To celebrate the release of the movie The Mothman Prophecies, based on the book by John Keel, Fortean Times published a special Mothman issue (#156, April 2002). I contributed an interview with John, aided by George Kuchar and Mamie Caton, as well as a Keelian bio and bibliography. I also wrote a short article about Woodrow Derenberger, one of the contactees John wrote about in the book. John was amused by the title, since he had once written a proposal for a movie called Nudists from Outer Space, which I hadn’t known about. (It turned up after John’s death, and is posted here.)

In another shortened classic, Chicken Little doesn’t think the sky is falling. What a relief!

A setting of part of Il Vendemmiatore, by Luigi Tansillo, which I encountered quoted by Giordano Bruno in his dialogue La Cena de le ceneri. The part I set is:

Lasciate l’ombre, ed abbracciate il vero;
Non cangiate il presente col futuro.
Io d’aver di miglior già non dispero;
Ma per viver più lieto e più sicuro,
Godo il presente e del futuro spero:
Cosi doppia dolcezza mi procuro.

Leave the shadows, and embrace the truth;
Do not exchange the present for the future.
I do not despair of having something better;
But by living more gladly and more calmly,
I enjoy the present and hope for the future:
And so I obtain double sweetness.

It was based on randomized four-pitch diatonic chords, like the “Nine Settings.”

The syllabic constraint of haiku calls for the additional constraint of rhyme. Here are seven examples:

Look at all the salt
Sprinkled on my frosted malt
It’s the waiter’s fault

You thought it great sport
To commit a grievous tort
I’ll see you in court

What is this I found
Just lying here on the ground
It must weigh a pound

Consider the mole
It spends its life in a hole
That’s its only goal

In the afternoon
You will seldom see the moon
Because it’s too soon

This is just a hunch
That was not a wholesome crunch
In my bite of lunch

Everybody dies
Then we get our ears and eyes
Full of baby flies

A song about the miracle of human reproduction. Here’s how it begins:

I’ve drawn a few pages under the rubric “Shorten the Classics.” Each is four panels, and abbreviates a famous work of literature, usually by nipping it in the bud. Tragedies are averted, murders prevented, adulteries blocked. Derek Pell of Black Scat Books urged me to draw a book of them, so that’s what I’m doing now, redrawing the old pages and drawing new ones. Here, for example, is that classic book for horse buffs, Black Beauty.

Tom Bowden has posted a review of my translation of Charles Cros’s Principles of Cerebral Mechanics, along with an interview with me, over here (it’s the second review in the batch). Get your copy of this fascinating work today, from Wakefield Press!

I made this arrangement of Satie’s cabaret song “Je te veux” (published in 1902, but probably composed in 1897) for my ukulele students. It’s the only piece I’ve written out in tablature.