| All original songs, writing and real-time performances BY ANGELO M. BRUSCAS III Copyright 2009, Real News Network and AMBIII Publishing INFERNO I don't know who you are, or why I'm here, can't say what I Hope to find. I only know who I am, and what I believe, can't stop what know to be true. He broke down as winter dawned, voices called out from the flames: I don't know why I run, don't know when to stop, can't say where it all will end . . . I went down to the underground, floating on a burning sea Wading into the water, the boiling water, death danced at my feet . . . I was baptized, I was free. I don't know where to go, don't know where to turn, no map for the road ahead. I've been down for so long, don't know where I've been, Can't say what I'm looking for . . . He broke down as daybreak dawned, hands reached out from the flames. I don't know who you are, or why we're here, can't cay where it all will end . . . I went down from the burning town, and turned away on my own. A path of spirals for the rest of life, he knew he could never go home, Always alone, ever more . . . I don't know why I live, don't know when to stop, can't stop What I know to be true. I only feel the heat of all the burning souls, who Pave the road ahead . . . She broke down as destiny dawned, love was consumed by the flames I don't know who you were, or why we're here, Can't say where it all will lead . . . I went down to the underground, floating on a burning sea, Wading into the water, the boiling water, I was baptized, I was Free . . . While death danced at my feet. |
| Song of Cecilia is a literary journey of love and a lyrical joyride into the triumphs and depths of marriage and divorce through these ever-shifting sands of economic, moral and social turmoil – a novel about the mythic and mystical music two lovers create when they begin to believe and then shatter the myths they adopt for their lives. The contemporary mystery-romance storyline of 112,000 words unwinds as a modern twist on “The Divine Comedy” with obvious similarities to “The Great Gatsby” -- told through the eyes of a writer in the maze of a major life transformation; the spiraling economy has put an end to his newspaper, sparking a renewed search for personal redemption and reconnection with the lost love and the lost music of his life. His lost love has taken on the myth of St. Cecilia, martyred for the love of God, sacrificed for the music of angels. The central theme is the universality of love, the endurance of the love of friends and family, even the love of God, through the love of writing or rediscovering the love songs within us all: That joyful noise of life. The story is highlighted by the “language of love” crafted by the central characters, Mario and Cecilia, in letters, songs, poetry, factual experience and fictional expression, assuming and then consuming their namesakes in the myth of an angel and the myth of the patron saint of music . |
Song of Cecilia
Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Your knowledge cannot counter her. She reigns, Providing, judging, making calculations, As do the other gods in their domains. No truce may interrupt her permutations. Necessity demands that she not pause. Mari’s lot is one of constant variations. And this is she whom men put on the cross. Even the ones who ought to hold her dear Revile her name and blame her without cause. -- Dante Alighieri, “Inferno” SONG OF CECILIA: A Not-so Divine Comedy Day after day after day, the Mario letters kept coming, and Cecilia knew only one other person who could stop them forever, end the writing and leave her at peace – the almighty God herself. Now Mario might not have been aware of it, but Cecilia had come to know God personally after twice fighting off breast cancer and a few near-death experiences of her own. She thought he’d be especially surprised to find that God is a woman, and not a man like Mario thought at all. If she could appeal to God, she knew God had the power to end the writing and stop all this never-ending love nonsense. She didn’t even have to write out her appeal endlessly in frivolous letters like Mario; all she had to do was close her eyes and pray and God would answer as she always did. After all, Cecilia was the patron saint of music and that still accounted for some clout, even in an era where music just didn’t sound very angelic any more. “God, oh glorious God,” she started. “I have lived my life these past few years only to honor you and the commitment I have made in my new love, never wavering from the promise I made to live out the rest of my days in peace and reverence to you. But my ex-husband Mario, one of your dark-angel types who got booted from heaven, just won’t give me a second of peace in this lifetime. This is going to kill me if something isn’t done about it soon.” God’s first response was typically decisive and quick to the point: “Do you want me to send him a heart attack, a stroke or something? God can do something like that when she gets good reason to dig her heels in.” “No, I really don’t mean