I used to spend a lot of time going to shows.  My sister lived walking distance from Union Pool, an easy stroll or train ride to most of the venues we were all going to in that 2005-2012 or so time period.  

TV on the Radio, Bardo Pond, Stars of the Lid, Brightblack Morning Light, Mogwai, Fursaxa, Hammock, Weird Owl, Zelienepole, Grouper, Holy Fuck, School of Seven Bells, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Fourtet, Panda Bear, Explosions in the Sky, PJ Harvey, Black Angels, Dead Meadow, Beach House, Lower Dens, Coco Rosie…music seemed much better back then.  Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker, the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, Music Hall of Williamsburgh, Prospect Park and Union Square Park.

These days I wake with the sunrise, rather than sink to sleep, and apparently I’m into chamber music. The first time this was proposed to me I laughed, assuming it was not my thing.  The intimate upstate performances by Hudson Valley Baroque expanded my mind on this. These took place in a bare bones reconstructed French church overlooking a cemetery presumed to be from around 1683. The acoustics were amazing.

Please see The Hawaii Pacific Review for some of my writing inspired by a performance by Hudson Valley Baroque. This fine publication nominates for The Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Best of the Net Anthology, and The Best American Series, and it is an honor to be included in it.  Thank you also to Soundings East, from Salem State University for offering to print it as well – founded in 1973 and nominating for the Claire Keyes Award.  If I could I would put poetry everywhere, so when we are gone the poems would still be there.  While still here it would remind us to wake up if we were walking and sleeping.