My version of the Faust legend is 152 lines, in tetrameter couplets alternating masculine and feminine rhymes. It has a cheerier ending than most; Faust and the Devil get drunk, become friends, and open a bar together. Here’s how it begins. I’ll cut it off before we get to the sex magick. Perhaps you’ve heard […]

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A song about the free wine at gallery openings. There was originally a second chorus about the free wine once offered in Chinese restaurants, but the chorus was removed when the practice was abandoned.

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Black Scat Books will soon publish my translation of Alphonse Allais’s first book, Double Over: Blackcattish Stories (A se tordre: Histoires chatnoiresques). At my publisher’s request, I drew the following frontispiece for it. Since the stories were taken from Allais’s contributions to Le Chat Noir, the paper published by the cabaret of the same name, […]

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From my conservatory days, an idea for a graphic score notated on flipbooks. I did this for my freshman composition class, and it made a cheery racket.

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Black Scat Books has posted “A Funny Story,” from my upcoming collection of short stories, Sleepytime Cemetery. It can be found here.

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A song about the few essential principles that guide our nation.

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A song deploring the existence of film crews.

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“The Fussbudgets’ Ball” is a sprightly tune for viola, baritone horn, tuba, and guitar (ad lib). At its first performance, I played the baritone part an octave higher, on an alto melodica. That seemed to work too.

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From 1994, clangorous counterpoint travels between the letters of the word “fiction.”  We separate narrative into fiction or fact; music deserves the same courtesy.

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