to imply that I want him terminally removed from earth, just to stop writing to me. He‘s not such a bad guy when he doesn‘t have a keyboard in his hands.” “Well, I could foul up his computer and take away his Internet access for a couple of days, maybe infect it with one of those newfangled viruses that no one but Bill Gates understands -- that might stop him in his tracks.” “I doubt it. He would just use a pencil or pen and all those old notebooks I once gave him at Christmas to begin writing his novel that he never finished. He even indiscriminately uses all the old letters I once wrote him and tried to destroy over and over again.” “Sounds like you might have had a hand yourself in enabling this writing problem of his once upon a time.” “But that was years and years ago. Now he’s living on his own with too much time on his hands and nothing better to do. In four years, he hasn’t stopped writing me since I threw him out of the house, took him back like a fool and then divorced him for good when he wouldn’t change his behavior. I know you helped make him a writer and gave him a few talents, but this is how he uses and abuses it all, especially me.” “Some people may never change no matter how many miracles I work for them right before their very eyes, Cecilia. Even God can’t change everything, certainly when you’re dealing with angels who think they are human. It‘s a lot easier working my powers on humans who think they are angels, that‘s for sure.” “Please God, at least you could try changing what he’s writing about, because I know for a fact that he thinks he listens to you and actually hears what you’re saying.” “I’m glad someone out there is listening. What does he say he hears? Voices? Angels? Demons? The Dead?” “He says he hears things like songs on the wind or music in his heart or things like that. He sees visions in nature and remembers things I have completely forgotten or have tried with all God’s strength to forget on my own. It’s not really clear where he gets his inspiration, other than from the utter destruction of our love.” “How can that be, Cecilia, my beautiful sister, since love is indestructible?” “Well his notion of love is simply indescribable, and his disrespect even for God has gotten way out of hand, oh most gorgeous Goddess of all goodness. Look how he tried to destroy our love, how he succeeded in ruining his own health and well-being and mine in the process, and now he wants it all back. He just won‘t leave well enough alone, and I need to be left alone to have any peace in my time left on earth.” “But I thought he was the one who is now living alone.” God looked perplexed, raised her eyebrows, pouted her lips and sighed wistfully. “Ah, to be alone, without a care in the universe. For a human, that’s tough for anyone, especially a man.” “Good God, can’t you possibly send him some vixen demon who needs punishing to play his harps and blow his horn and keep him occupied while I live the rest of my life in peace? He’s kind of bullish about sex, so maybe give him a siren goddess with some of that sexy lingerie I used to wear and a face like an angel; I know he would be out of my life for good with another woman. After all, you once sent him me a few decades ago and look how long before he got tired of that.” “It appears he’s still not tired of you, despite what you say he’s done or how many years have gone by.” Cecilia kept shaking her head, calculating all the letters she had received from him over the years and all the months and all the days she and Mario had shared their love, their families, their lives, their bodies, their minds. “You and I know, God, that he uses his entire life indiscriminately for dramatic purposes. I don’t know what I believe about what he believes any more. Don‘t trust everything he says as being the truth, that‘s what you told me the last time I made this appeal to you. And it was you who suggested I move far away from him and accept the love of another man to bring me peace. Well, this isn‘t peace and I guess I just can‘t move far enough away from his words.” “I know, I know, and I share your burden, Cecilia, but he’s been pretty truthful and repentant since then and I really like some of the music and songs that you inspired him to write over the past couple of years. It seems like he’s doing all he can to give the glory to me and to you, too, certainly in some of the words I’ve seen from him lately. God is a forgiving God, after all.” “That’s just his way of trying to fool you and everyone else who might read some of the crap he‘s written. He doesn’t even realize that God is a woman, not just some concept he can slap around whenever he feels self-righteous. He uses God like she’s a four-letter word.” “God can be a bitch when she wants to be, you should know that Cecilia. But maybe I do need to make myself a little more available to him judging from your concern about his writing, and you might try the same tact, too. Give him a little womanly face time and show him what a truly powerful patron saint can do. Work a little magic with the