FIELDNOTES: I report on my wilderness ecology fieldwork from the field…

Two pieces from my THE LITTLE CLAVIER, 633 pages black & white photography, with poems, essays, rants, meditations, and miniatures, etc. Available online at: THE LITTLE CLAVIER by Cliff Crego (Paperback) - Lulu http://bit.ly/1gtE62i [PHOTO: A happy Mt. Toad  coupling (Bufo borealis) at 2300 meters, July, the WALLOWA, Oregon]

BUY eBook on iTunes

Retronyms - Notation:  a set of 2 miniatures, w/ Mt. Toad chorus

Sine sole sileo / Without sun I am silent. The main theme in this dialogue circle tape.

SEE my related NEW ENERGY MANIFESTO at http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/poster_new-energy-manifesto.html

NEW DIGITAL AWARENESS, or the failure of education & ethical responsibility. . .

IMAGE: Climate Breakdown basecamp, the WALLOWAS, OREGON

Photo / text of poem is at bit.ly/f5czpb

WATCH…“i’m too poor in this world, and yet not poor enough…after RILKE” https://vimeo.com/845195766

I’m too poor in this world, and yet not poor enough…after RILKE, a soundpoem

Special thanks to my good friend, Simone de HAAN, Australian new music trombonist extraordinaire…I couldn’t have done this project without his help.

“What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy.”

TEXT of Bertrand Russell’s Last letter used here is at http://www.picture-poems.com/pdfs/russells-last-letter.pdf

Feel free to make your own, I am sure, much better performance of the text. The track for the orchestral background (minus voice) is here:  http://picture-poems.com/mp3/russell_no-voice.wav

IMAGE: Bertrand RUSSELL, 1957

RUSSELL’S 1970 LAST LETTER, a call for peace in the Middle East

A set of FIVE METAPHYSICAL MINIATURES...soundscape includes a found gong, walking on crusty snow with snowshoes, powerful snowmachines that circle my winter camp, and most especially, a February love duo of two owls, counter-singing in the middle of the night. Recordings...made in the Wallowas, just outside the Eagle Cap Wilderness, Northeast Oregon.

VIEW a set of 100 MINIATURES at: www.picture-poems.com/100

Freedom - Limit - Right Action - Money - Economy: a set of 5 miniatures

PHOTO: YUM CHENMO--"Great Wisdom Mother" at EWAM, Garden of 1000 Buddhas, Jocko Valley, Arlee, Montana

SEE TEXT at: http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/1000-buddhas_9-29-10_8bw.html

RETWEET #buddhism A QUESTION OF #NONVIOLENCE, OR NON-EXISTENCE—a meditation pdf [140k] http://bit.ly/1nkSlvg mp3 [3.7Mb] http://bit.ly/1nkSjDB

A QUESTION OF NON-VIOLENCE, OR NON-EXISTENCE,  a meditation . . .

PHOTO: Arinica (Arnica montana) & Butterfly, the Alps

POSTER is at: http://www.cs-music.com/features/cards/poster_sonnet-XIV-2.html

POSTER pdf is at: http://www.cs-music.com/features/cards/poster_sonnet-XIV-2.pdf

DOWNLOAD: #FreeFriday RILKE IN THE WALLOWAS 80 new tr. & 120 photos, by CLIFF CREGO pdf 212 p/ 208 Mb http://bit.ly/mA3Ly7

RILKE: Sonnets to Orpheus, XIV [second part], German/English, tr. Cliff Crego

PHOTO: NORTH-side / SOUTH-side Cornucopia Peak, the South WALLOWA, Oregon, where the recording was made VI.27.2008

SEE MORE at: http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/copia_north-south_6-27-08.html

FIELDNOTES: I report on difference between SOUTH- & NORTH-facing slope

FOR MORE PHOTOS & MORE ON the natural history of the Camas Lily -- one of the most beautiful and storied plants of the Northwest -- go to: http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/camassia_6-15-10d.html

FIELDNOTES: I report on a secret reserve of CAMAS LILIES

PHOTO: Corn Lily (Veratrum viridis), MAY aspect http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/veratrum_6-5-11.html

NOTE: "Native invasive" is a radically new concept, one we need with disturbance, especially if we are to understand the more subtle effects of the climate crisis. It's an interesting thought: a native species, like say, Mt. Pine Beetles, becomes thoroughly invasive once the wider context -- the climate, or grazing practices -- changes. 



