my writing

Category: Music

  • A Walk across Paris, along the Meridian : 3

    The Blut-Fin (location of the Mire du Nord, first siting post for Picard’s measuring of the meridian across France, to begin the first accurate survey of Louis XIV’s realm) was one of thirty Montmartre windmills in 1700, milling grains, pepper, spices, locally-quarried gypsum for plaster and porcelain, crushing grapes. By 1830s most had gone, as…

  • A walk across Paris, along the Meridian 2

    I am standing on the Paris Meridian. (A meridian is an imaginary line connecting the north and south poles of a sphere.) The Paris Meridian was decided upon 6.6km (20,317 pieds de roi, in those days) south of here, on Midsummer Day, 1667, when members of the Academy of Sciences gathered to outline on the…

  • A Walk across Paris, along the Meridian: 1

    St-Ouen. Outside le Périph. A large silver ball has landed on a small traffic island. The sun blazes at its centre. Mirrors reflect; a curved mirror bends. And eventually deflects. Passing cars appear, swell, are gone, into St-Ouen. “St-Ouen Bienvenue.” Under Napoleon III, I see a marshal of France on horseback, sabre raised. Between the…

  • Connie Converse’s disappearance on 10 August, 1974

    ‘You don’t go out of your way to make yourself something you’re not.’ After her return from England in January 1972, Ms Converse was adrift. She wrote, ‘the basic nerves and will by which I had always been able to survive my difficulties may have worn out or broken, and might not be easily reparable.’…

  • Connie Converse’s 100th birthday

    Between 1 August, the 100th anniversary of her birth, and 10 August, when fifty years ago she disappeared, I want to celebrate the many lives of Elizabeth Connie Converse. In 1944, age 20, she dropped out of her prestigious New England college, where she was the star student, and went to New York City, alone…

  • Connie Converse: A Singer/Songwriter before her Time

    100 years after she was born, 50 years since she disappeared without trace (10th Aug, 1974), I am celebrating The Guitar Songs of Connie Converse. Written between 1950 and 1955, in New York, and unheard until 2009, I first heard them three months ago and have been playing them since, finding new qualities with each…