soothing music of your voice, try a little tenderness and love and joy and happiness and that might get you the ending everyone will be happy with.” “Oh God, not that. All he would do would be to write more about it, and then where would I be? Right back where we started.” “There’s always the other alternative and you can try the Dark Side if you aren’t satisfied with what God has to offer here.” “No I tried that Dark Side before, too, and that was worse, far worse than living with Mario – even worse than his infernal snoring. It made Mario seem like a miracle.” “So say a couple of Hail Marys, pick up the phone and take direct action. Stop him with kindness and purity and forgiveness and understanding. Seduce him with your sensual powers of subconscious persuasion. That’s what God does whenever she wants something. All you have to do is let your fingers do the walking and your mind do the talking. It’s amazing how easy miracles can be accomplished in this day and age.” The conversation left Cecilia wondering if Mario had somehow managed to seduce even God herself. She wouldn’t put it past him to try, especially being a third angel and all with a few God-like talents still left under his broken wings. She looked downcast and resigned. “Okay, God, Hail Mary full of grace, I guess I’m just going to have to deal with this on more earthly terms. In my mind, I still can’t ever see us with a real and lasting truce here. Any response I make just gets more twisted up in his letters, and then his stories, and then his songs and then what next? He’s even making home movies and posting them on YouTube!” “Sorry I can’t be of more help, Cecilia, but Mario really does love you no matter what form that love takes. What do you want me to do? I can’t take his love away, especially his love of God or of writing, but especially his songs, even if he misses the point that God is woman and even if his writing makes no sense to anyone but God. That’s what separates those who get into heaven from those who have no chance in hell. And he’s got a lot of love yet to give, I’m sure of that.” “Can’t he at least give it to someone besides me, say like you, God?” “Well you know what they say about men, Cecilia -- many have come close but all fall short of the glory of God. That pretty much sums up Mario, but you should know that as well as any other woman in the universe. Have some pity on him. He’s not a bad man for an angel, even if I haven‘t seen him flapping his wings around heaven in years.” Dear Cecilia, I don’t know. Maybe this has become so much like an Andy Kaufman routine that there just isn’t anything funny about my writing any more. It doesn’t really seem like it’s getting stale to me, but my fear about the affect it already has had on you makes me question if I have missed the mark once again in life. Or maybe it’s like I’m the author-character in “The Shining,” who, instead of writing the same sentence over and over, writes the same letter to you over and over and over again. I will call again and I will write again. I will send flowers again. I will love you as fully and completely as I am able until my last breath is taken because I could not breathe without loving you, like I could not live without writing. Why can’t you talk to me? Likely for fear I will write about it and the ramifications it will have on your current love and future life. The only thing that can change that is fate and space and time, I guess, so it’s beyond me to hold back the act of writing, certainly when you won’t respond to anything short of me showing up at your doorstep and when I know I am getting closer to pure truth every day I write. My final daily epiphany in this mini-parable, however, is more unreality and unreal thinking: Say you possibly agree with some of the things I’ve written and actually think I might have something valid to say about love and space and time and God and all I have been writing about. And say you might even find a few passages that move you rather than enrage you or cause you pain, fear and sorrow. Maybe you might highlight those for me or respond and ask me to take some things out that seem to make no sense whatsoever. Maybe you might write back a few chapters of your own, even a final conclusion, and we really could put together an amazing, simply amazing book about all that we have learned about love and God and peace and happiness and health and joy. The end could be so uplifting rather than weighted in its current sadness and sorrow, with you and I coming to true terms -- as Dante would have it: a truce to interrupt these permutations -- for the rest of life to come that would never cause us such turmoil ever again and leave all who love us happy and joyful, too. The longer I write this alone, the more it takes shape into something magnificent; but I know it never will be truly complete without you. Mario "Information is recorded in vast interconnecting networks. Each idea or image has hundreds, perhaps thousands, of associations and is connected to numerous other points in the mental