The thing that looks out through my eyes will carry on forever -
My body’s just its visual depiction.
Neither different, nor the same - in this there is no contradiction -
And yet there is one’s death, which seems to sever

The connection one observes between the “body and the soul”,
Which seems like an intuitive conclusion,
But eventually reveals itself as only an illusion, 
Which one is hardly able to control,

Since the inner and the outer seem as if they’re really two,
A notion we’ve all had since we were born -
Babies are all dualists, who believe the body’s worn
Like clothing, which surrounds the real you.

But what if brains and bodies are just simple illustrations, 
Just images, which fin’lly are unreal?
Pictures which convey the things which spirits think and feel,
That in the end are just hallucinations

Of what’s more fundamental - the awareness that’s behind
This ghostly dance of fleeting apparitions -
Which seem as if they’re “physical”, but are just suppositions,
Resulting from their being so well-aligned - 

Like reflections seen in mirrors which will suddenly disperse,
And seem to disappear into the air -
Like the way in which the moon when not observed’s not really there -
Like the fate of all my insubstantial verse.

If the body’s just a picture, well then, what becomes of me?
Where will I be when I up and die?
Exactly where my atoms are, in sea and earth and sky! 
Where finally of my ego I’ll be free.

And when that time arrives, this troubled, sad, and lonely wave
Will once again return into the ocean -
That vastness all-encompassing, of which we’ve little notion,
Which says to me that everything that they’ve


Been telling us since infancy were bromides falsely spoken -
That all the things that felt like me will find
They’d been a petty nightmare in a universal mind,
From which I will have finally awoken.

And when that strange, unearthly calm descends...

Composer, mathematician, visual artist. 
Seeks collaboration with performers and choreographers.

Please don't spam this account!

Resides in Portland, Oregon. Grew up in Berkeley, CA. Born in Seattle.  PhD, Harvard. “Gary Noland is one of the great composers of the 21st century.”—JACK RUMMEL, KGNU 88.5 FM, Boulder CO, “...iconoclastic, stylistic potpourri standards of giddy humor, no holds barred soup to nuts and high spirits.”—ROBERT LEVIN, pianist, musicologist, composer, "...a fleet-fingered, ebullient performer ... bright, witty and engaging.”—CHRISTIAN CAREY, SPLENDID MAGAZINE, “...distinctive, inventive ... subversive ... You can hardly be indifferent to Noland’s music and so I would urge you to try it.” —ROGER BLACKBURN, MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL, “...set in a dizzying harmonic language that loops uncontrollably through a wide-ranging gamut of possible and impossible tonalities ... The general effect is like watching wet paintings of 19th Century musical memorabilia drip into frazzled 21st Century oblivion...” —ALLEN GIMBEL, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “Mr. Noland writes as a ‘time traveler’ in styles long abandoned by most composers as well as styles so new as to not have been imagined but by him. This he accomplishes naturally, convincingly, with originality and true passion. His command of all musical languages and his ability to traverse musical time is nothing less than remarkable. Listen!”—DONALD MARTINO, Pulitzer Prize winning composer, “...mind-bending spiraling of focus which is truly breathtaking ... spectacular...”—CHARLES AMIRKHANIAN, composer, sound poet & radio producer, “I'm amazed at your harmonic skill. Haven't seen or heard anything like it from any one else—except yours truly—certainly not from your generation. It falls somewhere between Strauss and Mahler. Especially like how you are able to slip in and out from the tonal to the atonal—or near atonal...”—GEORGE ROCHBERG, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist, “...court jester to the classical establishment...”—PAYTON MACDONALD, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “...florid and juicy...” —RICHARD BUELL, THE BOSTON GLOBE, “...an incredible aural web ... a great ostinato of American kitsch. Sul pont never sounded so good.”—RUSSELL STEINBERG, composer, conductor of the LOS ANGELES YOUTH ORCHESTRA, “...I am bowled over by the expertise of your music: you use certain elements from the 19th century and from jazz, etc., and just at the moment when I am about to say, OK, what else is new?, you do a number of things, such as speeding up, becoming wildly dissonant, modulating to a distant continent, stopping completely and throwing some kind of total surprise ... you seem to know exactly when to do what and how much. I don’t know anybody else who can do it!” —ANDREW IMBRIE, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist, “... remarkable stuff...”
—MAX MORATH, American ragtime pianist, composer, actor & author, “...a loony composer from Oregon...” —MAX SHEA, WMUA 91.1FM, Amherst, MA, “Gary Noland is one of those 21st Century composers seeking to forge a new aesthetic based on older models that do not traffic in serialism or minimalism ... Zany waltzes, ragtime riffs, chorales, toccatas, and much else romp and tear through these depictions of superheroes and villains from his ‘chamber novels’; other pieces spoof serial music ... to grand operas ... and Jewish guilt.” —JACK SULLIVAN, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE, “...Paranoid Ravel...”—ALEX DUNN, KZSU FM90.3, Stanford, CA, “...It’s a romantic romp, rhythmically robust yet melodically flirting with the nostalgia of cabaret, minus the sleazy diminution of spilled drinks and smelly ashtrays. Its elegance recalls Elgar, and the serious sides, a synthesis of those strange bedfellows Schubert and Ives. Composers hate it when their music reminds you of someone else’s, but writing within a tradition, Noland has incorporated divergent styles that, woven together, work. Cosmopolitan without snobbery, it’s intelligent, pleasurable and convincing.” —ROCKY LEPLIN, THE BERKELEY VOICE

And when that strange, unearthly calm descends...

Anonymous 67