Amado

I’ve bonded as of late with a boy here who looks up to me for some strange reason. His name is Amado. He…asks me things…he talks to me…he looks to me for advice. What I’ve been able to tell him has helped…everything from random vocabulary words to advice on how to live unpretentiously…and I like it. I like being friends with him. I think he does need an older brother of sorts. I think maybe I can make up for all the mistakes I’ve made in the past by helping this guy out with his life, his order, everything appreciable.

So much has happened. I’m still taking it all in…I’ll have to update more completely as time goes on…

Have you ever been with someone and never wanted to stop talking to that person, simply because they made you feel so…complete? I think that’s what I’m feeling right this instant. It’s indescribable.

New Situations

I’m not sure how to react to things which have been happening to me lately. It seems that everything I’ve been doing has been some concentrated effort to stay where I am. I’m talking about my new college life. I just moved here on Monday and already I’ve been having some significant problems trying to pay for everything. The weekend was stressful; everything was out of order, Mom and I had a fight. I think now I’m more attuned to my surroundings, but it’s been really lonely out here.

Mom and the rest of the family are back in Harlingen, about 30-40 miles away from here. I’m actually glad I’m out of the house. It seemed like it needed to happen. I skipped out on my last session in therapy and decided to move into the new dorm just a day late. I guess this needed to be done since I was already sick with boredom and isolated from everyone, including all of my friends.

Will still hasn’t returned my 10-CD set of Steve Reich’s collected works, plus some other albums I lent him. He’s been doing pretty okay too, working at some little convenience store in Rio Hondo and working with his family on the side. These days remind me of when we first began to get to know one another. I remember those days so fondly. Everything was so carefree then. I wonder exactly why I can’t have those days back.

Of course Ryan and I are still on good terms, and everything’s going well as planned. Although I still don’t trust him to some extent with his outings with Kyle Kundomal, I still believe he wants for me to be around for him. I’m really convinced I love him. I mean, if you think about it, we’ve been connected since the day I left Lubbock, and we really haven’t stopped talking. Since I have no phone service here, I’ve basically had to rely on communication with the outside world via the Internet. It’s strange…I think I’m more isolated than anything else.

He said to me once, when I was sad, ‘You have the ability to reinvent yourself…over and over again…to make bad situations good ones…you’re basically a survivor.’

Now that I’m back online I’ll be updating more. I intend to redesign my website once all this hubbub is over with. Philomel will be celebrating the 45th anniversary of Minimalism in America with a yearlong retrospect of the different composers and artists, known and unknown, who really made it a hit with audiences.

As a sidenote to all of this I would like to say that I think I’m living the life I intended when I first started doing this back in 2003. I always wanted to be a college student; I always wanted to be someone that had enough passion and drive to complete goals and fulfill dreams. I’m living the repented life I’ve always wanted to live. I look back at everything and I think, ‘I could have been a better person,’ or, ‘I could have made more authentic decisions.’ I think we all want to do that in our lives. We want to be the best we can be. I hope now, more than anything, I can be the best I intended to be, without having to lie or be fake about it. I’m glad I’m not so terribly fake. I think it’s a good thing to be this real.

I’m actually in the process of compiling some works at the present moment for inclusion in a new zine. I don’t know what it will be called yet. I finished up my autobiographical statement. That will be a new zine sometime soon.

I also was privileged to hear this gorgeous new Ave Maria by a Japanese composer…Hosokawa’s his name, I think. It incorporates some wonderful glissandi effects in the soprano section. It appears on this CD on the BIS label that also has choral works by Webern, Schoenberg (his setting of the De Profundis is quite lovely) and others. What is so lovely about this Ave Maria it represents a wonderful new way of presenting the Marian antiphons in a very postmodernistic way. It reminds me of ‘Constantine’ when I hear of it. This Ave Maria has also provoked me to write music for the four great Marian antiphons, in one song cycle, for choir. This CD also presents work by the perennial favorite of the experimental crowd, Giacinto Scelsi: three ‘motets’ of popular prayers and antiphons of the Church. I think I’ll be touching on these later. Like I said, the Schoenberg De Profundis was simply gorgeous with its use of Sprechstimme and Sprechgesang, which make it sound very haunting and sort of spooky and also very turbulent in a wonderful sort of way. I compared this also to another work of Schoenberg’s I heard, ‘Variations on a Recicative’. The overall result is one of tremendous turblent beauty, this really calculated sound. It’s really something wonderful.

I’ll be back later. It’s lunchtime.

88

Behold, I have prepared a statement:

I think I’m just going to take it easy from now on.

Anyway, I’ve been busy trying to get things done with the usual verve that fans of my work know me for; I’ve stopped talking to certain individuals that I feel have hindered my creative growth and emotional sustainment. I shan’t mention their names, but they know who they are. I’m tired of feeling bitter and resentful over the fact that they make my shortcomings more apparent, and I’ve resolved to not have so much of a bleeding heart, so to speak. I can’t help living down a past marred with dishonesty and resentment. I should have been a great fool not to respond to something that I should have done years ago. I should have been myself.

I think as I move forward now, I’m going to bury my resentments where they cannot bother me, and try to live the most decent, humble and respectable life I can. I feel that as an artist, I would be compromising my vision and my resisitude by just blaming everyone for what has happened. I have put on hold my plans to move until I have some decisive idea as to where I can go. That means no New York City, no fame, nothing like that. I figure if I’m trying to be as Cagean as possible, then that means starting all over at the beginning–with myself.

That having been said, I hope this new endeavor will be one in which I will meet with some success.

I moved home on the 15th of May and have been here in Harlingen since. I’ve been in deep therapy with Dr. Eva Miller, PhD., who has shown me things I have not seen in myself. I go for walks now, and think about the present. I try not to live vicariously. I have curbed things. I have lost weight. I have gained weight, as well, in other places. I am a little more muscle-bound. I am less of what I used to be.

Texas Tech is all but a memory now. I hope I never see it again. I hope I never come to anything but myself. And I hope that from now on, I may be a little more cautious when endeavoring upon things I’m not too terribly sure of. I promise to respect myself a little bit more, and to not allow me to become mired in the precipitious drama that has surrounded me as of late.

I’ll be returning to college soon. This has not been the end of anything but parts of myself which needed to die off. Consider this a reblooming of sorts.

The other day I received a wonderful letter from Mr. AP Casale, a lawyer who lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and a person with which I have had some rapport.

He wrote:

“I hope you understand what you’re capable of…you have a powerful mind…nothing is ever impossible for you. Dreams don’t have a class, or an economic background…do what you need to do to be the best you can. Don’t ever give up.”

With this in mind, I am confident that the actions I undertake will be of some benefit to me in the future. The time has passed where I have been too many people. I think it is time for me to just be myself.

J. Galván

As praias desertas

As praias desertas
by Tom Jobim

As praias desertas continuam
Esperando por nós dois
A este encontro eu não devo faltar

O mar que brinca na areia
Está sempre a chamar
Agora eu sei que não posso faltar

O vento que venta lá fora
O mato onde não vai ninguém
Tudo me diz
Não podes mais fingir

Porque tudo na vida há de ser sempre assim
Se eu gosto de você
E você gosta de mim

As praias desertas continuam
Esperando por nós dois