network." -- Peter Russell from “Waking Up in Time” Dear Cecilia, (much later in the week) The final goodbye party for the newspaper was one of the most memorable but bittersweet events of its kind that Seattle will ever see, and it was with sheer joy that our little rock band played its final performance on the stage overlooking the bay, the Sound and the Olympics in the distance, where the Post-Intelligencer officially was put to rest and set free to the seas of change on the battered sails of history. It very much reminded me of the day I spoke in Mayflower Church at my Grandma Copsey’s funeral. For me, there was nothing but rebirth and release and redemption all night long, and I only wish that you could have been there to experience it, too, especially since you were a part of this era as much as me, and there were many, many people you once considered to be your friends in attendance who asked about you through the amazing night. I know, for some of my colleagues, the party was sort of a wake. For my part, it felt like the celebration of a new beginning, and I am quite sure my brief performance live was the best I have ever done, as was the band’s performance, too -- far more rocking than when we won the Battle of the Bands title last year at the Skylark in West Seattle, ending with that encore version of Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen’s “Because the Night.” Playing in front of 250 current and former journalists, even the likes of novelist Tom Robbins in the house, was like playing for my family, like romping on the lawn with all my cousins in games of imaginary glory while the old folks sat around a table inside reminiscing about all the good old days that passed them by. We started out playing “The Way Home,” and it just rocked hard from my opening chords, with the main lick ringing out on the semi-hollow body Epiphone I bought for my birthday last year. I was dressed like Johnny Cash, The Man In Black, with that old fish tie and a black-and-silver striped shirt, black Levis, and a black pork pie hat. Bill’s organ lines just lift the melody and we extended the jam part of the ending out to about seven minutes, sounding very Doors-like until I ended up busting my E-string on the penultimate solo. The recorded version now really does come close to the way we played it live. I love the way the song includes violin by Amy and the way Monica and I intertwine vocals throughout; with 16 tracks, it also represents my most intricate work as a producer/engineer, something I am just as thrilled with as the actual songwriting that makes such a simple song work so well on so many different levels. The party really seemed like the passing of a torch, where each of us as individuals now has to keep the light burning on our own to find new paths for our creativity. Mine, I’m sure will flow freely and burn bright with the music from here on out. As I was walking out with my guitar after we had played, I bumped into Tom Robbins making his exit alone to the parking lot. He looked in fine health and spirits, even if he’s not quite as robust as when I used to cross paths with him in LaConne or Bellingham back in the time we bothj lived in that neck of the wonderful, magical Northwest, the days of the Magic Skagit and even more magical mushrooms of mirth and imagination. Robbins, who you well know also worked at the P-I before launching his novel-writing career to great success, had lately been a “writer in residence” for a time, participating in a final forum of creativity in the waning years of the newspaper that did help to infuse some light on an otherwise dying medium. He asked me what I was going to do now that the paper was folding, and I just held up my guitar case. “If you see me on a street corner playing tunes down by the Pike Place Market, be sure to kick in a dime or two,” I said, chuckling. “Sounds like you’ve got a real future there,” Robbins smiled back in his slow, wry way. “Actually, I’ve sort of decided to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. I’m moving out to the coast where the unemployment is the highest in the state and where there are no women to tempt my soul; I’m going to buy a house by the beach and write music and finish up all those stories I’ve been putting off for the past 25 years.” Robbins smiled again. “You know, when I left the P-I I moved to Raymond on Willapa Bay to write my first book, and it was the best move I ever made,” he recalled. “But the place has sure changed lately. Have you been there?” “That’s funny, because I even looked at a house in Raymond, and it was only $49,000 but that is now one of the most depressed areas anywhere on the West Coast. Logging is dead, the hippies have all gone on or have died, too, and the only thing left is the gray and ugly winters and the summers of dreadful fog.” “Well I wish you great fortune in whatever that great ocean spirit unveils for you," Robbins said, shaking my hand in that soft and gentle way of his. "I am sure going to miss the P-I and all you folks who made it what it was and always