FIELDNOTES: I report on the "native invasive" Corn Lily & the "Strong Man Circle"

A rambling, cold, windy meditation -- it was -15 c. -- on skis, above the picture-poems.com Office in happy EAGLE VALLEY, an isolated, rugged & wild area of Northeast Oregon. And yet, I'm looking down into a temperature inversion holding a toxic soup of particulates from an interstate highway 60 km away, as the crow flies. It's true. No place to hide. Pollution, if nothing else, brings home the oneness of the world. MORE AT: http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/eagle-valley-inversion.html



FIELDNOTES: I report from the Eagle Cap Wilderness on air pollution in the valley below

PHOTO: Snug Thanksgiving Camp, at 2300 m., between Spire Firs & Whitebark Pine, the WALLOWA, #Oregon

FiELDNOTES: Climate Crisis, Mountaineering & Rain on top of Snow

A 17 seventeen-step poem is a kind of generalized HAIKU. How it is notated in the score isn’t relevant. Only the 17 steps as we hear/sense/feel them as a dance, a pattern of movement, is important.

A SEQUENCE strings 17 of these seventeen-step poems together, like strings of lights on a Christmas tree. Each string has a different color or theme or center.

There are 17 SEQUENCES. Here, we hear the first nine.

Each numbered pattern we hear is a single image or experience from a bike packing pilgrimage made through the mountains of IDAHO and OREGON. 120 days / 80 camps. Many more, new special places and new friends.

TEXT of SEQUENCES I through XI… (rough draft…) is at http://www.picture-poems.com/pdfs/lost-in-idaho.pdf

IMAGE: My bike packing rig, MISSOULA. I cache the bike, and periodically change over to boots and backpack for wilderness photography work, and then hike back out to my bike.

LOST IN IDAHO, A pilgrim’s notebook….Sequences I through IX

THIS IS A set of metaphysical MINIATURES from the picture-poems.com 2014/2015 CALENDAR. All b & w photography, pdf [22.9Mb] is at: http://bit.ly/1F9R54K

MUSICAL header & coda is from the STONEPINE SONATA, violin & piano, for the young performer, on Soundcloud at: http://bit.ly/1D7Ni1S score pdf http://bit.ly/1D7NrT9 This is the piece I hope to have played on a fiddle made of whitebark -- or stonepine --wood. [SEE BELOW....]

PHOTO: Old-growth Whitebark pine, or Stonepine, on solid rock, at 2500 m., Eagle Cap #Wilderness, OREGON. I'm working on a photobook project, WHITEBARKS OF THE WALLOWAS. Whitebarks of the polar bears of trees, both the oldest and most important keystone species of the high alpine zone, and also the most endangered of species, threatened on all sides by beetles, and, most especially, a hotter, drier climate. SEE MORE AT: http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/whitebark_on-rock.html



Natural Justice - Freedom & Limit - Dialogue - Religion - Square of False Rationality, 6 MINIATURES

JUST A LITTLE field recording I made yesterday, Mayday-Tree-of-Life-Day, V.I.2015. I was out photo-making/mt. bike training, going up a little 400 m. pass just 1.5 km from my little Eagle Valley shoebox Office. I had just stopped as two regular-sized pickups approached in opposite directions. If you bike, you know first hand what I'm about to say; if you don't bike, you won't.

NOISE POLLUTION. 

How is it experienced by the avian world? I'm afraid I can't agree with the great Bucky Fuller, here."Pollution is nothing but the resources we are not harvesting." That's true for the trucks emissions, but it's hard to see how that's possible with all the noise pollution of the world.

Just meditate on this a bit. NOISE, here, is the entirely unintended side-effect of two ranchers going in opposite directions in a hurry. I guess becoming de-sensetized to the subtlety of natural, living sound is just part and parcel or a generally horribly de-humanized landscape. I also wanted to call attention to the fact that this is not just a feature of BIG CITY life. And the two counter-singing Meadowlarks (Sturnella neglecta http://bit.ly/1I6qaZW)? Well, I for one can only marvel at their tenacity and strength of spirit. Sing as sing one must, regardless of the racket the rest of the, from their point of view, indifferent world makes.

