While researching the life of the novelist and Fortean Tiffany Thayer, I came across an unfamiliar photo of Charles Fort. I passed it along to the Fortean Times, which inspired the art director, Etienne Gilfillan, to search for more. His discoveries were published in the March 2006 issue (#207). I provided captions, and an article on Fort’s friendship with Dreiser.

A love song to the viola, lamenting that the poor instrument is usually relegated to offbeats, set to viola offbeats. The viola does play a solo at the end, though.

This bustling prelude is taken from the music I wrote for Bill Irwin’s show The Courtroom, back in 1985. And it starts out like this.

I am intrigued by the hapax legomenon, a word that appears only once in a given work, author, or language. For a musical equivalent, I placed one F♯ against randomized 4-pitch diatonic arpeggios in C.

For many years, I’ve made pictures and collages on index cards. They were never meant to be shown; they’re a combination of sketchbook, waste of time, and insomnia therapy. They’re also a quick way to combine images and see what happens. However, I have projected some of them on “Carousel,” and on those occasions when I’ve been called on to lecture at art students.

A three-part palindromic round, modeled on everyone’s favorite mythical reptile, the hoop snake.

I had forgotten about these, and rediscovered them while going through some old papers. Eight riddles are set diatonically, traveling through the circle of fifths. My notes said that I planned to double them with violin. That might be nice.

In 2007, I was an artist in residence at NYC’s venerable downtown theater Dixon Place. I put together a program of musical curiosities, based on similar shows I’d done for the INFO FortFest and the Fortean Times UnConvention.

The program included music by Rameau’s Nephew, Lewis Carroll, and the Count of Saint-Germain; an odd tune by the Rosicrucian and sex magick pioneer Paschal Beverly Randolph; Rosemary Brown’s channeled Liszt; a Lawsonomy hymn; music from the Masons and Oddfellows; a Hungarian Esperanto cabaret song; Athanasius Kircher’s realization of the music of the spheres; and more. I was joined by violist Corrina Albright for the first show, and David Gold for the others.

André Breton once said that he wasn’t interested in music, because he couldn’t imagine representing the world with sound. I do disagree; and find diatonic cluster drones as good a symbol as any. This organ piece is one example; here’s how it begins.