A quick Lazy Sunday today, dear readers, looking back at the recent Spring Concert. I’m looking forward to (God Willing) a relatively normal week of work!
Rock on—and Happy Sunday!
—TPP
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The 2026 Spring Concert is in the books! It was my “swan song,” featuring a total of twenty-six (26) pieces: ten selections from the Middle School Music Ensemble; three solo pieces; one small group performance; and twelve tunes from the High School Music Ensemble.
Before the concert, I estimated a total runtime of about two hours. It was slightly more, clocking in a bit closer to two hours, ten minutes. That was a bit longer than I prefer, but it was worthwhile to get in all of the performances. Yes, I could have shaved at least one tune from each Ensemble (and I know the ones I would have cut), but the sets ended up being very nicely balanced.
My High School Music Ensemble in particular had a good mix between the various singers in class. It’s a blessing to have several singers, and it allows for the blending of voices in fun ways, but I like to make sure every singer who wants to sing lead gets a roughly equal proportion, with heavier weight towards seniors. I think I achieved that, with every singer getting at least two songs. For the Middle School Music Ensemble, I had one young lady who took lead on most tunes, but I had quite a few boys sing solos or with one another. Another young lady sang our concert opener, “Eye of the Tiger.”
Overall, the concert went very well. Even with the length, students and parents were thrilled. Several parents expressed dismay post-concert that it would be my last. The kids maintained an impressive degree of stamina throughout the experience. There were naturally a few flubs, but even those the students handled like pros.
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The last Spring Concert of yours portly career (at least in its current iteration) is coming up this Tuesday, 28 April 2026. It’s my swan song as the music teacher at my little school, so I’m going out big.
This concert will be the biggest, most stacked concert I’ve ever programmed. It will feature a total of twenty-six (26) pieces (appropriate, since it’s 2026, but I did not plan it that way; I just realized the connection while typing this post)—ten selections from the Middle School Music Ensemble; three solo pieces; one small group performance; and twelve tunes from the High School Music Ensemble.
The Middle School Music Ensemble’s set takes about forty minutes from top to bottom, and they’ve played it all the way through every day this past week. The High School Set is a bit longer, and we have not been able to play the entire program in a single class period. A class period at my school is about fifty-six minutes; by the time we get through attendance and tuning, we have maybe fifty minutes remaining. Our best run yet was getting through ten of the twelve pieces.
As such, I’m estimating that the total performance time of the concert will be about two hours—100 minutes between the two Ensembles, and about twenty minutes for the solo and small group pieces. That’s about the upper limit of where I (and, I imagine, my administration) would like to go. Factor in some shuffling between pieces and what not, as well as transitioning students on and off the stage, and we’re probably looking at around two hours and fifteen minutes.
There’s always this weird pressure to rush on through these concerts. My point (and the one I’ll make to my admin if they object to the length) is that we routinely have sporting events that last three or more hours. Baseball frequently has double-headers on school nights, which can easily run until 9 or even 10 PM. Us wrapping up around 8:15 or 8:30 PM is not going to ruin anyone’s ability to come to school the next day. Frankly, if the admin doesn’t want to stick around (understandable—they have to make an appearance at a lot of events), I don’t mind. I can lock up the building myself (as I have done many times before)!
Ahem—but I digress. No need to get defensive on the front end. That said, it’s going to be a pretty awesome concert. It’s not just two hours of lame filler. We’re going to rock—and pop, and soft rock, and so on—and it’s going to be a fitting display of my students’ talents.
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Last Saturday I spent pretty much the entire day working on music. It started with an extensive composing session to write “Epistemology,” the title track of my next release, Epistemology, which hits on Friday, 1 March 2024 on Bandcamp and all streaming platforms, sans Spotify (by the way, my newest album, Firefly Dance, released yesterday, and is available now on Bandcamp and streaming platforms—you should get it!). After a long, late nap, I finished up artwork and the rest of the particulars necessary to get the files and metadata uploaded to CD Baby for digital distribution (I might need to write a post about that some day, but it’s not exactly a sexy topic).
I’d written the other nine tracks first, but was searching for some theme or album title. Then I saw poet Stacey C. Johnson‘s “On Knowing,” and that gave me the idea to write a composition based on the different philosophies of knowing, or asking, “how do we know what we know?” [For a good Christian introduction to the topic, check out W. Jay Wood‘s Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous on Amazon. —TPP] In this case, it was the title more than the poem’s content that inspired me (although it’s a great poem!), but two of Johnson’s other poems inspired me to write pieces for this album (“Updrafting” and “Waltz“). In a way, I owe Johnson and her writing a huge debt of gratitude for Epistemology, because her work inspired a good chunk of it.
So while my American History students took a quiz on Friday, I rapidly jotted down the basic ideas for “Epistemology.” I wanted to write a repeating theme—like Hector Berlioz‘s idée fixe from his Symphonie Fantastique—that would evolve throughout the different sections. That theme or motif represents Truth as filtered through the various epistemological philosophies, starting with skepticism and proceeding through empiricism, rationalism, idealism, and postmodernism, before finally arriving at God’s Truth. I wanted that last bit to be the seventh part, as seven is traditionally understood to be the number representing God; to do that, I had to shoehorn in “Observation” as the second section. I also specifically wanted the chaos and uncertainty of “The Postmodernist” to be sixth, representing man’s number and his fallen—and confused!—nature.
