday Trio has long disappeared and I am no longer close to Julie or Sunmin. I was honored to see Sunmin through to her PhD, and she promptly disappeared from my life. She had served as producer of a recording project exploring Julie Song’s remarkable voice. All recording episodes explored new repertoire recorded under the sensitive guidance of sound engineer Tom Beyer. I composed some new songs for the project, all created in my wonderful Greene Street studio at NYU,
Julie has gone on to distinguish herself as a music educator. The estrangement of our relationship came during the final days of our IMPACT workshop. I am happy to see how her career has developed. I remember forming a reading group that included Sunmin Kim and Julie Song to focus on the scholarly literature of music education.
Those days disappear into the fabric of the past. This process was buffered by a relationship with a remarkable personality who lived on the Korean Island of Jeju. In all, I wonder at the attraction of of Korea which influenced my life and professional career.