will be, but you’ll find there’s a bigger world out there. Like an oyster in a half-shell, you just have to slurp it down your throat no matter how bad it smells or how bad it might taste if you really stop to think about it. The faster you do it, the better it feels and then you're even ready to do another one. After a while, you just develop a taste for oysters.” Driving on my way home, the conversation with Robbins lingered with me like a song you hear on the radio that compels you to keep turning through all the stations in hopes of catching it playing again to clearly get the words or the melody straight in your mind. I always considered Robbins’ writing to have a certain lyrical playful brilliance, like listening to The Beatles in their “White Album” days, glass onion of layered complexities and helter-skelter rides through an imagination as fertile as the tulip beds and surrounding strawberry fields from which it took root in the early days of his ascension into public acclaim. I hope my move to the ocean will bring a similar music to my writing as well, and I can even re-create the tunes I hear in my head now at the highest level possible, thanks to the advance of computer recording technology and my steady progress at learning to play a multitude of instruments I never even attempted to play before. Like Robbins in his “Another Roadside Attraction” days, I think I am creating a new form of writing, where the music is as much of the story as the novel itself, even an essential element to this letter. The music IS the message. Going back to Peter Russell in “Waking Up in Time” -- Russell postulates that technology, particularly computer technology, will make it possible for a massive number of people to reach the ultimate state of “being” or “knowing.” He likens it to a mathematical uprising of the Brahmin state of liberation, where wisdom and spiritual understanding, the concepts of peace and love and joy, the essential truths of the universe, will open up far greater states of consciousness than we can even conceive under the host of current cultural, social and individual restraints we place on our path toward that very certain destination. In a microcosm of that thought, I look at music as a way I reach such a state of pure joy and pure understanding. I remember going back to the days I was 12 years old, always wanting to make music and live the life of a songwriter, not necessarily to be a rock star, but just simply to make all the great music that seemed to be forever playing through my head. I used to marvel at my identical twin friends John and Gary Craft in Monterey, and how they had twin Fender Stratocasters and rocked out to surf music like “Pipeline” or “Wipeout” at all the school dances, playing licks and riffs and chords I could only dream about on my old nylon-string Contessa. Or my cousin Michael, who would take me over to his Jewish friend’s house, where for his Bar Mitzvah he had received enough money to buy an actual electric organ and a Les Paul with a Silvertone tube amp. He had it all set up in a black-light room that shook to high heaven when we played the only two real rock songs I knew back then -- “House of the Rising Sun” and “Gloria.” As it was, it took me 30 more years before I finally was able to get my own electric guitar and amp, and I can only wonder at all the songs I would have written in the past had I chosen music over journalism to make a living in this world. But then again, maybe I wouldn’t have been the songwriter I certainly am now in the present music that moves before me like notes of precise measure and rhyme and rhythm. Funny, too, that the event which drew me back into making music again was the newspaper strike of 2000, when you remember I started learning how to play all those great old rock songs from BigCity Mike on the picket line: “Hotel California,” “Substitute,” “What’s So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding,” “Dear Prudence,” “Money,” “Suite Judy Blue Eyes,” “Sunshine of Your Love,” “Learning to Fly.” Mike has taught be so much on the guitar, opening up new ways of looking at chord structures, individual notes, alternative tunings, even changing some of the fingerings on a few of the most basic patterns I have played all my life. It feels strange at 50 to think I am a better rock and roll songwriter, a better musician, a far better singer or performer even, than I ever could have hoped to be at 20, but that is the very real and lasting truth. That I was even able to finish this body of work of music and get it all recorded before my time on earth here is gone is the pure joy of my entire life, something uniquely mine and of my spirit and soul. Something few men can do or even attempt to do. I don’t know if it will ever reach an audience beyond that limited one it already touches on the Internet or with the friends who sometimes do get the beauty of the words or the stories in the melodies and choruses, but to have been able through the wonders of technology to even record them at all brings me the greatest