Epistemology will release on Friday, 1 March 2024 (if you want to know the minute it comes out, take a minute and follow my Bandcamp page). But for you—my adoring subscribers—you get to hear the title track today.
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The following is a re-posting of this past Sunday’s edition of Sunday Doodles (Sunday Doodles CXCV), which is normally a perk for $5 and up subscribers to my SubscribeStar Page. The post serves as a preview, of sorts, to the kind of content that will make up (I hope!) my third book, tentatively entitled Offensive Poems: With Pictures. I thought I’d bring it to the masses—you, my beloved free subscribers and daily readers—to get feedback—and to let you in on this new project. —TPP
Typically, Sunday Doodles is reserved for the classy $5 and up subscribers, while $3 a month gets the first Sunday of the month to gawk at doodles. However, I’m opening this post up to all subscribers.
That’s because this weekend’s edition of Sunday Doodles features a preview of my current book project, Offensive Poems: With Pictures. This project started almost by accident—I was doodling at an open mic night on Tuesday, 18 July 2023, and started sketching people around me. Two nights later—Thursday, 20 July 2023—at another open mic, I drew “Cute But Offensive Extraterrestrial”; he prompted me to write the haiku “Learn to Code.”
That got me thinking: what if I wrote a red-pilled haiku for every doodle? I was already toying with the idea of writing poems to accompany each doodle, but I wasn’t thinking of making them a satirical commentary on the strange times in which we find ourselves. Now, I can’t stop coming up with pithy verses about the various sacred cows and empty bromides of our time. It’s remarkable how many Leftist slogans are seven-syllables, which works great for that second line of each haiku.
Why haiku? I like the challenge of stating a complex sets of ideas in seventeen syllables. The structure of a haiku—five syllables in the first and third lines, seven syllables in the second/middle line—means I have to be extremely efficient with words.
And, to be totally honest, I just find haiku easier to work with than other poetic forms. It offers enough flexibility in terms of rhythm, meter, etc., for a hedge-poet like myself to play around with. Once I have to worry about iambic pentameter, for example, and stressed and unstressed syllables, it’s a bit too much for yours portly.
That said, I wanted some form, as I find most free verse to be too loose. There is something to be said for structure, as it forces me to think intentionally about every word. Also, I find that much free verse quickly becomes indistinguishable from prose. Much of it seems like prose writing with random or mildly clever line breaks.
So! Enough rambling. Let’s get to the doodles!
After a very long Monday, I’m taking a moment to write a post I promised earlier today. Instead of my usual Monday Morning Movie Review, I’m offering up a preview of 100 films.
For Christmas, I received two massive collections of films: Mad Scientist Theatre and Horror Classics, both put out by low-budget distributor Mill Creek Entertainment:
Just look at those glorious covers. What is going on with that hairy dude holding up a syringe full of a mysterious green substance? Why is there a woman’s head covered surrounded by tubes in a tub of liquid? Perhaps Dr. Fauci can weigh in.
Regardless, I’m super excited to watch these films—all 100 of them.
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It’s hard to believe, but tonight is another Spooktacular. It’s technically the third Spooktacular, but it’s the second conducted from my front porch. The very first “official” Spooktacular was held at a coffee shop in Darlington, South Carolina, in October 2019. The following October, that coffee shop—along with many others—had shuttered during The Age of The Virus, or had not reopened for live performances.
As such, I decided to try something different: instead of finding a venue to take me in, I made my home the venue. I have a front porch that is just big enough to hold four musicians and their gear comfortably (albeit a tight comfort, like a college girl wearing yoga pants to her 8 AM class).
I’ve documented all of this elsewhere, but I will confess I am proud of myself for making it happen (with a follow-up front porch concert in May 2021, the TJC Spring Jam). It’s not a completely original idea, but I’m glad I was able to turn a bad situation into an opportunity for everyone to have a good time.
Well, tonight is the big night, and I’m not sure what to expect. Some of my major contributors are not able to attend this year, but my opening act, Jeremy and The Blissters (named in part for Jeremy Miles, no stranger to this blog), possess a dedicated following and should bring out a good crowd. I’ve also heard from a number of folks who are coming tonight, so I think we will have a good crowd.
All that said, I have the inside scoop on what’s going down tonight, and big crowd or not, it’s going to be a fun time.
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This Thursday, 1 April 2021, I’m releasing my first book, a collection of ten of my Inspector Gerard “one-minute mystery” stories (the paperback edition is available now). The collection, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot, reproduces stories I first wrote twenty years ago, starring the hard-boiled, absurd, postmodern private eye, Inspector Gerard.
The whole “gimmick” of Gerard is that the solutions to his cases involve evidence and details denied to the reader, making the cases hilariously unsolvable.
For my generous subscribers, I’m sharing here three of the best Gerard stories: “Dial ‘M’ for Malfeasance,” “Sleazebag in the City,” and “Inspector Gerard and the Video Rental Caper.”
Preorder The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard for Kindle or order now in paperback.
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