PHOTO: Sulphur Lupine in Sagebrush (Lupinus sulphureus), just above where the field recording was made . . . at: http://bit.ly/1QYYngB

[LISTENING TIP: try downloading the little mp3 file & putting into a loop w/ iTunes or other player. The density as a background soundscape is about what it is like if you're biking the Oregon outback on asphalt. Once you're on gravel, it's very much more quiet. And once you cache your bike, which is what I do, and head into the roadless wilderness, one only has to contend with the fighter jets overhead.]


FIELDNOTES: Noise pollution in an isolated sagebrush steppe at 700m., w/ Meadowlark Duo...

This is the sound track for: Watch “THINK OF A RIVER, a flowform meditation” on #Vimeo https://vimeo.com/841380035 

MAGE: Rolling Thunder Falls, Eagle Cap Wilderness, Northeast #OREGON

I'VE BEEN MEDITATING a lot recently on Thoreau's little 7-beat aphorism, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." We are, after all, marking the 50th anniversary of APOLLO 8 & the great EARTH RISE photograph. Yes, "When we went to Moon, but discovered the Earth." And yet, reactionary forces everywhere continue their mindless attack on our planet home.

"THINK OF A RIVER (as something powerful)" was first composed in preparation of a 56-day double circumambulation of the WALLOWAS I do every year. This is a vast and rugged wilderness area where I work in the US, about 1/6th the size of Switzerland, running from alpine peaks above 3000 m. all the way to the great Hells Canyon and the Snake River at 600 m., where we can almost smell the Pacific Ocean. I do the outer circle on Mt. bike, and the inner circle--all the way round what I sense as the neutral, motionless "hub of the wheel" of the living mandala of Eagle Caps--running all the many rivers on foot.

The idea is simple: If you want to understand a watershed, walk it. And always running parallel, "If you want to understand, to "strike at the root of evil," observe as an intense form of meditation in Nature your own thought and thinking.

The two streams, that of the river, and that of consciousness, are for me one, inseparable. To understand one is to understand both. A revolution of consciousness IS a revolution in the nature of our relationship to water. And a revolution in our relationship with water IS a revolution of consciousness.

The rhythm of the piece is measured i what I call "flowform time." I prefer not to write this down in western musical notation. If you'd like to perform the piece, feel free to simply learn the movement of the text by heart, and play it by ear, from there.

TEXT, in a slightly different version, is at: bit.ly/1JARAEs Another recording, made a few years back, is on Soundcloud at: Cliff-crego – Think-of-a-river-as-something

THINK OF A RIVER, a flowform meditation...

Composer. Writer. Photographer. Former conductor & founder of the ASKO ensemble.

On a bike/ski/hike trek of the Pacific Northwest studying native plants & climate breakdown 🌲 from sagebrush sea to whitebark pine. Composing off-grid the whole way.

#Sun2Sound 🌕 on X

THINKING LIKE A STONEPINE, a soundpoem manifesto https://vimeo.com/844665859

“LOVE & WATER, three thought poems w/ coda, PHAROS for small orchestra, “Nightwind”” https://vimeo.com/847079690 

CURRENTLY on mt bike/ski/climbing trek through Pacific Northwest, working on a photobook about WHITEBARK PINE COLLAPSE and CLIMATE CRISIS. BASES in the WALLOWAS | AMSTERDAM | ALPS. 

WEEKLY photo/poetry updates at www.picture-poems.com & THE CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE new music, poetry & dance performance project at www.cs-music.com

ALWAYS ON THE LOOKOUT for progressive, tech-savy, instrumental virtuosi interested in dialogue & collaborative undertakings.

CONTACT cliff@picture-opoems.com
Or on SKYPE or FACETIME @cliffcrego

MUSIC? The one thing humans do,
that makes the rest of nature jealous.

FIELDNOTES: Noise pollution in an isolated sagebrush steppe at 700m., w/ Meadowlark Duo...

Cliff Crego

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