sense of peace and accomplishment, far greater than anything I have ever written in the newspaper world, without a doubt. I hope you enjoy the newly recorded version of “Inferno,” which features me on every instrument. The shakers you hear in the opening are intended to be sort of a “Sympathy for the Devil” nod to the Stones, and I just bought them from a hand- crafted artist who makes them for the Quinault tribe out of gourds. I think the guitar lick that holds the song down from the opening is a haunting one that I just began to groove on one night, with a slide element that gives it that blues sound, sort of like a wicked Jimi Hendrix “Crosstown Traffic” feel with a chorus of power chords that pays homage to Dylan’s great “All Along the Watchtower” progression: A-minor, to G, to F and back down the scale. Finally, I added the church organ myself, which I am most happy with since I have just started playing piano again after watching BigCity Mike’s 10-year-old son master “The Butterfly Song” one afternoon and being inspired to take up the keyboard on another level entirely. With the end of the P-I, I think my live-band days are over like my journalism career, like our marriage, but I know the music still calls out to my soul like never before. I barely can wait to get fully settled at the beach now and begin to present my songs in a form where they will be better understood in the context of my creative pursuits in life, both in the past and in the future. In the present, I give the songs back to you with all our words, all our letters, all our hopes and dreams and promises. Rise up from the inferno of our love, shake free of the chains of daily delusions, rock to the beat of a wild drumming imagination, and sing out to be free of the haunting voices of doubt and denial. There is plenty of video of the band playing live now up on YouTube and online, where we recorded most recently as Joint Operating Agreement, as of course a play on our former newspaper predicament and on our chosen substance of some inspirational guidance. You can also see snippets of the party where they auctioned off dozens of P-I artifacts and mementos, including one of those fire-engine red newspaper boxes that I now have prominently displayed in my living room, stocked with all my clips from over the past quarter century. Our final number at the party was a song that our keyboard player Bill Miller wrote the words to, “Red Box Blues,” on which I sang lead and got probably the best crowd response for all night long in light of the occasion. I think it sums up everything as simply as could possibly be said: “Sea-town, what’ you doing? Help us play these Red Box blues, the Red Box blues. Stuffed shirts, they stopped the presses, teaching us a profit lesson, a profit lesson. Sea-town, what’s that you say? Well we’re going to live to fight another day, fight another day. They say that print is dead, but we’re going to be alive and we’re going to be read, we’re going to be read, we’re going to be read. Sea-town, what more can we do? Help us play these Red Box blues, the Red Box blues.” Singing from the depths of my soul, Mario PS: I am tired of Seattle and all the vacant traces of our life there. I write much better at the ocean when I seem closer to nature and my visions of God and paradise. At least my vision of God gets easier to write as I go along in life, which I think is a good thing and not a bad one at all. Forever fixed in poignant memory Is the kind, paternal, loving face I knew When in the world above you instructed me From time to time in what a man must do To become eternal. I must proclaim with pride, For as long as I still live, my debt to you. I will write what you have told my fortune’s tide With another text, which a lady will understand And make clear to me, if I ever reach her side. -- Dante, from “Inferno Canto XV” CANCER WARD I went down to meet my make maker, She said, “Son, get down on your knees.” I went out to seek my Jesus, He said, “Sinner, don’t you worship me.” I called up to Saint Cecilia, She said, “Lover, you can’t even talk to me.” I knelt down at the feet of Buddha, He said, “Fool, when will you be free?” Heal me, in this Tropic of Cancer, Hear me, Oh Lord Take me from this cancer ward . . . . I worked hard to tend her garden, She came to plant nothing but weeds I stood fast against the cancer, She renounced all that we believed I cried out into the heavens, She shut her eyes, refused to see I looked up to seek salvation, All she saw was misery Heal me, in this Tropic of Cancer, Hear me, Oh Lord Take me from this cancer ward . . . . I believe in the love of my family, She never totally believed in anything I believe in the Gods and the Angels, She worshiped at the feet of mythology I believe in a higher calling, She only would hang up on me. Heal me, in this Tropic of Cancer Hear me, Oh Lord. Take me from this cancer ward . . . . |
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Song of Cecilia soundtrack player:
Control chapter music selection here
Control chapter music selection here